The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of
Charles Dudley Warner, by Charles Dudley Warner
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Title: The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner
Author: Charles Dudley Warner
Release Date: October 11, 2004 [EBook #3136]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENTIRE PG WARNER ***
Produced by David Widger
THE ENTIRE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF CHARLES D. WARNER
By CHARLES D. WARNER
CONTENTS:
Baddeck and That Sort of Thing
My Summer In A Garden
Calvin A Study Of Character
Backlog Studies
In The Wilderness
How I Killed A Bear
Lost In The Woods
A Fight With A Trout
A-Hunting Of The Deer
A Character Study (Old Phelps)
Camping Out
A Wilderness Romance
What Some People Call Pleasure
How Spring Came In New England
Captain John Smith
The Story Of Pocahontas
Saunterings
Being A Boy
On Horseback
As We Were Saying (Essays)
Rose And Chrysanthemum
The Red Bonnet
The Loss In Civilization
Social Screaming
Does Refinement Kill Individuality?
The Directoire Gown
The Mystery Of The Sex
The Clothes Of Fiction
The Broad A
Chewing Gum
Women In Congress
Shall Women Propose?
Frocks And The Stage
Altruism
Social Clearing-House
Dinner-Table Talk
Naturalization
Art Of Governing
Love Of Display
Value Of The Commonplace
The Burden Of Christmas
The Responsibility Of Writers
The Cap And Gown
A Tendency Of The Age
A Locoed Novelist
As We Go (Essays)
Our President
The Newspaper-Made Man
Interesting Girls
Give The Men A Chance
The Advent Of Candor
The American Man
The Electric Way
Can A Husband Open His Wife's Letters?
A Leisure Class
Weather And Character
Born With An "Ego"
Juventus Mundi
A Beautiful Old Age
The Attraction Of The Repulsive
Giving As A Luxury
Climate And Happiness
The New Feminine Reserve
Repose In Activity
Women--Ideal And Real
The Art Of Idleness
Is There Any Conversation
The Tall Girl
The Deadly Diary
The Whistling Girl
Born Old And Rich
The "Old Soldier"
The Island Of Bimini
June
Nine Short Essays
A Night In The Garden Of The Tuileries
Truthfulness
The Pursuit Of Happiness
Literature And The Stage
The Life-Saving And Life Prolonging Art
"H.H." In Southern California
Simplicity
The English Volunteers During The Late Invasion
Nathan Hale
Fashions In Literature
The American Newspaper
Certain Diversities Of American Life
The Pilgrim, And The American Of Today--[1892]
Some Causes Of The Prevailing Discontent
The Education Of The Negro
The Indeterminate Sentence
Literary Copyright
The Relation Of Literature To Life
Biographical Sketch By Thomas R. Lounsbury.
The Relation Of Literature To Life
"Equality"
What Is Your Culture To Me?
Modern Fiction
Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froude's "Progress"
England
The Novel And The Common School
The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote
Trilogy
A Little Journey In The World
The Golden House
That Fortune
Their Pilgrimage
Washington Irving
BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
By Charles Dudley Warner
PREFACE
TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL
It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketches
of a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume in
response to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escape
altogether. For it was you who first taught me to say the name
Baddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and a
seductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, in
relation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor.
That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see his
tackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy good
fishing in the right season. You understand the duties of a home
missionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would be
likely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of his
preserve.
But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started you
speedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turned
it over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference;
you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by Nova
Scotia. The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, no
part of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take any
interest in it. You know that our design was to slip rapidly down,
by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spend
a week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey here
imperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fate
and by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.
It would have been easy after our return to have made up from
libraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing it
with historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnological
information, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowing
imagination. But it seemed to me that it would be a more honest
contribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapid
travel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body of
print, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to
its originality and individuality,--however slight either is,--and
very little value if it is a compilation of the observations of
others. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can only
hope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of it
may not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.
Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of this
little journey could have during its persual the companionship that
the writer had when it was made, they would think it altogether
delightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going about
the world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is
distracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. The
delight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniary
profit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which the
philosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, as
Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings and
factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? For
wars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are the majority
of the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went into the
Provinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it may
be my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, under
similar circumstances.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.
C. D. W.
BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
"Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home,
I was in a better place; but travellers must be content."
--TOUCHSTONE.
Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than the
United States in the month of August, found themselves one
evening in apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.
The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionable
inhabitants had retired into the country, or into the
second-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air of
tender gloom settled upon the Common. The streets were almost empty,
and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins and
the uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under the
flooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without any
increase in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even the news-offices
had put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buy
a guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, or
to show him how to get out of it. There was, to be sure, a cheerful
tinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicles
which created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers on
their way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not having
well-regulated minds, had no desire to go there. What would have
become of Boston if the great fire had reached this sacred point of
pilgrimage no merely human mind can imagine. Without it, I suppose
the horse-cars would go continually round and round, never stopping,
until the cars fell away piecemeal on the track, and the horses
collapsed into a mere mass of bones and harness, and the
brown-covered books from the Public Library, in the hands of the
fading virgins who carried them, had accumulated fines to an
incalculable amount.
Boston, notwithstanding its partial destruction by fire, is still a
good place to start from. When one meditates an excursion into an
unknown and perhaps perilous land, where the flag will not protect
him and the greenback will only partially support him, he likes to
steady and tranquilize his mind by a peaceful halt and a serene
start. So we--for the intelligent reader has already identified us
with the two travelers resolved to spend the last night, before
beginning our journey, in the quiet of a Boston hotel. Some people
go into the country for quiet: we knew better. The country is no
place for sleep. The general absence of sound which prevails at
night is only a sort of background which brings out more vividly the
special and unexpected disturbances which are suddenly sprung upon
the restless listener. There are a thousand pokerish noises that no
one can account for, which excite the nerves to acute watchfulness.
It is still early, and one is beginning to be lulled by the frogs and
the crickets, when the faint rattle of a drum is heard,--just a few
preliminary taps. But the soul takes alarm, and well it may, for a
roll follows, and then a rub-a-dub-dub, and the farmer's boy who is
handling the sticks and pounding the distended skin in a neighboring
horse-shed begins to pour out his patriotism in that unending
repetition of rub-a-dub-dub which is supposed to represent love of
country in the young. When the boy is tired out and quits the field,
the faithful watch-dog opens out upon the stilly night. He is the
guardian of his master's slumbers. The howls of the faithful
creature are answered by barks and yelps from all the farmhouses for
a mile around, and exceedingly poor barking it usually is, until all
the serenity of the night is torn to shreds. This is, however, only
the opening of the orchestra. The cocks wake up if there is the
faintest moonshine and begin an antiphonal service between responsive
barn-yards. It is not the clear clarion of chanticleer that is heard
in the morn of English poetry, but a harsh chorus of cracked voices,
hoarse and abortive attempts, squawks of young experimenters, and
some indescribable thing besides, for I believe even the hens crow in
these days. Distracting as all this is, however, happy is the man
who does not hear a goat lamenting in the night. The goat is the
most exasperating of the animal creation. He cries like a deserted
baby, but he does it without any regularity. One can accustom
himself to any expression of suffering that is regular. The
annoyance of the goat is in the dreadful waiting for the uncertain
sound of the next wavering bleat. It is the fearful expectation of
that, mingled with the faint hope that the last was the last, that
aggravates the tossing listener until he has murder in his heart.
He longs for daylight, hoping that the voices of the night will then
cease, and that sleep will come with the blessed morning. But he has
forgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east have
assembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for an
hour the most rasping dissonance,--an orchestra in which each artist
is tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play a
different tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings
"Annie Laurie,"--to pervert Bayard Taylor's song.
Give us the quiet of a city on the night before a journey. As we
mounted skyward in our hotel, and went to bed in a serene altitude,
we congratulated ourselves upon a reposeful night. It began well.
But as we sank into the first doze, we were startled by a sudden
crash. Was it an earthquake, or another fire? Were the neighboring
buildings all tumbling in upon us, or had a bomb fallen into the
neighboring crockery-store? It was the suddenness of the onset that
startled us, for we soon perceived that it began with the clash of
cymbals, the pounding of drums, and the blaring of dreadful brass.
It was somebody's idea of music. It opened without warning. The men
composing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alley
about the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattling
quickstep, on purpose. The horrible sound thus suddenly let loose
had no chance of escape; it bounded back from wall to wall, like the
clapping of boards in a tunnel, rattling windows and stunning all
cars, in a vain attempt to get out over the roofs. But such music
does not go up. What could have been the intention of this assault
we could not conjecture. It was a time of profound peace through the
country; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was a
serenade. Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into an
alley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big for
the alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation. It may be well
enough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that night
must have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him. Perhaps the
band had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, in
humble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at it
from the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notes
of "Fair Harvard."
The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber and
weariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley,
like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement;
and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who were
evidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up their
voices in song. Boston seems to be full of good singers; but they
will ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city will
cease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.
But this entertainment did not last the night out.
It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rouse
the travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to be
awakened. In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at two
o'clock and keeps up till seven. If the porter is at all faithful,
he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rouses
the wrong people. We treated the pounding of the porter on our door
with silent contempt. At the next door he had better luck. Pound,
pound. An angry voice, "What do you want?"
"Time to take the train, sir."
"Not going to take any train."
"Ain't your name Smith?"
"Yes."
"Well, Smith"--
"I left no order to be called." (Indistinct grumbling from Smith's
room.)
Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage. In a little
while he returns to Smith's door, evidently not satisfied in his
mind. Rap, rap, rap!
"Well, what now?"
"What's your initials? A. T.; clear out!"
And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumbling
something about a mistake. The idea of waking a man up in the middle
of the night to ask him his "initials" was ridiculous enough to
banish sleep for another hour. A person named Smith, when he
travels, should leave his initials outside the door with his boots.
Refreshed by this reposeful night, and eager to exchange the
stagnation of the shore for the tumult of the ocean, we departed next
morning for Baddeck by the most direct route. This we found, by
diligent study of fascinating prospectuses of travel, to be by the
boats of the International Steamship Company; and when, at eight
o'clock in the morning, we stepped aboard one of them from Commercial
Wharf, we felt that half our journey and the most perplexing part of
it was accomplished. We had put ourselves upon a great line of
travel, and had only to resign ourselves to its flow in order to
reach the desired haven. The agent at the wharf assured us that it
was not necessary to buy through tickets to Baddeck,--he spoke of it
as if it were as easy a place to find as Swampscott,--it was a
conspicuous name on the cards of the company, we should go right on
from St. John without difficulty. The easy familiarity of this
official with Baddeck, in short, made us ashamed to exhibit any
anxiety about its situation or the means of approach to it.
Subsequent experience led us to believe that the only man in the
world, out of Baddeck, who knew anything about it lives in Boston,
and sells tickets to it, or rather towards it.
There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of
it, when the traveler is settled simply as to his destination, and
commits himself to his unknown fate and all the anticipations of
adventure before him. We experienced this pleasure as we ascended to
the deck of the steamboat and snuffed the fresh air of Boston Harbor.
What a beautiful harbor it is, everybody says, with its irregularly
indented shores and its islands. Being strangers, we want to know
the names of the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has a
national reputation, pointed out. As usual on a steamboat, no one is
certain about the names, and the little geographical knowledge we
have is soon hopelessly confused. We make out South Boston very
plainly: a tourist is looking at its warehouses through his
opera-glass, and telling his boy about a recent fire there. We find out
afterwards that it was East Boston. We pass to the stern of the boat
for a last look at Boston itself; and while there we have the
pleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and the State House. We
do this with easy familiarity; but where there are so many tall
factory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the Monument as one
may think.
The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned air
of the land. The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like the
top of a glass of champagne. We intend by and by to sit down and
look at it for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasing
ourselves with the shifting and dancing of the waves. Now we are
busy running about from side to side to see the islands, Governor's,
Castle, Long, Deer, and the others. When, at length, we find Fort
Warren, it is not nearly so grim and gloomy as we had expected, and
is rather a pleasure-place than a prison in appearance. We are
conscious, however, of a patriotic emotion as we pass its green turf
and peeping guns. Leaving on our right Lovell's Island and the Great
and Outer Brewster, we stand away north along the jagged
Massachusetts shore. These outer islands look cold and wind-swept
even in summer, and have a hardness of outline which is very far from
the aspect of summer isles in summer seas. They are too low and bare
for beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humble
description. Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by an
eccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map,
and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender arm
with knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club. We sit
and watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight. Its
curves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villages
and dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the white
spires, the summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with an
occasional orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and then the
flag of some many-piazzaed hotel. The sunlight is the glory of it
all; it must have quite another attraction--that of melancholy--under
a gray sky and with a lead-colored water foreground.
There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention from
the study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers had
gone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. The
passengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had
the listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or
two, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in
their uncomfortable Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen to
the boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who could
draw up and pass the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers. I
heard one of these Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficient
to repress the mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom,
enlightening an admiring friend as to his idiosyncrasies. It
appeared that he was that sort of a man that, if a man wanted
anything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and that one of
his peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid muscle to
the brain, though he did not express it in that language. He went on
to explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically that
whenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost all
control of himself. This sort of confidence poured out to a single
friend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcited
tone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity. The very
act of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, so
that he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, his
diseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or in
politics, and his most secret hopes. One sees everywhere this
beautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy. There was the old
lady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboard
the express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.
She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's Four Corners. It seemed that
the train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards that
the obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would let
her off at Peak's. When she stepped into the car, in a flustered
condition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all the
passengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stopped
at Peak's. The information she received was various, but the weight
of it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to get
off without delay, before the train should start. The poor woman got
off, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but her
mind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every person
who passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her.
"Sit perfectly still," said the conductor, when he came by. "You
must get out and wait for a way train," said the passengers, who
knew. In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old lady
had about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction was
completed by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board. She
saw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after one
look of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat,
grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair. Fate now
seemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it. I am sure
it was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led me
to approach her and say, "Madam, where are you going?"
"The Lord only knows," was the utterly candid response; but then,
forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burst
of confidence, she began to tell me her troubles. She informed me
that her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all her
wedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and as
she said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped it
might be following her. What would become of them all now, all brand
new, she did n't know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.
And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all that
that trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar sound
in a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each. It
seemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this catalogue
which filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelation
that I cannot convey in words. And though I am compelled, by way of
illustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall ever
extract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.
We were now passing Nahant, and we should have seen Longfellow's
cottage and the waves beating on the rocks before it, if we had been
near enough. As it was, we could only faintly distinguish the
headland and note the white beach of Lynn. The fact is, that in
travel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory as
he is at home. Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything. The
interest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainly
literary and historical. And no country is of much interest until
legends and poetry have draped it in hues that mere nature cannot
produce. We looked at Nahant for Longfellow's sake; we strained our
eyes to make out Marblehead on account of Whittier's ballad; we
scrutinized the entrance to Salem Harbor because a genius once sat in
its decaying custom-house and made of it a throne of the imagination.
Upon this low shore line, which lies blinking in the midday sun, the
waves of history have beaten for two centuries and a half, and
romance has had time to grow there. Out of any of these coves might
have sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to Noroway,"
"They hadna sailed upon the sea
A day but barely three,
Till loud and boisterous grew the wind,
And gurly grew the sea."
The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an
August holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the
suggestive shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, and
few women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stools
that the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers.
There is no scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one of
those stools. And when the traveler is at sea, with the land failing
away in his horizon, and has to create his own scenery by an effort
of the imagination, these stools are no assistance to him. The
imagination, when one is sitting, will not work unless the back is
supported. Besides, it began to be cold; notwithstanding the shiny,
specious appearance of things, it was cold, except in a sheltered
nook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing to be complained of
by persons who had left the parching land in order to get cool. They
knew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and that
they would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the little
stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out of
something that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people enjoy riding
on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along in
pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any
ennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes
them when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away.
"Did you see the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On our
steamboat there was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just as
plain, off to the east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one.
I wonder where all these men come from who always see a whale. I
never was on a sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.
We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close
by the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the
lanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher
all at play; and then we bore away, straight over the trackless
Atlantic, across that part of the map where the title and the
publisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St.
John. It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't see
the whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from a
view of the Isles of Shoals. I am not tempted to introduce them into
this sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, for
truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.
There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or might
not have seen. For instance, it might not be wrong to describe a
coast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were performing
our morning toilets in our staterooms. The traveler owes a duty to
his readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too indifferent
to go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village where a
landing is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by his
indolence. He should describe the village.
I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinating
on the map as that of Norway. We had all the feelings appropriate to
nearness to it, but we couldn't see it. Before we came abreast of it
night had settled down, and there was around us only a gray and
melancholy waste of salt water. To be sure it was a lovely night,
with a young moon in its sky,
"I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"
and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so
boldly down into the sea. At length we saw them,--faint, dusky
shadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most
poetical light. We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for
our journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such a
distance. I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and asked
if we should go any nearer to Mt. Desert.
"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in this
country have for inquisitive travelers,--"them's Camden Hills. You
won't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't."
One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on a
steamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and the
language to do so. But there was an absolute want of material, that
would hardly be credited if we went into details. The first meeting
of the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it. There is a kind
of female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly say
that to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner that
are interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or the
reverse, which attract one's attention: but there was absolutely
nothing of this sort on our boat. The female passengers were all
neutrals, incapable, I should say, of making any impression whatever
even under the most favorable circumstances. They were probably
women of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggy
land they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, but
merely a languid expectation of something undefined. My comrade was
disposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel but
throughout the Provinces generally,--a resentment that could be shown
to be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty in
these lands, and it was probably a bad year for it. Nor should an
American of the United States be forward to set up his standard of
taste in such matters; neither in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, nor
Cape Breton have I heard the inhabitants complain of the plainness of
the women.
On such a night two lovers might have been seen, but not on our boat,
leaning over the taffrail,--if that is the name of the fence around
the cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the long
track of light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness.
For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere with
the most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged ahead
under the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom that
almost concealed the commercial nature of her mission. It seemed
--this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillating
heavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night
--like a pleasure trip. "It is the witching hour of half past ten,"
said my comrade, "let us turn in." (The reader will notice the
consideration for her feelings which has omitted the usual
description of "a sunset at sea.")
When we looked from our state-room window in the morning we saw land.
We were passing within a stone's throw of a pale-green and rather
cold-looking coast, with few trees or other evidences of fertile
soil. Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.
I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in his
winter overcoat, since four o'clock. He described to me the
magnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands and
capes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it. He knew
all about the harbor. That wooden town at the foot of it, with the
white spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching was
Eastport. The long island stretching clear across the harbor was
Campobello. We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out of
our way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that we
could not enter by the Lubec Channel. We had been obliged to enter
an American harbor by British waters.
We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity and
considerable respect. It had been one of the cities of the
imagination. Lying in the far east of our great territory, a
military and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on the
map, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequent
in telegraphic dispatches,--we had imagined it a solid city, with
some Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.
The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance,
with the sun shining on its white houses. When we landed at its
wooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, a
sprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with a
flag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal. It is doubtless a
very enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning was
that of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensating
picturesqueness. White paint always looks chilly under a gray sky
and on naked hills. Even in hot August the place seemed bleak. The
tourist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that it
would be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking on
Campobello Island. It has another advantage for the wicked over
other Maine towns. Owing to the contiguity of British territory, the
Maine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit. The thirsty citizen or
sailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two across
the narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Island
and land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he is
missed.
This might be a cause of war with, England, but it is not the most
serious grievance here. The possession by the British of the island
of Campobello is an insufferable menace and impertinence. I write
with the full knowledge of what war is. We ought to instantly
dislodge the British from Campobello. It entirely shuts up and
commands our harbor, one of our chief Eastern harbors and war
stations, where we keep a flag and cannon and some soldiers, and
where the customs officers look out for smuggling. There is no way
to get into our own harbor, except in favorable conditions of the
tide, without begging the courtesy of a passage through British
waters. Why is England permitted to stretch along down our coast in
this straggling and inquisitive manner? She might almost as well own
Long Island. It was impossible to prevent our cheeks mantling with
shame as we thought of this, and saw ourselves, free American
citizens, land-locked by alien soil in our own harbor.
We ought to have war, if war is necessary to possess Campobello and
Deer Islands; or else we ought to give the British Eastport. I am
not sure but the latter would be the better course.
With this war spirit in our hearts, we sailed away into the British
waters of the Bay of Fundy, but keeping all the morning so close to
the New Brunswick shore that we could see there was nothing on it;
that is, nothing that would make one wish to land. And yet the best
part of going to sea is keeping close to the shore, however tame it
may be, if the weather is pleasant. A pretty bay now and then, a
rocky cove with scant foliage, a lighthouse, a rude cabin, a level
land, monotonous and without noble forests,--this was New Brunswick
as we coasted along it under the most favorable circumstances. But
we were advancing into the Bay of Fundy; and my comrade, who had been
brought up on its high tides in the district school, was on the
lookout for this phenomenon. The very name of Fundy is stimulating
to the imagination, amid the geographical wastes of youth, and the
young fancy reaches out to its tides with an enthusiasm that is given
only to Fingal's Cave and other pictorial wonders of the text-book.
I am sure the district schools would become what they are not now, if
the geographers would make the other parts of the globe as attractive
as the sonorous Bay of Fundy. The recitation about that is always an
easy one; there is a lusty pleasure in the mere shouting out of the
name, as if the speaking it were an innocent sort of swearing. From
the Bay of Fundy the rivers run uphill half the time, and the tides
are from forty to ninety feet high. For myself, I confess that, in
my imagination, I used to see the tides of this bay go stalking into
the land like gigantic waterspouts; or, when I was better instructed,
I could see them advancing on the coast like a solid wall of masonry
eighty feet high. "Where," we said, as we came easily, and neither
uphill nor downhill, into the pleasant harbor of St. John,---"where
are the tides of our youth?"
They were probably out, for when we came to the land we walked out
upon the foot of a sloping platform that ran into the water by the
side of the piles of the dock, which stood up naked and blackened
high in the air. It is not the purpose of this paper to describe St.
John, nor to dwell upon its picturesque situation. As one approaches
it from the harbor it gives a promise which its rather shabby
streets, decaying houses, and steep plank sidewalks do not keep. A
city set on a hill, with flags flying from a roof here and there, and
a few shining spires and walls glistening in the sun, always looks
well at a distance. St. John is extravagant in the matter of
flagstaffs; almost every well-to-do citizen seems to have one on his
premises, as a sort of vent for his loyalty, I presume. It is a good
fashion, at any rate, and its more general adoption by us would add
to the gayety of our cities when we celebrate the birthday of the
President. St. John is built on a steep sidehill, from which it
would be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortised
into the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, but
the labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note these
things complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the Victoria
Hotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and from
the upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and of
the hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenly
truncated ruin of a round stone tower. This tower was one of the
first things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor. It gave
an antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wanted
without this. Round stone towers are not so common in this world
that we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called a
Martello tower, but I could not learn who built it. I could not
understand the indifference, almost amounting to contempt, of the
citizens of St. John in regard to this their only piece of curious
antiquity. "It is nothing but the ruins of an old fort," they said;
"you can see it as well from here as by going there." It was,
however, the one thing at St. John I was determined to see. But we
never got any nearer to it than the ferry-landing. Want of time and
the vis inertia of the place were against us. And now, as I think of
that tower and its perhaps mysterious origin, I have a longing for it
that the possession of nothing else in the Provinces could satisfy.
But it must not be forgotten that we were on our way to Baddeck; that
the whole purpose of the journey was to reach Baddeck; that St. John
was only an incident in the trip; that any information about St.
John, which is here thrown in or mercifully withheld, is entirely
gratuitous, and is not taken into account in the price the reader
pays for this volume. But if any one wants to know what sort of a
place St. John is, we can tell him: it is the sort of a place that if
you get into it after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, you cannot
get out of it in any direction until Thursday morning at eight
o'clock, unless you want to smuggle goods on the night train to
Bangor. It was eleven o'clock Wednesday forenoon when we arrived at
St. John. The Intercolonial railway train had gone to Shediac; it
had gone also on its roundabout Moncton, Missaquat River, Truro,
Stewiack, and Shubenacadie way to Halifax; the boat had gone to Digby
Gut and Annapolis to catch the train that way for Halifax; the boat
had gone up the river to Frederick, the capital. We could go to none
of these places till the next day. We had no desire to go to
Frederick, but we made the fact that we were cut off from it an
addition to our injury. The people of St. John have this
peculiarity: they never start to go anywhere except early in the
morning.
The reader to whom time is nothing does not yet appreciate the
annoyance of our situation. Our time was strictly limited. The
active world is so constituted that it could not spare us more than
two weeks. We must reach Baddeck Saturday night or never. To go
home without seeing Baddeck was simply intolerable. Had we not told
everybody that we were going to Baddeck? Now, if we had gone to
Shediac in the train that left St. John that morning, we should have
taken the steamboat that would have carried us to Port Hawkesbury,
whence a stage connected with a steamboat on the Bras d'Or, which
(with all this profusion of relative pronouns) would land us at
Baddeck on Friday. How many times had we been over this route on the
map and the prospectus of travel! And now, what a delusion it
seemed! There would not another boat leave Shediac on this route
till the following Tuesday,--quite too late for our purpose. The
reader sees where we were, and will be prepared, if he has a map (and
any feelings), to appreciate the masterly strategy that followed.
II
During the pilgrimage everything does not suit the tastes of the
pilgrim.--TURKISH PROVERB.
One seeking Baddeck, as a possession, would not like to be detained a
prisoner even in Eden,--much less in St. John, which is unlike Eden
in several important respects. The tree of knowledge does not grow
there, for one thing; at least St. John's ignorance of Baddeck
amounts to a feature. This encountered us everywhere. So dense was
this ignorance, that we, whose only knowledge of the desired place
was obtained from the prospectus of travel, came to regard ourselves
as missionaries of geographical information in this dark provincial
city.
The clerk at the Victoria was not unwilling to help us on our
journey, but if he could have had his way, we would have gone to a
place on Prince Edward Island which used to be called Bedeque, but is
now named Summerside, in the hope of attracting summer visitors. As
to Cape Breton, he said the agent of the Intercolonial could tell us
all about that, and put us on the route. We repaired to the agent.
The kindness of this person dwells in our memory. He entered at once
into our longings and perplexities. He produced his maps and
time-tables, and showed us clearly what we already knew. The Port
Hawkesbury steamboat from Shediac for that week had gone, to be sure,
but we could take one of another line which would leave us at Pictou,
whence we could take another across to Port Hood, on Cape Breton.
This looked fair, until we showed the agent that there was no steamer
to Port Hood.
"Ah, then you can go another way. You can take the Intercolonial
railway round to Pictou, catch the steamer for Port Hawkesbury,
connect with the steamer on the Bras d'Or, and you are all right."
So it would seem. It was a most obliging agent; and it took us half
an hour to convince him that the train would reach Pictou half a day
too late for the steamer, that no other boat would leave Pictou for
Cape Breton that week, and that even if we could reach the Bras d'Or,
we should have no means of crossing it, except by swimming. The
perplexed agent thereupon referred us to Mr. Brown, a shipper on the
wharf, who knew all about Cape Breton, and could tell us exactly how
to get there. It is needless to say that a weight was taken off our
minds. We pinned our faith to Brown, and sought him in his
warehouse. Brown was a prompt business man, and a traveler, and
would know every route and every conveyance from Nova Scotia to Cape
Breton.
Mr. Brown was not in. He never is in. His store is a rusty
warehouse, low and musty, piled full of boxes of soap and candles and
dried fish, with a little glass cubby in one corner, where a thin
clerk sits at a high desk, like a spider in his web. Perhaps he is a
spider, for the cubby is swarming with flies, whose hum is the only
noise of traffic; the glass of the window-sash has not been washed
since it was put in apparently. The clerk is not writing, and has
evidently no other use for his steel pen than spearing flies. Brown
is out, says this young votary of commerce, and will not be in till
half past five. We remark upon the fact that nobody ever is "in"
these dingy warehouses, wonder when the business is done, and go out
into the street to wait for Brown.
In front of the store is a dray, its horse fast-asleep, and waiting
for the revival of commerce. The travelers note that the dray is of
a peculiar construction, the body being dropped down from the axles
so as nearly to touch the ground,--a great convenience in loading and
unloading; they propose to introduce it into their native land. The
dray is probably waiting for the tide to come in. In the deep slip
lie a dozen helpless vessels, coasting schooners mostly, tipped on
their beam ends in the mud, or propped up by side-pieces as if they
were built for land as well as for water. At the end of the wharf is
a long English steamboat unloading railroad iron, which will return
to the Clyde full of Nova Scotia coal. We sit down on the dock,
where the fresh sea-breeze comes up the harbor, watch the lazily
swinging crane on the vessel, and meditate upon the greatness of
England and the peacefulness of the drowsy after noon. One's feeling
of rest is never complete--unless he can see somebody else at work,
--but the labor must be without haste, as it is in the Provinces.
While waiting for Brown, we had leisure to explore the shops of
King's Street, and to climb up to the grand triumphal arch which
stands on top of the hill and guards the entrance to King's Square.
Of the shops for dry-goods I have nothing to say, for they tempt the
unwary American to violate the revenue laws of his country; but he
may safely go into the book-shops. The literature which is displayed
in the windows and on the counters has lost that freshness which it
once may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term,
fly-specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets.
There are old illustrated newspapers from the States, cheap novels
from the same, and the flashy covers of the London and Edinburgh
sixpenny editions. But this is the dull season for literature, we
reflect.
It will always be matter of regret to us that we climbed up to the
triumphal arch, which appeared so noble in the distance, with the
trees behind it. For when we reached it, we found that it was built
of wood, painted and sanded, and in a shocking state of decay; and
the grove to which it admitted us was only a scant assemblage of
sickly locust-trees, which seemed to be tired of battling with the
unfavorable climate, and had, in fact, already retired from the
business of ornamental shade trees. Adjoining this square is an
ancient cemetery, the surface of which has decayed in sympathy with
the mouldering remains it covers, and is quite a model in this
respect. I have called this cemetery ancient, but it may not be so,
for its air of decay is thoroughly modern, and neglect, and not
years, appears to have made it the melancholy place of repose it is.
Whether it is the fashionable and favorite resort of the dead of the
city we did not learn, but there were some old men sitting in its
damp shades, and the nurses appeared to make it a rendezvous for
their baby-carriages,--a cheerful place to bring up children in, and
to familiarize their infant minds with the fleeting nature of
provincial life. The park and burying-ground, it is scarcely
necessary to say, added greatly to the feeling of repose which stole
over us on this sunny day. And they made us long for Brown and his
information about Baddeck.
But Mr. Brown, when found, did not know as much as the agent. He had
been in Nova Scotia; he had never been in Cape Breton; but he
presumed we would find no difficulty in reaching Baddeck by so and
so, and so and so. We consumed valuable time in convincing Brown
that his directions to us were impracticable and valueless, and then
he referred us to Mr. Cope. An interview with Mr. Cope discouraged
us; we found that we were imparting everywhere more geographical
information than we were receiving, and as our own stock was small,
we concluded that we should be unable to enlighten all the
inhabitants of St. John upon the subject of Baddeck before we ran
out. Returning to the hotel, and taking our destiny into our own
hands, we resolved upon a bold stroke.
But to return for a moment to Brown. I feel that Brown has been let
off too easily in the above paragraph. His conduct, to say the
truth, was not such as we expected of a man in whom we had put our
entire faith for half a day,--a long while to trust anybody in these
times,--a man whom we had exalted as an encyclopedia of information,
and idealized in every way. A man of wealth and liberal views and
courtly manners we had decided Brown would be. Perhaps he had a
suburban villa on the heights over-looking Kennebeckasis Bay, and,
recognizing us as brothers in a common interest in Baddeck,
not-withstanding our different nationality, would insist upon taking
us to his house, to sip provincial tea with Mrs. Brown and Victoria
Louise, his daughter. When, therefore, Mr. Brown whisked into his
dingy office, and, but for our importunity, would have paid no more
attention to us than to up-country customers without credit, and when
he proved to be willingly, it seemed to us, ignorant of Baddeck, our
feelings received a great shock. It is incomprehensible that a man
in the position of Brown with so many boxes of soap and candles to
dispose of--should be so ignorant of a neighboring province. We had
heard of the cordial unity of the Provinces in the New Dominion.
Heaven help it, if it depends upon such fellows as Brown! Of course,
his directing us to Cope was a mere fetch. For as we have intimated,
it would have taken us longer to have given Cope an idea of Baddeck,
than it did to enlighten Brown. But we had no bitter feelings about
Cope, for we never had reposed confidence in him.
Our plan of campaign was briefly this: To take the steamboat at eight
o'clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to go
by rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn north
and east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to push
on by stage to the Gut of Canso. This would carry us over the entire
length of Nova Scotia, and, with good luck, land us on Cape Breton
Island Saturday morning. When we should set foot on that island, we
trusted that we should be able to make our way to Baddeck, by
walking, swimming, or riding, whichever sort of locomotion should be
most popular in that province. Our imaginations were kindled by
reading that the "most superb line of stages on the continent" ran
from New Glasgow to the Gut of Canso. If the reader perfectly
understands this programme, he has the advantage of the two
travelers at the time they made it.
It was a gray morning when we embarked from St. John, and in fact a
little drizzle of rain veiled the Martello tower, and checked, like
the cross-strokes of a line engraving, the hill on which it stands.
The miscellaneous shining of such a harbor appears best in a golden
haze, or in the mist of a morning like this. We had expected days of
fog in this region; but the fog seemed to have gone out with the high
tides of the geography. And it is simple justice to these
possessions of her Majesty, to say that in our two weeks'
acquaintance of them they enjoyed as delicious weather as ever falls
on sea and shore, with the exception of this day when we crossed the
Bay of Fundy. And this day was only one of those cool interludes of
low color, which an artist would be thankful to introduce among a
group of brilliant pictures. Such a day rests the traveler, who is
overstimulated by shifting scenes played upon by the dazzling sun.
So the cool gray clouds spread a grateful umbrella above us as we ran
across the Bay of Fundy, sighted the headlands of the Gut of Digby,
and entered into the Annapolis Basin, and into the region of a
romantic history. The white houses of Digby, scattered over the
downs like a flock of washed sheep, had a somewhat chilly aspect, it
is true, and made us long for the sun on them. But as I think of it
now, I prefer to have the town and the pretty hillsides that stand
about the basin in the light we saw them; and especially do I like to
recall the high wooden pier at Digby, deserted by the tide and so
blown by the wind that the passengers who came out on it, with their
tossing drapery, brought to mind the windy Dutch harbors that
Backhuysen painted. We landed a priest here, and it was a pleasure
to see him as he walked along the high pier, his broad hat flapping,
and the wind blowing his long skirts away from his ecclesiastical
legs.
It was one of the coincidences of life, for which no one can account,
that when we descended upon these coasts, the Governor-General of the
Dominion was abroad in his Provinces. There was an air of
expectation of him everywhere, and of preparation for his coming; his
lordship was the subject of conversation on the Digby boat, his
movements were chronicled in the newspapers, and the gracious bearing
of the Governor and Lady Dufferin at the civic receptions, balls, and
picnics was recorded with loyal satisfaction; even a literary flavor
was given to the provincial journals by quotations from his
lordship's condescension to letters in the "High Latitudes." It was
not without pain, however, that even in this un-American region we
discovered the old Adam of journalism in the disposition of the
newspapers of St. John toward sarcasm touching the well-meant
attempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the provincial
town of Halifax,--a disposition to turn, in short, upon the
demonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule. There
were those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take part
in the civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as we
were going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling of
satisfaction which proximity to the Great often excites.
We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction. We were sailing
along the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the Annapolis
Basin, and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we were
about to enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call the
Garden of Nova Scotia. This favored vale, skirted by low ranges of
hills on either hand, and watered most of the way by the Annapolis
River, extends from the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor on
the river Avon. We expected to see something like the fertile
valleys of the Connecticut or the Mohawk. We should also pass
through those meadows on the Basin of Minas which Mr. Longfellow has
made more sadly poetical than any other spot on the Western
Continent. It is,--this valley of the Annapolis,--in the belief of
provincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the world, with
a soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair meadows,
orchards, and vines. It was doubtless our own fault that this land
did not look to us like a garden, as it does to the inhabitants of
Nova Scotia; and it was not until we had traveled over the rest of
the country, that we saw the appropriateness of the designation. The
explanation is, that not so much is required of a garden here as in
some other parts of the world. Excellent apples, none finer, are
exported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoes
is said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here. I should think that
oats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those who
care for it, may be satisfactory. I should judge that the other
products of this garden are fish and building-stone. But we
anticipate. And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and the
hemlocks"? Nobody, I suppose, ever travels here without believing
that he sees these trees of the imagination, so forcibly has the poet
projected them upon the uni-versal consciousness. But we were unable
to see them, on this route.
It would be a brutal thing for us to take seats in the railway train
at Annapolis, and leave the ancient town, with its modern houses and
remains of old fortifications, without a thought of the romantic
history which saturates the region. There is not much in the smart,
new restaurant, where a tidy waiting-maid skillfully depreciates our
currency in exchange for bread and cheese and ale, to recall the
early drama of the French discovery and settlement. For it is to the
French that we owe the poetical interest that still invests, like a
garment, all these islands and bays, just as it is to the Spaniards
that we owe the romance of the Florida coast. Every spot on this
continent that either of these races has touched has a color that is
wanting in the prosaic settlements of the English.
Without the historical light of French adventure upon this town and
basin of Annapolis, or Port Royal, as they were first named, I
confess that I should have no longing to stay here for a week;
notwithstanding the guide-book distinctly says that this harbor has
"a striking resemblance to the beautiful Bay of Naples." I am not
offended at this remark, for it is the one always made about a
harbor, and I am sure the passing traveler can stand it, if the Bay
of Naples can. And yet this tranquil basin must have seemed a haven
of peace to the first discoverers.
It was on a lovely summer day in 1604, that the Sieur de Monts and
his comrades, Champlain and the Baron de Poutrincourt, beating about
the shores of Nova Scotia, were invited by the rocky gateway of the
Port Royal Basin. They entered the small inlet, says Mr. Parkman,
when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquil
basin, compassed with sunny hills, wrapped with woodland verdure and
alive with waterfalls. Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene,
and would fain remove thither from France with his family. Since
Poutrincourt's day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees,
and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such a
gray sky as we saw.
The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy of
Acadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentiment
is the one thing to be shunned in these days. Yet I cannot but stay,
though the train should leave us, to pay my respectful homage to one
of the most heroic of women, whose name recalls the most romantic
incident in the history of this region. Out of this past there rises
no figure so captivating to the imagination as that of Madame de la
Tour. And it is noticeable that woman has a curious habit of coming
to the front in critical moments of history, and performing some
exploit that eclipses in brilliancy all the deeds of contemporary
men; and the exploit usually ends in a pathetic tragedy, that fixes
it forever in the sympathy of the world. I need not copy out of the
pages of De Charlevoix the well-known story of Madame de la Tour; I
only wish he had told us more about her. It is here at Port Royal
that we first see her with her husband. Charles de St. Etienne, the
Chevalier de la Tour,--there is a world of romance in these mere
names,--was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and of
La Hive, from Louis XIII. He ceded La Hive to Razilli, the
governor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for a
residence. He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when the
Chevalier d'Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli at
La Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal. De Charnise
was a Catholic; the difference in religion might not have produced
any unpleasantness, but the two noblemen could not agree in dividing
the profits of the peltry trade,--each being covetous, if we may so
express it, of the hide of the savage continent, and determined to
take it off for himself. At any rate, disagreement arose, and De la
Tour moved over to the St. John, of which region his father had
enjoyed a grant from Charles I. of England,--whose sad fate it is not
necessary now to recall to the reader's mind,--and built a fort at
the mouth of the river. But the differences of the two ambitious
Frenchmen could not be composed. De la Tour obtained aid from
Governor Winthrop at Boston, thus verifying the Catholic prediction
that the Huguenots would side with the enemies of France on occasion.
De Charnise received orders from Louis to arrest De la Tour; but a
little preliminary to the arrest was the possession of the fort of
St. John, and this he could not obtain, although be sent all his
force against it. Taking advantage, however, of the absence of De la
Tour, who had a habit of roving about, he one day besieged St. John.
Madame de la Tour headed the little handful of men in the fort, and
made such a gallant resistance that De Charnise was obliged to draw
off his fleet with the loss of thirty-three men,--a very serious
loss, when the supply of men was as distant as France. But De
Charnise would not be balked by a woman; he attacked again; and this
time, one of the garrison, a Swiss, betrayed the fort, and let the
invaders into the walls by an unguarded entrance. It was Easter
morning when this misfortune occurred, but the peaceful influence of
the day did not avail. When Madame saw that she was betrayed, her
spirits did not quail; she took refuge with her little band in a
detached part of the fort, and there made such a bold show of
defense, that De Charnise was obliged to agree to the terms of her
surrender, which she dictated. No sooner had this unchivalrous
fellow obtained possession of the fort and of this Historic Woman,
than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with a
woman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all the
men, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be the
executioner of the others. And the poltroon compelled the brave
woman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a rope
round her neck,--or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it,
"obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, la corde au cou."
To the shock of this horror the womanly spirit of Madame de la Tour
succumbed; she fell into a decline and died soon after. De la Tour,
himself an exile from his province, wandered about the New World in
his customary pursuit of peltry. He was seen at Quebec for two
years. While there, he heard of the death of De Charnise, and
straightway repaired to St. John. The widow of his late enemy
received him graciously, and he entered into possession of the estate
of the late occupant with the consent of all the heirs. To remove
all roots of bitterness, De la Tour married Madame de Charnise, and
history does not record any ill of either of them. I trust they had
the grace to plant a sweetbrier on the grave of the noble woman to
whose faithfulness and courage they owe their rescue from obscurity.
At least the parties to this singular union must have agreed to
ignore the lamented existence of the Chevalier d'Aunay.
With the Chevalier de la Tour, at any rate, it all went well
thereafter. When Cromwell drove the French from Acadia, he granted
great territorial rights to De la Tour, which that thrifty adventurer
sold out to one of his co-grantees for L16,000; and he no doubt
invested the money in peltry for the London market.
As we leave the station at Annapolis, we are obliged to put Madame de
la Tour out of our minds to make room for another woman whose name,
and we might say presence, fills all the valley before us. So it is
that woman continues to reign, where she has once got a foothold,
long after her dear frame has become dust. Evangeline, who is as
real a personage as Queen Esther, must have been a different woman
from Madame de la Tour. If the latter had lived at Grand Pre, she
would, I trust, have made it hot for the brutal English who drove the
Acadians out of their salt-marsh paradise, and have died in her
heroic shoes rather than float off into poetry. But if it should
come to the question of marrying the De la Tour or the Evangeline, I
think no man who was not engaged in the peltry trade would hesitate
which to choose. At any rate, the women who love have more influence
in the world than the women who fight, and so it happens that the
sentimental traveler who passes through Port Royal without a tear for
Madame de la Tour, begins to be in a glow of tender longing and
regret for Evangeline as soon as he enters the valley of the
Annapolis River. For myself, I expected to see written over the
railway crossings the legend,
"Look out for Evangeline while the bell rings."
When one rides into a region of romance he does not much notice his
speed or his carriage; but I am obliged to say that we were not
hurried up the valley, and that the cars were not too luxurious for
the plain people, priests, clergymen, and belles of the region, who
rode in them. Evidently the latest fashions had not arrived in the
Provinces, and we had an opportunity of studying anew those that had
long passed away in the States, and of remarking how inappropriate a
fashion is when it has ceased to be the fashion.
The river becomes small shortly after we leave Annapolis and before
we reach Paradise. At this station of happy appellation we looked
for the satirist who named it, but he has probably sold out and
removed. If the effect of wit is produced by the sudden recognition
of a remote resemblance, there was nothing witty in the naming of
this station. Indeed, we looked in vain for the "garden" appearance
of the valley. There was nothing generous in the small meadows or
the thin orchards; and if large trees ever grew on the bordering
hills, they have given place to rather stunted evergreens; the
scraggy firs and balsams, in fact, possess Nova Scotia generally as
we saw it,--and there is nothing more uninteresting and wearisome
than large tracts of these woods. We are bound to believe that Nova
Scotia has somewhere, or had, great pines and hemlocks that murmur,
but we were not blessed with the sight of them. Slightly picturesque
this valley is with its winding river and high hills guarding it, and
perhaps a person would enjoy a foot-tramp down it; but, I think he
would find little peculiar or interesting after he left the
neighborhood of the Basin of Minas.
Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and some
of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide
goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time. The Acadia
College was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said that
it is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a place
described as "one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province."
But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that the
next station was Grand Pre! We were within three miles of the most
poetic place in North America.
There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he was
born in Grand Pre. It seemed impossible that we should actually be
near a person so felicitously born. He had a justifiable pride in
the fact, as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking to
see for the first time his old home. His local information, imparted
to her, overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read
"Evangeline," his delight in making us acquainted with the scene of
that poem was pleasant to see. The village of Grand Pre is a mile
from the station; and perhaps the reader would like to know exactly
what the traveler, hastening on to Baddeck, can see of the famous
locality.
We looked over a well-grassed meadow, seamed here and there by beds
of streams left bare by the receding tide, to a gentle swell in the
ground upon which is a not heavy forest growth. The trees partly
conceal the street of Grand Pre, which is only a road bordered by
common houses. Beyond is the Basin of Minas, with its sedgy shore,
its dreary flats; and beyond that projects a bold headland, standing
perpendicular against the sky. This is the Cape Blomidon, and it
gives a certain dignity to the picture.
The old Normandy picturesqueness has departed from the village of
Grand Pre. Yankee settlers, we were told, possess it now, and there
are no descendants of the French Acadians in this valley. I believe
that Mr. Cozzens found some of them in humble circumstances in a
village on the other coast, not far from Halifax, and it is there,
probably, that the
"Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,
While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."
At any rate, there is nothing here now except a faint tradition of
the French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments that
they were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear their
flocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicity
of ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is to
the expulsion he owes "Evangeline" and the luxury of his romantic
grief. So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soul
faithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as he
passes through this region of sorrow.
Our eyes lingered as long as possible and with all eagerness upon
these meadows and marshes which the poet has made immortal, and we
regretted that inexorable Baddeck would not permit us to be pilgrims
for a day in this Acadian land. Just as I was losing sight of the
skirt of trees at Grand Pre, a gentleman in the dress of a rural
clergyman left his seat, and complimented me with this remark: "I
perceive, sir, that you are fond of reading."
I could not but feel flattered by this unexpected discovery of my
nature, which was no doubt due to the fact that I held in my hand one
of the works of Charles Reade on social science, called "Love me
Little, Love me Long," and I said, "Of some kinds, I am."
"Did you ever see a work called 'Evangeline'?"
"Oh, yes, I have frequently seen it."
"You may remember," continued this Mass of Information, "that there
is an allusion in it to Grand Pre. That is the place, sir!"
"Oh, indeed, is that the place? Thank you."
"And that mountain yonder is Cape Blomidon, blow me down, you know."
And under cover of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired,
unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of
the region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an
eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have my
attention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks of which we
were running about this time. It is really a broad arm of the basin,
extending up to Windsor, and beyond in a small stream, and would have
been a charming river if there had been a drop of water in it. I
never knew before how much water adds to a river. Its slimy bottom
was quite a ghastly spectacle, an ugly gash in the land that nothing
could heal but the friendly returning tide. I should think it would
be confusing to dwell by a river that runs first one way and then the
other, and then vanishes altogether.
All the streams about this basin are famous for their salmon and
shad, and the season for these fish was not yet passed. There seems
to be an untraced affinity between the shad and the strawberry; they
appear and disappear in a region simultaneously. When we reached
Cape Breton, we were a day or two late for both. It is impossible
not to feel a little contempt for people who do not have these
luxuries till July and August; but I suppose we are in turn despised
by the Southerners because we do not have them till May and June.
So, a great part of the enjoyment of life is in the knowledge that
there are people living in a worse place than that you inhabit.
Windsor, a most respectable old town round which the railroad sweeps,
with its iron bridge, conspicuous King's College, and handsome church
spire, is a great place for plaster and limestone, and would be a
good location for a person interested in these substances. Indeed,
if a man can live on rocks, like a goat, he may settle anywhere
between Windsor and Halifax. It is one of the most sterile regions
in the Province. With the exception of a wild pond or two, we saw
nothing but rocks and stunted firs, for forty-five miles, a monotony
unrelieved by one picturesque feature. Then we longed for the
"Garden of Nova Scotia," and understood what is meant by the name.
A member of the Ottawa government, who was on his way to the
Governor-General's ball at Halifax, informed us that this country is
rich in minerals, in iron especially, and he pointed out spots where
gold had been washed out. But we do not covet it. And we were not
sorry to learn from this gentleman, that since the formation of the
Dominion, there is less and less desire in the Provinces for
annexation to the United States. One of the chief pleasures in
traveling in Nova Scotia now is in the constant reflection that you
are in a foreign country; and annexation would take that away.
It is nearly dark when we reach the head of the Bedford Basin. The
noble harbor of Halifax narrows to a deep inlet for three miles along
the rocky slope on which the city stands, and then suddenly expands
into this beautiful sheet of water. We ran along its bank for five
miles, cheered occasionally by a twinkling light on the shore, and
then came to a stop at the shabby terminus, three miles out of town.
This basin is almost large enough to float the navy of Great Britain,
and it could lie here, with the narrows fortified, secure from the
attacks of the American navy, hovering outside in the fog. With
these patriotic thoughts we enter the town. It is not the fault of
the railroad, but its present inability to climb a rocky hill, that
it does not run into the city. The suburbs are not impressive in the
night, but they look better then than they do in the daytime; and the
same might be said of the city itself. Probably there is not
anywhere a more rusty, forlorn town, and this in spite of its
magnificent situation.
It is a gala-night when we rattle down the rough streets, and have
pointed out to us the somber government buildings. The Halifax Club
House is a blaze of light, for the Governor-General is being received
there, and workmen are still busy decorating the Provincial Building
for the great ball. The city is indeed pervaded by his lordship, and
we regret that we cannot see it in its normal condition of quiet; the
hotels are full, and it is impossible to escape the festive feeling
that is abroad. It ill accords with our desires, as tranquil
travelers, to be plunged into such a vortex of slow dissipation.
These people take their pleasures more gravely than we do, and
probably will last the longer for their moderation. Having
ascertained that we can get no more information about Baddeck here
than in St. John, we go to bed early, for we are to depart from this
fascinating place at six o'clock.
If any one objects that we are not competent to pass judgment on the
city of Halifax by sleeping there one night, I beg leave to plead the
usual custom of travelers,--where would be our books of travel, if
more was expected than a night in a place?--and to state a few
facts. The first is, that I saw the whole of Halifax. If I were
inclined, I could describe it building by building. Cannot one see
it all from the citadel hill, and by walking down by the
horticultural garden and the Roman Catholic cemetery? and did not I
climb that hill through the most dilapidated rows of brown houses,
and stand on the greensward of the fortress at five o'clock in the
morning, and see the whole city, and the British navy riding at
anchor, and the fog coming in from the Atlantic Ocean? Let the
reader go to! and if he would know more of Halifax, go there. We
felt that if we remained there through the day, it would be a day of
idleness and sadness. I could draw a picture of Halifax. I could
relate its century of history; I could write about its free-school
system, and its many noble charities. But the reader always skips
such things. He hates information; and he himself would not stay in
this dull garrison town any longer than he was obliged to.
There was to be a military display that day in honor of the Governor.
"Why," I asked the bright and light-minded colored boy who sold
papers on the morning train, "don't you stay in the city and see it?"
"Pho," said he, with contempt, "I'm sick of 'em. Halifax is played
out, and I'm going to quit it."
The withdrawal of this lively trader will be a blow to the enterprise
of the place.
When I returned to the hotel for breakfast--which was exactly like
the supper, and consisted mainly of green tea and dry toast--there
was a commotion among the waiters and the hack-drivers over a nervous
little old man, who was in haste to depart for the morning train. He
was a specimen of provincial antiquity such as could not be seen
elsewhere. His costume was of the oddest: a long-waisted coat
reaching nearly to his heels, short trousers, a flowered silk vest,
and a napless hat. He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, and
his attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, who
were evidently enjoying their first taste of city life. The little
old man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the last
century, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and had
them down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, or
horse-car, or something to take them to the station. That he might
be a man of some importance at home was evident, but he had lost his
head in the bustle of this great town, and was at the mercy of all
advisers, none of whom could understand his mongrel language. As we
came out to take the horse-car, he saw his helpless daughters driven
off in one hack, while he was raving among his meal-bags on the
sidewalk. Afterwards we saw him at the station, flying about in the
greatest excitement, asking everybody about the train; and at last he
found his way into the private office of the ticket-seller. "Get out
of here!" roared that official. The old man persisted that he
wanted a ticket. "Go round to the window; clear out!" In a very
flustered state he was hustled out of the room. When he came to the
window and made known his destination, he was refused tickets,
because his train did not start for two hours yet!
This mercurial old gentleman only appears in these records because he
was the only person we saw in this Province who was in a hurry to do
anything, or to go anywhere.
We cannot leave Halifax without remarking that it is a city of great
private virtue, and that its banks are sound. The appearance of its
paper-money is not, however, inviting. We of the United States lead
the world in beautiful paper-money; and when I exchanged my crisp,
handsome greenbacks for the dirty, flimsy, ill-executed notes of the
Dominion, at a dead loss of value, I could not be reconciled to the
transaction. I sarcastically called the stuff I received
"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;
for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there is
between the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of the
Dominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in the
Provinces for the name to be a reproach to them. I wish I had
thought of something more insulting to say.
By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through a
country where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won at
all; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a place
exhibiting more thrift than any we have seen. A pleasant enough
country, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up the
Salmon and down the East River. New Glasgow is not many miles from
Pictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants build
vessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboring
coal mines. Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride of
eighty miles to the Gut of Canso.
The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the most
unwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize its
condition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he will
scarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions. There seems to be a
fashion in diet which endures. The early travelers as well as the
later in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,
limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;
though authorities differ in regard to the third element for
discouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimes
it is ham. Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman of
this part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become now
a tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and the
custom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman. At the inn
in New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, and
those skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in seven
minutes. A man who understands the use of edged tools can get along
twice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.
But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer the
advertisement of being "second to none on the continent." We mount
to the seat with the driver. The sun is bright; the wind is in the
southwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the long
ride is propitious.
But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young and
sickly, with the baby in her arms. The woman has paid her fare
through to Guysborough, and holds her ticket. It turns out, however,
that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary's
Cross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,
which is away down on Chedabucto Bay. (The reader will notice this
geographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in the
direction of St. Mary's. She will not get out, she will not
surrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again. Why should she? And
the stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over the
problem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of the
tavern to reason with her. The baby joins its voice from the coach
window in the clamor of the discussion. The baby prevails. The
stage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we are
off, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon a
hilly and not cheerful country. And the driver begins to tell us
stories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,
and great peril to men and cattle.
III
"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I with
the country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delight
proved equal to my wonder."--BENVENUTO CELLINI.
There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on the
box-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you and
hearing the driver talk about his horses. We made the intimate
acquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned the
peculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambition
of display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, their
faithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which they
yielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.
May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the
third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish,
mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see
that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head
about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up
"in any simple knot,"--like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice
Cenci. How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now and
then let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkish
feeling.
"So! girl; so! Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones of
admiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like a
kitten."
But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driver
is obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty. The reproof of the
displeased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to her
work, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up and
down, and protesting by her nimble movements against the more
deliberate trot of her companion. I believe that a blow from the
cruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made a
little fiend of the spirited creature. The lash is hardly ever good
for the sex.
For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven this
monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills,
scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight. What a time to nurse his
thought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn things
over in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve out
of his consciousness! One would think so. But, in fact, the
stagebox is no place for thinking. To handle twelve horses every
day, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy and
restraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatest
amount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making each
trip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition at
the close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshing
the team by an occasional spurt of speed,--all these things require
constant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, the
coach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, the
horses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver's care.
I conclude that the most delicate and important occupation in life is
stage-driving. It would be easier to "run" the Treasury Department
of the United States than a four-in-hand. I have a sense of the
unimportance of everything else in comparison with this business in
hand. And I think the driver shares that feeling. He is the
autocrat of the situation. He is lord of all the humble passengers,
and they feel their inferiority. They may have knowledge and skill
in some things, but they are of no use here. At all the stables the
driver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him;
they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as a
favor if he gives them better than they send. And it is his joke
that always raises the laugh, regardless of its quality.
We carry the royal mail, and as we go along drop little sealed canvas
bags at way offices. The bags would not hold more than three pints
of meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them. Yet somebody
along here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up the
mail facilities. At French River we change horses. There is a mill
here, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, which
the driver thinks will not tumble down this trip. The settlement may
have seen better days, and will probably see worse.
I preferred to cross the long, shaky wooden bridge on foot, leaving
the inside passengers to take the risk, and get the worth of their
money; and while the horses were being put to, I walked on over the
hill. And here I encountered a veritable foot-pad, with a club in
his hand and a bundle on his shoulder, coming down the dusty road,
with the wild-eyed aspect of one who travels into a far country in
search of adventure. He seemed to be of a cheerful and sociable
turn, and desired that I should linger and converse with him. But he
was more meagerly supplied with the media of conversation than any
person I ever met. His opening address was in a tongue that failed
to convey to me the least idea. I replied in such language as I had
with me, but it seemed to be equally lost upon him. We then fell
back upon gestures and ejaculations, and by these I learned that he
was a native of Cape Breton, but not an aborigine. By signs he asked
me where I came from, and where I was going; and he was so much
pleased with my destination, that he desired to know my name; and
this I told him with all the injunction of secrecy I could convey;
but he could no more pronounce it than I could speak his name. It
occurred to me that perhaps he spoke a French patois, and I asked
him; but he only shook his head. He would own neither to German nor
Irish. The happy thought came to me of inquiring if he knew English.
But he shook his head again, and said,
"No English, plenty garlic."
This was entirely incomprehensible, for I knew that garlic is not a
language, but a smell. But when he had repeated the word several
times, I found that he meant Gaelic; and when we had come to this
understanding, we cordially shook hands and willingly parted. One
seldom encounters a wilder or more good-natured savage than this
stalwart wanderer. And meeting him raised my hopes of Cape Breton.
We change horses again, for the last stage, at Marshy Hope. As we
turn down the hill into this place of the mournful name, we dash past
a procession of five country wagons, which makes way for us:
everything makes way for us; even death itself turns out for the
stage with four horses. The second wagon carries a long box, which
reveals to us the mournful errand of the caravan. We drive into the
stable, and get down while the fresh horses are put to. The
company's stables are all alike, and open at each end with great
doors. The stable is the best house in the place; there are three or
four houses besides, and one of them is white, and has vines growing
over the front door, and hollyhocks by the front gate. Three or four
women, and as many barelegged girls, have come out to look at the
procession, and we lounge towards the group.
"It had a winder in the top of it, and silver handles," says one.
"Well, I declare; and you could 'a looked right in?"
"If I'd been a mind to."
"Who has died?" I ask.
"It's old woman Larue; she lived on Gilead Hill, mostly alone. It's
better for her."
"Had she any friends?"
"One darter. They're takin' her over Eden way, to bury her where she
come from."
"Was she a good woman?" The traveler is naturally curious to know
what sort of people die in Nova Scotia.
"Well, good enough. Both her husbands is dead."
The gossips continued talking of the burying. Poor old woman Larue!
It was mournful enough to encounter you for the only time in this
world in this plight, and to have this glimpse of your wretched life
on lonesome Gilead Hill. What pleasure, I wonder, had she in her
life, and what pleasure have any of these hard-favored women in this
doleful region? It is pitiful to think of it. Doubtless, however,
the region isn't doleful, and the sentimental traveler would not have
felt it so if he had not encountered this funereal flitting.
But the horses are in. We mount to our places; the big doors swing
open.
"Stand away," cries the driver.
The hostler lets go Kitty's bridle, the horses plunge forward, and we
are off at a gallop, taking the opposite direction from that pursued
by old woman Larue.
This last stage is eleven miles, through a pleasanter country, and we
make it in a trifle over an hour, going at an exhilarating gait, that
raises our spirits out of the Marshy Hope level. The perfection of
travel is ten miles an hour, on top of a stagecoach; it is greater
speed than forty by rail. It nurses one's pride to sit aloft, and
rattle past the farmhouses, and give our dust to the cringing foot
tramps. There is something royal in the swaying of the coach body,
and an excitement in the patter of the horses' hoofs. And what an
honor it must be to guide such a machine through a region of rustic
admiration!
The sun has set when we come thundering down into the pretty Catholic
village of Antigonish,--the most home-like place we have seen on the
island. The twin stone towers of the unfinished cathedral loom up
large in the fading light, and the bishop's palace on the hill--the
home of the Bishop of Arichat--appears to be an imposing white barn
with many staring windows. At Antigonish--with the emphasis on the
last syllable--let the reader know there is a most comfortable inn,
kept by a cheery landlady, where the stranger is served by the comely
handmaidens, her daughters, and feels that he has reached a home at
last. Here we wished to stay. Here we wished to end this weary
pilgrimage. Could Baddeck be as attractive as this peaceful valley?
Should we find any inn on Cape Breton like this one?
"Never was on Cape Breton," our driver had said; "hope I never shall
be. Heard enough about it. Taverns? You'll find 'em occupied."
"Fleas?
"Wus."
"But it is a lovely country?"
"I don't think it."
Into what unknown dangers were we going? Why not stay here and be
happy? It was a soft summer night. People were loitering in the
street; the young beaux of the place going up and down with the
belles, after the leisurely manner in youth and summer; perhaps they
were students from St. Xavier College, or visiting gallants from
Guysborough. They look into the post-office and the fancy store.
They stroll and take their little provincial pleasure and make love,
for all we can see, as if Antigonish were a part of the world. How
they must look down on Marshy Hope and Addington Forks and Tracadie!
What a charming place to live in is this!
But the stage goes on at eight o'clock. It will wait for no man.
There is no other stage till eight the next night, and we have no
alternative but a night ride. We put aside all else except duty and
Baddeck. This is strictly a pleasure-trip.
The stage establishment for the rest of the journey could hardly be
called the finest on the continent. The wagon was drawn by two
horses. It was a square box, covered with painted cloth. Within
were two narrow seats, facing each other, affording no room for the
legs of passengers, and offering them no position but a strictly
upright one. It was a most ingeniously uncomfortable box in which to
put sleepy travelers for the night. The weather would be chilly
before morning, and to sit upright on a narrow board all night, and
shiver, is not cheerful. Of course, the reader says that this is no
hardship to talk about. But the reader is mistaken. Anything is a
hardship when it is unpleasantly what one does not desire or expect.
These travelers had spent wakeful nights, in the forests, in a cold
rain, and never thought of complaining. It is useless to talk about
the Polar sufferings of Dr. Kane to a guest at a metropolitan hotel,
in the midst of luxury, when the mosquito sings all night in his ear,
and his mutton-chop is overdone at breakfast. One does not like to
be set up for a hero in trifles, in odd moments, and in inconspicuous
places.
There were two passengers besides ourselves, inhabitants of Cape
Breton Island, who were returning from Halifax to Plaster Cove, where
they were engaged in the occupation of distributing alcoholic liquors
at retail. This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned the
nationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion by
their lively ejaculations during the night. We stowed ourselves into
the rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and her
daughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down the
street towards the open country.
The moon rises at eight o'clock in Nova Scotia. It came above the
horizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round and
red. When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as if
too heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut by
a fence-rail. With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhouses
and farms, and the broad sweep of level country! There could not be
a more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographical
mystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.
A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before a
post-station. An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receive
the bag which the driver carried to her. A couple of sprightly little
girls rushed out to "interview" the passengers, climbing up to ask
their names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their faces. And
upon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw in the
moonlight they pronounced with perfect candor. We are not obliged to
say what their verdict was. Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, lose
this trustful candor as they grow older.
Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,
in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man
'bout 'Tigonish?"
"Nary."
"There's one been round here for three or four days, pretty bad off;
's got the St. Vitus's. He wanted me to get him some medicine for it
up to Antigonish. I've got it here in a vial, and I wished you could
take it to him."
"Where is he?"
"I dunno. I heern he'd gone east by the Gut. Perhaps you'll hear of
him." All this screamed out into the night.
"Well, I'll take it."
We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfully
affected us. The weird voice of the old woman was exciting in
itself, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancing
about this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by night
and alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. This
fugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the following
simple poem:
"There was an old man of Canso,
Unable to sit or stan' so.
When I asked him why he ran so,
Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
All down the Gut of Canso.'"
This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
Antigonish.
In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore on
slowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in the
jolting wagon. One can sleep upright, but not when his head is every
moment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jolly
young Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep under
whatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances. He wishes
he had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casual
acquaintance. This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee of
music, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwilling
violin. Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to draw
the seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there is
enthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling from
sunset till the dawn of day. Other information, however, the young
man has not; and when this is exhausted, he becomes sleepy again, and
tries a dozen ways to twist himself into a posture in which sleep
will be possible. He doubles up his legs, he slides them under the
seat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the wagon swings and jolts and
knocks him about. His patience under this punishment is admirable,
and there is something pathetic in his restraint from profanity.
It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is now
high, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; the
stars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with a
chastened fervor. It is on the whole a splendid display for the sake
of four sleepy men, banging along in a coach,--an insignificant
little vehicle with two horses. No one is up at any of the
farmhouses to see it; no one appears to take any interest in it,
except an occasional baying dog, or a rooster that has mistaken the
time of night. By midnight we come to Tracadie, an orchard, a
farmhouse, and a stable. We are not far from the sea now, and can
see a silver mist in the north. An inlet comes lapping up by the old
house with a salty smell and a suggestion of oyster-beds. We knock
up the sleeping hostlers, change horses, and go on again, dead
sleepy, but unable to get a wink. And all the night is blazing with
beauty. We think of the criminal who was sentenced to be kept awake
till he died.
The fiddler makes another trial. Temperately remarking, "I am very
sleepy," he kneels upon the floor and rests his head on the seat.
This position for a second promises repose; but almost immediately
his head begins to pound the seat, and beat a lively rat-a-plan on
the board. The head of a wooden idol couldn't stand this treatment
more than a minute. The fiddler twisted and turned, but his head
went like a triphammer on the seat. I have never seen a devotional
attitude so deceptive, or one that produced less favorable results.
The young man rose from his knees, and meekly said,
"It's dam hard."
If the recording angel took down this observation, he doubtless made
a note of the injured tone in which it was uttered.
How slowly the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a
slowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last.
When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst
out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was
strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant
more than an eighth of the heavenly circle. The moon could not put
her out of countenance. She blazed and scintillated with a dazzling
brilliance, a throbbing splendor, that made the moon seem a pale,
sentimental invention. Steadily she mounted, in her fresh beauty,
with the confidence and vigor of new love, driving her more domestic
rival out of the sky. And this sort of thing, I suppose, goes on
frequently. These splendors burn and this panorama passes night
after night down at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for the
stage-driver, dozing along on his box, from Antigonish to the strait.
"Here you are," cries the driver, at length, when we have become
wearily indifferent to where we are. We have reached the ferry. The
dawn has not come, but it is not far off. We step out and find a
chilly morning, and the dark waters of the Gut of Canso flowing
before us lighted here and there by a patch of white mist. The
ferryman is asleep, and his door is shut. We call him by all the
names known among men. We pound upon his house, but he makes no
sign. Before he awakes and comes out, growling, the sky in the east
is lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn sparkles less
brilliantly. But the process is slow. The twilight is long. There
is a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the sun for
rising, as there is in the movements of the boatman. Both appear to
be reluctant to begin the day.
The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we step
into the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull us
upstream. The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide is
running strongly, and the water is full of swirls,--the little
whirlpools of the rip-tide. The morning-star is now high in the sky;
the moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silver
shield; along the east is a faint flush of pink. In the increasing
light we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the square
projection of Cape Porcupine below.
On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a black
and white sign,--Telegraph Cable,--we set ashore our companions of
the night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing the
necessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournful
thought that we may never behold them again.
As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep on
the rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing. The
rock is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed.
We pass within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, and
we do not disturb his morning slumbers. For there is no such cruelty
as the waking of anybody out of a morning nap.
When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the white
tavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), the
sun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of the
night vanishes.
And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel. Here
is the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck? It is Saturday morning;
if we cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained in
Boston. And who knows what we shall find if we get there? A forlorn
fishing-station, a dreary hotel? Suppose we cannot get on, and are
forced to stay here? Asking ourselves these questions, we enter the
Plaster Cove tavern. No one is stirring, but the house is open, and
we take possession of the dirty public room, and almost immediately
drop to sleep in the fluffy rocking-chairs; but even sleep is not
strong enough to conquer our desire to push on, and we soon rouse up
and go in pursuit of information.
No landlord is to be found, but there is an unkempt servant in the
kitchen, who probably does not see any use in making her toilet more
than once a week. To this fearful creature is intrusted the dainty
duty of preparing breakfast. Her indifference is equal to her lack
of information, and her ability to convey information is fettered by
her use of Gaelic as her native speech. But she directs us to the
stable. There we find a driver hitching his horses to a two-horse
stage-wagon.
"Is this stage for Baddeck?"
"Not much."
"Is there any stage for Baddeck?"
"Not to-day."
"Where does this go, and when?"
"St. Peter's. Starts in fifteen minutes."
This seems like "business," and we are inclined to try it, especially
as we have no notion where St. Peter's is.
"Does any other stage go from here to-day anywhere else?"
"Yes. Port Hood. Quarter of an hour."
Everything was about to happen in fifteen minutes. We inquire
further. St. Peter's is on the east coast, on the road to Sydney.
Port Hood is on the west coast. There is a stage from Port Hood to
Baddeck. It would land us there some time Sunday morning; distance,
eighty miles.
Heavens! what a pleasure-trip. To ride eighty miles more without
sleep! We should simply be delivered dead on the Bras d'Or; that is
all. Tell us, gentle driver, is there no other way?
"Well, there's Jim Hughes, come over at midnight with a passenger
from Baddeck; he's in the hotel now; perhaps he'll take you."
Our hope hung on Jim Hughes. The frowzy servant piloted us up to his
sleeping-room. "Go right in," said she; and we went in, according to
the simple custom of the country, though it was a bedroom that one
would not enter except on business. Mr. Hughes did not like to be
disturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake up
suddenly, shake his head, and transact business,--a sort of Napoleon,
in fact. Mr. Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if he
meditated an assault.
"Do you live in Baddeck?" we asked.
"No; Hogamah,--half-way there."
"Will you take us to Baddeck to-day?"
Mr. Hughes thought. He had intended to sleep--till noon. He had
then intended to go over the Judique Mountain and get a boy. But he
was disposed to accommodate. Yes, for money--sum named--he would
give up his plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour. Distance, sixty
miles. Here was a man worth having; he could come to a decision
before he was out of bed. The bargain was closed.
We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster
Cove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There
is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and
slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the
mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there
is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of
smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house
smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its
floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never
pretended to be anything but a rookery. I say nothing against the
hotel at Plaster Cove. In fact, I recommend it. There is a kind of
harmony about it that I like. There is a harmony between the
breakfast and the frowzy Gaelic cook we saw "sozzling" about in the
kitchen. There is a harmony between the appearance of the house and
the appearance of the buxom young housekeeper who comes upon the
scene later, her hair saturated with the fatty matter of the bear.
The traveler will experience a pleasure in paying his bill and
departing.
Although Plaster Cove seems remote on the map, we found that we were
right in the track of the world's news there. It is the transfer
station of the Atlantic Cable Company, where it exchanges messages
with the Western Union. In a long wooden building, divided into two
main apartments, twenty to thirty operators are employed. At eight
o'clock the English force was at work receiving the noon messages
from London. The American operators had not yet come on, for New
York business would not begin for an hour. Into these rooms is
poured daily the news of the world, and these young fellows toss it
about as lightly as if it were household gossip. It is a marvelous
exchange, however, and we had intended to make some reflections here
upon the en rapport feeling, so to speak, with all the world, which
we experienced while there; but our conveyance was waiting. We
telegraphed our coming to Baddeck, and departed. For twenty-five
cents one can send a dispatch to any part of the Dominion, except the
region where the Western Union has still a foothold.
Our conveyance was a one-horse wagon, with one seat. The horse was
well enough, but the seat was narrow for three people, and the entire
establishment had in it not much prophecy of Baddeck for that day.
But we knew little of the power of Cape Breton driving. It became
evident that we should reach Baddeck soon enough, if we could cling
to that wagon-seat. The morning sun was hot. The way was so
uninteresting that we almost wished ourselves back in Nova Scotia.
The sandy road was bordered with discouraged evergreens, through
which we had glimpses of sand-drifted farms. If Baddeck was to be
like this, we had come on a fool's errand. There were some savage,
low hills, and the Judique Mountain showed itself as we got away from
the town. In this first stage, the heat of the sun, the monotony of
the road, and the scarcity of sleep during the past thirty-six hours
were all unfavorable to our keeping on the wagon-seat. We nodded
separately, we nodded and reeled in unison. But asleep or awake, the
driver drove like a son of Jehu. Such driving is the fashion on Cape
Breton Island. Especially downhill, we made the most of it; if the
horse was on a run, that was only an inducement to apply the lash;
speed gave the promise of greater possible speed. The wagon rattled
like a bark-mill; it swirled and leaped about, and we finally got the
exciting impression that if the whole thing went to pieces, we should
somehow go on,--such was our impetus. Round corners, over ruts and
stones, and uphill and down, we went jolting and swinging, holding
fast to the seat, and putting our trust in things in general. At the
end of fifteen miles, we stopped at a Scotch farmhouse, where the
driver kept a relay, and changed horse.
The people were Highlanders, and spoke little English; we had struck
the beginning of the Gaelic settlement. From here to Hogamah we
should encounter only the Gaelic tongue; the inhabitants are all
Catholics. Very civil people, apparently, and living in a kind of
niggardly thrift, such as the cold land affords. We saw of this
family the old man, who had come from Scotland fifty years ago, his
stalwart son, six feet and a half high, maybe, and two buxom
daughters, going to the hay-field,--good solid Scotch lassies, who
smiled in English, but spoke only Gaelic. The old man could speak a
little English, and was disposed to be both communicative and
inquisitive. He asked our business, names, and residence. Of the
United States he had only a dim conception, but his mind rather
rested upon the statement that we lived "near Boston." He complained
of the degeneracy of the times. All the young men had gone away from
Cape Breton; might get rich if they would stay and work the farms.
But no one liked to work nowadays. From life, we diverted the talk
to literature. We inquired what books they had.
"Of course you all have the poems of Burns?"
"What's the name o' the mon?"
"Burns, Robert Burns."
"Never heard tell of such a mon. Have heard of Robert Bruce. He was
a Scotchman."
This was nothing short of refreshing, to find a Scotchman who had
never heard of Robert Burns! It was worth the whole journey to take
this honest man by the hand. How far would I not travel to talk with
an American who had never heard of George Washington!
The way was more varied during the next stage; we passed through some
pleasant valleys and picturesque neighborhoods, and at length,
winding around the base of a wooded range, and crossing its point, we
came upon a sight that took all the sleep out of us. This was the
famous Bras d'Or.
The Bras d'Or is the most beautiful salt-water lake I have ever seen,
and more beautiful than we had imagined a body of salt water could
be. If the reader will take the map, he will see that two narrow
estuaries, the Great and the Little Bras d'Or, enter the island of
Cape Breton, on the ragged northeast coast, above the town of Sydney,
and flow in, at length widening out and occupying the heart of the
island. The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies the
interior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slender
tongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into the
recesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements,
the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.
There is very little tide at any time, so that the shores are clean
and sightly for the most part, like those of fresh-water lakes. It
has all the pleasantness of a fresh-water lake, with all the
advantages of a salt one. In the streams which run into it are the
speckled trout, the shad, and the salmon; out of its depths are
hooked the cod and the mackerel, and in its bays fattens the oyster.
This irregular lake is about a hundred miles long, if you measure it
skillfully, and in some places ten miles broad; but so indented is
it, that I am not sure but one would need, as we were informed, to
ride a thousand miles to go round it, following all its incursions
into the land. The hills about it are never more than five or six
hundred feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, and
offer everywhere pleasing lines.
What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by the
driver, Hogamah Bay. At its entrance were long, wooded islands,
beyond which we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes of
some poetic sea-coast. The bay narrowed to a mile in width where we
came upon it, and ran several miles inland to a swamp, round the head
of which we must go. Opposite was the village of Hogamah. I had my
suspicions from the beginning about this name, and now asked the
driver, who was liberally educated for a driver, how he spelled
"Hogamah."
"Why-ko-ko-magh. Hogamah."
Sometimes it is called Wykogamah. Thus the innocent traveler is
misled. Along the Whykokomagh Bay we come to a permanent encampment
of the Micmac Indians,--a dozen wigwams in the pine woods. Though
lumber is plenty, they refuse to live in houses. The wigwams,
however, are more picturesque than the square frame houses of the
whites. Built up conically of poles, with a hole in the top for the
smoke to escape, and often set up a little from the ground on a
timber foundation, they are as pleasing to the eye as a Chinese or
Turkish dwelling. They may be cold in winter, but blessed be the
tenacity of barbarism, which retains this agreeable architecture.
The men live by hunting in the season, and the women support the
family by making moccasins and baskets. These Indians are most of
them good Catholics, and they try to go once a year to mass and a
sort of religious festival held at St. Peter's, where their sins are
forgiven in a yearly lump.
At Whykokomagh, a neat fishing village of white houses, we stopped
for dinner at the Inverness House. The house was very clean, and the
tidy landlady gave us as good a dinner as she could of the inevitable
green tea, toast, and salt fish. She was Gaelic, but Protestant, as
the village is, and showed us with pride her Gaelic Bible and
hymn-book. A peaceful place, this Whykokomagh; the lapsing waters of
Bras d'Or made a summer music all along the quiet street; the bay lay
smiling with its islands in front, and an amphitheater of hills rose
behind. But for the line of telegraph poles one might have fancied
he could have security and repose here.
We put a fresh pony into the shafts, a beast born with an everlasting
uneasiness in his legs, and an amount of "go" in him which suited his
reckless driver. We no longer stood upon the order of our going; we
went. As we left the village, we passed a rocky hay-field, where the
Gaelic farmer was gathering the scanty yield of grass. A comely
Indian girl was stowing the hay and treading it down on the wagon.
The driver hailed the farmer, and they exchanged Gaelic repartee
which set all the hay-makers in a roar, and caused the Indian maid to
darkly and sweetly beam upon us. We asked the driver what he had
said. He had only inquired what the man would take for the load--as
it stood! A joke is a joke down this way.
I am not about to describe this drive at length, in order that the
reader may skip it; for I know the reader, being of like passion and
fashion with him. From the time we first struck the Bras d'Or for
thirty miles we rode in constant sight of its magnificent water. Now
we were two hundred feet above the water, on the hillside, skirting a
point or following an indentation; and now we were diving into a
narrow valley, crossing a stream, or turning a sharp corner, but
always with the Bras d'Or in view, the afternoon sun shining on it,
softening the outlines of its embracing hills, casting a shadow from
its wooded islands. Sometimes we opened on a broad water plain
bounded by the Watchabaktchkt hills, and again we looked over hill
after hill receding into the soft and hazy blue of the land beyond
the great mass of the Bras d'Or. The reader can compare the view and
the ride to the Bay of Naples and the Cornice Road; we did nothing of
the sort; we held on to the seat, prayed that the harness of the pony
might not break, and gave constant expression to our wonder and
delight. For a week we had schooled ourselves to expect nothing more
from this wicked world, but here was an enchanting vision.
The only phenomenon worthy the attention of any inquiring mind, in
this whole record, I will now describe. As we drove along the side
of a hill, and at least two hundred feet above the water, the road
suddenly diverged and took a circuit higher up. The driver said that
was to avoid a sink-hole in the old road,--a great curiosity, which
it was worth while to examine. Beside the old road was a circular
hole, which nipped out a part of the road-bed, some twenty-five feet
in diameter, filled with water almost to the brim, but not running
over. The water was dark in color, and I fancied had a brackish
taste. The driver said that a few weeks before, when he came this
way, it was solid ground where this well now opened, and that a large
beech-tree stood there. When he returned next day, he found this
hole full of water, as we saw it, and the large tree had sunk in it.
The size of the hole seemed to be determined by the reach of the
roots of the tree. The tree had so entirely disappeared, that he
could not with a long pole touch its top. Since then the water had
neither subsided nor overflowed. The ground about was compact
gravel. We tried sounding the hole with poles, but could make
nothing of it. The water seemed to have no outlet nor inlet; at
least, it did not rise or fall. Why should the solid hill give way
at this place, and swallow up a tree? and if the water had any
connection with the lake, two hundred feet below and at some distance
away, why didn't the water run out? Why should the unscientific
traveler have a thing of this kind thrown in his way? The driver did
not know.
This phenomenon made us a little suspicious of the foundations of
this island which is already invaded by the jealous ocean, and is
anchored to the continent only by the cable.
The drive became more charming as the sun went down, and we saw the
hills grow purple beyond the Bras d'Or. The road wound around lovely
coves and across low promontories, giving us new beauties at every
turn. Before dark we had crossed the Middle River and the Big
Baddeck, on long wooden bridges, which straggled over sluggish waters
and long reaches of marsh, upon which Mary might have been sent to
call the cattle home. These bridges were shaky and wanted a plank at
intervals, but they are in keeping with the enterprise of the
country. As dusk came on, we crossed the last hill, and were bowling
along by the still gleaming water. Lights began to appear in
infrequent farmhouses, and under cover of the gathering night the
houses seemed to be stately mansions; and we fancied we were on a
noble highway, lined with elegant suburban seaside residences, and
about to drive into a town of wealth and a port of great commerce.
We were, nevertheless, anxious about Baddeck. What sort of haven
were we to reach after our heroic (with the reader's permission) week
of travel? Would the hotel be like that at Plaster Cove? Were our
thirty-six hours of sleepless staging to terminate in a night of
misery and a Sunday of discomfort?
We came into a straggling village; that we could see by the
starlight. But we stopped at the door of a very unhotel-like
appearing hotel. It had in front a flower-garden; it was blazing
with welcome lights; it opened hospitable doors, and we were received
by a family who expected us. The house was a large one, for two
guests; and we enjoyed the luxury of spacious rooms, an abundant
supper, and a friendly welcome; and, in short, found ourselves at
home. The proprietor of the Telegraph House is the superintendent of
the land lines of Cape Breton, a Scotchman, of course; but his wife
is a Newfoundland lady. We cannot violate the sanctity of what
seemed like private hospitality by speaking freely of this lady and
the lovely girls, her daughters, whose education has been so
admirably advanced in the excellent school at Baddeck; but we can
confidently advise any American who is going to Newfoundland, to get
a wife there, if he wants one at all. It is the only new article he
can bring from the Provinces that he will not have to pay duty on.
And here is a suggestion to our tariff-mongers for the "protection"
of New England women.
The reader probably cannot appreciate the delicious sense of rest and
of achievement which we enjoyed in this tidy inn, nor share the
anticipations of undisturbed, luxurious sleep, in which we indulged
as we sat upon the upper balcony after supper, and saw the moon rise
over the glistening Bras d'Or and flood with light the islands and
headlands of the beautiful bay. Anchored at some distance from the
shore was a slender coasting vessel. The big red moon happened to
come up just behind it, and the masts and spars and ropes of the
vessel came out, distinctly traced on the golden background, making
such a night picture as I once saw painted of a ship in a fiord of
Norway. The scene was enchanting. And we respected then the
heretofore seemingly insane impulse that had driven us on to Baddeck.
IV
"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious of
that, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of their
country, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants with
a fearless confidence."--BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.
Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day as
it is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late on
Sunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleep
of the just. It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl,
who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost the
opportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,--an act
of gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.
The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of
Sabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,--such a morning as
never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning,
with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day it
was for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and
night from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fully
opened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper
balcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond,
reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, and
inhale the balmy air. (We greatly need another word to describe good
air, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps it
might in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to rest
in such a soothing situation,--rest, and not incessant activity,
having been one of the original designs of the day.
But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to
be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an
out-of-the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not set
themselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to
teach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained two
hundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that the
sacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantness
of it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, and
probably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on Cape
Breton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelers
fishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authorities
to lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on the
Lord's day.
In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my
companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the
kirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I
could without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, I
could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of
white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants;
that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off
into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping
curve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops,
and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves ran
into the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and the
usual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful and
perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked down
the road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappeared
round the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had a
small pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day,
and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics from
Whykokornagh.
The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a
pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England
meeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the service
had begun. There was something familiar in the bareness and
uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews had
high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,--a
sort of theological fortification,--approached by wide, curving
flights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seats
to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank
board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister,
though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars.
The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England
congregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had been
Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.
Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful
respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid
Scotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh and
rosy-cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of the
audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and
respectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frills
over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and
hanging down the neck,--a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.
The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this region
to go to church,--for whole families to go, even the smallest
children; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend
the service. There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for
the lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practiced
elsewhere. The service was worth coming seven miles to participate
in!--it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if he
had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. The
singing was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good
(for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. This
congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David
powerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the
Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded,
and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. It
certainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza from
Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental
nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with
perfect individual independence as to time:
"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king,
And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."
The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation;
and it filled a solid hour of time. I am not a good judge of
sermons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knows
a sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological,
and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository. It was
doubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it. But the
adults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied with
it; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually.
The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocritical
show of attention. To be sure, the day was warm and the house was
unventilated. If the windows had been opened so as to admit the
fresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers and
their wives would have resented such an interference with their
ordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemed
more musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air.
Considering that only half of the congregation could understand the
preacher, its behavior was exemplary.
After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and I
noticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,--a
melancholy sound for the pastor. This might appear niggardly on the
part of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that they
put only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel,
and so far as they are concerned they have it. Although the farmers
about the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their minister
enough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support is
eked out by the contributions of a missionary society. It was
gratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part of
the people, but was due to their religious principle. It seemed to
us that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs next
to nothing.
When the service was over, about half of the people departed; the
rest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbath
exercises. These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understood
little or nothing of the English service. The minister turned
himself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that language
the long exercises of the morning. The sermon and perhaps the
prayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and the
singing was a great improvement. It was of the same Psalms, but the
congregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, as
wailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotional
outburst of two centuries ago. This service also lasted about two
hours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without any
rest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must have
been half past three o'clock before that was over. And this is
considered a day of rest.
These Gaelic Christians, we were informed, are of a very old pattern;
and some of them cling more closely to religious observances than to
morality. Sunday is nowhere observed with more strictness. The
community seems to be a very orderly and thrifty one, except upon
solemn and stated occasions. One of these occasions is the
celebration of the Lord's Supper; and in this the ancient Highland
traditions are preserved. The rite is celebrated not oftener than
once a year by any church. It then invites the neighboring churches
to partake with it,--the celebration being usually in the summer and
early fall months. It has some of the characteristics of a
"camp-meeting." People come from long distances, and as many as two
thousand and three thousand assemble together. They quarter
themselves without special invitation upon the members of the
inviting church. Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer,
overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about his
premises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family,
and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out of
house and home. Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of these
religious raids,--at least he is left with a debt of hundreds of
dollars. The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains over
Sunday. There is preaching every day, but there is something
besides. Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, the
four days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, of
drinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he would
not particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St.
Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses. The evil has
become so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacred
rite will have to be reformed altogether.
Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fast
driving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowded
full of men, women, and children,--released from their long sanctuary
privileges, and going home,--was a sort of profanation of the day;
and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.
Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadful
prison-house. It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stone
and substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with a
square of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for the
residence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings at
the lower windows. A more inviting place to spend the summer in, a
vicious person could not have. The Scotch keeper of it is an old,
garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan. I think
that if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take him
with him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod. If the
prisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape,
the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardly
approve the prisoner's conduct.
The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us to
enter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our own
country (officially), we were interested in inspecting this. It was
a favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a man
confined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper's
feeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four rooms
on the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three of
these rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, were
cells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family. The family
were now also occupying the front cell,--a cheerful room commanding a
view of the village street and of the bay. A prisoner of a
philosophic turn of mind, who had committed some crime of sufficient
magnitude to make him willing to retire from the world for a season
and rest, might enjoy himself here very well.
The jailer exhibited his premises with an air of modesty. In the
rear was a small yard, surrounded by a board fence, in which the
prisoner took his exercise. An active boy could climb over it, and
an enterprising pig could go through it almost anywhere. The keeper
said that he intended at the next court to ask the commissioners to
build the fence higher and stop up the holes. Otherwise the jail was
in good condition. Its inmates were few; in fact, it was rather apt
to be empty: its occupants were usually prisoners for debt, or for
some trifling breach of the peace, committed under the influence of
the liquor that makes one "unco happy." Whether or not the people of
the region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; the
jail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity. The great
incident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-known
citizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money. The
keeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, where
an attempt had been made to batter a hole through. The Highland clan
and kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came one night and threatened
to knock the jail in pieces if he was not given up. They bruised the
wall, broke the windows, and finally smashed in the door and took
their man away. The jailer was greatly excited at this rudeness, and
went almost immediately and purchased a pistol. He said that for a
time he did n't feel safe in the jail without it. The mob had thrown
stones at the upper windows, in order to awaken him, and had insulted
him with cursing and offensive language.
Having finished inspecting the building, I was unfortunately moved by
I know not what national pride and knowledge of institutions superior
to this at home, to say,
"This is a pleasant jail, but it doesn't look much like our great
prisons; we have as many as a thousand to twelve hundred men in some
of our institutions."
"Ay, ay, I have heard tell," said the jailer, shaking his head in
pity, "it's an awfu' place, an awfu' place,--the United States. I
suppose it's the wickedest country that ever was in the world. I
don't know,--I don't know what is to become of it. It's worse than
Sodom. There was that dreadful war on the South; and I hear now it's
very unsafe, full of murders and robberies and corruption."
I did not attempt to correct this impression concerning my native
land, for I saw it was a comfort to the simple jailer, but I tried to
put a thorn into him by saying,
"Yes, we have a good many criminals, but the majority of them, the
majority of those in jails, are foreigners; they come from Ireland,
England, and the Provinces."
But the old man only shook his head more solemnly, and persisted,
"It's an awfu' wicked country."
Before I came away I was permitted to have an interview with the sole
prisoner, a very pleasant and talkative man, who was glad to see
company, especially intelligent company who understood about things,
he was pleased to say. I have seldom met a more agreeable rogue, or
one so philosophical, a man of travel and varied experiences. He was
a lively, robust Provincial of middle age, bullet-headed, with a mass
of curly black hair, and small, round black eyes, that danced and
sparkled with good humor. He was by trade a carpenter, and had a
work-bench in his cell, at which he worked on week-days. He had been
put in jail on suspicion of stealing a buffalo-robe, and he lay in
jail eight months, waiting for the judge to come to Baddeck on his
yearly circuit. He did not steal the robe, as he assured me, but it
was found in his house, and the judge gave him four months in jail,
making a year in all,--a month of which was still to serve. But he
was not at all anxious for the end of his term; for his wife was
outside.
Jock, for he was familiarly so called, asked me where I was from. As
I had not found it very profitable to hail from the United States,
and had found, in fact, that the name United States did not convey
any definite impression to the average Cape Breton mind, I ventured
upon the bold assertion, for which I hope Bostonians will forgive me,
that I was from Boston. For Boston is known in the eastern
Provinces.
"Are you?" cried the man, delighted. "I've lived in Boston, myself.
There's just been an awful fire near there."
"Indeed!" I said; "I heard nothing of it.' And I was startled with
the possibility that Boston had burned up again while we were
crawling along through Nova Scotia.
"Yes, here it is, in the last paper." The man bustled away and found
his late paper, and thrust it through the grating, with the inquiry,
"Can you read?"
Though the question was unexpected, and I had never thought before
whether I could read or not, I confessed that I could probably make
out the meaning, and took the newspaper. The report of the fire
"near Boston" turned out to be the old news of the conflagration in
Portland, Oregon!
Disposed to devote a portion of this Sunday to the reformation of
this lively criminal, I continued the conversation with him. It
seemed that he had been in jail before, and was not unaccustomed to
the life. He was not often lonesome; he had his workbench and
newspapers, and it was a quiet place; on the whole, he enjoyed it,
and should rather regret it when his time was up, a month from then.
Had he any family?
"Oh, yes. When the census was round, I contributed more to it than
anybody in town. Got a wife and eleven children."
"Well, don't you think it would pay best to be honest, and live with
your family, out of jail? You surely never had anything but trouble
from dishonesty."
"That's about so, boss. I mean to go on the square after this. But,
you see," and here he began to speak confidentially, "things are
fixed about so in this world, and a man's got to live his life. I
tell you how it was. It all came about from a woman. I was a
carpenter, had a good trade, and went down to St. Peter's to work.
There I got acquainted with a Frenchwoman,--you know what Frenchwomen
are,--and I had to marry her. The fact is, she was rather low
family; not so very low, you know, but not so good as mine. Well, I
wanted to go to Boston to work at my trade, but she wouldn't go; and
I went, but she would n't come to me, so in two or three years I came
back. A man can't help himself, you know, when he gets in with a
woman, especially a Frenchwoman. Things did n't go very well, and
never have. I can't make much out of it, but I reckon a man 's got
to live his life. Ain't that about so?"
"Perhaps so. But you'd better try to mend matters when you get out.
Won't it seem rather good to get out and see your wife and family
again?"
"I don't know. I have peace here."
The question of his liberty seemed rather to depress this cheerful
and vivacious philosopher, and I wondered what the woman could be
from whose companionship the man chose to be protected by jail-bolts.
I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive and
sufficient. He only said,
"She's a yelper."
Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions in
Baddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very good
schools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sister
would do credit to Boston scholars even. You would not say that the
place was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is an
orderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town. Book-agents visit
it with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, which
is said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in that
direction yet. I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax,
supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St. John; but so far
as I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophers
under whose instructions we have become the well-informed people we
are.
The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one's
opportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday. There seemed to
be no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on the
skeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within the
statute. No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyond
the island to fish for cod,--although, as that fish is ready to bite,
and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excuses
for angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw a
line for another sort of fish. My earliest recollections are of the
codfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,--his sacred tail
pointing the way the wind went. I did not know then why this emblem
should be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew why
codfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table. But
these associations invested this plebeian fish with something of a
religious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.
Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we did
not know to what to lay the quiet on Monday. But its peacefulness
continued. I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and the
traders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt that
he had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky the
evening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was an
inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains
than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of
sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.
In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic
isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with
little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of
sluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going
traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the
reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.
Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place,
which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.
If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too well
what would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape
Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints,
their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and
fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel,
their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;
and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. And
the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.
There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake
of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and
watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the
red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray
twilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure.
There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is
lacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no person
to go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lack
occupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter,
he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a
rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula
between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He may
also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on
the Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a
hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the
salmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook in
his nose. The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can be
caught whenever he will bite. The day we went for him appeared to be
an off-day, a sort of holiday with him.
There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail to
visit. That is St. Ann's Bay. He will go light of baggage, for he
must hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch of
St. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat.
There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full of
picturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around the
indentations of St. Ann's harbor. From the high promontory where
rests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross to
English Town. High bluffs, bold shores, exquisite sea-views,
mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of the
Dominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed at
this place. In point of grandeur and beauty it surpasses Mt. Desert,
and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of the
Atlantic Cable. If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he will
visit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant,
who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native shore. A man
of gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as big
as a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul. While the
visitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only as
sledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by his
neighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity. He was not
spoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreign
triumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he is
almost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feel
bigger than he was. He performed his duty in life without
ostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by the
flattery of constant public curiosity. He knew, having tried both,
how much better it is to be good than to be great. I should like to
have known him. I should like to know how the world looked to him
from his altitude. I should like to know how much food it took at
one time to make an impression on him; I should like to know what
effect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head. I should
like to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experienced
in merely closing his hand over something. It is a pity that he
could not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school,
and ending in a university. There was a field for the multifarious
new education! If we could have annexed him with his island, I
should like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States. He
would have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear his
lightest remark like a declaration of war. And he would have been at
home in that body of great men. Alas! he has passed away, leaving
little influence except a good example of growth, and a grave which
is a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of the
untamed Atlantic.
I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, if
it were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said to
make the traveler wish to go there. I more unreservedly urge him to
go there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibility
for his liking or disliking. He will go upon the recommendation of
two gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residents
of Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinations
of land and water in coast scenery. When a Maine man admits that
there is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a note
of.
On Monday we went a-fishing. Davie hitched to a rattling wagon
something that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a great
deal of "go" in him, if he could be coaxed to show it. For the first
half-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, moving
indifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down the
road, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of Middle
River. Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks,
and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses.
Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,
--he could start him after a while,--but he did n't like to have all
the town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such an
exhibition affected the market value of the horse. We sat in the
wagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimes
out of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused him
with his tongue. It was a pleasant day, and the spectators
increased.
There are two ways of managing a balky horse. My companion knew one
of them and I the other. His method is to sit quietly in the wagon,
and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse. The theory
is that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse's
mind, and he will try to escape them by going on. The spectators
supplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measured
gentleness. Probably the horse understood this method, for he did
not notice the attack at all. My plan was to speak gently to the
horse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by one
sudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat the
operation. The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word will
start any horse. I tried this, and with a certain success. The
horse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backed
himself into the wagon, if I had continued. When the animal was at
length ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side,
coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed him
into a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down.
Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only on
the return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began to
reflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before his
father saw them.
Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over the
sprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream,
to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into a
bayou with ragged shores, about which the Indians have encampments,
and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs. Saturday night
we had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge. We
followed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement of
farmers. The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy,
fertile, and sheltered by hills,--a green Eden, one of the few
peaceful inhabited spots in the world. I could conceive of no news
coming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender.
Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook,
we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at least
as good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman and
brother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse,
and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely to
be found at this season of the year.
It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor's
residence, but truth is older than Scotchmen, and the reader looks to
us for truth and not flattery. Though the McGregor seems to have a
good farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rather
cheerless place for the "woman" to slave away her uneventful life
in, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock of
children. And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,--there
always is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough for
them. A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small though
he was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he had
recently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself. The
young Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks.
We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in all
remote regions where travelers are few. Mrs. McGregor had none of
that reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agricultural
regions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed us
to partake freely of that simple drink. And he refused to take any
pay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act of
hospitality should have any commercial value. But travelers
themselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we planted
the notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life may
be made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably the
next travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small change
there, if they use a little tact.
It was late in the season for trout. Perhaps the McGregor was aware
of that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows,
and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck. It
was a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying in
cool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content,
indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod and
reel. The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe,
over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gently
reposing in the broad bends of the grassy banks. It was in one of
these bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies,
that we tried our skill. We heroically waded the stream and threw
our flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water nor
in the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to the
deceitful leaders. We enjoyed the distinction of being the only
persons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and this
was something. The meadows were sweet with the newly cut grass, the
wind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed high
overhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all these
gentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their cool
retreats. At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle River
we found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, for
I should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yet
the public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without any
fish in it. Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by a
tree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens of
them a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs
relieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at first
they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis and
the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were
alike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial
taste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized
-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor
and baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in our
day's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the worm
before their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other,
gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel,
until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but it
was not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregor
contemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhaps
learn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in Cape
Breton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.
The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the
bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;
and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the
peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness
of this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuous
person on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height
was made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his
very short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a little
difficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the back
of his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at that
stage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowing
with information and good-nature. With what might in strict art be
called an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civil
engineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a great
traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humorous
satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsec
junction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as a
joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light.
From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, to
the relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boat
drew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edge
of the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail by
a friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing us
prosperity and the Fourth of July. His was the only effort in the
nature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and we
could not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."
Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of this
hazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the most
complete enjoyment of our voyage. Certainly, as we glided out upon
the summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of the
widening shores, it seemed as if we had taken passage to the
Fortunate Islands.
V
"One town, one country, is very like another; ...... there are indeed
minute discriminations both of places and manners, which, perhaps,
are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays long
enough to investigate and compare."--DR. JOHNSON.
There was no prospect of any excitement or of any adventure on the
steamboat from Baddeck to West Bay, the southern point of the Bras
d'Or. Judging from the appearance of the boat, the dinner might have
been an experiment, but we ran no risks. It was enough to sit on
deck forward of the wheel-house, and absorb, by all the senses, the
delicious day. With such weather perpetual and such scenery always
present, sin in this world would soon become an impossibility. Even
towards the passengers from Sydney, with their imitation English ways
and little insular gossip, one could have only charity and the most
kindly feeling.
The most electric American, heir of all the nervous diseases of all
the ages, could not but find peace in this scene of tranquil beauty,
and sail on into a great and deepening contentment. Would the voyage
could last for an age, with the same sparkling but tranquil sea, and
the same environment of hills, near and remote! The hills approached
and fell away in lines of undulating grace, draped with a tender
color which helped to carry the imagination beyond the earth. At
this point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade did
not feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gut
of Canso. A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch of
production, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him. But
poetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profane
language,--often without the least provocation.
Twelve miles from Baddeck we passed through the Barra Strait, or the
Grand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came into
its widest expanse. At the Narrows is a small settlement with a
flag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills.
Here is a Catholic chapel; and on shore a fat padre was waiting in
his wagon for the inevitable priest we always set ashore at such a
place. The missionary we landed was the young father from Arichat,
and in appearance the pleasing historical Jesuit. Slender is too
corpulent a word to describe his thinness, and his stature was
primeval. Enveloped in a black coat, the skirts of which reached his
heels, and surmounted by a black hat with an enormous brim, he had
the form of an elegant toadstool. The traveler is always grateful
for such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith which
preserves so much of the ugly picturesque. A peaceful farming
country this, but an unremunerative field, one would say, for the
colporteur and the book-agent; and winter must inclose it in a
lonesome seclusion.
The only other thing of note the Bras d'Or offered us before we
reached West Bay was the finest show of medusm or jelly-fish that
could be produced. At first there were dozens of these disk-shaped,
transparent creatures, and then hundreds, starring the water like
marguerites sprinkled on a meadow, and of sizes from that of a teacup
to a dinner-plate. We soon ran into a school of them, a convention,
a herd as extensive as the vast buffalo droves on the plains, a
collection as thick as clover-blossoms in a field in June, miles of
them, apparently; and at length the boat had to push its way through
a mass of them which covered the water like the leaves of the
pondlily, and filled the deeps far down with their beautiful
contracting and expanding forms. I did not suppose there were so
many jelly-fishes in all the world. What a repast they would have
made for the Atlantic whale we did not see, and what inward comfort
it would have given him to have swum through them once or twice with
open mouth! Our delight in this wondrous spectacle did not prevent
this generous wish for the gratification of the whale. It is
probably a natural human desire to see big corporations swallow up
little ones.
At the West Bay landing, where there is nothing whatever attractive,
we found a great concourse of country wagons and clamorous drivers,
to transport the passengers over the rough and uninteresting nine
miles to Port Hawkesbury. Competition makes the fare low, but
nothing makes the ride entertaining. The only settlement passed
through has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could see
little river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belong
to that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extract
nothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a great
relief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon the
straggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.
One cannot but feel a respect for this historical strait, on account
of the protection it once gave our British ancestors. Smollett makes
a certain Captain C----tell this anecdote of George II. and his
enlightened minister, the Duke of Newcastle: "In the beginning of the
war this poor, half-witted creature told me, in a great fright, that
thirty thousand French had marched from Acadie to Cape Breton.
'Where did they find transports?' said I. 'Transports!' cried he; 'I
tell you, they marched by land.' By land to the island of Cape
Breton?' 'What! is Cape Breton an island?' 'Certainly.' 'Ha! are
you sure of that?' When I pointed it out on the map, he examined it
earnestly with his spectacles; then taking me in his arms, 'My dear
C----!' cried he, you always bring us good news. I'll go directly
and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.'"
Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house is
one of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms,
chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decay
and untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has a
low back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden,
damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travel
rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant
man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that
this was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making and
frolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt lovers
sat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond of
each other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon the
traces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air of
the hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maids
at table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-made
dishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hotel
and lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make a
little romance about its history.
While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. We
hastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey.
But haste was not called for. The steamboat would not sail on her
return till morning. No one could tell why. It was not on account
of freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of more
passengers, for they were all on board. But if the boat had returned
that night to Pictou, some of the passengers might have left her and
gone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days lounging
through Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of Prince
Edward Island. If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we could
catch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the officials were aware
of this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac. We
mention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn to
possess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not run
for his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize him
with the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientific
reader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in these
regions. Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth moves
through space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles an
hour. This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of the
most rapid express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotive
in an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a
line nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of the
earth in the same time. But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait
without a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an express
train. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincial
steamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from Port
Hawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters by
him.
In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and by
breakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, and
making for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something in
the nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but it
had so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I
thought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highly
developed provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengers
had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards
each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to
uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies'
shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with each
other's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the company
health. It became painfully evident presently that it was an
excursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kind
that depresses the spirits of all except those who join in it. The
excursion had assembled on the lee guards out of the wind, and was
enjoying itself in an abandon of serious musical enthusiasm. We
feared at first that there might be some levity in this performance,
and that the unrestrained spirit of the excursion was working itself
off in social and convivial songs. But it was not so. The singers
were provided with hymn-and-tune books, and what they sang they
rendered in long meter and with a most doleful earnestness. It is
agreeable to the traveler to see that the provincials disport
themselves within bounds, and that an hilarious spree here does not
differ much in its exercises from a prayer-meeting elsewhere. But
the excursion enjoyed its staid dissipation amazingly.
It is pleasant to sail into the long and broad harbor of Pictou on a
sunny day. On the left is the Halifax railway terminus, and three
rivers flow into the harbor from the south. On the right the town of
Pictou, with its four thousand inhabitants, lies upon the side of the
ridge that runs out towards the Sound. The most conspicuous building
in it as we approach is the Roman Catholic church; advanced to the
edge of the town and occupying the highest ground, it appears large,
and its gilt cross is a beacon miles away. Its builders understood
the value of a striking situation, a dominant position; it is a part
of the universal policy of this church to secure the commanding
places for its houses of worship. We may have had no prejudices in
favor of the Papal temporality when we landed at Pictou, but this
church was the only one which impressed us, and the only one we took
the trouble to visit. We had ample time, for the steamboat after its
arduous trip needed rest, and remained some hours in the harbor.
Pictou is said to be a thriving place, and its streets have a cindery
appearance, betokening the nearness of coal mines and the presence of
furnaces. But the town has rather a cheap and rusty look. Its
streets rise one above another on the hillside, and, except a few
comfortable cottages, we saw no evidences of wealth in the dwellings.
The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure,
with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings,
so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoying
the view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hot
wharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat which
lay at the railway terminus opposite. It is the most unfair thing in
the world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in the
development of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express any
opinion whatever about such a town as Pictou. But we may say of it,
without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may have
an interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance can
leave it without regret.
By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss
that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of
seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.
Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and
presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,--a coast
indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather
that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but
still slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such a
position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a
good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his
fellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may
be pronounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in the
matter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worrying
anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the
remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with the
Rebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that the
ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-shadows
this part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said,
"Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright,
and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcome
and Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of consolation to fail
before; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it does
in England.
New passengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and not
all could get seats for dinner at the first table. Notwithstanding
the supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unable
to dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, and
consequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves at
the second table. And we were rewarded by one of those pleasing
sights that go to make up the entertainment of travel. There sat
down opposite to us a fat man whose noble proportions occupied at the
board the space of three ordinary men. His great face beamed delight
the moment he came near the table. He had a low forehead and a wide
mouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy of
famine to his fellow-men. But a more good-natured, pleased animal
you may never see. Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he looked
at us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, that
plainly said, "Now my time has come." Every part of his vast bulk
said this. Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made us
partners in his pleasure. With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation,
he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragments
towards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing into
his cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudied
and preliminary manner. When he had secured everything within his
reach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents,
using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency. The man's
good-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amusement as
different in kind from his enjoyment. The spectacle was worth a
journey to see. Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame its
grossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he could
swallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrange
matters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beaming
smile that a pig would not take offense at it. The performance was
not the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievement
unique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once in
a lifetime. It was only when the man left the table that his face
became serious. We had seen him at his best.
Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, and
nothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the map
conveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, without
fogs, we are informed. In the winter it has ice communication with
Nova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,--the route of the
submarine cable. The island is as flat from end to end as a floor.
When it surrendered its independent government and joined the
Dominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the government
should build a railway the whole length of it. This is in process of
construction, and the portion that is built affords great
satisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessary
adjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, or
that it would pay, we were unable to learn.
We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait to
Charlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of land
between two rivers. Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in the
afternoon and spent the night, giving the passengers an opportunity
to make thorough acquaintance with the town. It has the appearance
of a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, with
wide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something.
Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building,
where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, and
the colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty. The
mansion of the governor--now vacant of pomp, because that official
does not exist--is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded among
trees by the water-side. It is dignified with a winding approach,
but is itself only a cheap and decaying house. On our way to it we
passed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for a
skating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whom
we inquired. Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attention
to flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest. Indeed,
we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock in
the dooryard is considered an ornament. A conspicuous building is a
large market-house shingled all over (as many of the public buildings
are), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst of
a large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the most
part. The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to be
regretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory of
a governor and court and ministers of state, and all the
paraphernalia of a royal parliament. That the productive island,
with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperous
career, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of great
activity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and I
think that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or two
there; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements to
tourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.
We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night of
delightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secluded
harbor. But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that we
should improve our time by an interesting study of human nature.
Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms were
supposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of the
small cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making an
excursion on the island railway. This family might remind an
antiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;"
they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine of
that story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard to
their family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, we
felt as if we knew every one of them. There was a great squabble as
to where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, the
revelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits of
sleep continued to pierce the thin deal partitions of the adjoining
state-rooms. When all the possible trivialities of vacant minds
seemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of
"Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;" "Goodnight, pet;" and "Are you
asleep, ma?" "No." "Are you asleep, pa?" "No; go to sleep, pet."
"I'm going. Good-night, pa; good-night, ma." "Goodnight, pet."
"This bed is too short." "Why don't you take the other?" "I'm all
fixed now." "Well, go to sleep; good-night." "Good-night, ma;
goodnight, pa,"--no answer. "Good-night,pa." "Goodnight, pet."
"Ma, are you asleep?" "Most." "This bed is all lumps; I wish I'd
gone downstairs." "Well, pa will get up." "Pa, are you asleep?"
"Yes." "It's better now; good-night, pa." "Goodnight, pet."
"Good-night, ma." "Good-night, pet." And so on in an exasperating
repetition, until every passenger on the boat must have been
thoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting family
habitually settled itself to repose.
Half an hour passes with only a languid exchange of family feeling,
and then: "Pa?" "Well, pet." "Don't call us in the morning; we
don't want any breakfast; we want to sleep." "I won't." "Goodnight,
pa; goodnight, ma. Ma?" "What is it, dear?" "Good-night, ma."
"Good-night, pet." Alas for youthful expectations! Pet shared her
stateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on a
private dialogue during this public performance. Did these young
ladies, after keeping all the passengers of the boat awake till near
the summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma to
insure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze?
The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domestic
infliction, anticipated the morning with grim satisfaction; for they
had a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise and
make their toilet without waking up every one in their part of the
boat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stay
awake. And so it turned out. The family grumbling at the unexpected
disturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange of
family affection during the night.
No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailing
along the southern coast of Prince Edward Island. It was a sparkling
morning. When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; the
faint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and New
Brunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us. On the still, sunny
coasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there was
no sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras to
Cape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a few
days later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to the
ground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now inviting
shores with wrecked ships and drowning sailors,--a storm which has
passed into literature in "The Lord's-Day Gale" of Mr Stedman.
Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, in
order to discharge its passengers into the sweeping unrest of
continental travel? Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost melted
away, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat lounged
into Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside.
This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would give
these travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at all
remember how it looks. But it is a place that, like some faces,
makes no sort of impression on the memory. We went ashore there, and
tried to take an interest in the ship-building, and in the little
oysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interest
or not has passed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, wooden
town, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend an
interest in it which we did not feel? It did not disturb our
reposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of the
day.
On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a group
reading and nodding in the sunshine, we found a pretty girl with a
companion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the "pa" of
the pretty girl and of our night of anguish. The pa might have been
a clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a female
boarding-school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person to
travel with, whose willingness to impart information made even the
travelers long for a pa. It was no part of his plan of this family
summer excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have any
hour of it wasted in idleness. He held an open volume in his hand, and
was questioning his daughter on its contents. He spoke in a loud
voice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrank
from this public examination, and begged her father not to continue
it. The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter's
acquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out of
her ignorance. Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon the
geography of the region we are passing through, its early settlement,
the romantic incidents of its history when French and English fought
over it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure.
But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of the
new education. Greece was his theme and he got his questions, and his
answers too, from the ancient school history in his hand. The lesson
went on:
"Who was Alcibiades?
"A Greek."
"Yes. When did he flourish?"
"I can't think."
"Can't think? What was he noted for?"
"I don't remember."
"Don't remember? I don't believe you studied this."
"Yes, I did."
"Well, take it now, and study it hard, and then I'll hear you again."
The young girl, who is put to shame by this open persecution, begins
to study, while the peevish and small tyrant, her pa, is nagging her
with such soothing remarks as, "I thought you'd have more respect for
your pride;" "Why don't you try to come up to the expectations of
your teacher?" By and by the student thinks she has "got it," and
the public exposition begins again. The date at which Alcibiades
"flourished" was ascertained, but what he was "noted for" got
hopelessly mixed with what Thernistocles was "noted for." The
momentary impression that the battle of Marathon was fought by
Salamis was soon dissipated, and the questions continued.
"What did Pericles do to the Greeks?"
"I don't know."
"Elevated 'em, did n't he? Did n't he elevate Pem?"
"Yes, sir."
"Always remember that; you want to fix your mind on leading things.
Remember that Pericles elevated the Greeks. Who was Pericles?
"He was a"--
"Was he a philosopher?"
"Yes, sir."
"No, he was n't. Socrates was a philosopher. When did he flourish?"
And so on, and so on.
O my charming young countrywomen, let us never forget that Pericles
elevated the Greeks; and that he did it by cultivating the national
genius, the national spirit, by stimulating art and oratory and the
pursuit of learning, and infusing into all society a higher
intellectual and social life! Pa was this day sailing through seas
and by shores that had witnessed some of the most stirring and
romantic events in the early history of our continent. He might have
had the eager attention of his bright daughter if he had unfolded
these things to her in the midst of this most living landscape, and
given her an "object lesson" that she would not have forgotten all
her days, instead of this pottering over names and dates that were as
dry and meaningless to him as they were uninteresting to his
daughter. At least, O Pa, Educator of Youth, if you are insensible
to the beauty of these summer isles and indifferent to their history,
and your soul is wedded to ancient learning, why do you not teach
your family to go to sleep when they go to bed, as the classic Greeks
used to?
Before the travelers reached Shediac, they had leisure to ruminate
upon the education of American girls in the schools set apart for
them, and to conjecture how much they are taught of the geography and
history of America, or of its social and literary growth; and
whether, when they travel on a summer tour like this, these coasts
have any historical light upon them, or gain any interest from the
daring and chivalric adventurers who played their parts here so long
ago. We did not hear pa ask when Madame de la Tour "flourished,"
though "flourish" that determined woman did, in Boston as well as in
the French provinces. In the present woman revival, may we not hope
that the heroic women of our colonial history will have the
prominence that is their right, and that woman's achievements will
assume their proper place in affairs? When women write history, some
of our popular men heroes will, we trust, be made to acknowledge the
female sources of their wisdom and their courage. But at present
women do not much affect history, and they are more indifferent to
the careers of the noted of their own sex than men are.
We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest. It
had been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in our
projected tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, we
expected to swing around the Provinces. Upon the map it was so
attractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there. It
once seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contented
to abide there, in a place so remote, in a port so picturesque and
foreign. But returning from the real east, our late interest in
Shediac seemed unaccountable to us. Firmly resolved as I was to note
our entrance into the harbor, I could not keep the place in mind; and
while we were in our state-room and before we knew it, the steamboat
Jay at the wharf. Shediac appeared to be nothing but a wharf with a
railway train on it, and a few shanty buildings, a part of them
devoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap lodgings. This landing,
however, is called Point du Chene, and the village of Shediac is two
or three miles distant from it; we had a pleasant glimpse of it from
the car windows, and saw nothing in its situation to hinder its
growth. The country about it is perfectly level, and stripped of its
forests. At Painsec Junction we waited for the train from Halifax,
and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of intercolonial travel.
Why people should travel here, or why they should be excited about
it, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling of the
unreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had no
right to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonial
railway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into the
Provinces. We are free to say, however, that nothing can be less
interesting than the line of this road until it strikes the
Kennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admire
the Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would like
to praise if it were not for exciting the jealousy of the "Garden of
Nova Scotia." The whole land is in fact a garden, but differing
somewhat from the Isle of Wight.
In all travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and so
it was at this time. As twilight shut down upon the valley of the
Kennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with the
Grecian catechism. Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or by
the colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque the
scraggy evergreens on the horizon. His eyes were with his heart, and
that was in Sparta. Above the roar of the car-wheels we heard his
nagging inquiries.
"What did Lycurgus do then?"
Answer not audible.
"No. He made laws. Who did he make laws for?"
"For the Greeks."
"He made laws for the Lacedemonians. Who was another great
lawgiver?"
"It was--it was--Pericles."
"No, it was n't. It was Solon. Who was Solon?"
"Solon was one of the wise men of Greece."
"That's right. When did he flourish?"
When the train stops at a station the classics continue, and the
studious group attracts the attention of the passengers. Pa is well
pleased, but not so the young lady, who beseechingly says,
"Pa, everybody can hear us."
"You would n't care how much they heard, if you knew it," replies
this accomplished devotee of learning.
In another lull of the car-wheels we find that pa has skipped over to
Marathon; and this time it is the daughter who is asking a question.
"Pa, what is a phalanx?"
"Well, a phalanx--it's a--it's difficult to define a phalanx. It's a
stretch of men in one line,--a stretch of anything in a line. When
did Alexander flourish?"
This domestic tyrant had this in common with the rest of us, that he
was much better at asking questions than at answering them. It
certainly was not our fault that we were listeners to his instructive
struggles with ancient history, nor that we heard his petulant
complaining to his cowed family, whom he accused of dragging him away
on this summer trip. We are only grateful to him, for a more
entertaining person the traveler does not often see. It was with
regret that we lost sight of him at St. John.
Night has settled upon New Brunswick and upon ancient Greece before
we reach the Kennebeckasis Bay, and we only see from the car windows
dimly a pleasant and fertile country, and the peaceful homes of
thrifty people. While we are running along the valley and coming
under the shadow of the hill whereon St. John sits, with a regal
outlook upon a most variegated coast and upon the rising and falling
of the great tides of Fundy, we feel a twinge of conscience at the
injustice the passing traveler must perforce do any land he hurries
over and does not study. Here is picturesque St. John, with its
couple of centuries of history and tradition, its commerce, its
enterprise felt all along the coast and through the settlements of
the territory to the northeast, with its no doubt charming society
and solid English culture; and the summer tourist, in an idle mood
regarding it for a day, says it is naught! Behold what "travels"
amount to! Are they not for the most part the records of the
misapprehensions of the misinformed? Let us congratulate ourselves
that in this flight through the Provinces we have not attempted to do
any justice to them, geologically, economically, or historically,
only trying to catch some of the salient points of the panorama as it
unrolled itself. Will Halifax rise up in judgment against us? We
look back upon it with softened memory, and already see it again in
the light of history. It stands, indeed, overlooking a gate of the
ocean, in a beautiful morning light; and we can hear now the
repetition of that profane phrase, used for the misdirection of
wayward mortals,---"Go to Halifax!" without a shudder.
We confess to some regret that our journey is so near its end.
Perhaps it is the sentimental regret with which one always leaves the
east, for we have been a thousand miles nearer Ireland than Boston
is. Collecting in the mind the detached pictures given to our eyes
in all these brilliant and inspiring days, we realize afresh the
variety, the extent, the richness of these northeastern lands which
the Gulf Stream pets and tempers. If it were not for attracting
speculators, we should delight to speak of the beds of coal, the
quarries of marble, the mines of gold. Look on the map and follow
the shores of these peninsulas and islands, the bays, the penetrating
arms of the sea, the harbors filled with islands, the protected
straits and sounds. All this is favorable to the highest commercial
activity and enterprise. Greece itself and its islands are not more
indented and inviting. Fish swarm about the shores and in all the
streams. There are, I have no doubt, great forests which we did not
see from the car windows, the inhabitants of which do not show
themselves to the travelers at the railway-stations. In the
dining-room of a friend, who goes away every autumn into the wilds of
Nova Scotia at the season when the snow falls, hang trophies
--enormous branching antlers of the caribou, and heads of the mighty
moose--which I am assured came from there; and I have no reason to
doubt that the noble creatures who once carried these superb horns
were murdered by my friend at long range. Many people have an
insatiate longing to kill, once in their life, a moose, and would
travel far and endure great hardships to gratify this ambition. In
the present state of the world it is more difficult to do it than it
is to be written down as one who loves his fellow-men.
We received everywhere in the Provinces courtesy and kindness, which
were not based upon any expectation that we would invest in mines or
railways, for the people are honest, kindly, and hearty by nature.
What they will become when the railways are completed that are to
bind St. John to Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and
Newfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say. Probably
they will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no material
for the kindly persiflage of the traveler.
Regretting that we could see no more of St. John, that we could
scarcely see our way through its dimly lighted streets, we found the
ferry to Carleton, and a sleeping-car for Bangor. It was in the
heart of the negro porter to cause us alarm by the intelligence that
the customs officer would, search our baggage during the night. A
search is a blow to one's self-respect, especially if one has
anything dutiable. But as the porter might be an agent of our
government in disguise, we preserved an appearance of philosophical
indifference in his presence. It takes a sharp observer to tell
innocence from assurance. During the night, awaking, I saw a great
light. A man, crawling along the aisle of the car, and poking under
the seats, had found my traveling-bag and was "going through" it.
I felt a thrill of pride as I recognized in this crouching figure an
officer of our government, and knew that I was in my native land.
SUMMER IN A GARDEN
and
CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER
By Charles Dudley Warner
INTRODUCTORY LETTER
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I did promise to write an Introduction to these
charming papers but an Introduction,--what is it?--a sort of
pilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and
usually flat,--very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid,
which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture,
representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her
head or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and which
could stand just as well without as with them. But an Introduction
is more apt to be a pillar, such as one may see in Baalbec, standing
up in the air all alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for it
to do.
But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that no
formality, no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignity
to be sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only a
footpath, leading the curious to a favorable point of observation,
and then leaving them to wander as they will.
Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might
better be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, and
watches all day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare not
even bring his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, as
if too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy
and modesty of one's work.
Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, that
comes noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts.
And yet somewhere work must come in,--real, well-considered work.
Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of real
human feeling) once said, "No man can do anything in art, unless he
has intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collecting
the materials out of which intuitions are made." The truth could not
be hit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are the
flowers which grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched and
worked.
It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, now
gathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that the
author has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding,
in observing and considering the facts of Nature, and in weaving
curious analogies. Being an editor of one of the oldest daily
news-papers in New England, and obliged to fill its columns day after
day (as the village mill is obliged to render every day so many sacks
of flour or of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally occurred to
him, "Why not write something which I myself, as well as my readers,
shall enjoy? The market gives them facts enough; politics, lies
enough; art, affectations enough; criminal news, horrors enough;
fashion, more than enough of vanity upon vanity, and vexation of purse.
Why should they not have some of those wandering and joyous fancies
which solace my hours?"
The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read, and
wanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; and
many hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was of
wisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or of
convalescence that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do
not rush or roar, but distill as the dew.
The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiar
things, that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently
thrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is worth
a thousand fortunes of money, or its equivalents.
Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens,
every essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of the
mysteries which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed,
even, hints, is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of our
kind. And if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint
characters, and be filled with a grave humor, or break out at times
into merriment, all this will be no presumption against their wisdom
or his goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough because the mosses
and weather-stains stick in all manner of grotesque sketches along
its bark? Now, truly, one may not learn from this little book either
divinity or horticulture; but if he gets a pure happiness, and a
tendency to repeat the happiness from the simple stores of Nature, he
will gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost in his, and what
neither philosophy nor divinity has always been able to restore.
Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a former letter, which
begged you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers,
that go winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden and
the field, might not be given in book-form to your million readers, I
remain, yours to command in everything but the writing of an
Introduction,
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
BY WAY OF DEDICATION
MY DEAR POLLY,--When a few of these papers had appeared in "The
Courant," I was encouraged to continue them by hearing that they had
at least one reader who read them with the serious mind from which
alone profit is to be expected. It was a maiden lady, who, I am
sure, was no more to blame for her singleness than for her age; and
she looked to these honest sketches of experience for that aid which
the professional agricultural papers could not give in the management
of the little bit of garden which she called her own. She may have
been my only disciple; and I confess that the thought of her yielding
a simple faith to what a gainsaying world may have regarded with
levity has contributed much to give an increased practical turn to my
reports of what I know about gardening. The thought that I had
misled a lady, whose age is not her only singularity, who looked to
me for advice which should be not at all the fanciful product of the
Garden of Gull, would give me great pain. I trust that her autumn is
a peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the humorous or the
satirical side of Nature.
You know that this attempt to tell the truth about one of the most
fascinating occupations in the world has not been without its
dangers. I have received anonymous letters. Some of them were
murderously spelled; others were missives in such elegant phrase and
dress, that danger was only to be apprehended in them by one skilled
in the mysteries of medieval poisoning, when death flew on the wings
of a perfume. One lady, whose entreaty that I should pause had
something of command in it, wrote that my strictures on "pusley" had
so inflamed her husband's zeal, that, in her absence in the country,
he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of the
fat weed), and utterly cast it out. It is, however, to be expected,
that retributive justice would visit the innocent as well as the
guilty of an offending family. This is only another proof of the
wide sweep of moral forces. I suppose that it is as necessary in the
vegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the appearance of evil.
In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered from
week to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops or
the drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent half
the charm to my labor. If I were in a court of justice, or
injustice, under oath, I should not like to say, that, either in the
wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you
had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use
in the garden; but your suggestions have been invaluable, and,
whenever used, have been paid for. Your horticultural inquiries have
been of a nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it listened, and
were a constant inspiration to research. There was almost nothing
that you did not wish to know; and this, added to what I wished to
know, made a boundless field for discovery. What might have become
of the garden, if your advice had been followed, a good Providence
only knows; but I never worked there without a consciousness that you
might at any moment come down the walk, under the grape-arbor,
bestowing glances of approval, that were none the worse for not being
critical; exercising a sort of superintendence that elevated
gardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was as
complimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere which
made the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apart
for fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright presence that
filled the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and now leaves
upon it that tender play of color and bloom which is called among the
Alps the after-glow.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870
C. D. W.
PRELIMINARY
The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the
latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So
long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes
back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business,
eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken
the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of
looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to
him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.
To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and
watch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the
race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero writes
of the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is chief among them:
"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
delector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis
vitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because New
York editors have exhausted the English language in the praising of
spring, and especially of the month of May.)
Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece
of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.
It is alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of the
aristocrat. Broad acres are a patent of nobility; and no man but
feels more, of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he
can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four
thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property. And there
is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership
of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done
something for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers.
It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing
more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn
even with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful
than grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have their
delights, but they have not turf: and the world without turf is a
dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had such
turf as one sees in England. The Teutonic races all love turf: they
emigrate in the line of its growth.
To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should
be taken sparingly--is a great thing. One gets strength out of the
ground as often as one really touches it with a hoe. Antaeus (this
is a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such a
prize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he got
him to lay down his spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply beets
and potatoes and corn and string-beans that one raises in his
well-hoed garden: it is the average of human life. There is life in
the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up,
goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends to
his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant
loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on the
bushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; the
blood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the Wild
flowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing and
singing everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes the busy housewife
to shake a white something, and stands a moment to look, quite
transfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in the garden
on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is nearly equal
to the delight of going trouting.
Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. All
literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot of
the charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of
Chappaqua) had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who
did landscape gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not
get half as much comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simply
tilled acres. We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farming
himself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. In
order to enjoy agriculture, you do not want too much of it, and you
want to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moderately
yourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.
It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.
FIRST WEEK
Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, some
of which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vital
in them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has any
right to keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that those
who come after me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, will
find profit in the perusal of my experience. As my knowledge is
constantly increasing, there is likely to be no end to these papers.
They will pursue no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture,
but range from topic to topic, according to the weather and the
progress of the weeds, which may drive me from one corner of the
garden to the other.
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not
to give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and
cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience
and philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred and
expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes
to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of
character, as it was in the beginning. I shall keep this central
truth in mind in these articles. I mean to have a moral garden, if
it is not a productive one,--one that shall teach, O my brothers!
O my sisters! the great lessons of life.
The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that you
never know when to set it going. If you want anything to come to
maturity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If you put it out
early, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost;
for the thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. the
night of the day following. And, if you do not set out plants or sow
seeds early, you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables will
be late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watching
your slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When you
have planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to
see it above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see the
young plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble
lest the seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed in
anxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a great
moral discipline is worked out for you.
Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, and
apparently having no fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morning
for the first time,--it is not well usually to hoe corn until about
the 18th of May,--when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans. She
seemed to think the poles had come up beautifully. I thought they
did look well: they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown,
and stand straight. They were inexpensive, too. The cheapness came
about from my cutting them on another man's land, and he did not know
it. I have not examined this transaction in the moral light of
gardening; but I know people in this country take great liberties at
the polls. Polly noticed that the beans had not themselves come up
in any proper sense, but that the dirt had got off from them, leaving
them uncovered. She thought it would be well to sprinkle a slight
layer of dirt over them; and I, indulgently, consented. It occurred
to me, when she had gone, that beans always come up that way,--wrong
end first; and that what they wanted was light, and not dirt.
Observation.--Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a
garden.
I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendid
berry the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch has
grown into such a defiant attitude, that you could not get within
several feet of it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out
long, prickly arms in all directions; but the bushes were pretty much
all dead. I have walked into them a good deal with a pruning-knife;
but it is very much like fighting original sin. The variety is one
that I can recommend. I think it is called Brinckley's Orange. It
is exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks. The fruit is also
said to be good; but that does not matter so much, as the plant does
not often bear in this region. The stalks seem to be biennial
institutions; and as they get about their growth one year, and bear
the next year, and then die, and the winters here nearly always kill
them, unless you take them into the house (which is inconvenient if
you have a family of small children), it is very difficult to induce
the plant to flower and fruit. This is the greatest objection there
is to this sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these for
discipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for fruit.
SECOND WEEK
Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter
is, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order for
dinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a
lump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless your
garden is a boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I
hoe it on hot days), you must make a selection, from the great
variety of vegetables, of those you will raise in it; and you feel
rather bound to supply your own table from your own garden, and to
eat only as you have sown.
I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to have
a garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself,
but every man to please his neighbor. I tried to have a garden that
would give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody
could object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began to
plant them freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them.
"You don't want to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighbors
said; "you can buy potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid doing
is buying things). "What you want is the perishable things that you
cannot get fresh in the market."--"But what kind of perishable
things?" A horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow lines of
straw-berries and raspberries right over where I had put my potatoes
in drills. I had about five hundred strawberry-plants in another
part of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to turn my whole
patch into vines and runners. I suppose I could raise strawberries
enough for all my neighbors; and perhaps I ought to do it. I had a
little space prepared for melons,--muskmelons,--which I showed to an
experienced friend.
"You are not going to waste your ground on muskmelons?" he asked.
"They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost." He had
tried for years without luck. I resolved to not go into such a
foolish experiment. But, the next day, another neighbor happened in.
"Ah! I see you are going to have melons. My family would rather give
up anything else in the garden than musk-melons,--of the nutmeg
variety. They are the most grateful things we have on the table."
So there it was. There was no compromise: it was melons, or no
melons, and somebody offended in any case. I half resolved to plant
them a little late, so that they would, and they would n't. But I
had the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), and
squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of green
things.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put
your foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of my
friends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-day
but weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait.
Her mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she has
an infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing to
me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man.
Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants
with a vigor and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the
plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early
and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of
exhaustion.
"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I should
put over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is
not wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man who
undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himself
that, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and
of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a
green anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awake
nights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly
is the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds have
sprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant
life. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper
than conscience. Talk about the London Docks!--the roots of these
are like the sources of the Aryan race. And the weeds are not all.
I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person up
two hours before he ought to be out of bed) and think of the
tomato-plants,--the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugs
that skip around, and can't be caught. Somebody ought to get up
before the dew is off (why don't the dew stay on till after a
reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder if
it is I. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they are
disgusted, and go away. You can't get up too early, if you have a
garden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of the
bugs. I think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all
night, and sleep daytimes. Things appear to go on in the night in
the garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than it
is to get up so early.
I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,--a silver
and a gold color. How fine they will look on the table next year in
a cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set them
four and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apart
also. The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through when
they break into the garden,--as they do sometimes. A cow needs a
broader track than a locomotive; and she generally makes one. I am
sometimes astonished, to see how big a space in, a flower-bed her
foot will cover. The raspberries are called Doolittle and Golden
Cap. I don't like the name of the first variety, and, if they do
much, shall change it to Silver Top. You never can tell what a thing
named Doolittle will do. The one in the Senate changed color, and
got sour. They ripen badly,--either mildew, or rot on the bush.
They are apt to Johnsonize,--rot on the stem. I shall watch the
Doolittles.
THIRD WEEK
I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable
total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.
It is the bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,--whatever it is called. As
I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as
Adam did in his garden,--name things as I find them. This grass has
a slender, beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull up a
long root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two it
will come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.
Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on. Extermination
rather helps it. If you follow a slender white root, it will be
found to run under the ground until it meets another slender white
root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knot
somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every
joint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way to
deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and
carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take a
little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but
if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no further
trouble.
I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt to
pull up and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if
it does not show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed how
it runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting
branch of them roots somewhere; and that you cannot pull out one
without making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up your
whole being. I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off at
the top--say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religious
clothes and face so that no one will see them, and not try to
eradicate the network within.
Remark.--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of any
clergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me at
a day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.
I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities
of vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that
(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of
bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the
trellis. When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see
what it should do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole
was empty. There was evidently a little the best chance of light,
air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for
the pole, and began to climb it with determination. Here was as
distinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes
into a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will climb.
And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in exactly the
right direction, three feet, to find what it wanted? This is
intellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moral
qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action.
I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of
retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of the
matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does,
and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a
pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and
the weeds lengthen.
Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back,--with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious
instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a
great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away
so that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to
the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself.
I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a
cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss),
and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with the
striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him.
If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. It
takes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in darkness, and
wasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,
--it goes off very early,--you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is
my panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to the
necessity of soot, I am all right) and soot is unpleasant to the bug.
But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch the bugs. The
toad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug.
It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. The
difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you know
your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tight
fence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. This,
however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoological
garden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my little
enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris
"Jardin des Plantes."
FOURTH WEEK
Orthodoxy is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to
come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable
total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some
call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack
of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say
that these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with the
weeds, and talked most beautifully about the application of the
snake-grass figure. As, for instance, when a fault or sin showed on
the surface of a man, whether, if you dug down, you would find that
it ran back and into the original organic bunch of original sin
within the man. The only other clergyman who came was from out of
town,--a half Universalist, who said he wouldn't give twenty cents
for my figure. He said that the snake-grass was not in my garden
originally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could be
entirely rooted out with industry and patience. I asked the
Universalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said he
had n't time, and went away.
But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time! I feel
as if I had put down the rebellion. Only there are guerrillas left
here and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,--Forrest
docks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds. This first
hoeing is a gigantic task: it is your first trial of strength with
the never-sleeping forces of Nature. Several times, in its progress,
I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on account
of the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if there
had been only two really moral gardens,--Adam's and mine!) The only
drawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is,
that the garden now wants hoeing the second time. I suppose, if my
garden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it with
a hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest. The fact is, that
gardening is the old fable of perpetual labor; and I, for one, can
never forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots
of discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, in
the shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed. Alas! it is a
dream not to be realized in this world.
My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in a
garden. There are those who say that trees shade the garden too
much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may be
something in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of
the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from my
face, I should be grateful for shade. What is a garden for? The
pleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.
Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the
increased vigor of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd.
If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an
awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might roll
up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,
--not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind. Another very
good way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would be
to have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over you
as you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row with
some cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a very
barbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my
gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and
attended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come so
forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a
wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near
currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost
expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at
the end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done but
to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.
Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them by
covering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they could
not find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plants
again. But I have heard of another defense against the bugs. Put a
fine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs and
admit the rain. I should say that these screens would not cost much
more than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if you
bought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching the
bugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tender
plants within. That is worth paying for.
I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly was
getting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was working
away at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have the
ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I
should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my
agricultural influence), 'I am compelled to say that this was rather
helpless hoeing. It was patient, conscientious, even pathetic
hoeing; but it was neither effective nor finished. When completed,
the bed looked somewhat as if a hen had scratched it: there was that
touching unevenness about it. I think no one could look at it and
not be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, and
asked me if it was n't nice; and I said it was. It was not a
favorable time for me to explain the difference between puttering
hoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the instrument, which kills the
weeds, spares the plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it in
holes and hills. But, after all, as life is constituted, I think
more of Polly's honest and anxious care of her plants than of the
most finished gardening in the world.
FIFTH WEEK
I left my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell. A
season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the
transformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairly
jumped forward. The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of
bugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had
become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of
them had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out
of the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes--I will not
speak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus.
There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it had
sprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my
head. I am entirely aware of the value of words, and of moral
obligations. When I say that the asparagus had grown six feet in
seven days, I expect and wish to be believed. I am a little
particular about the statement; for, if there is any prize offered
for asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to compete,
--speed to govern. What I claim is the fastest asparagus. As for
eating purposes, I have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who looked
in at the growth of the bed, said, "Well, he'd be -----": but I told
him there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till I
wanted it on the asparagus affidavit. In order to have this sort of
asparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it
in, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of
chloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and
the neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl.
58-5, or not.
I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if
the devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the church, and a
very good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that
class, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, in
going through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping
the ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. I
asked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt like
breaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can
be said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the
"pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the
most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the
dictionary) plant I know. I saw a Chinaman, who came over with a
returned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of it
in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish,--"Me likee
he." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they come
to do our gardening. I only fear they will cultivate it at the
expense of the strawberries and melons. Who can say that other
weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remote
people or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that
we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some
other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are
virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this
thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds
are.
There is another subject which is forced upon my notice. I like
neighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to be
united near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are an
annoyance. Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the
strawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them
straddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner,
picking inquisitively here and there. It is of no use to tell the
neighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression on
him, for the tomatoes are not his. The best way is to casually
remark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown,
and that you like spring chickens broiled. He will take them away at
once.
The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden,
in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of
children. We should soon come to nothing without them, though the
Shakers have the best gardens in the world. Without them the common
school would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a
garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against
making away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it is
true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric,
and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel that
it would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even of
the smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, in
the garden. I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I am
not ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant says in his "Iliad," to
leave the circus of this life, and join that innumerable caravan
which moves, it will be some satisfaction to us, that we have never,
in the way of gardening, disposed of even the humblest child
unnecessarily. My plan would be to put them into Sunday-schools more
thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn;
teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors' vegetables. I
think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress upon
children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the
neighbors' gardens.
SIXTH WEEK
Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should
speak favorably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, but
with the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as
courteously of any other hoe which I may receive. If I understand
religious morals, this is the position of the religious press with
regard to bitters and wringing-machines. In some cases, the
responsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife of
the editor or clergy-man. Polly says she is entirely willing to make
a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this
hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an inverted
flower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value of
her testimony.
As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of
the desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made
life a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an
upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. It
does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle is
seven and a half feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp on
both edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and as
you walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with a
gentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and the
slaughter is immediate and widespread. When I got this hoe I was
troubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania with
regard to new weeders; when I went into my garden I was always sure
to see something. In this disordered state of mind and body I got
this hoe. The morning after a day of using it I slept perfectly and
late. I regained my respect for the eighth commandment. After two
doses of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely disappeared.
Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fence
in order to save from destruction the green things that ought to grow
in the garden. Of course, this is figurative language. What I mean
is, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you are
sorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables, after the weeds are
laid low, and must hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.
I make this explanation, because I intend to put nothing into these
agricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientific
investigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand and
cry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need to
study with care.
I need not add that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes the
merest pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. The
only danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and
somewhat neglect your garden in explaining it, and fooling about with
it. I almost think that, with one of these in the hands of an
ordinary day-laborer, you might see at night where he had been
working.
Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. I
have rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concerts
at four o'clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, I
said, and eat the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy the
foliage and the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificent
animal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),--so large and
powerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom.
He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals I
ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends his
nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice,
flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me a bird, I
told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he was
eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and
understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and
the time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing of
birds went on, to my great regret and shame.
The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen,
the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined
the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,
--seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the
growing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was
that they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I found
the pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds,
who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhaps
there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made a
rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground,
the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of
watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind
blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the
woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give
me back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?
I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That is the name of our
cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.
We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavished
upon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault;
that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition
of regard for my interests. I bade him go and do likewise
continually. I now saw how much better instinct is than mere
unguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion into
English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "You
need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was only the round
of Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. The
birds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat--no, we do not
eat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale of
being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you
have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat.
He completes an edible chain.
I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs to
me that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which
I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify
the birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautiful
brush in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, with
an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. A
neighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines,
which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birds
are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the
garden to care much for that. Another neighbor suggests that the
birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after
rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may be
so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and
the birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will
not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.
SEVENTH WEEK
A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be
aiding to grow in it. I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which the
preacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,
was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be an
archangel; that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, but
only develop. I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; and
I hesitate to support it by an illustration from my garden, especially
as I do not want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do not
care to give away these theological comparisons to clergymen who make
me so little return in the way of labor. But I find, in dissecting a
pea-blossom, that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniature
pea-pod, with the peas all in it,--as perfect a pea-pod as it will ever
be, only it is as tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize and some other
things show the same precocity. This confirmation of the theologic
theory is startling, and sets me meditating upon the moral
possibilities of my garden. I may find in it yet the cosmic egg.
And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition the
Ecumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against
"pusley." Of all the forms which "error" has taken in this world,
I think that is about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St.
Bernard's ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard
which a less rigid monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing.
In 1120 a bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in his
diocese; and, the following year, St. Bernard excommunicated the
flies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in 1510 the ecclesiastical
court pronounced the dread sentence against the rats of Autun, Macon,
and Lyons. These examples are sufficient precedents. It will be
well for the council, however, not to publish the bull either just
before or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this pestilent
heresy when the ground is wet.
It is the time of festivals. Polly says we ought to have one,--a
strawberry-festival. She says they are perfectly delightful: it is
so nice to get people together!--this hot weather. They create such
a good feeling! I myself am very fond of festivals. I always go,
--when I can consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are ice
creams and cake and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one always
feels so well the next day after such a diet! But as social
reunions, if there are good things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter;
and they are very profitable, if you have a good object. I agreed
that we ought to have a festival; but I did not know what object to
devote it to. We are not in need of an organ, nor of any
pulpit-cushions. I do not know that they use pulpit-cushions now as
much as they used to, when preachers had to have something soft to
pound, so that they would not hurt their fists. I suggested pocket
handkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter. But Polly says that will
not do at all. You must have some charitable object,--something that
appeals to a vast sense of something; something that it will be right
to get up lotteries and that sort of thing for. I suggest a festival
for the benefit of my garden; and this seems feasible. In order to
make everything pass off pleasantly, invited guests will bring or send
their own strawberries and cream, which I shall be happy to sell to
them at a slight advance. There are a great many improvements which
the garden needs; among them a sounding-board, so that the neighbors'
children can hear when I tell them to get a little farther off from the
currant-bushes. I should also like a selection from the ten
commandments, in big letters, posted up conspicuously, and a few traps,
that will detain, but not maim, for the benefit of those who cannot
read. But what is most important is, that the ladies should crochet
nets to cover over the strawberries. A good-sized, well-managed
festival ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire beds; and I
can think of no other method of preserving the berries from the birds
next year. I wonder how many strawberries it would need for a festival
and whether they would cost more than the nets.
I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with the
inequality of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilized
state. In savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take a
square hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodates
himself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raising
any dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition. But the
minute he begins to clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in for
a night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is at
once up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all her
ingenuity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing Nature is
pretty much nonsense. I do not intend to surrender in the midst of
the summer campaign, yet I cannot but think how much more peaceful my
relations would now be with the primal forces, if I had, let Nature
make the garden according to her own notion. (This is written with
the thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds starting up with a
freshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the first
time, and had not been cut down and dragged out every other day since
the snow went off.)
We have got down the forests, and exterminated savage beasts; but
Nature is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics,
--uses smaller guns, so to speak. She reenforces herself with a
variety of bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage
state, in order to make war upon the things of our planting; and
calls in the fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, to
snatch away the booty. When one gets almost weary of the struggle,
she is as fresh as at the beginning,--just, in fact, ready for the
fray. I, for my part, begin to appreciate the value of frost and
snow; for they give the husbandman a little peace, and enable him,
for a season, to contemplate his incessant foe subdued. I do not
wonder that the tropical people, where Nature never goes to sleep,
give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.
Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn. It
had to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving it
like a barber. When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go on
to it,--cows, and especially wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are a
product of civilization) know a lawn when they see it. They rather
have a fancy for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharp
borders of it, and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts of
cut-up, ruined turf. The other morning, I had just been running the
mower over the lawn, and stood regarding its smoothness, when I
noticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it; and, hastening
thither, I found that the mole had arrived to complete the work of
the hackmen. In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like a pig.
I found his run-ways. I waited for him with a spade. He did not
appear; but, the next time I passed by, he had ridged the ground in
all directions,--a smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like silk, if
you could only catch him. He appears to enjoy the lawn as much as
the hackmen did. He does not care how smooth it is. He is
constantly mining, and ridging it up. I am not sure but he could be
countermined. I have half a mind to put powder in here and there,
and blow the whole thing into the air. Some folks set traps for the
mole; but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place. I am
not sure but it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacing
snake-grass (the botanical name of which, somebody writes me, is
devil-grass: the first time I have heard that the Devil has a
botanical name), which would worry them, if it is as difficult for
them to get through it as it is for me.
I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint. He is only a
part of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humble
gardener. I desire to write nothing against him which I should wish
to recall at the last,--nothing foreign to the spirit of that
beautiful saying of the dying boy, "He had no copy-book, which,
dying, he was sorry he had blotted."
EIGHTH WEEK
My garden has been visited by a High Official Person. President
Gr-nt was here just before the Fourth, getting his mind quiet for
that event by a few days of retirement, staying with a friend at the
head of our street; and I asked him if he wouldn't like to come down
our way Sunday afternoon and take a plain, simple look at my garden,
eat a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink a glass of
native lager-beer. I thought of putting up over my gate, "Welcome
to the Nation's Gardener;" but I hate nonsense, and did n't do it.
I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday: what weeds I could n't
remove I buried, so that everything would look all right. The
borders of my drive were trimmed with scissors; and everything that
could offend the Eye of the Great was hustled out of the way.
In relating this interview, it must be distinctly understood that I
am not responsible for anything that the President said; nor is he,
either. He is not a great speaker; but whatever he says has an
esoteric and an exoteric meaning; and some of his remarks about my
vegetables went very deep. I said nothing to him whatever about
politics, at which he seemed a good deal surprised: he said it was
the first garden he had ever been in, with a man, when the talk was
not of appointments. I told him that this was purely vegetable;
after which he seemed more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted with
everything he saw. He was much interested in my strawberry-beds,
asked what varieties I had, and requested me to send him some seed.
He said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise as an
appropriation for the St. Domingo business. The playful bean seemed
also to please him; and he said he had never seen such impressive
corn and potatoes at this time of year; that it was to him an
unexpected pleasure, and one of the choicest memories that he should
take away with him of his visit to New England.
N. B.--That corn and those potatoes which General Gr-nt looked at I
will sell for seed, at five dollars an ear, and one dollar a potato.
Office-seekers need not apply.
Knowing the President's great desire for peas, I kept him from that
part of the garden where the vines grow. But they could not be
concealed. Those who say that the President is not a man easily
moved are knaves or fools. When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by the
birds, he burst into tears. A man of war, he knows the value of
peas. I told him they were an excellent sort, "The Champion of
England." As quick as a flash he said, "Why don't you call them 'The
Reverdy Johnson'?"
It was a very clever bon-mot; but I changed the subject.
The sight of my squashes, with stalks as big as speaking-trumpets,
restored the President to his usual spirits. He said the summer
squash was the most ludicrous vegetable he knew. It was nearly all
leaf and blow, with only a sickly, crook-necked fruit after a mighty
fuss. It reminded him of the member of Congress from...; but I
hastened to change the subject.
As we walked along, the keen eye of the President rested upon some
handsome sprays of "pusley," which must have grown up since Saturday
night. It was most fortunate; for it led his Excellency to speak of
the Chinese problem. He said he had been struck with one, coupling
of the Chinese and the "pusley" in one of my agricultural papers; and
it had a significance more far-reaching than I had probably supposed.
He had made the Chinese problem a special study. He said that I was
right in saying that "pusley" was the natural food of the Chinaman,
and that where the "pusley" was, there would the Chinaman be also.
For his part, he welcomed the Chinese emigration: we needed the
Chinaman in our gardens to eat the "pusley;" and he thought the whole
problem solved by this simple consideration. To get rid of rats and
"pusley," he said, was a necessity of our civilization. He did not
care so much about the shoe-business; he did not think that the
little Chinese shoes that he had seen would be of service in the
army: but the garden-interest was quite another affair. We want to
make a garden of our whole country: the hoe, in the hands of a man
truly great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than the pen. He
presumed that General B-tl-r had never taken into consideration the
garden-question, or he would not assume the position he does with
regard to the Chinese emigration. He would let the Chinese come,
even if B-tl-r had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but I
changed the subject.
During our entire garden interview (operatically speaking, the
garden-scene), the President was not smoking. I do not know how the
impression arose that he "uses tobacco in any form;" for I have seen
him several times, and he was not smoking. Indeed, I offered him a
Connecticut six; but he wittily said that he did not like a weed in a
garden,--a remark which I took to have a personal political bearing,
and changed the subject.
The President was a good deal surprised at the method and fine
appearance of my garden, and to learn that I had the sole care of it.
He asked me if I pursued an original course, or whether I got my
ideas from writers on the subject. I told him that I had had no time
to read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except
"Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and that
I had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, except
that I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on this
line if"--The President stopped me abruptly, and said it was
unnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.
Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it. Sometimes, he
said, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it in
resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it dropped
jocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for an
office, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would get
to running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-r
sings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.
He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on his
brain for years.
The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,
that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position of
head gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics. I
told him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign
appointment. I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to
take an appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any home
office, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless
for me to take one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled,
and said he would see what could be done for me. I did not change
the subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.
The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);
but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said it
carried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seen
lately. He looked forward with delight to the time when he could
again have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and
not have to get so much "sarce" from Congress.
The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glass
of lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.
It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak. It would have
been impossible to keep it from use by any precautions. There are
people who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with iron
spikes. Such is the adoration of Station.
NINTH WEEK
I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,
and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
anatomy and comparative philology,--the science of comparative
vegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, if
life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose
to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am
responsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which is
disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral
growth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the
dead-beets. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like with
the hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than the
Christians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.
This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it
should be. Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others,
when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table?
The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can
put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There is
no dignity in the bean. Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongside
the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of
superiority, is, however, the child of song. It waves in all
literature. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone.
Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgar
vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society among
vegetables. Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,
good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.
How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon a
similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half so
valuable! The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where
the melon is a minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celery
with the potato. The associations are as opposite as the dining-room
of the duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato,
both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic. I began
digging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy I
have discovered the right way to do it. I treat the potato just as I
would a cow. I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroy
them; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruit
which is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, that
it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until the
frost cuts it down. It is a game that one would not undertake with a
vegetable of tone.
The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is like
conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you
scarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is,
however, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which
comes to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know; growing
more solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiter
at the center, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, like
conversation, requires a good deal of oil to avoid friction, and keep
the company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash of pepper; a quantity
of mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will notice
no sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar. You can put anything, and
the more things the better, into salad, as into a conversation; but
everything depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I am in the
best society when I am with lettuce. It is in the select circle of
vegetables. The tomato appears well on the table; but you do not want
to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of course, I have
said nothing about the berries. They live in another and more ideal
region; except, perhaps, the currant. Here we see, that, even among
berries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well enough,
clear as truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask you to notice how far
it is from the exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, and
the native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.
I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able to
discover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out by
outward observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for
instance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put up
the most attractive sort of poles for my Limas. They stand high and
straight, like church-spires, in my theological garden,--lifted
up; and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. No
church-steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to draw
to it the rising generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift up my
beans towards heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet,
and then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more than
half of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis,
and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a
disregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon human
nature. And the grape is morally no better. I think the ancients, who
were not troubled with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were right
in the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have
had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and
license and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the
strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty
beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,
would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the
snake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;
and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a
firm hand, I have had to make my own "natural selection." Nothing
will so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of children
next door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could read
half as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,
"Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here." But I suppose it would
have no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick as
anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be a
cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would let
my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the fruit;
but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human
tendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors' children,
some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be a
public meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.
At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.
TENTH WEEK
I think I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds. I
tried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit the
shrewdest bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is all
concentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude the
devices of modern civilization which injure his chances of food. I
knew that, if I put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would detect
the imitation at once: the perfection of the thing would show him
that it was a trick. People always overdo the matter when they
attempt deception. I therefore hung some loose garments, of a bright
color, upon a rake-head, and set them up among the vines. The
supposition was, that the bird would think there was an effort to
trap him, that there was a man behind, holding up these garments, and
would sing, as he kept at a distance, "You can't catch me with any
such double device." The bird would know, or think he knew, that I
would not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would pass
for a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for a
deeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was
simplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity and
reasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate the
amount of peas I should gather.
But my game was only half played. In another part of the garden were
other peas, growing and blowing. To-these I took good care not to
attract the attention of the bird by any scarecrow whatever! I left
the old scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines; and by
this means I hope to keep the attention of the birds confined to that
side of the garden. I am convinced that this is the true use of a
scarecrow: it is a lure, and not a warning. If you wish to save men
from any particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning about
some other; and they will all give their special efforts to the one
to which attention is called. This profound truth is about the only
thing I have yet realized out of my pea-vines.
However, the garden does begin to yield. I know of nothing that
makes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have his
vegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on the
market-man and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration of
independence. The market-man shows me his peas and beets and
tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with the meat. "No,
I thank you," I say carelessly; "I am raising my own this year."
Whereas I have been wont to remark, "Your vegetables look a little
wilted this weather," I now say, "What a fine lot of vegetables
you've got!" When a man is not going to buy, he can afford to be
generous. To raise his own vegetables makes a person feel, somehow,
more liberal. I think the butcher is touched by the influence, and
cuts off a better roast for me, The butcher is my friend when he sees
that I am not wholly dependent on him.
It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, though
sometimes in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of any
Roman supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my own
vegetables; when everything on the table is the product of my own
labor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and
the chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when they
were most attractive. It is strange what a taste you suddenly have
for things you never liked before. The squash has always been to me
a dish of contempt; but I eat it now as if it were my best friend. I
never cared for the beet or the bean; but I fancy now that I could
eat them all, tops and all, so completely have they been transformed
by the soil in which they grew. I think the squash is less squashy,
and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of them.
I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a table
whereon was the fruit of my honest industry. But woman!--John Stuart
Mill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women.
Six thousand years is as one day with them. I thought I had
something to do with those vegetables. But when I saw Polly seated
at her side of the table, presiding over the new and susceptible
vegetables, flanked by the squash and the beans, and smiling upon the
green corn and the new potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which lay
sliced in ice before her, and when she began to dispense the fresh
dishes, I saw at once that the day of my destiny was over. You would
have thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had raised them
all from their earliest years. Such quiet, vegetable airs! Such
gracious appropriation! At length I said,--
"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"
"James, I suppose."
"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. But
who hoed them?"
"We did."
"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.
And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug
came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and
watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly,"
said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea
here that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow,
not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has
not caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope--but I will say no
more."
Observation.--In this sort of family discussion, "I will say no
more" is the most effective thing you can close up with.
I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as anybody this hot
summer. But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman,
"You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what is
more important, the consciousness of power in vegetables." I see how
it is. Woman is now supreme in the house. She already stretches out
her hand to grasp the garden. She will gradually control everything.
Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have ever
mingled in human affairs. I understand those women who say they
don't want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real power while we
go through the mockery of making laws. They want the power without
the responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans
--as they threatened at one time--had gone the wrong way: where would
I have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities. Woman
takes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only. And
what is politics? Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, says
Polly, and I care not who makes its politics. Here I sat at the
table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own
vegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is
quietly taking things into her own hands.
ELEVENTH WEEK
Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but what
you put into it, that is the most remunerative. What is a man? A
question frequently asked, and never, so far as I know,
satisfactorily answered. He commonly spends his seventy years, if so
many are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself. How many
hours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which is
happiness? I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; but
that serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easy
play, and the unnatural ones have a holiday. There is probably
nothing that has such a tranquilizing effect, and leads into such
content as gardening. By gardening, I do not mean that insane desire
to raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupation
of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing
things and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit,
and develops the deltoid muscles.
In half an hour I can hoe myself right away from this world, as we
commonly see it, into a large place, where there are no obstacles.
What an occupation it is for thought! The mind broods like a hen on
eggs. The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, but
are really vegetating like the plants around you. I begin to know
what the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which is
similar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We all have
something in our nature that requires contact with the earth. In the
solitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with the
vegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible. For
instance, I can believe that the dryads are plenty this summer: my
garden is like an ash-heap. Almost all the moisture it has had in
weeks has been the sweat of honest industry.
The pleasure of gardening in these days, when the thermometer is at
ninety, is one that I fear I shall not be able to make intelligible
to my readers, many of whom do not appreciate the delight of soaking
in the sunshine. I suppose that the sun, going through a man, as it
will on such a day, takes out of him rheumatism, consumption, and
every other disease, except sudden death--from sun-stroke. But,
aside from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges,
the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloat
at a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, a
little breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in the
treetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction. I hear a quail or
two whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentary
conversation going on among the birds, even on the warmest days. The
companionship of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He usually
attends me, unless I work too long in one place; sitting down on the
turf, displaying the ermine of his breast, and watching my movements
with great intelligence. He has a feline and genuine love for the
beauties of Nature, and will establish himself where there is a good
view, and look on it for hours. He always accompanies us when we go
to gather the vegetables, seeming to be desirous to know what we are
to have for dinner. He is a connoisseur in the garden; being fond of
almost all the vegetables, except the cucumber,--a dietetic hint to
man. I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat tobacco.
These are important facts. It is singular, however, that those who
hold up the pigs as models to us never hold us up as models to the
pigs.
I wish I knew as much about natural history and the habits of animals
as Calvin does. He is the closest observer I ever saw; and there are
few species of animals on the place that he has not analyzed. I
think he has, to use a euphemism very applicable to him, got outside
of every one of them, except the toad. To the toad he is entirely
indifferent; but I presume he knows that the toad is the most useful
animal in the garden. I think the Agricultural Society ought to
offer a prize for the finest toad. When Polly comes to sit in the
shade near my strawberry-beds, to shell peas, Calvin is always lying
near in apparent obliviousness; but not the slightest unusual sound
can be made in the bushes, that he is not alert, and prepared to
investigate the cause of it. It is this habit of observation, so
cultivated, which has given him such a trained mind, and made him so
philosophical. It is within the capacity of even the humblest of us
to attain this.
And, speaking of the philosophical temper, there is no class of men
whose society is more to be desired for this quality than that of
plumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys in
the business begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secret
of it is, that they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest days,
my fountain became disabled: the pipe was stopped up. A couple of
plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the
situation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about
where the stoppage was. I found the plumbers perfectly willing to
sit down and talk about it,--talk by the hour. Some of their guesses
and remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their general
observations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and could
hardly have been better if they had been made by the job. The work
dragged a little, as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers had
occasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, upon
arrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool; and one
would go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it; and his
comrade would await his return with the most exemplary patience, and
sit down and talk,--always by the hour. I do not know but it is a
habit to have something wanted at the shop. They seemed to me very
good workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, or
anything else, when I went near them. Nor had they any of that
impetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our American
civilization. To their credit be it said, that I never observed
anything of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two of them will
sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.
They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure to meet
such men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for them
by the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have very
nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people,
never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have no
anxiety, and little work. If you do things by the job, you are
perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour,
you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on
to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by
the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job,
trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position,
where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never
heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a
vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by
the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind!
TWELFTH WEEK
Mr. Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honor
upon this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirely
without his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture. In
politics I do not dare to follow him; but in agriculture he is
irresistible. When, therefore, I find him advising Western farmers
not to hill up their corn, I think that his advice must be political.
You must hill up your corn. People always have hilled up their corn.
It would take a constitutional amendment to change the practice, that
has pertained ever since maize was raised. "It will stand the
drought better," says Mr. Greeley, "if the ground is left level." I
have corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet high, strong and lusty,
standing the drought like a grenadier; and it is hilled. In advising
this radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has a political purpose.
He might just as well say that you should not hill beans, when
everybody knows that a "hill of beans" is one of the most expressive
symbols of disparagement. When I become too lazy to hill my corn, I,
too, shall go into politics.
I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate "pusley." I set
a little of it one side, and gave it some extra care. It did not
thrive as well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, there is a
spirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow the
more, the more it is interfered with. I am satisfied of that. I
doubt if any one has raised more "pusley" this year than I have; and
my warfare with it has been continual. Neither of us has slept much.
If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will be
understood by many, like the devil. I have a neighbor, a good
Christian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment. He planted
next to me an acre of turnips recently. A few days after, he went to
look at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thick
and luxurious carpet of "pusley," with a turnip-top worked in here
and there as an ornament. I have seldom seen so thrifty a field. I
advised my neighbor next time to sow "pusley" and then he might get a
few turnips. I wish there was more demand in our city markets for
"pusley" as a salad. I can recommend it.
It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raising
anything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf,
and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe a
hill of corn: it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaves
high in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yields
us not enough for a dinner. It grows because it delights to do so,
--to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, to
wax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with very
little thought of making any return to me. I might go all through my
garden and fruit trees with a similar result. I have heard of places
where there was very little land to the acre. It is universally true
that there is a great deal of vegetable show and fuss for the result
produced. I do not complain of this. One cannot expect vegetables
to be better than men: and they make a great deal of ostentatious
splurge; and many of them come to no result at last. Usually, the
more show of leaf and wood, the less fruit. This melancholy
reflection is thrown in here in order to make dog-days seem cheerful
in comparison.
One of the minor pleasures of life is that of controlling vegetable
activity and aggressions with the pruning-knife. Vigorous and rapid
growth is, however, a necessity to the sport. To prune feeble plants
and shrubs is like acting the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan.
You must feel the blood of Nature bound under your hand, and get the
thrill of its life in your nerves. To control and culture a strong,
thrifty plant in this way is like steering a ship under full headway,
or driving a locomotive with your hand on the lever, or pulling the
reins over a fast horse when his blood and tail are up. I do not
understand, by the way, the pleasure of the jockey in setting up the
tail of the horse artificially. If I had a horse with a tail not
able to sit up, I should feed the horse, and curry him into good
spirits, and let him set up his own tail. When I see a poor,
spiritless horse going by with an artificially set-up tail, it is
only a signal of distress. I desire to be surrounded only by
healthy, vigorous plants and trees, which require constant cutting-in
and management. Merely to cut away dead branches is like perpetual
attendance at a funeral, and puts one in low spirits. I want to have
a garden and orchard rise up and meet me every morning, with the
request to "lay on, Macduff." I respect old age; but an old
currant-bush, hoary with mossy bark, is a melancholy spectacle.
I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something about
fertilizers: all agriculturists do. When you plant, you think you
cannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, you
think you cannot fertilize too little. Of course you do not expect
to get the value of the manure back in fruits and vegetables; but
something is due to science,--to chemistry in particular. You must
have a knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, and then go
into a course of experiments to find what it needs. It needs
analyzing,--that, I am clear about: everything needs that. You had
better have the soil analyzed before you buy: if there is "pusley"
in it, let it alone. See if it is a soil that requires much hoeing,
and how fine it will get if there is no rain for two months. But
when you come to fertilizing, if I understand the agricultural
authorities, you open a pit that will ultimately swallow you up,
--farm and all. It is the great subject of modern times, how to
fertilize without ruinous expense; how, in short, not to starve the
earth to death while we get our living out of it. Practically, the
business is hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn of mind.
The details of fertilizing are not agreeable. Michael Angelo, who
tried every art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind to
fertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier to fertilize with a
pen, as the agricultural writers do, than with a fork. And this
leads me to say, that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you must
have a "consulting" gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy and
unpleasant work. To such a man, I say, in language used by
Demosthenes to the Athenians, and which is my advice to all
gardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"
THIRTEENTH WEEK
I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study of
natural history; and some scientific facts have come under my own
observation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists and
un-naturalists in about the same degree. Much, for instance, has
been written about the toad, an animal without which no garden would
be complete. But little account has been made of his value: the
beauty of his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been said
of his mouth, and its important function as a fly and bug trap. His
habits, and even his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, as an
illustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower? All my
life long, no one has been able to answer me that question. Why,
after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes of
toads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks? For
many years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose many
people think so still. They are so small, and they come in such
numbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not a violent
one. "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our best proverbs.
I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful woman,--indeed, a
leader in the great movement to have all the toads hop in any
direction, without any distinction of sex or religion. Her reply
was, that the toads come out during the shower to get water. This,
however, is not the fact. I have discovered that they come out not
to get water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, with
pailful after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came out of
their holes in the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escape
death by drowning. The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak of
hopping; and the little ones sprang about in the wildest confusion.
The toad is just like any other land animal: when his house is full
of water, he quits it. These facts, with the drawings of the water
and the toads, are at the service of the distinguished scientists of
Albany in New York, who were so much impressed by the Cardiff Giant.
The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance to
study, and also to obliterate in the garden. One of my neighbors has
a cow, but no land; and he seems desirous to pasture her on the
surface of the land of other people: a very reasonable desire. The
man proposed that he should be allowed to cut the grass from my
grounds for his cow. I knew the cow, having often had her in my
garden; knew her gait and the size of her feet, which struck me as a
little large for the size of the body. Having no cow myself, but
acquaintance with my neighbor's, I told him that I thought it would
be fair for him to have the grass. He was, therefore, to keep the
grass nicely cut, and to keep his cow at home. I waited some time
after the grass needed cutting; and, as my neighbor did not appear, I
hired it cut. No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, and
raked up most of it, and carried it away. He had evidently been
waiting that opportunity. When the grass grew again, the neighbor
did not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cow
tethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a short
distance from the house. This seemed to be the man's idea of the
best way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow there, because
I knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer her field
of mowing to the garden, but especially because of her voice. She
has the most melancholy "moo" I ever heard. It is like the wail of
one uninfallible, excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distressing
perpetual reminder of the brevity of life and the shortness of feed.
It is unpleasant to the family. We sometimes hear it in the middle
of the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion of coming
calamity. It is as bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.
I told the man about it; but he seemed to think that he was not
responsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away;
and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the
grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us
from unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her
loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, the
question was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I
could find somebody who was willing to pasture her. To this dilemma
had my excellent neighbor reduced me. But I found him, one Sunday
morning,--a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow at
the foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in that
abominable voice. I told the man that I could not have the cow in
the grounds. He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away. I
asked him to clear out. The man, who is a French sympathizer from
the Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly. He said he
wasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't make
me the least trouble in the world. I reminded him that he had been
told again and again not to come here; that he might have all the
grass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises. The
imperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept on
feeding his cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pastures
new, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: it
is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other
side. The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which I
shall recall when I keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if anybody
wants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the owner
little; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink it
are on the straight road to lunacy.
I think I have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, or
try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird
is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its
tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its
pleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and
all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the
English style. And we did. For in July, while the game-law was on,
and the young quails were coming on, we were awakened one morning by
firing, --musketry-firing, close at hand. My first thought was, that
war was declared; but, as I should never pay much attention to war
declared at that time in the morning, I went to sleep again. But the
occurrence was repeated,--and not only early in the morning, but at
night. There was calling of dogs, breaking down of brush, and firing
of guns. It is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the direction of
the house, at your own quails. The hunters could be sometimes seen,
but never caught. Their best time was about sunrise; but, before one
could dress and get to the front, they would retire.
One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the battle renewed. I
sprang up, but not in arms, and went to a window. Polly (like
another 'blessed damozel') flew to another window,--
"The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven,"
and reconnoitered from behind the blinds.
"The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers,"
when an armed man and a legged dog appeared in the opening. I was
vigilantly watching him.
. . . . "And now
She spoke through the still weather."
"Are you afraid to speak to him?" asked Polly.
Not exactly,
. . . ."she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
"Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the window till
"The bar I leaned on (was) warm,"
and cried,--
"Halloo, there! What are you doing?"
"Look out he don't shoot you," called out Polly from the other
window, suddenly going on another tack.
I explained that a sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentleman
in his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.
"You have no business here: what are you after?" I repeated.
"Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he strode away.
The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive that I shut the blinds
and went to bed.
But one evening I overhauled one of the poachers. Hearing his dog in
the thicket, I rushed through the brush, and came in sight of the
hunter as he was retreating down the road. He came to a halt; and we
had some conversation in a high key. Of course I threatened to
prosecute him. I believe that is the thing to do in such cases; but
how I was to do it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, and
couldn't see his face, never occurred to me. (I remember, now, that
a farmer once proposed to prosecute me when I was fishing in a
trout-brook on his farm, and asked my name for that purpose.) He
said he should smile to see me prosecute him.
"You can't do it: there ain't no notice up about trespassing."
This view of the common law impressed me; and I said,
"But these are private grounds."
"Private h---!" was all his response.
You can't argue much with a man who has a gun in his hands, when you
have none. Besides, it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew. I
gave it up, and we separated.
There is this disadvantage about having a game preserve attached to
your garden: it makes life too lively.
FOURTEENTH WEEK
In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a serene
equilibrium. Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself.
I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business after
this; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock,
--such a delicious air, such a graceful repose! I take off my hat as
I stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as if
Nature had sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went out with a
hoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me. Thrice is he armed who has
a long-handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day I am almost
ashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terrible
mitrailleuse of gardening.
The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to go
into a worthless condition,--green. The cucumbers cumber the
ground,--great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to
the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to
the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves
with delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I know
they are ripe if they come easily off the stem.
Moral Observations.--You can tell when people are ripe by their
willingness to let go. Richness and ripeness are not exactly the
same. The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity. I have
nothing against the rich. If I were not virtuous, I should like to
be rich. But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he was
down with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into the
neighborhood.
Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin to
turn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The clusters
under the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than they
taste. I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soon
as they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is,
that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and
let it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible to
grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should
explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for
the garden,--a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting
russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one
gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish
Beauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand:
they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.
The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire. Even the man's
cow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such an
air of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her. She is
chewing my cud as if it were hers. Well, eat on and chew on,
melancholy brute. I have not the heart to tell the man to take you
away: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it. The man
has not a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.
The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown. I will be
charitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolences
must soon be turned to other and more distant objects,--the
amelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education of
theological young men in the West, and the like.
I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but I
sufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I have
taken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, not
to speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down the
dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however,
letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in her
face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having
a tooth out, she says.
"If I could n't hold an apron better than that!"
But the sentence is not finished: it is useless to finish that sort
of a sentence in this delicious weather. Besides, conversation is
dangerous. As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bed
for a sowing of turnips,--not that I like turnips in the least; but
this is the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and extemporizes
her usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work. I well
know that something is coming.
"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"
"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to
rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."
"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once?
What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me
to help you any more than I am helping?"
"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)
"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"
"By all means, sell anything. We shall no doubt get rich out of this
acre."
"Don't be foolish."
And now!
"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"....
And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quite
enough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economical
manner. "Would n't that be nice?"
"Oh, yes! And where is the money to come from?"
"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."
"Certainly. But I think we would make more money if we sold the
plants now."
"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to do
it." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put in
the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell.
But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off
the loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone out
of the dirt. That went into the first crop.
In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little taken
aback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had just
rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a
faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big
green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't
know who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous that
he should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed
that my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt,
predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived
in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me--Nature
does. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week,
it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for the
turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious
"pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of
old age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While all
the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon
the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It
accepts no armistice.
FIFTEENTH WEEK
It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it
has a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or three
weeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this
protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was
over it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakes
in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)
I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she
said she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the
early grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about half
the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated
chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September
sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole,
the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a
sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.
The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my
absence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as
an Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone
so far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging
like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not but
admire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed
determined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make
sure of immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was as
ambitious as the others. After having seen the declining letter of
Mr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, and
intended to root it out. But one can never say what these
politicians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after the
next election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, and
rather sour. If there is any variety of strawberries that really
declines to run, and devotes itself to a private life of
fruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention here, since we
are on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over
the strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strange
bedfellows.
But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all
that has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention.
But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after
year, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the
greatest enemy of mankind, "p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted with
it. I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; and
it was as good as the first. I see no reason why our northern soil
is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce as
many crops in the year. The mistake we make is in trying to force
things that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, if we turn
our attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.
I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty
plant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as the
bounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a
fallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and
preceding the footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago in
the Adirondacks. We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of
the woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy:
I can see the lovely spot now. It was on the bank of the crystal,
rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which poured
into a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had just taken trout
enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the
fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to
feel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hut
of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper.
In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see
the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the
falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient
woods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sin
could enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old Phelps
is at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods and
streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we
know all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely
bear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of
the problems of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as
grizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice,
which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.
We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are
interested,--bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the
tariff, the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such a
tax on tobacco, and none on dogs:--"There ain't no dog in the United
States," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns his
living"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion,
the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where
were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants and
flowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote
forest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after a
growth of pine has been removed?)--in short, we had pretty nearly
reached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed
with uncommon energy,--
"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"
"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.
"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to
one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires
in despair.
"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's in
my garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me."
About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awe
came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the
stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go
nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on the
Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and
hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it. It
has entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet no
church there, and only a feeble school part of the year. Sin travels
faster than they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin;
but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take hold
on H.
By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassed
by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his
individual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his
ability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect
that there will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped into
my garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master
of the weeds. I have simply learned that an institution which is at
least six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not to
be put down in one season.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I
planted them in what are called "Early Rose,"--the rows a little
less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in
the drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation,
but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small
(as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to the
bountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with what
we might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. I
shall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. I
think they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed
to come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out the
brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day,
and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil.
Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. The
picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.
SIXTEENTH WEEK
I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening
pay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There is
a popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it
alone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not let
a man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not
pay. And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly
as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular
clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.
As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I know
that a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it
is really one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all have
front seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for
the opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are
rather dear. Among them I should name a good suit of clothes,
including some trifling ornament,--not including back hair for one
sex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other. I should add
also a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of a
fair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in which
sensibility and love of beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a man
is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beauty
undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him: so that it
appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are as
costly as anything in our civilization.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.
You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardening
in a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a
trotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or
your hair cut. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is a
sort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set a
money-value upon my delight in it. I fear that you could not put it in
money. Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there any
taste in the white of an egg?" Suppose there is not! What! shall I
set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made
the sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the red
strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, the
sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did not
waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweet
rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engaging
bean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what daily
freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large
crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above
ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which
pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his
trial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to make
such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.
I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost
of gardening, the potato. In my statement, I shall not include the
interest on the value of the land. I throw in the land, because it
would otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on city
land is taxes. I therefore make the following statement of the cost
and income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection
with other garden labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfy
the income-tax collector:--
Plowing.......................................$0.50
Seed..........................................$1.50
Manure........................................ 8.00
Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days.... 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........... 0.85
_____
Total Cost................$17.60
Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes,
at 2 cents..............................$50.00
Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig....... .50
Total return..............$50.50
Balance, profit in cellar......$32.90
Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for my
own time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing,
fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been a
little more. Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks while
hoeing. I leave this out from principle, because I always recommend
water to others. I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my own
wages. It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what I
thought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of it
for once. I figured it right down to European prices,--seventeen
cents a day for unskilled labor. Of course, I boarded myself. I
ought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or I
might have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me at
four dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of
honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away. I
have reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised to
eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: they
will merely send their cards.
I do not see any possible fault in the above figures. I ought to say
that I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed up
the debit column. This is always the safest way to do. I had
twenty-five bushels. I roughly estimated that there are one hundred
good ones to the bushel. Making my own market price, I asked two
cents apiece for them. This I should have considered dirt cheap last
June, when I was going down the rows with the hoe. If any one thinks
that two cents each is high, let him try to raise them.
Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so.
She shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put in
a few modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed the
seeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or four
short rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all came
up,--came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a
Chinese village. Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is,
pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes a
conscientious man some time to decide which are the best and
healthiest plants to spare. After all, I spared too many. That is
the great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in the
next): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much.
The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips,
because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainder
to grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for the
plants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point:
if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers,
it is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so late
in the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote part
of the garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never even
winks, as I can see. The tender blades were scarcely out of the
ground when she sent a small black fly, which seemed to have been
born and held in reserve for this purpose,--to cut the leaves. They
speedily made lace-work of the whole bed. Thus everything appears to
have its special enemy,--except, perhaps, p----y: nothing ever
troubles that.
Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than this
year? or yield so abundantly? The golden sunshine has passed into
them, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting. Such
heavy clusters! such bloom! such sweetness! such meat and drink in
their round globes! What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if
he had only signed the pledge when he was a young man! I have taken
off clusters that were as compact and almost as large as the Black
Hamburgs. It is slow work picking them. I do not see how the
gatherers for the vintage ever get off enough. It takes so long to
disentangle the bunches from the leaves and the interlacing vines and
the supporting tendrils; and then I like to hold up each bunch and
look at it in the sunlight, and get the fragrance and the bloom of
it, and show it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as taster and
companion, at the foot of the ladder, before dropping it into the
basket. But we have other company. The robin, the most knowing and
greedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will always be kept out), has
discovered that the grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come back,
with his whole tribe and family, larger than it was in pea-time. He
knows the ripest bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all. If
he would take a whole bunch here and there, say half the number, and
be off with it, I should not so much care. But he will not. He
pecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as he can. It is
time he went south.
There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder in
his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest
clusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a
group of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the
leaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet!" "What nice
ones!" and the like,--remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder.
It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.
Moral Truth.--I have no doubt that grapes taste best in other
people's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to be
generous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority of
people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the
opportunity.
Philosophical Observation.--Nothing shows one who his friends are
like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country,
whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits
you shall know them.
SEVENTEENTH WEEK
I like to go into the garden these warm latter days, and muse. To
muse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not sure
but goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out
of a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September and
October sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extreme
Lower Italy: you can stand a good deal of it, and apparently soak a
winter supply into the system. If one only could take in his winter
fuel in this way! The next great discovery will, very likely, be the
conservation of sunlight. In the correlation of forces, I look to
see the day when the superfluous sunshine will be utilized; as, for
instance, that which has burned up my celery this year will be
converted into a force to work the garden.
This sitting in the sun amid the evidences of a ripe year is the
easiest part of gardening I have experienced. But what a combat has
gone on here! What vegetable passions have run the whole gamut of
ambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety, and now
rest here in the truce of exhaustion! What a battle-field, if one
may look upon it so! The corn has lost its ammunition, and stacked
arms in a slovenly, militia sort of style. The ground vines are
torn, trampled, and withered; and the ungathered cucumbers, worthless
melons, and golden squashes lie about like the spent bombs and
exploded shells of a battle-field. So the cannon-balls lay on the
sandy plain before Fort Fisher after the capture. So the great
grassy meadow at Munich, any morning during the October Fest, is
strewn with empty beermugs. History constantly repeats itself.
There is a large crop of moral reflections in my garden, which
anybody is at liberty to gather who passes this way.
I have tried to get in anything that offered temptation to sin.
There would be no thieves if there was nothing to steal; and I
suppose, in the thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as the
thief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving out a few winter
pears, which some predatory boy carried off on Sunday. At first I
was angry, and said I should like to have caught the urchin in the
act; but, on second thought, I was glad I did not. The interview
could not have been pleasant: I shouldn't have known what to do with
him. The chances are, that he would have escaped away with his
pockets full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And, if I had
got my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed. If I
had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I
should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he
does tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him with
kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity
of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and
taken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the public
morality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic or
gunpowder into his watermelons, he is universally denounced as a
stingy old murderer by the community. A great many people regard
growing fruit as lawful prey, who would not think of breaking into
your cellar to take it. I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes,
early in the season, when we were waiting for a dishful to ripen.
Upon inquiring what he was about, he said he was only eating some;
and the operation seemed to be so natural and simple, that I disliked
to disturb him. And I am not very sure that one has a right to the
whole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has gathered it. At
least, in a city garden, one might as well conform his theory to the
practice of the community.
As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products of
my garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they are
barbarians. There is no exception among them to this condition of
barbarism. This is not to say that they are not attractive; for they
have the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. It is
held by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with a
stomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fill
it. It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he is
also curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early as
his hunger. He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers into
the unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existence
this is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungry
as his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his other
appetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story which
will make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious,
and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savage
races. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown
is marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that children
must be governed through their stomachs. I think they can be
controlled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the more
craving and imperious of the two. I have seen children follow about
a person who told them stories, and interested them with his charming
talk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.
Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to gardening; but it
occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high board
fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a
good deal of protection,--more, in fact, than spikes in the top,
which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much
fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if
the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read
them until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don't
know. Human nature is vicious. The boy might regard the picture of
the garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisement of what was
over the fence. I begin to find that the problem of raising fruit is
nothing to that of getting it after it has matured. So long as the
law, just in many respects, is in force against shooting birds and
small boys, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in vain.
The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful. Consider what he
can do. You buy and set out a choice pear-tree; you enrich the earth
for it; you train and trim it, and vanquish the borer, and watch its
slow growth. At length it rewards your care by producing two or
three pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring the
flavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary. The next
year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well; and in the autumn
has on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily
growing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends,
reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the
label; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of long
care. That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy!
Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing much
longer than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing on
him, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safe
obscurity. In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your work
of years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt not, of any agent of
fate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe.
And it is not of much consequence. The boy goes on his way,--to
Congress, or to State Prison: in either place he will be accused of
stealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it is better
to have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all.
You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure of
raising fruit is the vulgar eating it. You recall your delight in
conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated
catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of
extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which
it is so impossible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be raised on
this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. For
years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality.
How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming
bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knife
many a sunny morning! That is happiness. Then, if you know it, you
are drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of the
earth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening and
reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at the
source of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes of
Nature. Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is that
of preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from your
sight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. The
gardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.
EIGHTEENTH WEEK
Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might
have turned out so differently! If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned
for debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre. If William of
Orange had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if France
had followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, as
it came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; if
the Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; if
Blucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,--the lesson is, that things do
not come up unless they are planted. When you go behind the
historical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effect
every transformation which has astonished you. It was the rascality
of a minister and a contractor five years before that lost the
battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition. I
should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits of
indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love
of woman than by the hate of man. It is only because we are ill
informed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed because
we expect that for which we have not provided.
I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. A
garden ought to produce one everything,--just as a business ought to
support a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a convention
lately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't.
There has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seems
to me there is very little to show for it. It has been a terrible
campaign; but where is the indemnity? Where are all "sass" and
Lorraine? It is true that we have lived on the country; but we
desire, besides, the fruits of the war. There are no onions, for one
thing. I am quite ashamed to take people into my garden, and have
them notice the absence of onions. It is very marked. In onion is
strength; and a garden without it lacks flavor. The onion in its
satin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is
the only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost be
said to have a soul. You take off coat after coat, and the onion is
still there; and, when the last one is removed, who dare say that the
onion itself is destroyed, though you can weep over its departed
spirit? If there is any one thing on this fallen earth that the
angels in heaven weep over--more than another, it is the onion.
I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion;
but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not
that all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love.
Affection for it is concealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy of
owning it as they are of talking about religion. Some people have
days on which they eat onions,--what you might call "retreats," or
their "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony,
an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad. On that
day they see no company; they deny the kiss of greeting to the
dearest friend; they retire within themselves, and hold communion
with one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of the
moral vegetable world. Happy is said to be the family which can eat
onions together. They are, for the time being, separate from the
world, and have a harmony of aspiration. There is a hint here for
the reformers. Let them become apostles of the onion; let them eat,
and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it in the
form of seeds. In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood.
If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into a
universal sympathy. Look at Italy. I hope I am not mistaken as to
the cause of her unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospel
which made it possible. All the Reds of Europe, all the sworn
devotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Their
oaths are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the common people
of Italy. All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is laden
with it. Its odor is a practical democracy. In the churches all are
alike: there is one faith, one smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuel
into Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlic
had already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eat
onions in secret.
I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements.
Neither onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here. I have
never seen a garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbage
in it; but my garden gives the impression of a garden without a head.
The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I admire the force by which it
compacts its crisp leaves into a solid head. The secret of it would
be priceless to the world. We should see less expansive foreheads
with nothing within. Even the largest cabbages are not always the
best. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have with
the vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary to
the expectations of society. Society expects every man to have
certain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one had
no pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches
and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tired
garden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brown
leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrows
when he observes, "Ah! I see you have none of this, and of that." At
present we want the moral courage to plant only what we need; to
spend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is going on
over the fence. We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be
wholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden next
year that will be as popular as possible.
And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life. I begin to
feel the temptation of experiment. Agriculture, horticulture,
floriculture,--these are vast fields, into which one may wander away,
and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, this
gardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinite
possibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, "I wish
you would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me,
when you are in town." Time was, I used to accept such a commission
with alacrity and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked one
of his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some of that.
The young man, who is as handsome a young man as ever I looked at,
and who appears to own the shop, and whose suave superciliousness
would be worth everything to a cabinet minister who wanted to repel
applicants for place, says, "I have n't an ounce: I have sent to
Paris, and I expect it every day. I have a good deal of difficulty
in getting that shade in my assortment." To think that he is in
communication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia! Respect for such
a being gives place to awe. I go to another shop, holding fast to my
scarlet clew. There I am shown a heap of stuff, with more colors and
shades than I had supposed existed in all the world. What a blaze of
distraction! I have been told to get as near the shade as I could;
and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me about
of one color. But I can settle my mind on nothing. The affair
assumes a high degree of importance. I am satisfied with nothing but
perfection. I don't know what may happen if the shade is not
matched. I go to another shop, and another, and another. At last a
pretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue,
matches the shade in a minute. I buy five cents worth. That was the
order. Women are the most economical persons that ever were. I have
spent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say they
were wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is a
perfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work,
at arm's length, and turns her head one side, and then takes her
needle, and works it in? Working in, I can see, my own obligingness
and amiability with every stitch. Five cents is dirt cheap for such
a pleasure.
The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision. How
fascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become! Can I
raise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferable
to the other? Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sorts
of pears? I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines);
and I have no idea that I have hit the right one. Must I subscribe
to all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of the
best vines? Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, that
I could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite! Oh for the good
old days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was no
perplexity about it! There are more berries now than churches; and
no one knows what to believe. I have seen gardens which were all
experiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced little
or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation. People
grow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yield
them more than four pears to the tree. The fashions of ladies'
bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen. He who attempts
to follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short.
If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shall
leave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallow
me and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbs
of my forefathers! Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this is
not possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things,
and learn to talk knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must keep up
a reputation. I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, and
elevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk
about all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, the
original cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.
NINETEENTH WEEK
The closing scenes are not necessarily funereal. A garden should be
got ready for winter as well as for summer. When one goes into
winter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim. Expecting high
winds, we bring everything into close reef. Some men there are who
never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when
they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in
the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one
who does n't shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for
display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such
a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the
snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of
melancholy ruin and decay.
I confess that, after such an exhausting campaign, I felt a great
temptation to retire, and call it a drawn engagement. But better
counsels prevailed. I determined that the weeds should not sleep on
the field of battle. I routed them out, and leveled their works. I
am master of the situation. If I have made a desert, I at least have
peace; but it is not quite a desert. The strawberries, the
raspberries, the celery, the turnips, wave green above the clean
earth, with no enemy in sight. In these golden October days no work
is more fascinating than this getting ready for spring. The sun is
no longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminating all the open
space, and warming the mellow soil. And the pruning and clearing
away of rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with something of the
hilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals.
When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, and
to sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very different
from the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put the
strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vines
and laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given the
fruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away,
writing Resurgam on the gatepost. And Calvin, aware that the summer
is past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen is
worth two birds gone south, scampers away to the house with his tail
in the air.
And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. I know that this is
only a truce until the parties recover their exhausted energies. All
winter long the forces of chemistry will be mustering under ground,
repairing the losses, calling up the reserves, getting new strength
from my surface-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for the spring
campaign. They will open it before I am ready: while the snow is
scarcely melted, and the ground is not passable, they will begin to
move on my works; and the fight will commence. Yet how deceitfully
it will open to the music of birds and the soft enchantment of the
spring mornings! I shall even be permitted to win a few skirmishes:
the secret forces will even wait for me to plant and sow, and show my
full hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault.
There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass,
which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of my
garden-patch. It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging it
out is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry pie
with the stones all in. It is work, too, that I know by experience I
shall have to do alone. Every man must eradicate his own
devil-grass. The neighbors who have leisure to help you in
grape-picking time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive.
My neighbors' visits are well timed: it is only their hens which have
seasons for their own.
I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; but
I have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I am
inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only
choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am not
much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle
of upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the
world were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouth
wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out after
the first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer
vice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of an
overfed civilization. There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich
soil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor. To what
affluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which is
common) grow, with favoring circumstances, under the stimulus of the
richest social and intellectual influences! I am aware that there
has been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and the
harebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it is
possible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-wood
grace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth of
charms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higher
and more stimulating culture brings,--the passion as well as the soul
glowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor plants are
ever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest. I,
for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched. The
only question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned by
experience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition to
use them.
Moral Deduction.--The difference between soil and society is
evident. We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing;
we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that is
not clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish. Society
returns us what we give it.
Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the
blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on
the south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnuts
on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about
her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, I
see, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer
there. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas:
the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all
summer. I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulate
myself that we are ready for winter. For the winter-garden I have no
responsibility: Polly has entire charge of it. I am only required to
keep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for the
death of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that into
the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all the
work. We never relinquish that theory.
As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling a
bag with chestnuts and hickorynuts. They are not plenty this year;
and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us. The boy is a
little slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the picking
poor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hails
me with,
"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"
The coolness of this world grows upon me. It is time to go in and
light a wood-fire on the hearth.
CALVIN
NOTE.--The following brief Memoir of one of the characters in
this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the record
of an exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some service
to the world.
HARTFORD, January, 1880.
CALVIN
A STUDY OF CHARACTER
Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us,
was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so
uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have
been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my
recollections of his career.
His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a
matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I
have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly
was in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs.
Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her
house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, as
if he had been always a friend of the family. He appeared to have
artistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the
door if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there.
This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly
unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any household
where he would not have heard "Uncle Tom's Cabin" talked about. When
he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and
apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him no
appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers,
and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found the
secret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe that
he would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in
immature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.
After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida,
Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into the
ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,--I
say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired
for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the
family he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive of
beings, his individuality always made itself felt.
His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal
mould, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he had
nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though
powerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every
movement as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door--he
opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches--he was portentously
tall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed too
long for this world--as indeed he was. His coat was the finest and
softest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his
throat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore
the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever more
fastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw something of
his aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut,
there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, and
the expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent--I should
call it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistent
with his look of alertness and sagacity.
It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connection
with his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we know
nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin
was his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utter
playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at
stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his
own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse
himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps
something in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutely
no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw him
exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size
when a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats,
evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had no
association with them. Occasionally there would be heard a night
concert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have the door opened,
and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and the concert would
explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the
hearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n't
have any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue of
magnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and
extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at
a repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.
His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about
dictionaries,--to "get the best." He knew as well as any one what was
in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if
there were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the
oysters would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a gross
gourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he
was not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were refined;
he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the fork
down to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessity
compelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his
meals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger
were present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hoping
that the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give
him something. They used to say that he preferred as his table-cloth
on the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was said
by an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religious
prejudices, except that he did not like the association with
Romanists. He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to the
house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but the
moment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched into
the drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and
never withdrew, no matter how many callers--whom he recognized as of
his society--might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of
company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was
an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so
with most people.
The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of
life. He established a method of communicating his wants, and even
some of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things.
There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go
when he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired
more heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door after
himself. He could do almost everything but speak; and you would
declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in
his intelligent face. I have no desire to overdraw his qualities,
but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, it
was his fondness for nature. He could content himself for hours at a
low window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, noting
the smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompany
me walking about the garden, hearing the birds, getting the smell of
the fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me and
gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his
delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or
looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the
cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window,
keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its
falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he was
genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined
himself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for the
sake of killing, but only as civilized people do,--from necessity.
He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in the
chestnut-trees,--too intimate, for almost every day in the summer he
would bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed,
a superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump of
destructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There was
very little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don't
think he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and for
the first few months of his residence with us he waged an awful
campaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence was
sufficient to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him,
but he usually considered them too small game to be taken seriously; I
have seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with a
royal condescension. In this whole, matter of "getting a living,"
Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which he
lived.
I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and the
affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve that
he would not care to have it much talked about. We understood each
other perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spoke
his name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned home
at night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, and
would rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there were
purely accidental,--so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; and
when I opened the door, he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered,
and lounged, as if he had no intention of going in, but would
condescend to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and
he was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. It
happened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinner
would be early, and Calvin, walking about the grounds, missed it and
came in late. But he never made a mistake the second day. There was
one thing he never did,--he never rushed through an open doorway. He
never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have the door opened,
and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see him
now standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he was
thinking whether it were worth while to take an umbrella, until he
was near having his tail shut in.
His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. When we
returned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with
evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquil
happiness than by fuming about. He had the faculty of making us glad
to get home. It was his constancy that was so attractive. He liked
companionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in
any one's lap a moment; he always extricated himself from such
familiarity with dignity and with no show of temper. If there was
any petting to be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he would
sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and
pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his
nose, and then go away contented. He had a habit of coming to my
study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table for
hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his
tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by
the inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a
perch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he
understood it, he wanted to hold the pen.
He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if he
had said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a 'mess' of
friendship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it to
trivial conveniency. "Why insist on rash personal relations with
your friend?" "Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would not
give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of the
sacredness of the me and the not-me. And, at the risk of not being
believed, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated.
Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in the
contemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber over
the roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer and
winter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed. He would do this
always exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in the
chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door. He
had the obstinacy of General Grant. But this is by the way. In the
morning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with the
rest of the family. Now, when the mistress was absent from home, and
at no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell
rang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face,
follow me about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in many
purring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I know
that she has gone away, but I am here." Such was Calvin in rare
moments.
He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for nature, he had
no conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and very
expressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I placed it on the
floor. He regarded it intently, approached it cautiously and
crouchingly, touched it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turned
away abruptly, and never would notice it afterward. On the whole,
his life was not only a successful one, but a happy one. He never
had but one fear, so far as I know: he had a mortal and a reasonable
terror of plumbers. He would never stay in the house when they were
here. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't share our
fear about their charges, but he must have had some dreadful
experience with them in that portion of his life which is unknown to
us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, in his
scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.
In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimate
Calvin by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now,
when any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituary
in the newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate.
The plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, "They
say that she says that he says that he wouldn't take a hundred
dollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that I never made such a
remark, and that, so far as Calvin was concerned, there was no
purchase in money.
As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one,
for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept
when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his
toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. He
delighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, and
to lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influences
of summer. You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew
the secret of repose. The poet who wrote so prettily of him that his
little life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; it
was rounded with a good many. His conscience never seemed to
interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had good habits and a
contented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study door, sit
down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, and
look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. I
often thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the
power of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned the
inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and
yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a
sort of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call
attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want
of his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at a
closed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when
it was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by
"bolting" in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of
utterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty power
of purr to express his measureless content with congenial society.
There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power and
expression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performed
Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.
Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the
diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his
departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know
that he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature and
beauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his
illness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all his
blameless life. I suppose there never was an illness that had more
of dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it. It came on
gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite. An
alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of a
furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire.
Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only
anxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with the
delicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him to
eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything. Sometimes
he made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he made
the effort to please us. The neighbors--and I am convinced that the
advice of neighbors is never good for anything--suggested catnip. He
would n't even smell it. We had the attendance of an amateur
practitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls,
but nothing touched his case. He took what was offered, but it was
with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed. He sat
or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a display
of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are so
disagreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightest
spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and
he could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited our
interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our
sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression
that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to
all who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in
affliction.
I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of
his failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunny
morning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was
very thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the
plants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room,
and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown
and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of
his life had been spent. It was a last look. He turned and walked
away, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietly
died.
It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the
neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was
his individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see
him. There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was
felt that any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, who
acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believe
assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usual
levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that
it was the "driest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felt
a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect.
Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and she
apprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraid
of him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain that
he was what he appeared to be.
When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber
by an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box,
lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little
wine-glass with flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in his
arms,--a favorite position of his before the fire,--as if asleep in
the comfort of his soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntary
exclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks!" As
for myself, I said nothing. John buried him under the twin
hawthorn-trees,--one white and the other pink,--in a spot where Calvin
was fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and the
twitter of birds.
Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character
that was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have set
down nothing concerning him, but the literal truth. He was always a
mystery. I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has
gone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay
upon his grave.
BACKLOG STUDIES
By Charles Dudley Warner
FIRST STUDY
I
The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth
has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be
respected; sex is only distinguished by a difference between
millinery bills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider;
the young are not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night;
half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely
ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a
bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny
face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are
the gray-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and
doze in the chimney-corner. A good many things have gone out with
the fire on the hearth.
I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished
with the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness
are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we
are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be
purified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is
gone, as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up
a family round a "register." But you might just as well try to bring
it up by hand, as without the rallying-point of a hearthstone. Are
there any homesteads nowadays? Do people hesitate to change houses
any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as
they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a
year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means.
Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit
them. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person's
clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until
it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste. But we
have fallen into the days of conformity. It is no wonder that people
constantly go into their neighbors' houses by mistake, just as, in
spite of the Maine law, they wear away each other's hats from an
evening party. It has almost come to this, that you might as well be
anybody else as yourself.
Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuance
of big chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them? How can a person be
attached to a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it,
in the visible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like the
heart in the body? When you think of the old homestead, if you ever
do, your thoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burning
logs. No wonder that you are ready to move from one fireplaceless
house into another. But you have something just as good, you say.
Yes, I have heard of it. This age, which imitates everything, even
to the virtues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, with
artificial, iron, or composition logs in it, hacked and painted, in
which gas is burned, so that it has the appearance of a wood-fire.
This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down before
it? Can you poke it? If you can't poke it, it is a fraud. To poke
a wood-fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the
world. The crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife poke
the fire. I do not know how any virtue whatever is possible over an
imitation gas-log. What a sense of insincerity the family must have,
if they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering about it. With this
center of untruthfulness, what must the life in the family be?
Perhaps the father will be living at the rate of ten thousand a year
on a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful and
younger than her beautified daughters, will rouge; perhaps the young
ladies will make wax-work. A cynic might suggest as the motto of
modern life this simple legend,--"just as good as the real." But I am
not a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling of wood-fires, and a
return of the beautiful home light from them. If a wood-fire is a
luxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulge without thought,
and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the want
of ventilation of the house. Not that I have anything against
doctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a way that
seems so friendly, they had nothing against us.
My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broad
hearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and a
pair of gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are burnished, and
shine cheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tall
shovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, like
the two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. We
burn in it hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this
aromatic forest timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also a
sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an even
temper,--no snappishness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire so
well; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,--a
solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful
suggestions. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit trees.
I should as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet-oil that comes
in those graceful wicker-bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscript
sermons, which, however, do not burn well, be they never so dry, not
half so well as printed editorials.
Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he or
she does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest on
the andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat all
day, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, like
the last days of a good man, whose life is the richest and most
beneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap of
youth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, bright
elements of character. Then you want a forestick on the andirons;
and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In this way you have
at once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solid
mass, sinking down with increasing fervor; coals drop below, and
delicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of the
forestick. There are people who kindle a fire underneath. But these
are conceited people, who are wedded to their own way. I suppose an
accomplished incendiary always starts a fire in the attic, if he can.
I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don't call those
incendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire to the
martyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, so as to make them go
slow. Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up.
Education must proceed from the more enlightened down to the more
ignorant strata. If you want better common schools, raise the
standard of the colleges, and so on. Build your fire on top. Let
your light shine. I have seen people build a fire under a balky
horse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be a horse-martyr first. A fire
kindled under one never did him any good. Of course you can make a
fire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, but that does not make
it right. I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of the best things.
II
It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pair
of twins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room,
even by the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in its
cells, the brands are continually dropping down, and coals are being
scattered over the hearth. However much a careful housewife, who
thinks more of neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is one
of the chief delights of a wood-fire. I would as soon have an
Englishman without side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; and
I would rather have no fire than one that required no tending,--one
of dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of the
forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine it
absorbed in its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice
of danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothing
is so beautiful as springing, changing flame,--it was the last freak
of the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborate
edifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. A
fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witness
the most brilliant chemical experiments, minor conflagrations only
wanting the grandeur of cities on fire. It is a vulgar notion that a
fire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, however, to look at.
It is a picture, framed between the jambs. You have nothing on your
walls, by the best masters (the poor masters are not, however,
represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual. Speaking
like an upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never twice
the same. In this respect it is like the landscape-view through a
window, always seen in a new light, color, or condition. The
fireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever had a
glimpse of.
Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientific
enough to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence on
Mount Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortable
even by boiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is a
satisfaction in being well dressed which religion cannot give. There
is certainly a satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory fire
which is not to be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. The
hot air of a furnace is a sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is only
intense sunshine, like that bottled in Lacrimae Christi. Besides
this, the eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by the
fragrant decomposition, and the ear is pleased with the hissing,
crackling, and singing,--a liberation of so many out-door noises.
Some people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling pot, or the
fizzing of a frying-spider. But there is nothing gross in the
animated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth, not even
if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses are
ministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leaping
tongues of flame.
The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its best
recommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble to
maintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by private
corporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the support
of customs officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than we
do. Not that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and have
the proper regulation of its temperature get into politics, where we
already have so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too much
as a matter of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it among
the reasons for gratitude. Many people shut it out of their houses
as if it were an enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if it
were only a thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away from the
mouldering house. All the animals know better than this, as well as
the more simple races of men; the old women of the southern Italian
coasts sit all day in the sun and ply the distaff, as grateful as the
sociable hens on the south side of a New England barn; the slow
tortoise likes to take the sun upon his sloping back, soaking in
color that shall make him immortal when the imperishable part of him
is cut up into shell ornaments. The capacity of a cat to absorb
sunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an Ethiopian. They
are not afraid of injuring their complexions.
White must be the color of civilization; it has so many natural
disadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that,
however it may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his
wood-fire, because he does not maintain it without some cost.
Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and the
light of a wood-fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where it
rages most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than the
harmonious satisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and the
flaming colors of the tropics contrast with our more subdued
loveliness of foliage and bloom. The birds of the middle region
dazzle with their contrasts of plumage, and their voices are for
screaming rather than singing. I presume the new experiments in
sound would project a macaw's voice in very tangled and inharmonious
lines of light. I suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, as
well as animals and vegetables, on extremes in all ways. A wood-fire
on the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues. It brings in
cheerfulness, and a family center, and, besides, it is artistic.
I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas a
happy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register.
Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could almost create a
pleasant family round it. But what could he conjure out of a
register? If there was any virtue among our ancestors,--and they
labored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aids
which we have to excellence of life,--I am convinced they drew it
mostly from the fireside. If it was difficult to read the eleven
commandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get
the sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene mother
knitting in the chimney-corner.
III
When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genial
in its effulgence. I have never been upon a throne,--except in
moments of a traveler's curiosity, about as long as a South American
dictator remains on one,--but I have no idea that it compares, for
pleasantness, with a seat before a wood-fire. A whole leisure day
before you, a good novel in hand, and the backlog only just beginning
to kindle, with uncounted hours of comfort in it, has life anything
more delicious? For "novel" you can substitute "Calvin's
Institutes," if you wish to be virtuous as well as happy. Even
Calvin would melt before a wood-fire. A great snowstorm, visible on
three sides of your wide-windowed room, loading the evergreens, blown
in fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piled up in ever
accumulating masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, the hedges,
drifting and clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening your sense of
security, and taking away the sin of idleness by making it a
necessity, this is an excellent ground to your day by the fire.
To deliberately sit down in the morning to read a novel, to enjoy
yourself, is this not, in New England (I am told they don't read much
in other parts of the country), the sin of sins? Have you any right
to read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part of
the day in some employment that is called practical? Have you any
right to enjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when you
are tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that this
is the practice, if not the theory, of our society,--to postpone the
delights of social intercourse until after dark, and rather late at
night, when body and mind are both weary with the exertions of
business, and when we can give to what is the most delightful and
profitable thing in life, social and intellectual society, only the
weariness of dull brains and over-tired muscles. No wonder we take
our amusements sadly, and that so many people find dinners heavy and
parties stupid. Our economy leaves no place for amusements; we
merely add them to the burden of a life already full. The world is
still a little off the track as to what is really useful.
I confess that the morning is a very good time to read a novel, or
anything else which is good and requires a fresh mind; and I take it
that nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.
I suppose it is necessary that business should be transacted; though
the amount of business that does not contribute to anybody's comfort
or improvement suggests the query whether it is not overdone. I know
that unremitting attention to business is the price of success, but
I don't know what success is. There is a man, whom we all know, who
built a house that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, and
furnished it for another like sum, who does not know anything more
about architecture, or painting, or books, or history, than he cares
for the rights of those who have not so much money as he has. I
heard him once, in a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they stood
in front of a famous picture by Rubens: "That is the Rape of the
Sardines!" What a cheerful world it would be if everybody was as
successful as that man! While I am reading my book by the fire, and
taking an active part in important transactions that may be a good
deal better than real, let me be thankful that a great many men are
profitably employed in offices and bureaus and country stores in
keeping up the gossip and endless exchange of opinions among mankind,
so much of which is made to appear to the women at home as
"business." I find that there is a sort of busy idleness among men in
this world that is not held in disrepute. When the time comes that I
have to prove my right to vote, with women, I trust that it will be
remembered in my favor that I made this admission. If it is true, as
a witty conservative once said to me, that we never shall have peace
in this country until we elect a colored woman president, I desire to
be rectus in curia early.
IV
The fireplace, as we said, is a window through which we look out upon
other scenes. We like to read of the small, bare room, with
cobwebbed ceiling and narrow window, in which the poor child of
genius sits with his magical pen, the master of a realm of beauty and
enchantment. I think the open fire does not kindle the imagination
so much as it awakens the memory; one sees the past in its crumbling
embers and ashy grayness, rather than the future. People become
reminiscent and even sentimental in front of it. They used to become
something else in those good old days when it was thought best to
heat the poker red hot before plunging it into the mugs of flip.
This heating of the poker has been disapproved of late years, but I
do not know on what grounds; if one is to drink bitters and gins and
the like, such as I understand as good people as clergymen and women
take in private, and by advice, I do not know why one should not make
them palatable and heat them with his own poker. Cold whiskey out of
a bottle, taken as a prescription six times a day on the sly, is n't
my idea of virtue any more than the social ancestral glass, sizzling
wickedly with the hot iron. Names are so confusing in this world;
but things are apt to remain pretty much the same, whatever we call
them.
Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens and grows deep and
cavernous. The back and the jambs are built up of great stones, not
always smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which ashes are apt to
lie. The hearthstone is an enormous block of trap rock, with a
surface not perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butternuts
on. Over the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks of
all lengths hanging from it. It swings out when the housewife wants
to hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a row
of pots, or a mammoth caldron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sight
is this fireplace when the pots and kettles in a row are all boiling
and bubbling over the flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front!
It makes a person as hungry as one of Scott's novels. But the
brilliant sight is in the frosty morning, about daylight, when the
fire is made. The coals are raked open, the split sticks are piled
up in openwork criss-crossing, as high as the crane; and when the
flame catches hold and roars up through the interstices, it is like
an out-of-door bonfire. Wood enough is consumed in that morning
sacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian family for a year. How it
roars up the wide chimney, sending into the air the signal smoke and
sparks which announce to the farming neighbors another day cheerfully
begun! The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in his red
flannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped to
sleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that the
house, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold of
winter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost melts
little by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that the
gray dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time to
blow out the candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the light
of day. The morning romance is over; the family is astir; and member
after member appears with the morning yawn, to stand before the
crackling, fierce conflagration. The daily round begins. The most
hateful employment ever invented for mortal man presents itself: the
"chores" are to be done. The boy who expects every morning to open
into a new world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but he believes
to-morrow will be different. And yet enough for him, for the day, is
the wading in the snowdrifts, or the sliding on the diamond-sparkling
crust. Happy, too, is he, when the storm rages, and the snow
is piled high against the windows, if he can sit in the warm
chimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and General Fraser, and Miss
McCrea, midwinter marches through the wilderness, surprises of wigwams,
and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of the Kegs:--
"Come, gallants, attend and list a friend
Thrill forth harmonious ditty;
While I shall tell what late befell
At Philadelphia city."
I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England
farmhouse--rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the
old wars did not aspire to. "John," says the mother, "You'll burn
your head to a crisp in that heat." But John does not hear; he is
storming the Plains of Abraham just now. "Johnny, dear, bring in a
stick of wood." How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that
defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind
every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.
The fire rests upon the broad hearth; the hearth rests upon a great
substruction of stone, and the substruction rests upon the cellar.
What supports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports the
family. The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into its
dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes.
Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples. I know not what comical
sprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. The
feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, but
creates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this
underground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and the
boy begins to descend into the thick darkness, it is always with a
heart-beat as of one started upon some adventure. Who can forget the
smell that comes through the opened door;--a mingling of fresh earth,
fruit exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odor
of barrels, a sort of ancestral air,--as if a door had been opened
into an old romance. Do you like it? Not much. But then I would
not exchange the remembrance of it for a good many odors and perfumes
that I do like.
It is time to punch the backlog and put on a new forestick.
SECOND STUDY
I
The log was white birch. The beautiful satin bark at once kindled
into a soft, pure, but brilliant flame, something like that of
naphtha. There is no other wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in a
joyous, spiritual way, as if glad to burn for the sake of burning.
Burning like a clear oil, it has none of the heaviness and fatness of
the pine and the balsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to account for its
intense and yet chaste flame, since the bark has no oily appearance.
The heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling. It flares up
eagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keep
up the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, have
not considered it in its relation to young love. In the remote
settlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it endures
to sit up by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world of
sentiment and of letters. The most poetical reputation of the North
American Indian floats in a canoe made of it; his picture-writing was
inscribed on it. It is the paper that nature furnishes for lovers in
the wilderness, who are enabled to convey a delicate sentiment by its
use, which is expressed neither in their ideas nor chirography. It
is inadequate for legal parchment, but does very well for deeds of
love, which are not meant usually to give a perfect title. With
care, it may be split into sheets as thin as the Chinese paper. It
is so beautiful to handle that it is a pity civilization cannot make
more use of it. But fancy articles manufactured from it are very
much like all ornamental work made of nature's perishable seeds,
leaves, cones, and dry twigs,--exquisite while the pretty fingers are
fashioning it, but soon growing shabby and cheap to the eye. And yet
there is a pathos in "dried things," whether they are displayed as
ornaments in some secluded home, or hidden religiously in bureau
drawers where profane eyes cannot see how white ties are growing
yellow and ink is fading from treasured letters, amid a faint and
discouraging perfume of ancient rose-leaves.
The birch log holds out very well while it is green, but has not
substance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber or
men is always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, let
us say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothing
in a more complicated civilization. City life is a severe trial.
One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks;
another shrinks and swells with every change of circumstance.
Prosperity is said to be more trying than adversity, a theory which
most people are willing to accept without trial; but few men stand
the drying out of the natural sap of their greenness in the
artificial heat of city life. This, be it noticed, is nothing
against the drying and seasoning process; character must be put into
the crucible some time, and why not in this world? A man who cannot
stand seasoning will not have a high market value in any part of the
universe. It is creditable to the race, that so many men and women
bravely jump into the furnace of prosperity and expose themselves to
the drying influences of city life.
The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in the autumn seems to
bring out the cold weather. Deceived by the placid appearance of the
dying year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color of the
foliage, we have been shivering about for days without exactly
comprehending what was the matter. The open fire at once sets up a
standard of comparison. We find that the advance guards of winter
are besieging the house. The cold rushes in at every crack of door
and window, apparently signaled by the flame to invade the house and
fill it with chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call the temperate
zone. It needs a roaring fire to beat back the enemy; a feeble one
is only an invitation to the most insulting demonstrations. Our
pious New England ancestors were philosophers in their way. It was
not simply owing to grace that they sat for hours in their barnlike
meeting-houses during the winter Sundays, the thermometer many
degrees below freezing, with no fire, except the zeal in their own
hearts,--a congregation of red noses and bright eyes. It was no
wonder that the minister in the pulpit warmed up to his subject,
cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good deal of the hot place and
the Person whose presence was a burning shame, hammered the desk as
if he expected to drive his text through a two-inch plank, and heated
himself by all allowable ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few of their
followers in our day seem to forget that our modern churches are
heated by furnaces and supplied with gas. In the old days it would
have been thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to warm the
meeting-houses artificially. In one house I knew, at least, when it
was proposed to introduce a stove to take a little of the chill from
the Sunday services, the deacons protested against the innovation.
They said that the stove might benefit those who sat close to it, but
it would drive all the cold air to the other parts of the church, and
freeze the people to death; it was cold enough now around the edges.
Blessed days of ignorance and upright living! Sturdy men who served
God by resolutely sitting out the icy hours of service, amid the
rattling of windows and the carousal of winter in the high, windswept
galleries! Patient women, waiting in the chilly house for
consumption to pick out his victims, and replace the color of youth
and the flush of devotion with the hectic of disease! At least, you
did not doze and droop in our over-heated edifices, and die of
vitiated air and disregard of the simplest conditions of organized
life. It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its
own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
It is something also that each age has its choice of the death it
will die. Our generation is most ingenious. From our public
assembly-rooms and houses we have almost succeeded in excluding pure
air. It took the race ages to build dwellings that would keep out
rain; it has taken longer to build houses air-tight, but we are on
the eve of success. We are only foiled by the ill-fitting, insincere
work of the builders, who build for a day, and charge for all time.
II
When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled into
steady radiance, talk begins. There is no place like the
chimney-corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an old
friendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted, by
comparing ideas and prejudices with the intimate friend of years ago,
whose course in life has lain apart from yours. No stranger puzzles
you so much as the once close friend, with whose thinking and
associates you have for years been unfamiliar. Life has come to mean
this and that to you; you have fallen into certain habits of thought;
for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; of
certain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony with
your surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in the
things that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it is
simply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world from
the right point of view. When you last saw your friend,--less than a
year after you left college,--he was the most sensible and agreeable
of men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreed with you; you could
even tell what sort of a wife he would select, and if you could do
that, you held the key to his life.
Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes. And
here he sits by the fireplace. I cannot think of any one I would
rather see there, except perhaps Thackery; or, for entertainment,
Boswell; or old, Pepys; or one of the people who was left out of the
Ark. They were talking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's about
whom they would most like to have seen, when Charles Lamb startled
the company by declaring that he would rather have seen Judas
Iscariot than any other person who had lived on the earth. For
myself, I would rather have seen Lamb himself once, than to have
lived with Judas. Herbert, to my great delight, has not changed; I
should know him anywhere,--the same serious, contemplative face, with
lurking humor at the corners of the mouth,--the same cheery laugh and
clear, distinct enunciation as of old. There is nothing so winning
as a good voice. To see Herbert again, unchanged in all outward
essentials, is not only gratifying, but valuable as a testimony to
nature's success in holding on to a personal identity, through the
entire change of matter that has been constantly taking place for so
many years. I know very well there is here no part of the Herbert
whose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it is an
astonishing reproduction of him,--a material likeness; and now for
the spiritual.
Such a wide chance for divergence in the spiritual. It has been such
a busy world for twenty years. So many things have been torn up by
the roots again that were settled when we left college. There were
to be no more wars; democracy was democracy, and progress, the
differentiation of the individual, was a mere question of clothes; if
you want to be different, go to your tailor; nobody had demonstrated
that there is a man-soul and a woman-soul, and that each is in
reality only a half-soul,--putting the race, so to speak, upon the
half-shell. The social oyster being opened, there appears to be two
shells and only one oyster; who shall have it? So many new canons of
taste, of criticism, of morality have been set up; there has been
such a resurrection of historical reputations for new judgment, and
there have been so many discoveries, geographical, archaeological,
geological, biological, that the earth is not at all what it was
supposed to be; and our philosophers are much more anxious to
ascertain where we came from than whither we are going. In this
whirl and turmoil of new ideas, nature, which has only the single end
of maintaining the physical identity in the body, works on
undisturbed, replacing particle for particle, and preserving the
likeness more skillfully than a mosaic artist in the Vatican; she has
not even her materials sorted and labeled, as the Roman artist has
his thousands of bits of color; and man is all the while doing his
best to confuse the process, by changing his climate, his diet, all
his surroundings, without the least care to remain himself. But the
mind?
It is more difficult to get acquainted with Herbert than with an
entire stranger, for I have my prepossessions about him, and do not
find him in so many places where I expect to find him. He is full of
criticism of the authors I admire; he thinks stupid or improper the
books I most read; he is skeptical about the "movements" I am
interested in; he has formed very different opinions from mine
concerning a hundred men and women of the present day; we used to eat
from one dish; we could n't now find anything in common in a dozen;
his prejudices (as we call our opinions) are most extraordinary, and
not half so reasonable as my prejudices; there are a great many
persons and things that I am accustomed to denounce, uncontradicted
by anybody, which he defends; his public opinion is not at all my
public opinion. I am sorry for him. He appears to have fallen into
influences and among a set of people foreign to me. I find that his
church has a different steeple on it from my church (which, to say
the truth, hasn't any). It is a pity that such a dear friend and a
man of so much promise should have drifted off into such general
contrariness. I see Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the old
look in his face coming out more and more, but I do not recognize any
features of his mind,--except perhaps his contrariness; yes, he was
always a little contrary, I think. And finally he surprises me with,
"Well, my friend, you seem to have drifted away from your old notions
and opinions. We used to agree when we were together, but I
sometimes wondered where you would land; for, pardon me, you showed
signs of looking at things a little contrary."
I am silent for a good while. I am trying to think who I am. There
was a person whom I thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, and
agreeing with him in most things. Where has he gone? and, if he is
here, where is the Herbert that I knew?
If his intellectual and moral sympathies have all changed, I wonder
if his physical tastes remain, like his appearance, the same. There
has come over this country within the last generation, as everybody
knows, a great wave of condemnation of pie. It has taken the
character of a "movement!" though we have had no conventions about
it, nor is any one, of any of the several sexes among us, running for
president against it. It is safe almost anywhere to denounce pie,
yet nearly everybody eats it on occasion. A great many people think
it savors of a life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although they
were very likely the foremost of the Americans in Paris who used to
speak with more enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque's
than of the Venus of Milo. To talk against pie and still eat it is
snobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is
sometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie is
something. We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tell
whether it is gaining or losing in the country at large. Its
disappearance in select circles is no test. The amount of writing
against it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number of
religious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion of
its piety. We are apt to assume that certain regions are
substantially free of it. Herbert and I, traveling north one summer,
fancied that we could draw in New England a sort of diet line, like
the sweeping curves on the isothermal charts, which should show at
least the leading pie sections. Journeying towards the White
Mountains, we concluded that a line passing through Bellows Falls,
and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward the
region of perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be found at all
hours and seasons, and at every meal. I am not sure, however, that
pie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, as I find that
all the hill and country towns of New England are full of those
excellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, who would
feel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchen
floors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house.
The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bible
even. Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as the
boarding-house keeper, who declared that if it were not for canned
tomato, she should have nothing to fly to. Well, in all this great
agitation I find Herbert unmoved, a conservative, even to the
under-crust. I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast. There
are some tests that the dearest friendship may not apply.
"Will you smoke?" I ask.
"No, I have reformed."
"Yes, of course."
"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, the
apparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions,
the almost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force,
and the relation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man,
it is not safe to do anything to the nervous system that will--"
"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: old
memories, reveries, friendships, center about that:--is n't an open
wood-fire good?"
"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it too
long."
III
The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot be
repeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with the
least residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept the
reports of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of these
years of grace.
But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hear
wonderful stories of the bright generation that sat about the wide
fireplaces of New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that it
cannot be reported,--the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug,
cannot be caught on paper. The best of it is when the subject
unexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a
conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. It
needs the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent the
conversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand--its
common fate--or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largely
chaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal,
but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talked
well. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circle
all the evening long with stories. When each day brought
comparatively little new to read, there was leisure for talk, and the
rare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly discussed.
Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes daily upon
the center-table. There must be a division of labor, one reading
this, and another that, to make any impression on it. The telegraph
brings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that every
mind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously with every
other mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst of
sympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we have
any faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modern
life. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be the
minister of it.
When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;
nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides,
called reading aloud. The listeners, who heard while they looked
into the wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately procession the
events and the grand persons of history, were kindled with the
delights of travel, touched by the romance of true love, or made
restless by tales of adventure;--the hearth became a sort of magic
stone that could transport those who sat by it to the most distant
places and times, as soon as the book was opened and the reader
began, of a winter's night. Perhaps the Puritan reader read through
his nose, and all the little Puritans made the most dreadful nasal
inquiries as the entertainment went on. The prominent nose of the
intellectual New-Englander is evidence of the constant linguistic
exercise of the organ for generations. It grew by talking through.
But I have no doubt that practice made good readers in those days.
Good reading aloud is almost a lost accomplishment now. It is little
thought of in the schools. It is disused at home. It is rare to
find any one who can read, even from the newspaper, well. Reading is
so universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hear
people mispronounce words that you did not suppose they had ever
seen. In reading to themselves they glide over these words, in
reading aloud they stumble over them. Besides, our every-day books
and newspapers are so larded with French that the ordinary reader is
obliged marcher a pas de loup,--for instance.
The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many words
with which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to in
the flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and an
unsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectly
knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it. The
newspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasing
the number of words which enter into common talk. The Americans of
the lowest intellectual class probably use more words to express
their ideas than the similar class of any other people; but this
prodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in some
higher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made to
do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be called
exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another the
remark, concerning some report, that "you know how it is yourself,"
and is met by the response of "that's what's the matter," and rejoins
with the perfectly conclusive "that's so." It requires a high degree
of culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet very
far from the Greek attainment.
IV
The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavy
and black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a
background of inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured
walls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their
occupants,--it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far through
the crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightly
appreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domestic
architecture in our climate. We fell to talking about it; and, as is
usual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, we
wandered all around it. The young lady staying with us was roasting
chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions required
considerable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready
to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this or
that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a
fireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested. The
worst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, and
that later in the evening. And it is an open question whether you
ought to associate with people who want that.
I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in the
world as domestic architecture. Temples, palaces, bridges,
aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength,
grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the
richest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. The
dwelling-house is a modern institution. It is a curious fact that it
has only improved with the social elevation of women. Men were never
more brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and
yet they had no homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles,
with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent
banquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled
for the night were often little better than dog-kennels. The
Pompeians had no comfortable night-quarters. The most singular thing
to me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in the
house, she has never done anything for architecture. And yet woman
is reputed to be an ingenious creature.
HERBERT. I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has great
adaptability. I don't say that she will do the same thing twice
alike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting herself to
circumstances.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, if you speak of constructive, creative
ingenuity, perhaps not; but in the higher ranges of achievement--that
of accomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, for instance--her
ingenuity is simply incomprehensible to me.
HERBERT. Yes, if you mean doing things by indirection.
THE MISTRESS. When you men assume all the direction, what else is
left to us?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see a woman refurnish a house?
THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH US. I never saw a man do it, unless he
was burned out of his rookery.
HERBERT. There is no comfort in new things.
THE FIRE-TENDER (not noticing the interruption). Having set her mind
on a total revolution of the house, she buys one new thing, not too
obtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the old. The husband
scarcely notices it, least of all does he suspect the revolution,
which she already has accomplished. Next, some article that does
look a little shabby beside the new piece of furniture is sent to the
garret, and its place is supplied by something that will match in
color and effect. Even the man can see that it ought to match, and
so the process goes on, it may be for years, it may be forever, until
nothing of the old is left, and the house is transformed as it was
predetermined in the woman's mind. I doubt if the man ever
understands how or when it was done; his wife certainly never says
anything about the refurnishing, but quietly goes on to new
conquests.
THE MISTRESS. And is n't it better to buy little by little, enjoying
every new object as you get it, and assimilating each article to your
household life, and making the home a harmonious expression of your
own taste, rather than to order things in sets, and turn your house,
for the time being, into a furniture ware-room?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, I only spoke of the ingenuity of it.
THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I never can get acquainted with more
than one piece of furniture at a time.
HERBERT. I suppose women are our superiors in artistic taste, and I
fancy that I can tell whether a house is furnished by a woman or a
man; of course, I mean the few houses that appear to be the result of
individual taste and refinement,--most of them look as if they had
been furnished on contract by the upholsterer.
THE MISTRESS. Woman's province in this world is putting things to
rights.
HERBERT. With a vengeance, sometimes. In the study, for example.
My chief objection to woman is that she has no respect for the
newspaper, or the printed page, as such. She is Siva, the destroyer.
I have noticed that a great part of a married man's time at home is
spent in trying to find the things he has put on his study-table.
THE YOUNG LADY. Herbert speaks with the bitterness of a bachelor
shut out of paradise. It is my experience that if women did not
destroy the rubbish that men bring into the house, it would become
uninhabitable, and need to be burned down every five years.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I confess women do a great deal for the appearance
of things. When the mistress is absent, this room, although
everything is here as it was before, does not look at all like the
same place; it is stiff, and seems to lack a soul. When she returns,
I can see that her eye, even while greeting me, takes in the
situation at a glance. While she is talking of the journey, and
before she has removed her traveling-hat, she turns this chair and
moves that, sets one piece of furniture at a different angle,
rapidly, and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen little
knick-knacks and bits of color, and the room is transformed. I
couldn't do it in a week.
THE MISTRESS. That is the first time I ever knew a man admit he
couldn't do anything if he had time.
HERBERT. Yet with all their peculiar instinct for making a home,
women make themselves very little felt in our domestic architecture.
THE MISTRESS. Men build most of the houses in what might be called
the ready-made-clothing style, and we have to do the best we can with
them; and hard enough it is to make cheerful homes in most of them.
You will see something different when the woman is constantly
consulted in the plan of the house.
HERBERT. We might see more difference if women would give any
attention to architecture. Why are there no women architects?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Want of the ballot, doubtless. It seems to me that
here is a splendid opportunity for woman to come to the front.
THE YOUNG LADY. They have no desire to come to the front; they would
rather manage things where they are.
THE FIRE-TENDER. If they would master the noble art, and put their
brooding taste upon it, we might very likely compass something in our
domestic architecture that we have not yet attained. The outside of
our houses needs attention as well as the inside. Most of them are
as ugly as money can build.
THE YOUNG LADY. What vexes me most is, that women, married women,
have so easily consented to give up open fires in their houses.
HERBERT. They dislike the dust and the bother. I think that women
rather like the confined furnace heat.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission.
We wouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build.
THE YOUNG LADY. That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know there
will be no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere the
open fire.
HERBERT. They are just now rebelling about something else; it seems
to me yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear.
THE MISTRESS. I'll join that movement. The time has come when woman
must strike for her altars and her fires.
HERBERT. Hear, hear!
THE MISTRESS. Thank you, Herbert. I applauded you once, when you
declaimed that years ago in the old Academy. I remember how
eloquently you did it.
HERBERT. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot.
Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in. And the company
brought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of the
disturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The
direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful
prospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction
in the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher,
there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it;
some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and
others were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider.
Herbert said there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.
More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic
shapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in
silvery patches among the trees in the ravine. The conversation
became worldly.
THIRD STUDY
I
Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had
turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.
The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of
talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with
cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon
like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of
"pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man
can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to
think how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many
dramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted their
genius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man
who might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of
this country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day after
day upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening to
wrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge
his fellow-men rather than enlighten them.
It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation of
the dead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not as
for what they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns might have
excelled as a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr.
Carlyle says that if he had been sent to a university, and become a
trained intellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the whole
course of British literature! A large undertaking, as so vigorous
and dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, since
British literature has swept by him in a resistless and widening
flood, mainly uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivances
wrecked on the shore with other curiosities of letters, and yet among
the richest of all the treasures lying there.
It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear what
talent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed to
a moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic,
such a mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober;
and then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly
soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously
drunk. I suppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant and
promising men have been lost to the world in this way. It is
sometimes almost painful to think what a surplus of talent and genius
there would be in the world if the habit of intoxication should
suddenly cease; and what a slim chance there would be for the
plodding people who have always had tolerably good habits. The fear
is only mitigated by the observation that the reputation of a person
for great talent sometimes ceases with his reformation.
It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wives
never marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartial
sweetness, and make it generally habitable. This is one of the
mysteries of Providence and New England life. It seems a pity, at
first sight, that all those who become poor wives have the
matrimonial chance, and that they are deprived of the reputation of
those who would be good wives were they not set apart for the high
and perpetual office of priestesses of society. There is no beauty
like that which was spoiled by an accident, no accomplishments--and
graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely
hindered the development of. All of which shows what a charitable
and good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation for
cynicism and detraction.
Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife that
her husband has all the talents, and could, if he would, be
distinguished in any walk in life; and nothing will be more
beautiful--unless this is a very dry time for signs--than the
husband's belief that his wife is capable of taking charge of any of
the affairs of this confused planet. There is no woman but thinks
that her husband, the green-grocer, could write poetry if he had
given his mind to it, or else she thinks small beer of poetry in
comparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely vegetable. It
is touching to see the look of pride with which the wife turns to her
husband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of wit
than his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what she
knows, there would be one more popular idol. How she magnifies his
small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as if
it were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man would make!
What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporals in
their retired homes who did more for the safety and success of our
armies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the
"high-cock-a-lorum" commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy the
reputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really won
Five Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and will
hear it a hundred times more with apparently unabated interest. What
a general her husband would have made; and how his talking talent
would shine in Congress!
HERBERT. Nonsense. There isn't a wife in the world who has not
taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him
in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him
after designs and specifications of her own. That knowledge,
however, she ordinarily keeps to herself, and she enters into a
league with her husband, which he was never admitted to the secret
of, to impose upon the world. In nine out of ten cases he more than
half believes that he is what his wife tells him he is. At any rate,
she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with only
a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually she flatters
him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide on
occasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think that
she thoroughly believes in him.
THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I have
heard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call it
so.
HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which society
rests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to be
overturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell men
what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations
of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall
exist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, without
regard to sex, has always been the ideal life of the poets.
THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to
have his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more
than he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and
there is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by
a woman.
HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that the
reason why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in
the open for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to
change the certain domination of centuries, with weapons they are
perfectly competent to handle, for an experiment. I think we should
be better off if women were more transparent, and men were not so
systematically puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to
control them.
MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that
guise, and begins to convince me that I can see through her like a
ray of light, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the truly
dangerous. There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to say
that; he has just returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quite
often begins his remarks with "on the ship going over;" the Young
Lady declares that he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says
it, that makes her sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless,
guileless, natural bunch of lace and feathers you ever saw; she was
all candor and helplessness and dependence; she sang like a
nightingale, and talked like a nun. There never was such simplicity.
There was n't a sounding-line on board that would have gone to the
bottom of her soulful eyes. But she managed the captain and all the
officers, and controlled the ship as if she had been the helm. All
the passengers were waiting on her, fetching this and that for her
comfort, inquiring of her health, talking about her genuineness, and
exhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if she had
been about to knight them all and give them a castle apiece when they
came to land.
THE MISTRESS. What harm? It shows what I have always said, that the
service of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men.
MANDEVILLE. If she is noble, and not a mere manager. I watched this
woman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else. She
never did.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see her again? I presume Mandeville
has introduced her here for some purpose.
MANDEVILLE. No purpose. But we did see her on the Rhine; she was
the most disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor with
her maid. I judged that her happiness depended upon establishing
controlling relations with all about her. On this Rhine boat, to be
sure, there was reason for disgust. And that reminds me of a remark
that was made.
THE YOUNG LADY. Oh!
MANDEVILLE. When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of a
dreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see no
cause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf. The
fog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, and
increased. We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but in
vain. It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness.
We had heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had no
idea that the entire stream was infected. It was intolerable.
The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holding
their noses and admiring the scenery. You might see a row of them
leaning over the side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag,
entranced with the romance of the situation, and all holding their
noses with thumb and finger. The sweet Rhine! By and by somebody
discovered that the odor came from a pile of cheese on the forward
deck, covered with a canvas; it seemed that the Rhinelanders are so
fond of it that they take it with them when they travel. If there
should ever be war between us and Germany, the borders of the Rhine
would need no other defense from American soldiers than a barricade
of this cheese. I went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a stout
American traveler what was the origin of the odor he had been trying
to dodge all the morning. He looked more disgusted than before, when
he heard that it was cheese; but his only reply was: "It must be a
merciful God who can forgive a smell like that!"
II
The above is introduced here in order to illustrate the usual effect
of an anecdote on conversation. Commonly it kills it. That talk
must be very well in hand, and under great headway, that an anecdote
thrown in front of will not pitch off the track and wreck. And it
makes little difference what the anecdote is; a poor one depresses
the spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; a good one begets
others, and the talkers go to telling stories; which is very good
entertainment in moderation, but is not to be mistaken for that
unwearying flow of argument, quaint remark, humorous color, and
sprightly interchange of sentiments and opinions, called
conversation.
The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of deciding
whether Herbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whether
Tennyson could have dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode as
Herbert did. The more one sees of life, I think the impression
deepens that men, after all, play about the parts assigned them,
according to their mental and moral gifts, which are limited and
preordained, and that their entrances and exits are governed by a law
no less certain because it is hidden. Perhaps nobody ever
accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every
one who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally,
and learns about how far to attempt to spring. There are no
impossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person has
tried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he is
quite content to go down among the chorus. It is only the fools who
keep straining at high C all their lives.
Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something that
happened when he was on the--
But Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man's
single and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlled
by his own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicians
call the substance, all else being the mere accidents of the man.
And this is the reason that we cannot with any certainty tell what
any person will do or amount to, for, while we know his talents and
abilities, we do not know the resulting whole, which is he himself.
THE FIRE-TENDER. So if you could take all the first-class qualities
that we admire in men and women, and put them together into one
being, you wouldn't be sure of the result?
HERBERT. Certainly not. You would probably have a monster. It
takes a cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make a
dish "taste good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence,
the resulting balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeable
or beautiful or effective in the world.
THE YOUNG LADY. That must be the reason why novelists fail so
lamentably in almost all cases in creating good characters. They put
in real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of the
synthesis is something that never was seen on earth before.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.
We admit this in poetry. It is as true of such creations as Colonel
Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond. There is no patchwork about
them.
THE YOUNG LADY. Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create a
noble woman?
THE FIRE-TENDER. That is the standing conundrum with all the women.
They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to
admit that Thackeray was a writer for men.
HERBERT. Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that
Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.
THE MISTRESS. That's ill-natured. Thackeray did, however, make
ladies. If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us just
as we are, I doubt if we should have liked it much.
MANDEVILLE. That's just it. Thackeray never pretended to make
ideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature,
then he was not the best novelist. When I was crossing the Channel--
THE MISTRESS. Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, I
move we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.
III
There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,
that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine any
one being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws out
formality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes
of mind and body,--lounging attitudes,--Herbert said.
And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as
to manner. The backlog period having passed, we are beginning to
have in society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or
polished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing
about the man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the
old-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much at
her ease as the countess, but something far finer than this. These
are the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for a
moment, and never let you forget it. Their presence is a constant
rebuke to society. They are never "jolly;" their laugh is never
anything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed into
any enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance,
of want of culture. They never lose themselves in any cause; they
never heartily praise any man or woman or book; they are superior to
all tides of feeling and all outbursts of passion. They are not even
shocked at vulgarity. They are simply indifferent. They are calm,
visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is not the eternal, majestic
calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-conscious
repression. You would like to put a bent pin in their chair when
they are about calmly to sit down.
A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that
her eggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on china
eggs. Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of
them. We admire them without envy. They are too beautiful in their
manners to be either prigs or snobs. They are at once our models and
our despair. They are properly careful of themselves as models, for
they know that if they should break, society would become a scene of
mere animal confusion.
MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
English.
THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home.
MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about a
cultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdily
and naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others.
There's a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages of
culture on the island have gone deeper than the surface, and they
have simpler and more natural manners than we. There is something
good in the full, round tones of their voices.
HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling
English-man who had n't secured the place he wanted?
[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops of
omnibuses.]
THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San
Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?
MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid
to.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men of
the best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,
are what you would call good fellows,--easy and simple in manner,
enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the
smooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard
as the sine qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assured
that they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we were
speaking.
THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those
who live a great deal in American hotels?
THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?
HERBERT. The last two are the same.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a
man has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, you
cannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of
hotels or of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect
polish and politeness of indifferentism.
IV
Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates
the idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions.
Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some
forest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees
all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants,
cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of
a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its
dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost
in the distant darkling spaces.
If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets
an impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing
else so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothing
makes one feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent cat
will quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the
falling snow with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are his
own, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on
such a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphic
battery, if it could be utilized. The connection between thought and
electricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentally
very alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting his
eyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to the
slightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content,
but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.
I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging his
long arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with,
"Well, I declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's
tract on the philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking at
the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her
lap,--one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting
friends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office
department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is
thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which
legislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, to
write letters on her lap and a man on a table,--a distinction which
is commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.
The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the
room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the
picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and
is thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the
thermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift across
the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if
it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten
persons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were
women; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the
parish, anyhow.
The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but
it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about
eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the
Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a
lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that
it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and
asks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.
Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no better
fun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it. The
Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on
writing his wife's name.
Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the
soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a
present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on
Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat her
gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little
children and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them had
known what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, the
woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the
dogs alive.
The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with
provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in
a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been
sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.
MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice
how extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like
the sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?
THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?
MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is never
interested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has by
nature that calmness and indifference which your people of culture
have acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he would
scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would
do nothing else.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of
the highest breeding?
MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?
MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have
malice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "little
digs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire to
them.
HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a red
man into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or
into a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is
apparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people,
--and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in the
country, for everything is mixed in these days,--some of the best
people in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the
Indian would.
THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should
say you were snobbish.
HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of
anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful
it may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of
etiquette. They are like the countryman who confessed afterwards
that he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's
entertainments,
THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house in
Flushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparent
delight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored the
rooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? I suppose
that Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city,
would have thought it very ill-bred.
MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them,
have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and
action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.
THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had
stayed at home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness
will do for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared to
pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is more
nonsense talked about culture than about anything else.
HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I
once met walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon him
with any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native
place, and there was little that could bear the test. He had the sly
air of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with his
mouth in a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so placid as
rustic conceit. There was something very enjoyable about his calm
superiority to all the treasures of art.
MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister,
a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have
a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.
Ministers seem to think that is their business. They serve it in
such small pieces in order to make it go round.
THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music;
nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time.
THE MISTRESS. What shall it be?
THE PARSON. Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony.
The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. Herbert looks at the young
lady. The Parson composes himself for critical purposes. Mandeville
settles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly into
the fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.
After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is still
snowing.
FOURTH STUDY
It is difficult to explain the attraction which the uncanny and even
the horrible have for most minds. I have seen a delicate woman half
fascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly of
reptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies.
She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering and
the utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, only
to experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion,
she must have relished the sort of electric mental shock that the
sight gave her.
I can no more account for the fascination for us of the stories of
ghosts and "appearances," and those weird tales in which the dead are
the chief characters; nor tell why we should fall into converse about
them when the winter evenings are far spent, the embers are glazing
over on the hearth, and the listener begins to hear the eerie noises
in the house. At such times one's dreams become of importance, and
people like to tell them and dwell upon them, as if they were a link
between the known and unknown, and could give us a clew to that
ghostly region which in certain states of the mind we feel to be more
real than that we see.
Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting around the borders of the
supernatural late at night, MANDEVILLE related a dream of his which
he assured us was true in every particular, and it interested us so
much that we asked him to write it out. In doing so he has curtailed
it, and to my mind shorn it of some of its more vivid and picturesque
features. He might have worked it up with more art, and given it a
finish which the narration now lacks, but I think best to insert it
in its simplicity. It seems to me that it may properly be called,
A NEW "VISION OF SIN"
In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading colleges
of this country. I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily,
though I was perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches than
many others. I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books.
For the solid sciences I had no particular fancy, but with mental
modes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic in
the intellectual and spiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar.
All the literature of the supernatural was as real to me as the
laboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle of
material substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, less
palpable and coarse forms. My imagination, naturally vivid,
stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times I could
scarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (if
I may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed,
from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable plain, where I heard
the same voices, I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in the
garden at Domremy. She was inspired, however, while I only lacked
exercise. I do not mean this in any literal sense; I only describe a
state of mind. I was at this time of spare habit, and nervous,
excitable temperament. I was ambitious, proud, and extremely
sensitive. I cannot deny that I had seen something of the world, and
had contracted about the average bad habits of young men who have the
sole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter. It is
necessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more of
what is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this period
I was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correct
as those of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some very
favorable specimens of that ancient sect.
Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiar
mental condition. I well remember an illustration of it. I sat
writing late one night, copying a prize essay,--a merely manual task,
leaving my thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry night, and about
midnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full of
mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,--the same
wind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing through
the room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister,
--a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became conscious
of a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from the
paper on which I wrote. Gradually I came to know that my
grandmother--dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea--was in the
room. She stood beside her old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quite
near me. She wore a plain muslin cap with a high puff in the crown,
a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes with
heels. She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with the
left hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb and
forefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted on
it. In her right hand she held a small stick. I heard the sharp
click of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of the
wheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased by
the whirl of its point, then a step backwards, a pause, a step
forward and the running of the yarn upon the spindle, and again a
backward step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning and hum of
the wheel, most mournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortal
ear. Since childhood it has haunted me. All this time I wrote, and
I could hear distinctly the scratching of the pen upon the paper.
But she stood behind me (why I did not turn my head I never knew),
pacing backward and forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had a
hundred times seen her in childhood in the old kitchen on drowsy
summer afternoons. And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of the
spindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of the mournful wheel.
Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it might crumble at
the touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in the June wind
that blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did NOT see her. But I
know she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose years
and years ago by our fireside. For I was in full possession of my
faculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscript
than I did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the word
out of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most
persistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing the
portfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly and
ignorant question. Could I see the wind which had now risen
stronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the
night, somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born of
reminiscence?
In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up the
use of tobacco,--a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which I
have nothing more to say than this: that I should attribute to it
almost all the sin and misery in the world, did I not remember that
the old Romans attained a very considerable state of corruption
without the assistance of the Virginia plant.
On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervous
and excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and later
still I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid,
illuminated, more real than any event of my life. I was at home, and
fell sick. The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium
set in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious
wandering in places of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequently
that our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when a
consultation was called, which did the business. I have the
satisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school. I lay
sick for three days.
On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died. The sensation was
not unpleasant. It was not a sudden shock. I passed out of my body
as one would walk from the door of his house. There the body lay,--a
blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was
rather entertained with watching the respect paid to it. My friends
stood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose),
while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a
smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that
matter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see is
material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability
pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass
as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed. When I
speak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was no
change, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top of
a bookcase in the corner of the room, from which I looked down. For
a moment I was interested to see my person from the outside, but
thereafter I was quite indifferent to the body. I was now simply
soul. I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about six
inches in diameter. I saw and heard everything as before. Of
course, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily and quickly
wherever I willed to go. There was none of that tedious process of
communicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles.
I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there. It
was better than the telegraph.
It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I half
incline to call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeks
after my decease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose.
I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stay
by myself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once. As most
of those referred to in this true narrative are still living, I am
forbidden to indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to say
exactly how my death affected my friends, even the home circle.
Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and kept awake. I saw the
"pennies" used instead of the "quarters" which I should have
preferred. I saw myself "laid out," a phrase that has come to have
such a slang meaning that I smile as I write it. When the body was
put into the coffin, I took my place on the lid.
I cannot recall all the details, and they are commonplace besides.
The funeral took place at the church. We all rode thither in
carriages, and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on the outside
with the undertaker, whom I found to be a good deal more jolly than
he looked to be. The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit when
we arrived. I took my station on the pulpit cushion, from which
elevation I had an admirable view of all the ceremonies, and could
hear the sermon. How distinctly I remember the services. I think I
could even at this distance write out the sermon. The tune sung was
of--the usual country selection,--Mount Vernon. I recall the text.
I was rather flattered by the tribute paid to me, and my future was
spoken of gravely and as kindly as possible,--indeed, with remarkable
charity, considering that the minister was not aware of my presence.
I used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even then, of the last
game; for, however solemn the occasion might be to others, it was not
so to me. With what interest I watched my kinsfolks, and neighbors
as they filed past for the last look! I saw, and I remember, who
pulled a long face for the occasion and who exhibited genuine
sadness. I learned with the most dreadful certainty what people
really thought of me. It was a revelation never forgotten.
Several particular acquaintances of mine were talking on the steps as
we passed out.
"Well, old Starr's gone up. Sudden, was n't it? He was a first-rate
fellow."
"Yes, queer about some things; but he had some mighty good streaks,"
said another. And so they ran on.
Streaks! So that is the reputation one gets during twenty years of
life in this world. Streaks!
After the funeral I rode home with the family. It was pleasanter
than the ride down, though it seemed sad to my relations. They did
not mention me, however, and I may remark, that although I stayed
about home for a week, I never heard my name mentioned by any of the
family. Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and supper got
ready. This seemed to lift the gloom a little, and under the
influence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got more
cheerful. They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistake
of the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the large
congregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They had
waffles for supper,--of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now I
saw them disappear without a sigh.
For the first day or two of my sojourn at home I was here and there
at all the neighbors, and heard a good deal about my life and
character, some of which was not very pleasant, but very wholesome,
doubtless, for me to hear. At the expiration of a week this
amusement ceased to be such for I ceased to be talked of. I realized
the fact that I was dead and gone.
By an act of volition I found myself back at college. I floated into
my own room, which was empty. I went to the room of my two warmest
friends, whose friendship I was and am yet assured of. As usual,
half a dozen of our set were lounging there. A game of whist was
just commencing. I perched on a bust of Dante on the top of the
book-shelves, where I could see two of the hands and give a good
guess at a third. My particular friend Timmins was just shuffling
the cards.
"Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without old Starr. Did you cut? I
should like to see him lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet on
the mantel-piece proceed to expound on the duplex functions of the
soul."
"There--misdeal," said his vis-a-vis. "Hope there's been no misdeal
for old Starr."
"Spades, did you say?" the talk ran on, "never knew Starr was
sickly."
"No more was he; stouter than you are, and as brave and plucky as he
was strong. By George, fellows,--how we do get cut down! Last term
little Stubbs, and now one of the best fellows in the class."
"How suddenly he did pop off,--one for game, honors easy,--he was
good for the Spouts' Medal this year, too."
"Remember the joke he played on Prof. A., freshman year?" asked
another.
"Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me about that time," said
Timmins's partner, gathering the cards for a new deal.
"Guess he is the only one who ever did," retorted some one.
And so the talk went on, mingled with whist-talk, reminiscent of me,
not all exactly what I would have chosen to go into my biography, but
on the whole kind and tender, after the fashion of the boys. At
least I was in their thoughts, and I could see was a good deal
regretted,--so I passed a very pleasant evening. Most of those
present were of my society, and wore crape on their badges, and all
wore the usual crape on the left arm. I learned that the following
afternoon a eulogy would be delivered on me in the chapel.
The eulogy was delivered before members of our society and others,
the next afternoon, in the chapel. I need not say that I was
present. Indeed, I was perched on the desk within reach of the
speaker's hand. The apotheosis was pronounced by my most intimate
friend, Timmins, and I must say he did me ample justice. He never
was accustomed to "draw it very mild" (to use a vulgarism which I
dislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered into
the matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a young man who never
expected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam." It
made my hair stand on end,--metaphorically, of course. From my
childhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes of
preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my
eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of
my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as it
appeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, of
which I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair promising bud
blasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with the dew of its
youth. Once launched upon my college days, Timmins went on with all
sails spread. I had, as it were, to hold on to the pulpit cushion.
Latin, Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect master of; all
history was merely a light repast to me; mathematics I glanced at,
and it disappeared; in the clouds of modern philosophy I was wrapped
but not obscured; over the field of light literature I familiarly
roamed as the honey-bee over the wide fields of clover which blossom
white in the Junes of this world! My life was pure, my character
spotless, my name was inscribed among the names of those deathless
few who were not born to die!
It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he finished, though I had
misgivings at the beginning, that I deserved it all. The effect on
the audience was a little different. They said it was a "strong"
oration, and I think Timmins got more credit by it than I did. After
the performance they stood about the chapel, talking in a subdued
tone, and seemed to be a good deal impressed by what they had heard,
or perhaps by thoughts of the departed. At least they all soon went
over to Austin's and called for beer. My particular friends called
for it twice. Then they all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper was
good enough to say that I was no fool, if I did go off owing him four
dollars. To the credit of human nature, let me here record that the
fellows were touched by this remark reflecting upon my memory, and
immediately made up a purse and paid the bill,--that is, they told
the old man to charge it over to them. College boys are rich in
credit and the possibilities of life.
It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed at college during this
probation. So far as I could see, everything went on as if I were
there, or had never been there. I could not even see the place where
I had dropped out of the ranks. Occasionally I heard my name, but I
must say that four weeks was quite long enough to stay in a world
that had pretty much forgotten me. There is no great satisfaction in
being dragged up to light now and then, like an old letter. The case
was somewhat different with the people with whom I had boarded. They
were relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, and they talked of
me a good deal at twilight and Sunday nights, especially the youngest
one, Carrie, who was handsomer than any one I knew, and not much
older than I. I never used to imagine that she cared particularly
for me, nor would she have done so, if I had lived, but death brought
with it a sort of sentimental regret, which, with the help of a
daguerreotype, she nursed into quite a little passion. I spent most
of my time there, for it was more congenial than the college.
But time hastened. The last sand of probation leaked out of the
glass. One day, while Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not)
one of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," I suddenly, yet gently,
without self-effort or volition, moved from the house, floated in the
air, rose higher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exultant, yet
inconceivably rapid motion. The ecstasy of that triumphant flight!
Groves, trees, houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled away
beneath me. Upward mounting, as on angels' wings, with no effort,
till the earth hung beneath me a round black ball swinging, remote,
in the universal ether. Upward mounting, till the earth, no longer
bathed in the sun's rays, went out to my sight, disappeared in the
blank. Constellations, before seen from afar, I sailed among.
Stars, too remote for shining on earth, I neared, and found to be
round globes flying through space with a velocity only equaled by my
own. New worlds continually opened on my sight; newfields of
everlasting space opened and closed behind me.
For days and days--it seemed a mortal forever--I mounted up the great
heavens, whose everlasting doors swung wide. How the worlds and
systems, stars, constellations, neared me, blazed and flashed in
splendor, and fled away! At length,--was it not a thousand years?--I
saw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that country
whence travelers come not back, a battlement wider than I could
guess, the height of which I could not see, the depth of which was
infinite. As I approached, it shone with a splendor never yet beheld
on earth. Its solid substance was built of jewels the rarest, and
stones of priceless value. It seemed like one solid stone, and yet
all the colors of the rainbow were contained in it. The ruby, the
diamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, the
sapphire; of them the wall was built up in harmonious combination.
So brilliant was it that all the space I floated in was full of the
splendor. So mild was it and so translucent, that I could look for
miles into its clear depths.
Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an immense niche was
disclosed in its solid face. The floor was one large ruby. Its
sloping sides were of pearl. Before I was aware I stood within the
brilliant recess. I say I stood there, for I was there bodily, in my
habit as I lived; how, I cannot explain. Was it the resurrection of
the body? Before me rose, a thousand feet in height, a wonderful
gate of flashing diamond. Beside it sat a venerable man, with long
white beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, and a golden key
hanging by a cord from his waist. In the serene beauty of his noble
features I saw justice and mercy had met and were reconciled. I
cannot describe the majesty of his bearing or the benignity of his
appearance. It is needless to say that I stood before St. Peter, who
sits at the Celestial Gate.
I humbly approached, and begged admission. St. Peter arose, and
regarded me kindly, yet inquiringly.
"What is your name?" asked he, "and from what place do you come?"
I answered, and, wishing to give a name well known, said I was from
Washington, United States. He looked doubtful, as if he had never
heard the name before.
"Give me," said he, "a full account of your whole life."
I felt instantaneously that there was no concealment possible; all
disguise fell away, and an unknown power forced me to speak absolute
and exact truth. I detailed the events of my life as well as I
could, and the good man was not a little affected by the recital of
my early trials, poverty, and temptation. It did not seem a very
good life when spread out in that presence, and I trembled as I
proceeded; but I plead youth, inexperience, and bad examples.
"Have you been accustomed," he said, after a time, rather sadly, "to
break the Sabbath?"
I told him frankly that I had been rather lax in that matter,
especially at college. I often went to sleep in the chapel on
Sunday, when I was not reading some entertaining book. He then asked
who the preacher was, and when I told him, he remarked that I was not
so much to blame as he had supposed.
"Have you," he went on, "ever stolen, or told any lie?"
I was able to say no, except admitting as to the first, usual college
"conveyances," and as to the last, an occasional "blinder" to the
professors. He was gracious enough to say that these could be
overlooked as incident to the occasion.
"Have you ever been dissipated, living riotously and keeping late
hours?"
"Yes."
This also could be forgiven me as an incident of youth.
"Did you ever," he went on, "commit the crime of using intoxicating
drinks as a beverage?"
I answered that I had never been a habitual drinker, that I had never
been what was called a "moderate drinker," that I had never gone to a
bar and drank alone; but that I had been accustomed, in company with
other young men, on convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of the
flowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had also tasted the
pains of it, and for months before my demise had refrained from
liquor altogether. The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection,
said this might also be overlooked in a young man.
"What," continued he, in tones still more serious, "has been your
conduct with regard to the other sex?"
I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom a
little book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "Don
Giovanni." There, I said, was a record of my flirtation and
inconstancy. I waited long for the decision, but it came in mercy.
"Rise," he cried; "young men will be young men, I suppose. We shall
forgive this also to your youth and penitence."
"Your examination is satisfactory, he informed me," after a pause;
"you can now enter the abodes of the happy."
Joy leaped within me. We approached the gate. The key turned in the
lock. The gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open. Out
flashed upon me unknown splendors. What I saw in that momentary
gleam I shall never whisper in mortal ears. I stood upon the
threshold, just about to enter.
"Stop! one moment," exclaimed St. Peter, laying his hand on my
shoulder; "I have one more question to ask you."
I turned toward him.
"Young man, did you ever use tobacco?"
"I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime," I faltered, "but..."
"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder.
Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled,
from the battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank in
a dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. The
light faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before,
for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sank
into thickening darkness,--and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashy
light more fearful.
In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran up
and down and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid,
black, terrible in its frowning massiveness.
Straightway I alighted at the gate,--a dismal crevice hewn into the
dripping rock. The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him at
once; who does not?--the Arch Enemy of mankind. He cocked his eye at
me in an impudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. I saw
that I was not to be treated like a gentleman.
"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face,"
what are you sent here for?
"For using tobacco," I replied.
"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's what
most of 'em are sent here for now."
Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within.
What a dreadful plain lay before me! There was a vast city laid out
in regular streets, but there were no houses. Along the streets were
places of torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable.
For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors through
these horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows of
fiery ovens. I noticed several immense caldron kettles of boiling
oil, upon the rims of which little devils sat, with pitchforks in
hand, and poked down the helpless victims who floundered in the
liquid. But I forbear to go into unseemly details. The whole scene
is as vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape.
After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of an
oven,--a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames.
They grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before the
blazing mouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE...."
I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set down
nothing that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of this
wonderful vision I have been obliged to omit.
Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off the
use of tobacco.
FIFTH STUDY
I
I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New England
winter. Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. But
skepticism comes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow,
one feels the foundations of his belief breaking up. This is only
another way of saying that it is more difficult, if it be not
impossible, to freeze out orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is
to thaw it out; though it is a mere fancy to suppose that this is the
reason why the martyrs, of all creeds, were burned at the stake.
There is said to be a great relaxation in New England of the ancient
strictness in the direction of toleration of opinion, called by some
a lowering of the standard, and by others a raising of the banner of
liberality; it might be an interesting inquiry how much this change
is due to another change,--the softening of the New England winter
and the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion nowadays to
refer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is a
gratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.
The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New England
winter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. It
is a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralize
society than any other. It is not necessary to remember that it
filled the silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over New
England every few days, and is in some portions of it the prevailing
wind. That it brings the soft clouds, and sometimes continues long
enough to almost deceive the expectant buds of the fruit trees, and
to tempt the robin from the secluded evergreen copses, may be
nothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engenders
discontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakened
imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know it we
become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change to
sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from the
plunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we are
braced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.
Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only a
fancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not
altogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used
to say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very
good woman, but her "temperature was very different from that of the
other two." The north wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina
of endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too if
there were a series of resolutions passed to that effect. The west
wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except
to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew.
The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling,
and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the
chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter.
The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate
suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modern
poetry,--at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air. I am not
sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of its
sweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when it
comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men "longen to gon on
pilgrimages."
I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to
do in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying
With Us, beginning,--
"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"
but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it was
exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only
rhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody can
write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many
poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a
south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very
fortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them. This
emotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went
away. I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;"
although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was;
and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she
meant Herbert by the "night-bird,"--a very absurd suggestion about
two unsentimental people. She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwards
told the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never put
into words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth.
And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tender
lonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in a
cloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is the death of sentiment.
But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the winds
do. Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor
and healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his
wholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, was
the east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is
only a querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistress
herself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of
blue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to apply what I have said
of the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a little
while Herbert was here.
II
In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, I
suppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical
seas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a great
woodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritable
New England winter raging outside. In order to get the highest
enjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mere
recipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to a
brisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences
minister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves.
There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a
delicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and
which convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and a
refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all
sentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into the
spiritual.
I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was
drawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of
pleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to
breast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration in
sharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with
stripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season under
bare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather in
which he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sun
on his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginning
their housekeeping.
A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have
private thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes
the robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little
suspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an early
spring.
I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory
and inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too,
not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy
color, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in
it, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon,
full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night. We
are very busy with our own affairs, but there is always something
going on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hour
before sunset that has not some special attraction. And, besides, it
puts one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire at
home.
Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on
their weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.
Almost no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea that
most people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know
what is best for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be any
better satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics.
Everybody knows our virtues,--at least if they believe half we tell
them,--and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look among
the girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and I
have traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee
Valley. Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of the
pretty girls in the West emigrated from New England. And yet--such
is the mystery of Providence--no one would expect that one of the
sweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing.
arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forth
from the edge of a snowbank at that.
It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousands
of people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a more
congenial one--or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and all
parts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate,
that one could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is it
worth while to waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasant
surroundings and in a constant friction with that which is
disagreeable? One would suppose that people set down on this little
globe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves. It must
be that they are much more content with the climate and country upon
which they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretend
to be.
III
Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter. Coming
in from my late walk,--in fact driven in by a hurrying north wind
that would brook no delay,--a wind that brought snow that did not
seem to fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polar
fields,--I find the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow of
philanthropic excitement.
There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Ameliorating
the Condition of somebody here at home. Any one can belong to it by
paying a dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a life
Ameliorator,--a sort of life assurance. The Mistress, at the
meeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is one
of the Vice-Presidents; and this family honor makes me feel almost as
if I were a president of something myself. These little distinctions
are among the sweetest things in life, and to see one's name
officially printed stimulates his charity, and is almost as
satisfactory as being the chairman of a committee or the mover of a
resolution. It is, I think, fortunate, and not at all discreditable,
that our little vanity, which is reckoned among our weaknesses, is
thus made to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers.
Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; and probably
there is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in the whisper,
"That's he," "That's she."
There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of the
Jews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other people
in ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up.
Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many people
who get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busy
in society, or to earn a little something in a good cause. They seem
to think that the world owes them a living because they are
philanthropists. In this Mandeville does not speak with his usual
charity. It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whose
condition needs ameliorating, and if very little is really
accomplished in the effort for them, it always remains true that the
charitable reap a benefit to themselves. It is one of the beautiful
compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help
another without helping himself.
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. Why is it that almost all philanthropists
and reformers are disagreeable?
I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is. He is the person
who comes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, as
his wife does also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinner
cup of tea before the fire. Formal society begins as soon as you
lock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bells
and servants. It is lucky for us that our next-door neighbor is
honest.
THE PARSON. Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?
Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all. They
are agitators. Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, they
wish to make it as unpleasant to others as possible.
MANDEVILLE. That's a noble view of your fellow-men.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt to
be unpleasant people to live with?
THE PARSON. As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their own
business were confined to the classes you mention! Some of the best
people I know are philanthropists,--I mean the genuine ones, and not
the uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It is not altogether the not minding their own
business. Nobody does that. The usual explanation is, that people
with one idea are tedious. But that is not all of it. For few
persons have more than one idea,--ministers, doctors, lawyers,
teachers, manufacturers, merchants,--they all think the world they
live in is the central one.
MANDEVILLE. And you might add authors. To them nearly all the life
of the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished if
they knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people are
occupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation which
is the vital current of the world to book-men. Newspapers have
reached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflecting
all the interests of the world.
THE MISTRESS. I have noticed one thing, that the most popular
persons in society are those who take the world as it is, find the
least fault, and have no hobbies. They are always wanted to dinner.
THE YOUNG LADY. And the other kind always appear to me to want a
dinner.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It seems to me that the real reason why reformers
and some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb our
serenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings. It is only
now and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor,
of investigation and regeneration. At other times they rather hate
those who disturb their quiet.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Professional reformers and philanthropists are
insufferably conceited and intolerant.
THE MISTRESS. Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reform
or a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.
MANDEVILLE. I attended a protracted convention of reformers of a
certain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with a
tableful of them. It was one of those country dinners accompanied
with green tea. Every one disagreed with every one else, and you
would n't wonder at it, if you had seen them. They were people with
whom good food wouldn't agree. George Thompson was expected at the
convention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in the
talk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned that
George took snuff,--when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up from
the table. One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbons
in her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared that
she was perfectly disgusted, and did n't want to hear him speak. In
the course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children,
and how to administer punishment. I was quite taken by the remark of
a thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in a
harsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" It sounded as if he had
said, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"
THE PARSON. I supposed you would say that he was a minister. There
is another thing about those people. I think they are working
against the course of nature. Nature is entirely indifferent to any
reform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.
There's a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued
for many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nail
resume its old regularity. You see the same thing in trees whose
bark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer's intimacy
with squashes. The bad traits in character are passed down from
generation to generation with as much care as the good ones. Nature,
unaided, never reforms anything.
MANDEVILLE. Is that the essence of Calvinism?
THE PARSON. Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact.
MANDEVILLE. When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism and
calomel together. I thought that homeopathy--similia, etc.--had done
away with both of them.
OUR NEXT DOOR (rising). If you are going into theology, I'm off..
IV
I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. In
order to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed that
the lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind
rages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the
community. The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon
country folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than
that caused by a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-storm
that grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always
the half-hope that this will be, since it has gone so far, the
largest fall of snow ever known in the region, burying out of sight
the great fall of 1808, the account of which is circumstantially and
aggravatingly thrown in our way annually upon the least provocation.
We all know how it reads: "Some said it began at daylight, others
that it set in after sunrise; but all agree that by eight o'clock
Friday morning it was snowing in heavy masses that darkened the air."
The morning after we settled the five--or is it seven?--points of
Calvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of those
wide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,
but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of
the personal qualities of the weather,--power, persistency,
fierceness, and roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to those
who looked out of windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the
commotion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of the low
evergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breast
and conquer the bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which was not
permitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it sometimes
does, but was blown and rent and tossed like the split canvas of a
ship in a gale. The world was taken possession of by the demons of
the air, who had their will of it. There is a sort of fascination in
such a scene, equal to that of a tempest at sea, and without its
attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear that the house
will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimly
seen anchored across the field; at every thundering onset there is no
fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break loose and
smash through the side, and we are not in momently expectation of the
tinkling of the little bell to "stop her." The snow rises in
drifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but so
long as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do not
go, we preserve an equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen than
the failure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed,
the little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world's
daily bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred from
coming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the
trifling, harmless gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion on
such a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm and
come is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival in
pleasant weather would never excite. The snow-bound in their Arctic
hulk are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau.
On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern New
England hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no
sunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the
while dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of the
noise of the rioting Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated,
the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the
first-story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted before
the front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling the
bank.
After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sun
struggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and
the scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the
tempest and half buried in sand. But when the blue sky again bent
over all, the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and
the chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful was the
picture! Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open up
communication through roads, or fields, or wherever paths could be
broken, and the ways to the meeting-house first of all. Then from
every house and hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with the
patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads,
driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as if the
severe labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarity
rising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meeting
at length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each
other as chance explorers in new lands, and made the whole
country-side ring with the noise of their congratulations. There was
as much excitement and healthy stirring of the blood in it as in the
Fourth of July, and perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it in
dumb show from the distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were
a man. At night there were great stories of achievement told by the
cavernous fireplace; great latitude was permitted in the estimation
of the size of particular drifts, but never any agreement was reached
as to the "depth on a level." I have observed since that people are
quite as apt to agree upon the marvelous and the exceptional as upon
simple facts.
V
By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a
letter to Herbert,--writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming
thus the simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says that
it is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes.
He begins to doubt the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm
about absence conquering love.
Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend
absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.
Mandeville begins to wish he were in New South Wales.
I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young Lady,
--obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which get
into print always are,--not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but
to show how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected by
the master passion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in the
interests of science one has no right to make an autopsy of two
loving hearts, especially when they are suffering under a late attack
of the one agreeable epidemic.
All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in
his extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he has
something of the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even
like to show the sincerity of his devotion by some piece of open
heroism. Why should he conceal a discovery which has transformed the
world to him, a secret which explains all the mysteries of nature and
human-ity? He is in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those who
were never orators before to rise in an experience-meeting and pour
out a flood of feeling in the tritest language and the most
conventional terms. I am not sure that Herbert, while in this glow,
would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this is one of the cases
where chancery would step in and protect one from himself by his next
friend. This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutal
to allude to it at all.
In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love has
a marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplest
words with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the power
they had when first coined. They are words of fire to those two who
know their secret, but not to others. It is generally admitted that
the best love-letters would not make very good literature.
"Dearest," begins Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously
selecting a word whose exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one,
and which is a whole letter, poem, confession, and creed in one
breath. What a weight of meaning it has to carry! There may be
beauty and wit and grace and naturalness and even the splendor of
fortune elsewhere, but there is one woman in the world whose sweet
presence would be compensation for the loss of all else. It is not
to be reasoned about; he wants that one; it is her plume dancing down
the sunny street that sets his heart beating; he knows her form among
a thousand, and follows her; he longs to run after her carriage,
which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. It is marvelous to
him that all the world does not want her too, and he is in a panic
when he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in that little
word addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph she
repeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity for
those who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all the
available world--it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "All
that long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of you
every moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you were
looking just that moment, and I found the occupation so charming that
I was almost sorry when the journey was ended." Not much in that!
But I have no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, and dwelt
also upon every moment, and found in it new proof of unshaken
constancy, and had in that and the like things in the letter a sense
of the sweetest communion. There is nothing in this letter that we
need dwell on it, but I am convinced that the mail does not carry any
other letters so valuable as this sort.
I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new light
unconsciously gave tone a little to the evening's talk; not that
anybody mentioned him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing from
the qualities that make one person admired by another to those that
win the love of mankind.
MANDEVILLE. There seems to be something in some persons that wins
them liking, special or general, independent almost of what they do
or say.
THE MISTRESS. Why, everybody is liked by some one.
MANDEVILLE. I'm not sure of that. There are those who are
friendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances. But, to
take the case away from ordinary examples, in which habit and a
thousand circumstances influence liking, what is it that determines
the world upon a personal regard for authors whom it has never seen?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.
THE MISTRESS. More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believe
that the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author who
was not loved by those who knew him most intimately.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Which comes to the same thing. The qualities, the
spirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into his
books.
MANDEVILLE. That does n't seem to me sufficient. Shakespeare has
put everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of
human sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the
sweetest spirit that ever man had.
THE YOUNG LADY. No one has better interpreted love.
MANDEVILLE. Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personal
regard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,--except
they stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thought
that the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.
THE PARSON. I don't think the world cares personally for any mere
man or woman dead for centuries.
MANDEVILLE. But there is a difference. I think there is still
rather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he
said, which is little known. Homer's works are certainly better
known, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for any
other shade.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Why not go back to Moses? We've got the evening
before us for digging up people.
MANDEVILLE. Moses is a very good illustration. No name of antiquity
is better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind of
popular liking that Socrates does.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly and
propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be.
Mandeville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the
Fijis.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How do you account for the alleged personal regard
for Socrates?
THE PARSON. Because the world called Christian is still more than
half heathen.
MANDEVILLE. He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people;
he had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely.
Franklin and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class. They were all
philosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor. It was
fortunate for Lincoln that, with his other qualities, he was homely.
That was the last touching recommendation to the popular heart.
THE MISTRESS. Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.
Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint,
patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or the
homely stone image of one, so loved by the people.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.
Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and put
up his statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincoln
in Union Square look beautiful.
THE PARSON. Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museum
there illustrating the "Science of Religion."
THE FIRE-TENDER. Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of,
the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with an
affectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that this
grows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything in
their writings. There seems to be more disposition of personal
liking to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,--a result
that would hardly have been predicted when the world was crying over
Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.
THE YOUNG LADY. What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb,
the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for him
somewhat independent of his writings?
MANDEVILLE. He is a striking example of an author who is loved.
Very likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still something
to do with the tenderness felt for him. He supported no dignity and
permitted a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of his
real rank in the world of letters. I have heard that his
acquaintances familiarly called him "Charley."
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to know
what Socrates was called?
MANDEVILLE. I have seen people who knew Lamb very well. One of them
told me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was going
home late one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by a
roystering party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern.
They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitating
manner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off,
singing as they went. Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them
who he was. When they were tired of lugging him, they lifted him,
with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and left
him there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down. Lamb
remained there philosophically in the enjoyment of his novel
adventure, until a passing watchman rescued him from his ridiculous
situation.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How did the story get out?
MANDEVILLE. Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when asked
afterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in it
unless he told it.
SIXTH STUDY
I
The King sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was a
fire on the hearth burning before him . . . . When Jehudi had
read three or four leaves he cut it with the penknife.
That seems to be a pleasant and home-like picture from a not very
remote period,--less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and many
centuries after the fall of Troy. And that was not so very long ago,
for Thebes, in the splendid streets of which Homer wandered and sang
to the kings when Memphis, whose ruins are older than history, was
its younger rival, was twelve centuries old when Paris ran away with
Helen.
I am sorry that the original--and you can usually do anything with
the "original"--does not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasant
picture. I should like to believe that Jehoiakiin--for that was the
singular name of the gentleman who sat by his hearthstone--had just
received the Memphis "Palimpsest," fifteen days in advance of the
date of its publication, and that his secretary was reading to him
that monthly, and cutting its leaves as he read. I should like to
have seen it in that year when Thales was learning astronomy in
Memphis, and Necho was organizing his campaign against Carchemish.
If Jehoiakim took the "Attic Quarterly," he might have read its
comments on the banishment of the Alcmaeonida, and its gibes at
Solon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents,
limiting the luxury of dress, and interfering with the sacred rights
of mourners to passionately bewail the dead in the Asiatic manner;
the same number being enriched with contributions from two rising
poets,--a lyric of love by Sappho, and an ode sent by Anacreon from
Teos, with an editorial note explaining that the Maces was not
responsible for the sentiments of the poem.
But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the backlog in his
winter-house had other things to think of. For Nebuchadnezzar was
coming that way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and a great
crowd of marauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whether
he would be the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. To us,
this is only a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalking
across vast historic spaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough scene
of war and plunder. The great captains of that age went about to
harry each other's territories and spoil each other's cities very
much as we do nowadays, and for similar reasons;--Napoleon the Great
in Moscow, Napoleon the Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris,
Great Scott in Mexico! Men have not changed much.
--The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the third month; there
was a fire on the hearth burning before him. He cut the leaves of
"Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim.
That seems as real as the other. In the garden, which is a room of
the house, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about the
fountain; the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines the
many-hued flowers. I wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug on
his passion-vine, and if he had any way of removing the scale-bug
from his African acacia? One would like to know, too, how he treated
the red spider on the Le Marque rose. The record is silent. I do
not doubt he had all these insects in his winter-garden, and the
aphidae besides; and he could not smoke them out with tobacco, for
the world had not yet fallen into its second stage of the knowledge
of good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant.
I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so many
centuries ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhat
misty past. No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grew
in that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted--the most
difficult thing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers from
Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through this
ancient fireplace,--which is a sort of domestic window into the
ancient world,--in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court of
the Pharaohs. I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment
--perhaps it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul has,
sooner or later, from isolation--which grew up between Herbert and
the Young Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that
fireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to be
sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the
play that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!" Yet we
like the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes the
pottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense with
the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the
grumblers are of two sorts,--the healthful-toned and the whiners.
There are makers of beer who substitute for the clean bitter of the
hops some deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by some
cloying sweet. There is nothing of this sickish drug in the Parson's
talk, nor was there in that of Jeremiah, I sometimes think there is
scarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in modern society. The
Parson says he never would give a child sugar-coated pills.
Mandeville says he never would give them any. After all, you cannot
help liking Mandeville.
II
We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem. The Fire-Tender
was saying that it is astonishing how much is telegraphed us
from the East that is not half so interesting. He was at a loss
philosophically to account for the fact that the world is so eager to
know the news of yesterday which is unimportant, and so indifferent
to that of the day before which is of some moment.
MANDEVILLE. I suspect that it arises from the want of imagination.
People need to touch the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity.
It would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege of Jerusalem
in a village where the event was unknown, if the date was appended;
and yet the account of it is incomparably more exciting than that of
the siege of Metz.
OUR NEXT DOOR. The daily news is a necessity. I cannot get along
without my morning paper. The other morning I took it up, and was
absorbed in the telegraphic columns for an hour nearly. I thoroughly
enjoyed the feeling of immediate contact with all the world of
yesterday, until I read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue,
of the city of New York, died of a sunstroke. If he had frozen to
death, I should have enjoyed that; but to die of sunstroke in
February seemed inappropriate, and I turned to the date of the paper.
When I found it was printed in July, I need not say that I lost all
interest in it, though why the trivialities and crimes and accidents,
relating to people I never knew, were not as good six months after
date as twelve hours, I cannot say.
THE FIRE-TENDER. You know that in Concord the latest news, except a
remark or two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. I believe the
Rig-Veda is read at the breakfast-table instead of the Boston
journals.
THE PARSON. I know it is read afterward instead of the Bible.
MANDEVILLE. That is only because it is supposed to be older. I have
understood that the Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is not
antiquated enough to be an authority.
OUR NEXT DOOR. There was a project on foot to put it into the
circulating library, but the title New in the second part was
considered objectionable.
HERBERT. Well, I have a good deal of sympathy with Concord as to the
news. We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, of
the unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and women, until our mental
digestion is seriously impaired; the day will come when no one will
be able to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book and assimilate
its contents.
THE MISTRESS. I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in the
higher sense of the word.
THE PARSON. Nobody supposes it is to women,--that is, if they can
see each other.
THE MISTRESS. Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say;
though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that the
minister does not know. The newspaper may be needed in society, but
how quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds of
what is called civilization. You remember when we were in the depths
of the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interest
in the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all the
struggle and turmoil of the world seemed. We stood apart, and could
estimate things at their true value.
THE YOUNG LADY. Yes, that was real life. I never tired of the
guide's stories; there was some interest in the intelligence that a
deer had been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake the
night before; that a bear's track was seen on the trail we crossed
that day; even Mandeville's fish-stories had a certain air of
probability; and how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve him hot
and juicy and clean, and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and heat
dish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems.
THE PARSON. You would have had no such problems at home. Why will
people go so far to put themselves to such inconvenience? I hate the
woods. Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited as
those who dwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone.
THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I feel humble in the presence of
mountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness.
THE PARSON. I'll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody would
expect her to feel, under given circumstances.
MANDEVILLE. I think the reason why the newspaper and the world it
carries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kind
of vegetable ourselves when we go there. I have often attempted to
improve my mind in the woods with good solid books. You might as
well offer a bunch of celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep:
the senses and the instincts wake up. The best I can do when it
rains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels. Their
ingenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by the
camp-fire. And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; the
history is as good as the morality.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I always wondered where Mandeville got his historical
facts.
THE MISTRESS. Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods. I
heard him one night repeat "The Vision of Sir Launfal"--(THE
FIRE-TENDER. Which comes very near being our best poem.)--as we were
crossing the lake, and the guides became so absorbed in it that they
forgot to paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as if it had
been a panther story.
THE PARSON. Mandeville likes to show off well enough. I heard that
he related to a woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy.
The boy was very much interested, and said "there'd been a man up
there that spring from Troy, looking up timber." Mandeville always
carries the news when he goes into the country.
MANDEVILLE. I'm going to take the Parson's sermon on Jonah next
summer; it's the nearest to anything like news we've had from his
pulpit in ten years. But, seriously, the boy was very well informed.
He'd heard of Albany; his father took in the "Weekly Tribune," and he
had a partial conception of Horace Greeley.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I never went so far out of the world in America yet
that the name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up before me. One of
the first questions asked by any camp-fire is, "Did ye ever see
Horace?"
HERBERT. Which shows the power of the press again. But I have often
remarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is,
people in remote regions get from the newspaper. It needs to be read
in the midst of events. A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tells
no tale of the force and swiftness of the current.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I don't exactly get the drift of that last remark;
but I rather like a remark that I can't understand; like the
landlady's indigestible bread, it stays by you.
HERBERT. I see that I must talk in words of one syllable. The
newspaper has little effect upon the remote country mind, because the
remote country mind is interested in a very limited number of things.
Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited. The most accomplished
scholar will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, because he
cannot follow a trail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trappers
call it).
THE PARSON. It's enough to read the summer letters that people write
to the newspapers from the country and the woods. Isolated from the
activity of the world, they come to think that the little adventures
of their stupid days and nights are important. Talk about that being
real life! Compare the letters such people write with the other
contents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.
That's one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters set
in.
THE MISTRESS. I should like to see something the Parson does n't
hate to have come.
MANDEVILLE. Except his quarter's salary; and the meeting of the
American Board.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I don't see that we are getting any nearer the
solution of the original question. The world is evidently interested
in events simply because they are recent.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I have a theory that a newspaper might be published
at little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before,
only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over his
sermons.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It's evident we must have a higher order of
news-gatherers. It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishes
thought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to
day the themes the world shall think on and talk about. The
occupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important.
When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department should
not be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars,
philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of the
world that is worth thinking over and talking about. The editorial
comments frequently are able enough, but is it worth while keeping an
expensive mill going to grind chaff? I sometimes wonder, as I open
my morning paper, if nothing did happen in the twenty-four hours
except crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers,
robberies, monstrous births,--say about the level of police-court
news.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated;
they are not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It is true that the newspapers have improved vastly
within the last decade.
HERBERT. I think, for one, that they are very much above the level
of the ordinary gossip of the country.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But I am tired of having the under-world still
occupy so much room in the newspapers. The reporters are rather more
alert for a dog-fight than a philological convention. It must be
that the good deeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day;
and what a good reflex action it would have on society if they could
be more fully reported than the bad! I suppose the Parson would call
this the Enthusiasm of Humanity.
THE PARSON. You'll see how far you can lift yourself up by your
boot-straps.
HERBERT. I wonder what influence on the quality (I say nothing of
quantity) of news the coming of women into the reporter's and
editor's work will have.
OUR NEXT DOOR. There are the baby-shows; they make cheerful reading.
THE MISTRESS. All of them got up by speculating men, who impose upon
the vanity of weak women.
HERBERT. I think women reporters are more given to personal details
and gossip than the men. When I read the Washington correspondence I
am proud of my country, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises,
how much marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine locks, we have
in the two houses of Congress.
THE YOUNG LADY. That's simply because women understand the personal
weakness of men; they have a long score of personal flattery to pay
off too.
MANDEVILLE. I think women will bring in elements of brightness,
picturesqueness, and purity very much needed. Women have a power of
investing simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bungling
narrators compared with them.
THE PARSON. The mistake they make is in trying to write, and
especially to "stump-speak," like men; next to an effeminate man
there is nothing so disagreeable as a mannish woman.
HERBERT. I heard one once address a legislative committee. The
knowing air, the familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding and
winking innuendoes, supposed to be those of a man "up to snuff," and
au fait in political wiles, were inexpressibly comical. And yet the
exhibition was pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of a
woman in man's clothes. The imitation is always a dreary failure.
THE MISTRESS. Such women are the rare exceptions. I am ready to
defend my sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I have great hope that women will bring into the
newspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life of
society is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than the
exceptional and extravagant. I confess (saving the Mistress's
presence) that the evening talk over the dessert at dinner is much
more entertaining and piquant than the morning paper, and often as
important.
THE MISTRESS. I think the subject had better be changed.
MANDEVILLE. The person, not the subject. There is no entertainment
so full of quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cultivation and
refinement relate her day's experience in her daily rounds of calls,
charitable visits, shopping, errands of relief and condolence. The
evening budget is better than the finance minister's.
OUR NEXT DOOR. That's even so. My wife will pick up more news in
six hours than I can get in a week, and I'm fond of news.
MANDEVILLE. I don't mean gossip, by any means, or scandal. A woman
of culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with the
tip of a wing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightness
of life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off a
character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without
tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles,
but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity,
and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we could
only have on the stage such actresses as we have in the drawing-room!
THE FIRE-TENDER. We want something more of this grace,
sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life of society in the
newspaper.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder Mandeville does n't marry, and become a
permanent subscriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper.
THE YOUNG LADY. Perhaps he does not relish the idea of being unable
to stop his subscription.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give us
more blaze? we are getting into the darkness of socialism.
III
Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending the
winter with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to be
a winter month. It usually is in New England, and April too, for
that matter. And I cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There are
so many topics to be turned over and settled at our fireside that a
winter of ordinary length would make little impression on the list.
The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery,
where nothing ever does come to a final decision. The chief effect
of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in
fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed
into conviction by the heat of attack and defence. A man left to
himself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake; it is only when the
wind blows that the boat goes anywhere.
Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written by
women, here and there, with a view to noting the effect upon
literature of this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it.
There was a good deal of talk about it evening after evening, off and
on, and I can only undertake to set down fragments of it.
HERBERT. I should say that the distinguishing feature of the
literature of this day is the prominence women have in its
production. They figure in most of the magazines, though very rarely
in the scholarly and critical reviews, and in thousands of
newspapers; to them we are indebted for the oceans of Sunday-school
books, and they write the majority of the novels, the serial stories,
and they mainly pour out the watery flood of tales in the weekly
papers. Whether this is to result in more good than evil it is
impossible yet to say, and perhaps it would be unjust to say, until
this generation has worked off its froth, and women settle down to
artistic, conscientious labor in literature.
THE MISTRESS. You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs.
Gaskell, and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage and
severe attack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporary
men novelists and poets.
HERBERT. You name some exceptions that show the bright side of the
picture, not only for the present, but for the future. Perhaps
genius has no sex; but ordinary talent has. I refer to the great
body of novels, which you would know by internal evidence were
written by women. They are of two sorts: the domestic story,
entirely unidealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel; and the
spiced novel, generally immoral in tendency, in which the social
problems are handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and passional
attraction, bigamy, and the violation of the seventh commandment.
These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, without any settled
ethics, with little discrimination of eternal right and wrong, and
with very little sense of responsibility for what is set forth. Many
of these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a nature impatient
of restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are as chaotic
as the untrained minds that produce them.
MANDEVILLE. Don't you think these novels fairly represent a social
condition of unrest and upheaval?
HERBERT. Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad the
discontent they describe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised by
divorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through an
entire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneaking
lover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls,
who were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, melt
and mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful reading
for maids or mothers.
THE MISTRESS. Or men.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The most disagreeable object to me in modern
literature is the man the women novelists have introduced as the
leading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to be
fascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal
manner. He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as
lithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in
the four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had a
harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished as
Bayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in the
library; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can be
instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not his wife's; and
through all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pure
as a violet.
THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elder
brother of Rochester?
THE FIRE-TENDER. One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meant
for a real man.
MANDEVILLE. I don't see that the men novel-writers are better than
the women.
HERBERT. That's not the question; but what are women who write so
large a proportion of the current stories bringing into literature?
Aside from the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizing
manner of treating social questions, most of their stories are vapid
and weak beyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showing
neither study, training, nor mental discipline.
THE MISTRESS. Considering that women have been shut out from the
training of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wide
observation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremost
living writers of fiction are women?
HERBERT. You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray and
Dickens have just died. But it does not affect the general
estimate. We are inundated with a flood of weak writing. Take the
Sunday-school literature, largely the product of women; it has n't as
much character as a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are coming to
if the presses keep on running.
OUR NEXT DOOR. We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful
time; I'm glad I don't write novels.
THE PARSON. So am I.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made the
good boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; and
the publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand that
sort of thing. Nobody but the good go to Congress.
THE MISTRESS. Herbert, what do you think women are good for?
OUR NEXT DOOR. That's a poser.
HERBERT. Well, I think they are in a tentative state as to
literature, and we cannot yet tell what they will do. Some of our
most brilliant books of travel, correspondence, and writing on topics
in which their sympathies have warmly interested them, are by women.
Some of them are also strong writers in the daily journals.
MANDEVILLE. I 'm not sure there's anything a woman cannot do as well
as a man, if she sets her heart on it.
THE PARSON. That's because she's no conscience.
CHORUS. O Parson!
THE PARSON. Well, it does n't trouble her, if she wants to do
anything. She looks at the end, not the means. A woman, set on
anything, will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.
She'd be a great deal more unscrupulous in politics than the average
man. Did you ever see a female lobbyist? Or a criminal? It is Lady
Macbeth who does not falter. Don't raise your hands at me! The
sweetest angel or the coolest devil is a woman. I see in some of the
modern novels we have been talking of the same unscrupulous daring, a
blindness to moral distinctions, a constant exaltation of a passion
into a virtue, an entire disregard of the immutable laws on which the
family and society rest. And you ask lawyers and trustees how
scrupulous women are in business transactions!
THE FIRE-TENDER. Women are often ignorant of affairs, and, besides,
they may have a notion often that a woman ought to be privileged more
than a man in business matters; but I tell you, as a rule, that if
men would consult their wives, they would go a deal straighter in
business operations than they do go.
THE PARSON. We are all poor sinners. But I've another indictment
against the women writers. We get no good old-fashioned love-stories
from them. It's either a quarrel of discordant natures one a
panther, and the other a polar bear--for courtship, until one of them
is crippled by a railway accident; or a long wrangle of married life
between two unpleasant people, who can neither live comfortably
together nor apart. I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing,
with all its torturing and delightful uncertainty, still goes on in
the world; and I have no doubt that the majority of married people
live more happily than the unmarried. But it's easier to find a dodo
than a new and good love-story.
MANDEVILLE. I suppose the old style of plot is exhausted.
Everything in man and outside of him has been turned over so often
that I should think the novelists would cease simply from want of
material.
THE PARSON. Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is
a new creation, and combinations are simply endless. Even if we did
not have new material in the daily change of society, and there were
only a fixed number of incidents and characters in life, invention
could not be exhausted on them. I amuse myself sometimes with my
kaleidoscope, but I can never reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannot
say that you may not exhaust everything else: we may get all the
secrets of a nature into a book by and by, but the novel is immortal,
for it deals with men.
The Parson's vehemence came very near carrying him into a sermon; and
as nobody has the privilege of replying to his sermons, so none of
the circle made any reply now.
Our Next Door mumbled something about his hair standing on end, to
hear a minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt the
general silence. Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire;
it would be intolerable if they sat and looked at each other.
The wind had risen during the evening, and Mandeville remarked, as
they rose to go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it was as cold
as winter. The Mistress said she heard a bird that morning singing
in the sun a spring song, it was a winter bird, but it sang.
SEVENTH STUDY
We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival.
We have spent I don't know how many evenings in looking over
Herbert's plans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vain
efforts to cover with Gothic roofs the vast number of large rooms
which the Young Lady draws in her sketch of a small house.
I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinite
modification, so that every house built in that style may be as
different from every other house as one tree is from every other, can
be adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch its
spirit instead of merely copying its old forms. But just now we are
taking the Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time,
or as we should probably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors had
not been colored. Not even the cholera is so contagious in this
country as a style of architecture which we happen to catch; the
country is just now broken out all over with the Mansard-roof
epidemic.
And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to our
climate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt that
which is suited to our religion.
We are building a great many costly churches here and there, we
Protestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms of
worship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religion
in order to save our investments. I am aware that this would be a
grave step, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther and
the right of private judgment without reflection. And yet, if it is
necessary to revive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not in
its spirit (that we nowhere do), but in the form which served another
age and another faith, and if, as it appears, we have already a great
deal of money invested in this reproduction, it may be more prudent
to go forward than to go back. The question is, "Cannot one easier
change his creed than his pew?"
I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection,
but I cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like to
call the apse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column,
right in front of me, and I am as much protected from the minister as
Old Put's troops were from the British, behind the stone wall at
Bunker's Hill. I can hear his voice occasionally wandering round in
the arches overhead, and I recognize the tone, because he is a friend
of mine and an excellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldom
make out. If there was any incense burning, I could smell it, and
that would be something. I rather like the smell of incense, and it
has its holy associations. But there is no smell in our church,
except of bad air,--for there is no provision for ventilation in the
splendid and costly edifice. The reproduction of the old Gothic is
so complete that the builders even seem to have brought over the
ancient air from one of the churches of the Middle Ages,--you would
declare it had n't been changed in two centuries.
I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man,
who stands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behind
him in order to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space
(where the altar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes the
place of the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large,
and send it echoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear a
minister who is unfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice,
try to fill the edifice. The more he roars and gives himself with
vehemence to the effort, the more the building roars in
indistinguishable noise and hubbub. By the time he has said (to
suppose a case), "The Lord is in his holy temple," and has passed on
to say, "let all the earth keep silence," the building is repeating
"The Lord is in his holy temple" from half a dozen different angles
and altitudes, rolling it and growling it, and is not keeping silence
at all. A man who understands it waits until the house has had its
say, and has digested one passage, before he launches another into
the vast, echoing spaces. I am expected, as I said, to fix my eye
and mind on the minister, the central point of the service. But the
pillar hides him. Now if there were several ministers in the church,
dressed in such gorgeous colors that I could see them at the distance
from the apse at which my limited income compels me to sit, and
candles were burning, and censers were swinging, and the platform was
full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual worship, and a bell
rang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mind the pillar at
all. I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy it. But, as
I have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I like to look at
him on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always says something
worth hearing. I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are, that
it would be pleasant to have the service of a little more social
nature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, and
set him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance,
scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a
trifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregations
do not "enjoy their religion" in their splendid edifices which cost
so much money and are really so beautiful.
A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic
architecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing.
Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or
to cushion a pulpit. It may be, and it may not be.
Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religious
experience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may have
had its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good.
Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century
ecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it
has attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churches
more violently than any others. We have had it here in its most
beautiful and dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much all of
us supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasm
in this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see our
rich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individual
amusement and sanctification. As the day will probably come when
every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story
granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect that
every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to be
discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to the
Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in New
England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for private
devotion.
There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside and
outside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it even
that "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything
else to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy
that for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church
in the city. Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,
--a beautiful little edifice. The committee forgot to make any more
provision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty
well-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time. The
Sunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustom
the children to bad air before they go into the church. The poor little
dears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world break
on them too suddenly. If the stranger noticed any lack about our
church, it would be that of a spire. There is a place for one;
indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped,
with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root. It
is a mistake however, to suppose that we do not know that the church
has what the profane here call a "stump-tail" appearance. But the
profane are as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic. All
the Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries. That at Milan
is scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the Cologne
cathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt if it
would be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We can
tell cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and not
a minute before. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do,
who are to build near us. I, for one, think we had better wait and
see how high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up. The church
is everything that could be desired inside. There is the nave, with
its lofty and beautiful arched ceiling; there are the side aisles,
and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so as to be a perfect
imitation of stucco; there is the apse, with its stained glass and
exquisite lines; and there is an organ-loft over the front entrance,
with a rose window. Nothing was wanting, so far as we could see,
except that we should adapt ourselves to the circumstances; and that
we have been trying to do ever since. It may be well to relate how
we do it, for the benefit of other inchoate Goths.
It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide
the beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregational
singing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof,
like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing. We
therefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it
than to satisfy our Gothic cravings. As for choir,--several of the
singers of the church volunteered to sit together in the front
side-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantly
rallied round a melodeon,--or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,--a
charming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping
with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real Gothic edifice.
It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have all
been looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard a
melodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in the
finest churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing.
And it went very well indeed. One of the advantages of pure
congregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whether
you have a voice or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can
do the same. It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices
there is, even among good people. But we enjoy it. If you do not
enjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.
So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it was
difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk
in the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation;
still, we could most of us see him on a clear day. The church was
admirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was very
favorable to them. When you sat in the centre of the house, it
sometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.
It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So is
assisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal
Reverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister's
voice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no
one up there, some of his best things were lost. We also had a
notion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It would
have been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirs
usually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any other
part of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of screen over the
organ-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped. We
next devised a sounding-board,--a sort of mammoth clamshell, painted
white,--and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect on
the minister. It kept him up straight to his work. So long as he
kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did not
return to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babel
of clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for him to splurge
about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raised
his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to be
drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he could hear
the congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs,
whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him,
and poured into his ears.
But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to bolder
measures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides,
those who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon.
There are depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is called
a cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound.
The melodeon was not, originally, designed for the Gothic worship.
We determined to have an organ, and we speculated whether, by
erecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that elegant portion of
the church, and compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and go out
over the pews. It would of course do something to efface the main
beauty of a Gothic church; but something must be done, and we began a
series of experiments to test the probable effects of putting the
organ and choir behind the minister. We moved the desk to the very
front of the platform, and erected behind it a high, square board
screen, like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds. This
did help matters. The minister spoke with more ease, and we could
hear him better. If the screen had been intended to stay there, we
should have agitated the subject of painting it. But this was only
an experiment.
Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteer
singers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,--some twenty of them
crowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. It
seemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people in
the congregation,--much to the injury of the congregation, of course,
as seen from the platform. There are few congregations that can
stand this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any;
yet it devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility of
looking as well as we can.
The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when
the screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. We
could not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain
as day. We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting the
high screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as it
was before. This would make the singers invisible,--"though lost to
sight, to memory dear,"--what is sometimes called an "angel choir,"
when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the most
subdued and religious effect. It is often so in cathedrals.
This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform,
all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the
minister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them,
studying all the faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits up
very straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why
he does n't sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is age
or family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a
hymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look at
the bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whether
we are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why he
doesn't let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why he
does n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, we
would like to know what it is about. And, then, suppose any of the
singers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown's
troches, and pass them round! Suppose the singers, more or less of
them, should sneeze!
Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will,
should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all our
attention from the minister, and would do so if they were the
homeliest people in the world. We must try something else.
It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idle
one.
EIGHTH STUDY
I
Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannot
but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to have
an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to
say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de Lion
Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."
A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after
Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in
others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there are
some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it
that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few
remaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of
them.
No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in a
suit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would be
as ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. The pit which
recognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him,
and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian
comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths
the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes,
the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love
of the traditionary drama not to titter.
If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us
from the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the
Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it must
have been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip
Sidney. That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think,
especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallants
of the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the golden
days of the drama. When a part of the audience sat on the stage, and
gentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, to
speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have
been very strong.
Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as
Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of
a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting
into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits
and associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity
and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what is
called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but
the advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some time
cast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples,
like the propositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama of
to-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume and
speech, and which touches the affections, the passions, the humor, of
the present time. The brilliant success of the few good plays that
have been written out of the rich life which we now live--the most
varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive--ought to rid us
forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular
curiosity.
We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. stalking about
in impossible clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if they
want to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours"
or "Rip Van Winkle." There will probably be some orator for years
and years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking,
Where is Thebes? but he does not care anything about it, and he does
not really expect an answer. I have sometimes wished I knew the
exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stop
that question, at any rate. It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.
If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find that
the putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makes
them act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.
An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot be
made to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricatures
and discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomed
clothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferable
than he would otherwise be. Dressed appropriately for parts for
which he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. What I mean
is, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity of
him and his part more apparent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as
in fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious.
Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage? Yes; but
let them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let us
have done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient and
modern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and the
whole theatre a painful pretension. We do not expect the modern
theatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turned
over to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), but
it may give amusement instead of torture, and do a little in
satirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.
This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one in
particular is responsible for it; and in this it is like public
opinion. The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatre
was the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in his
denunciation of the stage altogether.
MANDEVILLE. Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertains
us as mimicry, the personation of character. We enjoy it in private.
I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character
of grumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don't
know but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of the
priests, who once controlled it.
THE PARSON. Scoffer!
MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, cleared
of all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior,
all the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners of
times that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with living
characters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culture
that are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where all
the performers were persons of cultivation, that....
OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful,
commend me to amateur theatricals. I have passed some melancholy
hours at them.
MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stage
plays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on the
stage. It is not always so.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has got
into a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed
to be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in a
recognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse
from within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of
turning out a piece of literary work. That's the reason we
have so much poetry that impresses one like sets of faultless
cabinet-furniture made by machinery.
THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting
or in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone.
Amateur acting--they get it up at church sociables nowadays--is apt
to be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is the
Devil's art.
THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amusement?
MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.
THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fashion of the
day to amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.
HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about the
stage is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of the
world; the stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience.
Assumed dress on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makes
people no more constrained and self-conscious than it does off the
stage.
THE MISTRESS. What sarcasm is coming now?
HERBERT. Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to good
clothes yet. The majority do not wear them with ease. People who
only put on their best on rare and stated occasions step into an
artificial feeling.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it so
difficult to get hold of his congregation.
HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality and
vapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in a
manner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of
vivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each other
perfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in
their ordinary apparel. But nothing can be more artificial than the
behavior of people together who rarely "dress up." It seems
impossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so it
dies in a kind of inane helplessness. Especially is this true in the
country, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothes
that those who live in the city have. It is really absurd, at this
stage of our civilization, that we should be so affected by such an
insignificant accident as dress. Perhaps Mandeville can tell us
whether this clothes panic prevails in the older societies.
THE PARSON. Don't. We've heard it; about its being one of the
Englishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down to
dinner without a dress-coat, and all that.
THE MISTRESS. I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time to
eat a dinner would dress for that, the principal event of the day,
and do respectful and leisurely justice to it.
THE YOUNG LADY. It has always seemed singular to me that men who
work so hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, should
take so little leisure to enjoy either.
MANDEVILLE. If the Parson will permit me, I should say that the
chief clothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it is
the same with the dinners.
II
It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran into
the question of dress-reform, and ran out, of course. You cannot
converse on anything nowadays that you do not run into some reform.
The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything but
himself. We are all trying to associate ourselves to make everybody
else behave as we do. Said--
OUR NEXT DOOR. Dress reform! As if people couldn't change their
clothes without concert of action. Resolved, that nobody should put
on a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of every
sort of reform. I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspeptic
ascertain that he can eat porridge three times a day and live, and
straightway he insists that everybody ought to eat porridge and
nothing else. I mean to get up a society every member of which shall
be pledged to do just as he pleases.
THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. That
would be independence. If people dressed according to their means,
acted according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, it
would revolutionize society.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sunday
and see the changes under such conditions.
THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at any
time. And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrograde
ideas. It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if he
were alive, couldn't see or hear in it.
HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world on
their shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussy
fellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration they
seek, are more ludicrous than pathetic.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that they
would be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reform
singers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years,
with never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hair
growing longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, and
their faces, I do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always with
the same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the
snufftaker, for the suffragist,--"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys
(nothing offensive is intended by "boys," it is put in for
euphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists),
it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up of their faces there is when
they say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's"
coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezy
suggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that "good-time" (delayed so
long, waiting perhaps for the invention of the melodeon) when we
shall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote,
and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys." I declare it
almost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith in the
midst of a jeer-ing world.
HERBERT. I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not be
ridiculous. I mean those who give themselves up to the unction of
the reform.
THE MISTRESS. Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is large
or petty?
THE FIRE-TENDER. I should say rather that the reforms attracted to
them all the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to become
the most conspicuous. I suppose that nobody dare write out all that
was ludicrous in the great abolition movement. But it was not at all
comical to those most zealous in it; they never could see--more's the
pity, for thereby they lose much--the humorous side of their
performances, and that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense of the
absurdity of such people.
THE YOUNG LADY. It is lucky for the world that so many are willing
to be absurd.
HERBERT. Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage to
look out for themselves tolerably well. I knew once a lean and
faithful agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived to
collect every year for the cause just enough to support him at a good
hotel comfortably.
THE MISTRESS. That's identifying one's self with the cause.
MANDEVILLE. You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo,
in 1848, when Van Buren was nominated. All the world of hope and
discontent went there, with its projects of reform. There seemed to
be no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could get
a resolution passed that bread should be buttered on both sides, it
would be so buttered. The platform provided for every want and every
woe.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I remember. If you could get the millennium by
political action, we should have had it then.
MANDEVILLE. We went there on the Erie Canal, the exciting and
fashionable mode of travel in those days. I was a boy when we began
the voyage. The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was of
what must be done there. I got the impression that as that boat-load
went so would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling.
I can never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who was
on board, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions and
reading them privately to the passengers. He was a very
enthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore a
woolen muffler about his throat, although it was summer; he had
nearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a hoarse, disagreeable
whisper, and he always carried a teacup about, containing some sticky
compound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, and took, whenever
he talked, in order to improve his voice. If he was separated from
his cup for ten minutes, his whisper became inaudible. I greatly
delighted in him, for I never saw any one who had so much enjoyment
of his own importance. He was fond of telling what he would do if
the convention rejected such and such resolutions. He'd make it hot
for them. I did n't know but he'd make them take his mixture. The
convention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for one thing. He'd
heard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see. When we at length reached
Buffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions and went
ashore in a great hurry. I saw him once again in a cheap restaurant,
whispering a resolution to another delegate, but he did n't appear in
the con-vention. I have often wondered what became of him.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably he's consul somewhere. They mostly are.
THE FIRE-TENDER. After all, it's the easiest thing in the world to
sit and sneer at eccentricities. But what a dead and uninteresting
world it would be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines!
Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments,
even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled upon
some universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless and
absurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear. These
individual eccentricities seem to be the special providences in the
general human scheme.
HERBERT. They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who are
disposed to go along peaceably and smoothly.
MANDEVILLE. And stagnate. I 'm not sure but the natural condition
of this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed to its
anchorage--if the universe has any harbor for worlds out of
commission--it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner's
picture.
HERBERT. There is another thing I should like to understand: the
tendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personal
regeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen other
isms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories and
practices.
MANDEVILLE. Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's being
anchored, even if it is to a bad habit.
HERBERT. Thank you. But what is it in human nature that is apt to
carry a man who may take a step in personal reform into so many
extremes?
OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably it's human nature.
HERBERT. Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of the
noblest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known the
reformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"
(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, and
expect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-bread
disciple become enamored of Communism?
MANDEVILLE. I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think,
suit you; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in the
theory and practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believer
in the Christian religion.
HERBERT. Well, I can understand what he means: that a person is
bound to hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, using
and not abusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, not
retiring into a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escape
the full responsibility of self-control. And yet his theory would
certainly wreck most men and women. What does the Parson say?
THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individual
ability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else,
without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift,
and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, and
shipwrecked on some pernicious ism.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think the discussion has touched bottom.
III
I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it as
during the late spring; for its lateness was its main feature.
Everybody was grumbling about it, as if it were something ordered
from the tailor, and not ready on the day. Day after day it snowed,
night after night it blew a gale from the northwest; the frost sunk
deeper and deeper into the ground; there was a popular longing for
spring that was almost a prayer; the weather bureau was active;
Easter was set a week earlier than the year before, but nothing
seemed to do any good. The robins sat under the evergreens, and
piped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejays came and
scolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold in
any weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even with
a pickaxe. I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of the
weather only I think that people are no more accountable for what
they say of the weather than for their remarks when their corns are
stepped on.
We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and the
prospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire as
much as we were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell to
chanting the comforts of modern civilization.
THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if our
civilization differed essentially from any other in anything but its
comforts.
HERBERT. We are no nearer religious unity.
THE PARSON. We have as much war as ever.
MANDEVILLE. There was never such a social turmoil.
THE YOUNG LADY. The artistic part of our nature does not appear to
have grown.
THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in fact
radically different from the brutes.
HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of
human government.
THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and
not drawn from the living sources.
OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial. I
never felt before what barbarians we are.
THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man is
safer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we call
our civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than to
increase the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multiplied
wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of
manners and a diffusion of education and information. Are men and
women essentially changed, however? I suppose the Parson would say
we have lost faith, for one thing.
MANDEVILLE. And superstition; and gained toleration.
HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything but
indifference.
THE PARSON. Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue of
external achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to be
in man himself. It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but what
he can produce. The best sculpture was executed two thousand years
ago. The best paintings are several centuries old. We study the
finest architecture in its ruins. The standards of poetry are
Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts,
music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a century
ago.
THE MISTRESS. Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes the
civilization of this age. It has taken eighteen hundred years for
the principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practically
incorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will take
a long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there is
growth toward him, and not away from him, and when the average
culture has reached his height, some other genius will still more
profoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.
HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age is
expressed by the Calliope.
THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon
to the orchestra.
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longer
express ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole of
the Fourth of July in its patriotic throbs.
MANDEVILLE. We certainly have made great progress in one art,--that
of war.
THE YOUNG LADY. And in the humane alleviations of the miseries of
war.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in our
undoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is the
facility with which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificial
and external accidents of their lives are changed. We have always
kept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and I
think there never was a worse society than that in California and
Nevada in their early days.
THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York,
and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations of
social anarchy. Certainly they were not wanting in Paris. Yes,
there was a city widely accepted as the summit of our material
civilization. No city was so beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, so
well ordered for the comfort of living, and yet it needed only a
month or two to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery. Its
citizens were the barbarians who destroyed its own monuments of
civilization. I don't mean to say that there was no apology for what
was done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded it, but I simply
notice how ready the tiger was to appear, and how little restraint
all the material civilization was to the beast.
THE MISTRESS. I can't deny your instances, and yet I somehow feel
that pretty much all you have been saying is in effect untrue. Not
one of you would be willing to change our civilization for any other.
In your estimate you take no account, it seems to me, of the growth
of charity.
MANDEVILLE. And you might add a recognition of the value of human
life.
THE MISTRESS. I don't believe there was ever before diffused
everywhere such an element of good-will, and never before were women
so much engaged in philanthropic work.
THE PARSON. It must be confessed that one of the best signs of the
times is woman's charity for woman. That certainly never existed to
the same extent in any other civilization.
MANDEVILLE. And there is another thing that distinguishes us, or is
beginning to. That is, the notion that you can do something more
with a criminal than punish him; and that society has not done its
duty when it has built a sufficient number of schools for one class,
or of decent jails for another.
HERBERT. It will be a long time before we get decent jails.
MANDEVILLE. But when we do they will begin to be places of education
and training as much as of punishment and disgrace. The public will
provide teachers in the prisons as it now does in the common schools.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The imperfections of our methods and means of
selecting those in the community who ought to be in prison are so
great, that extra care in dealing with them becomes us. We are
beginning to learn that we cannot draw arbitrary lines with
infallible justice. Perhaps half those who are convicted of crimes
are as capable of reformation as half those transgressors who are not
convicted, or who keep inside the statutory law.
HERBERT. Would you remove the odium of prison?
THE FIRE-TENDER. No; but I would have criminals believe, and society
believe, that in going to prison a man or woman does not pass an
absolute line and go into a fixed state.
THE PARSON. That is, you would not have judgment and retribution
begin in this world.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Don't switch us off into theology. I hate to go up
in a balloon, or see any one else go.
HERBERT. Don't you think there is too much leniency toward crime and
criminals, taking the place of justice, in these days?
THE FIRE-TENDER. There may be too much disposition to condone the
crimes of those who have been considered respectable.
OUR NEXT DOOR. That is, scarcely anybody wants to see his friend
hung.
MANDEVILLE. I think a large part of the bitterness of the condemned
arises from a sense of the inequality with which justice is
administered. I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so few
respectable-looking convicts.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Nobody will go to jail nowadays who thinks anything
of himself.
THE FIRE-TENDER. When society seriously takes hold of the
reformation of criminals (say with as much determination as it does
to carry an election) this false leniency will disappear; for it
partly springs from a feeling that punishment is unequal, and does
not discriminate enough in individuals, and that society itself has
no right to turn a man over to the Devil, simply because he shows a
strong leaning that way. A part of the scheme of those who work for
the reformation of criminals is to render punishment more certain,
and to let its extent depend upon reformation. There is no reason
why a professional criminal, who won't change his trade for an honest
one, should have intervals of freedom in his prison life in which he
is let loose to prey upon society. Criminals ought to be discharged,
like insane patients, when they are cured.
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a wonder to me, what with our multitudes of
statutes and hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out of jail.
I never come away from a visit to a State-prison without a new spasm
of fear and virtue. The faculties for getting into jail seem to be
ample. We want more organizations for keeping people out.
MANDEVILLE. That is the sort of enterprise the women are engaged in,
the frustration of the criminal tendencies of those born in vice. I
believe women have it in their power to regenerate the world morally.
THE PARSON. It's time they began to undo the mischief of their
mother.
THE MISTRESS. The reason they have not made more progress is that
they have usually confined their individual efforts to one man; they
are now organizing for a general campaign.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I'm not sure but here is where the ameliorations of
the conditions of life, which are called the comforts of this
civilization, come in, after all, and distinguish the age above all
others. They have enabled the finer powers of women to have play as
they could not in a ruder age. I should like to live a hundred years
and see what they will do.
HERBERT. Not much but change the fashions, unless they submit
themselves to the same training and discipline that men do.
I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize for this remark
afterwards in private, as men are quite willing to do in particular
cases; it is only in general they are unjust. The talk drifted off
into general and particular depreciation of other times. Mandeville
described a picture, in which he appeared to have confidence, of a
fight between an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where these huge
iron-clad brutes were represented chewing up different portions of
each other's bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous period. So
far as he could learn, that sort of thing went on unchecked for
hundreds of thousands of years, and was typical of the intercourse of
the races of man till a comparatively recent period. There was also
that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all the early brutes
were disgusting. He delighted to think that even the lower animals
had improved, both in appearance and disposition.
The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, having
been taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about.
NINTH STUDY
I
Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circumstances.
In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when the
housewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,
later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often,
too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic
repression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and
hollyhock at the front door. This is a yearning after beauty and
ornamentation which has no other means of gratifying itself.
In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thus
discloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste.
You may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathway
to the front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;
--love and religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. The
sacredness of the Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and
unrequited affection, the slow years of gathering and wasting
sweetness, are in the smell of the pink and the sweet-clover. These
sentimental plants breathe something of the longing of the maiden who
sits in the Sunday evenings of summer on the lonesome front
doorstone, singing the hymns of the saints, and perennial as the
myrtle that grows thereby.
Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love and
devotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth,
in our latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse of
the sun happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over the
world. Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing the
chill from that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much more
penetrating than that from the coming on of night, which shortly
followed. It was impossible not to experience a shudder as of the
approach of the Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the
green lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to
each other. The birds in the trees felt the spell. We could in
fancy see those spectral camp-fires which men would build on the
earth, if the sun should slow its fires down to about the brilliancy
of the moon. It was a great relief to all of us to go into the
house, and, before a blazing wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.
In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it is
best to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at any
hour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill of
Hudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glides
calmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always be
ready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even in
our most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of a
cheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change that
one can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious by
the fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people if
we could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptian
has. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to the
unchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity of
the great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, show
the effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with the
Egyptian, for all that.
II
You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look back
to those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open to
this May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in the
chestnut-tree, and I see everywhere that first delicate flush of
spring, which seems too evanescent to be color even, and amounts to
little more than a suffusion of the atmosphere. I doubt, indeed, if the
spring is exactly what it used to be, or if, as we get on in years [no
one ever speaks of "getting on in years" till she is virtually settled
in life], its promises and suggestions do not seem empty in comparison
with the sympathies and responses of human friendship, and the
stimulation of society. Sometimes nothing is so tiresome as a perfect
day in a perfect season.
I only imperfectly understand this. The Parson says that woman is
always most restless under the most favorable conditions, and that
there is no state in which she is really happy except that of change.
I suppose this is the truth taught in what has been called the "Myth
of the Garden." Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element
in the world which continually destroys and re-creates. She is the
experimenter and the suggester of new combinations. She has no
belief in any law of eternal fitness of things. She is never even
content with any arrangement of her own house. The only reason the
Mistress could give, when she rearranged her apartment, for hanging a
picture in what seemed the most inappropriate place, was that it had
never been there before. Woman has no respect for tradition, and
because a thing is as it is is sufficient reason for changing it.
When she gets into law, as she has come into literature, we shall
gain something in the destruction of all our vast and musty libraries
of precedents, which now fetter our administration of individual
justice. It is Mandeville's opinion that women are not so
sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspoken
poetry of nature; being less poetical, and having less imagination,
they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make less
failures in business. I have noticed the almost selfish passion for
their flowers which old gardeners have, and their reluctance to part
with a leaf or a blossom from their family. They love the flowers
for themselves. A woman raises flowers for their use. She is
destruct-ion in a conservatory. She wants the flowers for her lover,
for the sick, for the poor, for the Lord on Easter day, for the
ornamentation of her house. She delights in the costly pleasure of
sacrificing them. She never sees a flower but she has an intense but
probably sinless desire to pick it.
It has been so from the first, though from the first she has been
thwarted by the accidental superior strength of man. Whatever she
has obtained has been by craft, and by the same coaxing which the sun
uses to draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees. I am not surprised
to learn that she has become tired of indulgences, and wants some of
the original rights. We are just beginning to find out the extent to
which she has been denied and subjected, and especially her condition
among the primitive and barbarous races. I have never seen it in a
platform of grievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she is
not, unless a better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf,
permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men;
the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wasted
on women. Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation of
woman? By a refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit whatever
from the missionaries who are sent out by--what to her must seem a
new name for Tantalus--the American Board.
I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in her
regret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company. Society
needs a certain seclusion and the sense of security. Spring opens
the doors and the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world are
let in. Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summer
brings longings innumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls.
Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of
pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any
satisfactory haven. The summer in these latitudes is a campaign of
sentiment and a season, for the most part, of restlessness and
discontent. We grow now in hot-houses roses which, in form and
color, are magnificent, and appear to be full of passion; yet one
simple June rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt not,
more sentiment and suggestion of love than a conservatory full of
them in January. And this suggestion, leavened as it is with the
inconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises which are so often
like the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason of
its vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the more limited
and attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourse by the
winter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if some
spell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doors to
out-doors. Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at all
know, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms on
the fruit trees. If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poets
pretend always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should say
drugged, by the sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but not
living elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably now
looks forward to the hearthstone as the most assured center of
enduring attachment.
If it should ever become the sad duty of this biographer to write of
disappointed love, I am sure he would not have any sensational story
to tell of the Young Lady. She is one of those women whose
unostentatious lives are the chief blessing of humanity; who, with a
sigh heard only by herself and no change in her sunny face, would put
behind her all the memories of winter evenings and the promises of
May mornings, and give her life to some ministration of human
kindness with an assiduity that would make her occupation appear like
an election and a first choice. The disappointed man scowls, and
hates his race, and threatens self-destruction, choosing oftener the
flowing bowl than the dagger, and becoming a reeling nuisance in the
world. It would be much more manly in him to become the secretary of
a Dorcas society.
I suppose it is true that women work for others with less expectation
of reward than men, and give themselves to labors of self-sacrifice
with much less thought of self. At least, this is true unless woman
goes into some public performance, where notoriety has its
attractions, and mounts some cause, to ride it man-fashion, when I
think she becomes just as eager for applause and just as willing that
self-sacrifice should result in self-elevation as man. For her,
usually, are not those unbought--presentations which are forced upon
firemen, philanthropists, legislators, railroad-men, and the
superintendents of the moral instruction of the young. These are
almost always pleasing and unexpected tributes to worth and modesty,
and must be received with satisfaction when the public service
rendered has not been with a view to procuring them. We should say
that one ought to be most liable to receive a "testimonial" who,
being a superintendent of any sort, did not superintend with a view
to getting it. But "testimonials" have become so common that a
modest man ought really to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fear
his motives will be misconstrued. Yet there are instances of very
worthy men who have had things publicly presented to them. It is the
blessed age of gifts and the reward of private virtue. And the
presentations have become so frequent that we wish there were a
little more variety in them. There never was much sense in giving a
gallant fellow a big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid him in his
intercourse with his family; and the festive ice-pitcher has become a
too universal sign of absolute devotion to the public interest. The
lack of one will soon be proof that a man is a knave. The
legislative cane with the gold head, also, is getting to be
recognized as the sign of the immaculate public servant, as the
inscription on it testifies, and the steps of suspicion must ere-long
dog him who does not carry one. The "testimonial" business is, in
truth, a little demoralizing, almost as much so as the "donation;"
and the demoralization has extended even to our language, so that a
perfectly respectable man is often obliged to see himself "made the
recipient of" this and that. It would be much better, if
testimonials must be, to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg of
oysters, and let him eat himself at once back into the ranks of
ordinary men.
III
We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here in
America, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all be
able to show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "of
which they have been the recipients." In time it may be a
distinction not to belong to it, and it may come to be thought more
blessed to give than to receive. For it must have been remarked that
it is not always to the cleverest and the most amiable and modest man
that the deputation comes with the inevitable ice-pitcher (and
"salver to match"), which has in it the magic and subtle quality of
making the hour in which it is received the proudest of one's life.
There has not been discovered any method of rewarding all the
deserving people and bringing their virtues into the prominence of
notoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable world if there
had, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellences in it
which are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasures of living
is in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, and kindliness
both in those we have long known and in the chance passenger whose
way happens for a day to lie with ours. The longer I live the more I
am impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, and
the greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets at
every turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters,
the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothing
compared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences of
private life. The people are few whom to know intimately is to
dislike. Of course you want to hate somebody, if you can, just to
keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from
becoming a mere mush of good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hate
some historical person who has been dead so long as to be indifferent
to it. It is more comfortable to hate people we have never seen. I
cannot but think that Judas Iscariot has been of great service to the
world as a sort of buffer for moral indignation which might have made
a collision nearer home but for his utilized treachery. I used to
know a venerable and most amiable gentleman and scholar, whose
hospitable house was always overrun with wayside ministers, agents,
and philanthropists, who loved their fellow-men better than they
loved to work for their living; and he, I suspect, kept his moral
balance even by indulgence in violent but most distant dislikes.
When I met him casually in the street, his first salutation was
likely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was! Don't you
hate him?" And then would follow specifications of historical
inveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thus
discharged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not a
spark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him and
other generous souls.
Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy night
by the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally
playing with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has a
good deal of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks so
beautifully sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report his
language. He has, besides, that sympathy of presence--I believe it
is called magnetism by those who regard the brain as only a sort of
galvanic battery--which makes it a greater pleasure to see him think,
if I may say so, than to hear some people talk.
It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so many
rare people he can never know; and so many excellent people that
scarcely any one will know, in fact. One discovers a friend by
chance, and cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty years of
life maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him. When
he is once known, through him opening is made into another little
world, into a circle of culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a
dozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices perhaps. How instantly and
easily the bachelor doubles his world when he marries, and enters
into the unknown fellowship of the to him continually increasing
company which is known in popular language as "all his wife's
relations."
Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, if
one had the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he sees
what a vast material there is for society and friendship, of which he
can never avail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travel
goes by one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure he could
choose a score of life-long friends, if the conductor would introduce
him. There are faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic
kindness,--interesting people, traveled people, entertaining people,
--as you would say in Boston, "nice people you would admire to know,"
whom you constantly meet and pass without a sign of recognition, many
of whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers and sisters. You can
see that they also have their worlds and their interests, and they
probably know a great many "nice" people. The matter of personal
liking and attachment is a good deal due to the mere fortune of
association. More fast friendships and pleasant acquaintanceships
are formed on the Atlantic steamships between those who would have
been only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would think
possible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as he is
indifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the only
power on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to her
personal appearance.
Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, the
glimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whom
his utmost efforts could give him no further information than her
name. Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on some
mountain lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even know
certainly whether she was the perfect beauty and the lovely character
he thought her. He said he would have known her, however, at a great
distance; there was to her form that command of which we hear so much
and which turns out to be nearly all command after the "ceremony;" or
perhaps it was something in the glance of her eye or the turn of her
head, or very likely it was a sweet inherited reserve or hauteur that
captivated him, that filled his days with the expectation of seeing
her, and made him hasten to the hotel-registers in the hope that her
name was there recorded. Whatever it was, she interested him as one
of the people he would like to know; and it piqued him that there was
a life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in many
noblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be absolutely
nothing to him,--nothing but a window into heaven momentarily opened
and then closed. I have myself no idea that she was a countess
incognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights than
those where Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that she
went her way so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wear
out the remainder of our days without her society. I have looked for
her name, but always in vain, among the attendants at the
rights-conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented at
court, among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beauty
in the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in the
reports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions. No news comes
of her. And so imperfect are our means of communication in this world
that, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago by some
private way.
IV
The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere,
and genuine people of the world is increased by the fact that they
are all different from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne who
said she had loved several different women for several different
qualities? Every real person--for there are persons as there are
fruits that have no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries--has a
distinct quality, and the finding it is always like the discovery of
a new island to the voyager. The physical world we shall exhaust
some day, having a written description of every foot of it to which
we can turn; but we shall never get the different qualities of people
into a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with a
human being will never cease to be an exciting experiment. We cannot
even classify men so as to aid us much in our estimate of them. The
efforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsatisfactory. If I
hear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot tell
therefrom whether I shall like and trust him. He may produce a
phrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of all
the virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holes
in his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be as
disagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feel
sometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its charts
are almost as misleading concerning character as photographs. And
photography may be described as the art which enables commonplace
mediocrity to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with shallow
cerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrument
can select a favorable focus, to appear in the picture with the brow
of a sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts for ministering to
human vanity the photographic is the most useful, but it is a poor
aid in the revelation of character. You shall learn more of a man's
real nature by seeing him walk once up the broad aisle of his church
to his pew on Sunday, than by studying his photograph for a month.
No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of their
temperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color of
her hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she may
be no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns all
the lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife the
most nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up in
the winter mornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even in
this scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruelly
deceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act
according to the advertisement of their temperaments. The truth
is that men refuse to come under the classifications of the
pseudo-scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to our
knowledge. You know what to expect--if the comparison will be pardoned
--of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey
with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was
the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not
able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am
very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of
meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in
individuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty and
another tricky through all its members for generations; noble strains
and ignoble strains are perpetuated. When we hear that she has eloped
with the stable-boy and married him, we are apt to remark, "Well, she
was a Bogardus." And when we read that she has gone on a mission and
has died, distinguishing herself by some extraordinary devotion to the
heathen at Ujiji, we think it sufficient to say, "Yes, her mother
married into the Smiths." But this knowledge comes of our experience
of special families, and stands us in stead no further.
If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kind
of botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetable
development, neither can we gain much knowledge of them by
comparison. It does not help me at all in my estimate of their
characters to compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, or Our Next
Door with the Parson. The wise man does not permit himself to set up
even in his own mind any comparison of his friends. His friendship
is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by
many qualities. When Mandeville goes into my garden in June I can
usually find him in a particular bed of strawberries, but he does not
speak disrespectfully of the others. When Nature, says Mandeville,
consents to put herself into any sort of strawberry, I have no
criticisms to make, I am only glad that I have been created into the
same world with such a delicious manifestation of the Divine favor.
If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough, I have no doubt
he would impartially make an end of the fruit of all the beds, for
his capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is in the
matter of friendships. The Young Lady has also her favorite patch of
berries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have them
picked for him the elect of the garden--and served in an orthodox
manner. The straw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and I
presume that no fruit is jealous of it any more than any flower is
jealous of the rose; but I remark the facility with which liking for
it is transferred to the raspberry, and from the raspberry (not to
make a tedious enumeration) to the melon, and from the melon to the
grape, and the grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. And we
do not mar our enjoyment of each by comparisons.
Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise our
friends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is
that by comparison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness,
but a wholesome exercise of our powers of analysis and
discrimination. It is, however, a very idle exercise, leading to no
results when we set the qualities of one over against the qualities
of another, and disparage by contrast and not by independent
judgment. And this method of procedure creates jealousies and
heart-burnings innumerable.
Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especially
is this true in literature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a young
poet to bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of his
defects or his excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and that Scott
never wrote anything finer. What is the justice of damning a
meritorious novelist by comparing him with Dickens, and smothering
him with thoughtless and good-natured eulogy? The poet and the
novelist may be well enough, and probably have qualities and gifts of
their own which are worth the critic's attention, if he has any time
to bestow on them; and it is certainly unjust to subject them to a
comparison with somebody else, merely because the critic will not
take the trouble to ascertain what they are. If, indeed, the poet
and novelist are mere imitators of a model and copyists of a style,
they may be dismissed with such commendation as we bestow upon the
machines who pass their lives in making bad copies of the pictures of
the great painters. But the critics of whom we speak do not intend
depreciation, but eulogy, when they say that the author they have in
hand has the wit of Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Macaulay.
Probably he is not like either of them, and may have a genuine though
modest virtue of his own; but these names will certainly kill him,
and he will never be anybody in the popular estimation. The public
finds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents the
extravagant claim for him as if he were an impudent pretender. How
many authors of fair ability to interest the world have we known in
our own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notoriety by the
lazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then have sunk
into a popular contempt as undeserved! I never see a young aspirant
injudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature,
but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and full of
trouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run a
creditable race.
I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than that
which kills by a different assumption, and one which is equally
common, namely, that the author has not done what he probably never
intended to do. It is well known that most of the trouble in life
comes from our inability to compel other people to do what we think
they ought, and it is true in criticism that we are unwilling to take
a book for what it is, and credit the author with that. When the
solemn critic, like a mastiff with a ladies' bonnet in his mouth,
gets hold of a light piece of verse, or a graceful sketch which
catches the humor of an hour for the entertainment of an hour, he
tears it into a thousand shreds. It adds nothing to human knowledge,
it solves none of the problems of life, it touches none of the
questions of social science, it is not a philosophical treatise, and
it is not a dozen things that it might have been. The critic cannot
forgive the author for this disrespect to him. This isn't a rose,
says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; it is not at all
like a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiot or an
idiotic pretender. What business, indeed, has the author to send the
critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would be
preferred,--something not showy, but useful?
A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that it
is devoid of personal feeling. He published, some years ago, a
little volume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, and
a very entertaining book it was. But one of the heavy critics got
hold of it, and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, he
confessed, like an ass, because there was nothing in the volume about
geology or mining prospects, and very little to instruct the student
of physical geography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, he
literally basted the author, till Mandeville said that he felt almost
like a depraved scoundrel, and thought he should be held up to less
execration if he had committed a neat and scientific murder.
But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics.
Consider what these public tasters have to endure! None of us, I
fancy, would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or to
take into our mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting it
with a grimace, all that they sip. The critics of the vintage, who
pursue their calling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, give
their opinion, for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that has
matured and ripened into development of quality. But what crude,
unrestrained, unfermented--even raw and drugged liquor, must the
literary taster put to his unwilling lips day after day!
TENTH STUDY
I
It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered the
rebellion of 1745. Lest this confession should make me seem very
aged, I will add that the visit took place in 1851, and that the man
was then one hundred and thirteen years old. He was quite a lad
before Dr. Johnson drank Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as he
had the credit of being, I have the evidence of my own senses (and I
am seldom mistaken in a person's age), of his own family, and his own
word; and it is incredible that so old a person, and one so
apparently near the grave, would deceive about his age.
The testimony of the very aged is always to be received without
question, as Alexander Hamilton once learned. He was trying a
land-title with Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon whom Burr
relied were venerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried the
surveying chains over the land in dispute, and who were now aged
respectively one hundred and four years and one hundred and six
years. Hamilton gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, but
he was instantly put down by the Dutch justice, who suggested that
Mr. Hamilton could not be aware of the age of the witnesses.
My old man (the expression seems familiar and inelegant) had indeed
an exaggerated idea of his own age, and sometimes said that he
supposed he was going on four hundred, which was true enough, in
fact; but for the exact date, he referred to his youngest son,--a
frisky and humorsome lad of eighty years, who had received us at the
gate, and whom we had at first mistaken for the veteran, his father.
But when we beheld the old man, we saw the difference between age and
age. The latter had settled into a grizzliness and grimness which
belong to a very aged and stunted but sturdy oak-tree, upon the bark
of which the gray moss is thick and heavy. The old man appeared hale
enough, he could walk about, his sight and hearing were not seriously
impaired, he ate with relish, and his teeth were so sound that he
would not need a dentist for at least another century; but the moss
was growing on him. His boy of eighty seemed a green sapling beside
him.
He remembered absolutely nothing that had taken place within thirty
years, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for
he must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anything
if he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why he
was interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for he
of course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he
only remembered to have heard it talked about as a great event in the
Irish market-town near which he lived, and to which he had ridden
when a boy. And he knew much more about the horse that drew him, and
the cart in which he rode, than he did about the rebellion of the
Pretender.
I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this amiable old man, and
if he is still living I wish him well, although his example was bad
in some respects. He had used tobacco for nearly a century, and the
habit has very likely been the death of him. If so, it is to be
regretted. For it would have been interesting to watch the process
of his gradual disintegration and return to the ground: the loss of
sense after sense, as decaying limbs fall from the oak; the failure
of discrimination, of the power of choice, and finally of memory
itself; the peaceful wearing out and passing away of body and mind
without disease, the natural running down of a man. The interesting
fact about him at that time was that his bodily powers seemed in
sufficient vigor, but that the mind had not force enough to manifest
itself through his organs. The complete battery was there, the
appetite was there, the acid was eating the zinc; but the electric
current was too weak to flash from the brain. And yet he appeared so
sound throughout, that it was difficult to say that his mind was not
as good as it ever had been. He had stored in it very little to feed
on, and any mind would get enfeebled by a century's rumination on a
hearsay idea of the rebellion of '45.
It was possible with this man to fully test one's respect for age,
which is in all civilized nations a duty. And I found that my
feelings were mixed about him. I discovered in him a conceit in
regard to his long sojourn on this earth, as if it were somehow a
credit to him. In the presence of his good opinion of himself, I
could but question the real value of his continued life, to himself
or to others. If he ever had any friends he had outlived them,
except his boy; his wives--a century of them--were all dead; the
world had actually passed away for him. He hung on the tree like a
frost-nipped apple, which the farmer has neglected to gather. The
world always renews itself, and remains young. What relation had he
to it?
I was delighted to find that this old man had never voted for George
Washington. I do not know that he had ever heard of him. Washington
may be said to have played his part since his time. I am not sure
that he perfectly remembered anything so recent as the American
Revolution. He was living quietly in Ireland during our French and
Indian wars, and he did not emigrate to this country till long after
our revolutionary and our constitutional struggles were over. The
Rebellion Of '45 was the great event of the world for him, and of
that he knew nothing.
I intend no disrespect to this man,--a cheerful and pleasant enough
old person,--but he had evidently lived himself out of the world, as
completely as people usually die out of it. His only remaining value
was to the moralist, who might perchance make something out of him.
I suppose if he had died young, he would have been regretted, and his
friends would have lamented that he did not fill out his days in the
world, and would very likely have called him back, if tears and
prayers could have done so. They can see now what his prolonged life
amounted to, and how the world has closed up the gap he once filled
while he still lives in it.
A great part of the unhappiness of this world consists in regret for
those who depart, as it seems to us, prematurely. We imagine that if
they would return, the old conditions would be restored. But would
it be so? If they, in any case, came back, would there be any place
for them? The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, that
the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the
circle most interested, into confusion. Are the Enoch Ardens ever
wanted?
II
A popular notion akin to this, that the world would have any room for
the departed if they should now and then return, is the constant
regret that people will not learn by the experience of others, that
one generation learns little from the preceding, and that youth never
will adopt the experience of age. But if experience went for
anything, we should all come to a standstill; for there is nothing so
discouraging to effort. Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspring
of action. In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, and
it is the source of every endeavor.
If the boy believed that the accumulation of wealth and the
acquisition of power were what the old man says they are, the world
would very soon be stagnant. If he believed that his chances of
obtaining either were as poor as the majority of men find them to be,
ambition would die within him. It is because he rejects the
experience of those who have preceded him, that the world is kept in
the topsy-turvy condition which we all rejoice in, and which we call
progress.
And yet I confess I have a soft place in my heart for that rare
character in our New England life who is content with the world as he
finds it, and who does not attempt to appropriate any more of it to
himself than he absolutely needs from day to day. He knows from the
beginning that the world could get on without him, and he has never
had any anxiety to leave any result behind him, any legacy for the
world to quarrel over.
He is really an exotic in our New England climate and society, and
his life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he
shares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is even
called lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"--the final stigma
that we put upon a person who has learned to wait without the
exhausting process of laboring.
I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not in
a long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He was a
man past middle life, with a large family. He had always been from
boyhood of a contented and placid mind, slow in his movements, slow
in his speech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling toward
anybody, nor envied any one, least of all the rich and prosperous
about whom he liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal about
wealth, especially about his cousin who had been down South and "got
fore-handed" within a few years. He was genuinely pleased at his
relation's good luck, and pointed him out to me with some pride. But
he had no envy of him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. I
inferred from all his conversation about "piling it up" (of which he
spoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye), that there were moments
when he would like to be rich himself; but it was evident that he
would never make the least effort to be so, and I doubt if he could
even overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body called
laziness, sufficiently to inherit.
Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and I
suspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet I
suppose he had--hardly the personal property which the law exempts
from execution. He had lived in a great many towns, moving from one
to another with his growing family, by easy stages, and was always
the poorest man in the town, and lived on the most niggardly of its
rocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reduced
to zero in a couple of seasons by his careful neglect of culture.
The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins under him,
perhaps because he sat on them so much, and the hovels he occupied
rotted down during his placid residence in them. He moved from
desolation to desolation, but carried always with him the equal mind
of a philosopher. Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife,
about their nomadic life and his serenity in the midst of discomfort,
could ruffle his smooth spirit.
He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest,
temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits,
--perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack
the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build a
house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief
existence, worth while to do any of these things. He was an
excellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the
shortness of days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, but
principally because the trout brooks were all arranged lengthwise and
ran over so much ground. But no man liked to look at a string of
trout better than he did, and he was willing to sit down in a sunny
place and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a time, and he would
talk pleasantly and well too, though his wife might be continually
interrupting him by a call for firewood.
I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not add
that he was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiable
though feeble pride in his family. It helped his self-respect, which
no ignoble circumstances could destroy. He was, as must appear by
this time, a most intelligent man, and he was a well-informed man;
that is to say, he read the weekly newspapers when he could get them,
and he had the average country information about Beecher and Greeley
and the Prussian war ("Napoleon is gettin' on't, ain't he?"), and
the general prospect of the election campaigns. Indeed, he was
warmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in politics. He liked to
talk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that his
condition would somehow be improved if we could get to a specie
basis. He was, in fact, a little troubled by the national debt; it
seemed to press on him somehow, while his own never did. He
exhibited more animation over the affairs of the government than he
did over his own,--an evidence at once of his disinterestedness and
his patriotism. He had been an old abolitionist, and was strong on
the rights of free labor, though he did not care to exercise his
privilege much. Of course he had the proper contempt for the poor
whites down South. I never saw a person with more correct notions on
such a variety of subjects. He was perfectly willing that churches
(being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionary
enterprises should go on; in fact, I do not believe he ever opposed
anything in his life. No one was more willing to vote town taxes and
road-repairs and schoolhouses than he. If you could call him
spirited at all, he was public-spirited.
And with all this he was never very well; he had, from boyhood,
"enjoyed poor health." You would say he was not a man who would ever
catch anything, not even an epidemic; but he was a person whom
diseases would be likely to overtake, even the slowest of slow
fevers. And he was n't a man to shake off anything. And yet
sickness seemed to trouble him no more than poverty. He was not
discontented; he never grumbled. I am not sure but he relished a
"spell of sickness" in haying-time.
An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, and
evidently lives on the experience of others. I have never seen a man
with less envy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented with as little
reason for being so. The only drawback to his future is that rest
beyond the grave will not be much change for him, and he has no works
to follow him.
III
This Yankee philosopher, who, without being a Brahmin, had, in an
uncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina,
reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a world
that could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man's
years to one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called an old and
worn-out world, having long passed the stage of its primeval poetry
and simplicity. Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, got
immortality upon less laziness and resignation than this temporary
sojourner in Massachusetts. It is a common notion that the world
(meaning the people in it) has become tame and commonplace, lost its
primeval freshness and epigrammatic point. Mandeville, in his
argumentative way, dissents from this entirely. He says that the
world is more complex, varied, and a thousand times as interesting as
it was in what we call its youth, and that it is as fresh, as
individual and capable of producing odd and eccentric characters as
ever. He thought the creative vim had not in any degree abated, that
both the types of men and of nations are as sharply stamped and
defined as ever they were.
Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure more clearly cut and
freshly minted than the Yankee? Had the Old World anything to show
more positive and uncompromising in all the elements of character
than the Englishman? And if the edges of these were being rounded
off, was there not developing in the extreme West a type of men
different from all preceding, which the world could not yet define?
He believed that the production of original types was simply
infinite.
Herbert urged that he must at least admit that there was a freshness
of legend and poetry in what we call the primeval peoples that is
wanting now; the mythic period is gone, at any rate.
Mandeville could not say about the myths. We couldn't tell what
interpretation succeeding ages would put upon our lives and history
and literature when they have become remote and shadowy. But we need
not go to antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters as
racy of the fresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn of
history. He would put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages of
the mythic or the classic period. He would have been perfectly at
home in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston.
There might have been more heroic characters at the siege of Troy
than Abraham Lincoln, but there was not one more strongly marked
individually; not one his superior in what we call primeval craft and
humor. He was just the man, if he could not have dislodged Priam by
a writ of ejectment, to have invented the wooden horse, and then to
have made Paris the hero of some ridiculous story that would have set
all Asia in a roar.
Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he did not know much
about that, and there was not much he cared to read except parts of
Shakespeare and Homer, and passages of Milton. But it did seem to
him that we had men nowadays, who could, if they would give their
minds to it, manufacture in quantity the same sort of epigrammatic
sayings and legends that our scholars were digging out of the Orient.
He did not know why Emerson in antique setting was not as good as
Saadi. Take for instance, said Mandeville, such a legend as this,
and how easy it would be to make others like it:
The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he was ashamed, and wished
to dye it. But his father said: "Nay, my son, rather behave in such
a manner that all fathers shall wish their sons had red hair."
This was too absurd. Mandeville had gone too far, except in the
opinion of Our Next Door, who declared that an imitation was just as
good as an original, if you could not detect it. But Herbert said
that the closer an imitation is to an original, the more unendurable
it is. But nobody could tell exactly why.
The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on by forms. The nuggets of
wisdom that are dug out of the Oriental and remote literatures would
often prove to be only commonplace if stripped of their quaint
setting. If you gave an Oriental twist to some of our modern
thought, its value would be greatly enhanced for many people.
I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem to prefer dried fruit
to fresh; but I like the strawberry and the peach of each season, and
for me the last is always the best.
Even the Parson admitted that there were no signs of fatigue or decay
in the creative energy of the world; and if it is a question of
Pagans, he preferred Mandeville to Saadi.
ELEVENTH STUDY
It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, it was contrived,--for I
have waited too long for things to turn up to have much faith in
"happen," that we who have sat by this hearthstone before should all
be together on Christmas eve. There was a splendid backlog of
hickory just beginning to burn with a glow that promised to grow more
fiery till long past midnight, which would have needed no apology in
a loggers' camp,--not so much as the religion of which a lady (in a
city which shall be nameless) said, "If you must have a religion,
this one will do nicely."
There was not much conversation, as is apt to be the case when people
come together who have a great deal to say, and are intimate enough
to permit the freedom of silence. It was Mandeville who suggested
that we read something, and the Young Lady, who was in a mood to
enjoy her own thoughts, said, "Do." And finally it came about that
the Fire Tender, without more resistance to the urging than was
becoming, went to his library, and returned with a manuscript, from
which he read the story of
MY UNCLE IN INDIA
Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. It is Polly's uncle, as I
very well know, from the many times she has thrown him up to me, and
is liable so to do at any moment. Having small expectations myself,
and having wedded Polly when they were smaller, I have come to feel
the full force, the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about "My
Uncle in India." The words as I write them convey no idea of the
tone in which they fall upon my ears. I think it is the only fault
of that estimable woman, that she has an "uncle in India" and does
not let him quietly remain there. I feel quite sure that if I had an
uncle in Botany Bay, I should never, never throw him up to Polly in
the way mentioned. If there is any jar in our quiet life, he is the
cause of it; all along of possible "expectations" on the one side
calculated to overawe the other side not having expectations. And
yet I know that if her uncle in India were this night to roll a
barrel of "India's golden sands," as I feel that he any moment may
do, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that charming wife, who
is more generous than the month of May, and who has no thought but
for my comfort in two worlds, would straightway make it over to me,
to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever and forever. And
that makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman, will
continue to mention him in the way she does.
In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place in
this transitory state of existence. They stand for a great many
possible advantages. They are liable to "tip" you at school, they
are resources in vacation, they come grandly in play about the
holidays, at which season mv heart always did warm towards them with
lively expectations, which were often turned into golden solidities;
and then there is always the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that
uncles are mortal, and, in their timely taking off, may prove as
generous in the will as they were in the deed. And there is always
this redeeming possibility in a niggardly uncle. Still there must be
something wrong in the character of the uncle per se, or all history
would not agree that nepotism is such a dreadful thing.
But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded that
the charioteer of the patient year has brought round the holiday
time. It has been a growing year, as most years are. It is very
pleasant to see how the shrubs in our little patch of ground widen
and thicken and bloom at the right time, and to know that the great
trees have added a laver to their trunks. To be sure, our garden,
--which I planted under Polly's directions, with seeds that must have
been patented, and I forgot to buy the right of, for they are mostly
still waiting the final resurrection,--gave evidence that it shared
in the misfortune of the Fall, and was never an Eden from which one
would have required to have been driven. It was the easiest garden
to keep the neighbor's pigs and hens out of I ever saw. If its
increase was small its temptations were smaller, and that is no
little recommendation in this world of temptations. But, as a
general thing, everything has grown, except our house. That little
cottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough to adorn a
palace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it has an
air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny by
day and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and not
unattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think do
well enough until my uncle--(but never mind my uncle, now),--and if,
in the long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and the
chestnuts glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and the
house-plants are green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the
firelight, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away look in her
eyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruel
mysteries which have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read in
one of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with a
taste of Montaigne,--if all this is true, there are times when the
cottage seems small; though I can never find that Polly thinks so,
except when she sometimes says that she does not know where she
should bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back from
India.
There it is, again. I sometimes think that my wife believes her
uncle in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideas
of him are any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the town
large enough for him except the Town Hall. She probably expects him
to come with his bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his
elephants, and his retinue of servants, and his principalities, and
his powers, and his ha--(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his--I
scarcely know what besides.
Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, a
placid, calm, swingeing cold night.
Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization. The
snow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on,
and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and all
the crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, at
a breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a million
silver joy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood at
the window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She is a
woman of most remarkable discernment.
Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way. Among the
many delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers,
there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season.
It is the most exciting time of the year. No one is too rich to
receive something, and no one too poor to give a trifle. And in the
act of giving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world is
kin for once, and brighter for this transient glow of generosity.
Delightful custom! Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothing
of the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimney
at night; and cheerless is any age that is not brightened by some
Christmas gift, however humble. What a mystery of preparation there
is in the preceding days, what planning and plottings of surprises!
Polly and I keep up the custom in our simple way, and great is the
perplexity to express the greatest amount of affection with a limited
outlay. For the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness
rather than in its value. As we stood by the window that night, we
wondered what we should receive this year, and indulged in I know not
what little hypocrisies and deceptions.
I wish, said Polly, "that my uncle in India would send me a
camel's-hair shawl, or a string of pearls, each as big as the end of
my thumb."
"Or a white cow, which would give golden milk, that would make butter
worth seventy-five cents a pound," I added, as we drew the curtains,
and turned to our chairs before the open fire.
It is our custom on every Christmas eve--as I believe I have
somewhere said, or if I have not, I say it again, as the member from
Erin might remark--to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories. And
this night, after punching the fire until it sent showers of sparks
up the chimney, I read the opening chapter of "Mrs. Lirriper's
Lodgings," in my best manner, and handed the book to Polly to
continue; for I do not so much relish reading aloud the succeeding
stories of Mr. Dickens's annual budget, since he wrote them, as men
go to war in these days, by substitute. And Polly read on, in her
melodious voice, which is almost as pleasant to me as the
Wasser-fluth of Schubert, which she often plays at twilight; and I
looked into the fire, unconsciously constructing stories of my own out
of the embers. And her voice still went on, in a sort of running
accompaniment to my airy or fiery fancies.
"Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what seemed to me a sort of
crash, in which all the castles tumbled into ashes.
"Not in the least," I answered brightly, "never heard anything more
agreeable." And the reading flowed on and on and on, and I looked
steadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi....
Suddenly the door opened, and into our cozy parlor walked the most
venerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with great
dignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I was
conscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languid
tranquillity. I was not surprised that the figure before me was clad
in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about the
middle with a rich shawl. Followed him a swart attendant, who
hastened to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, with great
gravity, as I am informed they do in farthest Ind. The slave then
filled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to his
master, retired behind him and began to fan him with the most
prodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. Soon the fumes of the delicate
tobacco of Persia pervaded the room, like some costly aroma which you
cannot buy, now the entertainment of the Arabian Nights is
discontinued.
Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin at
our door, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who did
not seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about on
the snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keen
air. Oho! thought! this, then, is my uncle from India!
"Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harsh
voice.
"I think I have heard Polly speak of you," I rejoined, in an attempt
to be civil, for I did n't like his face any better than I did his
voice,--a red, fiery, irascible kind of face.
"Yes I've come over to O Lord,--quick, Jamsetzee, lift up that foot,
--take care. There, Mr. Trimings, if that's your name, get me a
glass of brandy, stiff."
I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enough
to preserve a whole can of peaches. My uncle took it down without a
wink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved. It was a very
pleasant uncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt.
At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I saw
was directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderful
camel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew it
through my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely
cover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but
splendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in
one corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody
knows how many thousands of dollars.
"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come home--as I was saying
when that confounded twinge took me--to settle down; and I intend to
make Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life. Move that
leg a little, Jamsetzee."
I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to see
her dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n't
know any one with a greater capacity for that than she.
"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye. A
fortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away
in a minute. But what a house this is to live in!"; the
uncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a contemptuous glance
round the humble cottage. "Is this all of it?"
"In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing up; "but in the
summer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large as
anybody's house. And," I went on, with some warmth, "it was large
enough just before you came in, and pleasant enough. And besides," I
said, rising into indignation, "you can not get anything much better
in this city short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable first
days of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and my
salary...."
"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-nine
hovel! Do you think you have anything to say about the use of my
money, scraped up in forty years in Ingy? THINGS HAVE GOT TO BE
CHANGED!" he burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the
sideboard.
I should think they were. Even as I looked into the little fireplace
it enlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor,
glowing with seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old and
brown; and over it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in the
foreground with all the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyond
hills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy light. I held my
breath as I looked down the marvelous perspective. Looking round for
a second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo at each window, who vanished
as if they had been whisked off by enchantment; and the close walls
that shut us in fled away. Had cohesion and gravitation given out?
Was it the "Great Consummation" of the year 18-? It was all like the
swift transformation of a dream, and I pinched my arm to make sure
that I was not the subject of some diablerie.
The little house was gone; but that I scarcely minded, for I had
suddenly come into possession of my wife's castle in Spain. I sat in
a spacious, lofty apartment, furnished with a princely magnificence.
Rare pictures adorned the walls, statues looked down from deep
niches, and over both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped in
graceful luxuriance. Upon the heavy tables were costly, illuminated
volumes; luxurious chairs and ottomans invited to easy rest; and upon
the ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower-strewing daughters of the
dawn in brilliant frescoes. Through the open doors my eyes wandered
into magnificent apartment after apartment. There to the south,
through folding-doors, was the splendid library, with groined roof,
colored light streaming in through painted windows, high shelves
stowed with books, old armor hanging on the walls, great carved oaken
chairs about a solid oaken table, and beyond a conservatory of
flowers and plants with a fountain springing in the center, the
splashing of whose waters I could hear. Through the open windows I
looked upon a lawn, green with close-shaven turf, set with ancient
trees, and variegated with parterres of summer plants in bloom. It
was the month of June, and the smell of roses was in the air.
I might have thought it only a freak of my fancy, but there by the
fireplace sat a stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinary
dress of an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty in
recognizing as my uncle from India.
"One wants a fire every day in the year in this confounded climate,"
remarked that amiable old person, addressing no one in particular.
I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted the day would come when
he would have heat enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply. I
wish now that I had.
I think things had changed. For now into this apartment, full of the
morning sunshine, came sweeping with the air of a countess born, and
a maid of honor bred, and a queen in expectancy, my Polly, stepping
with that lofty grace which I always knew she possessed, but which
she never had space to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed with
that elegance and richness that I should not have deemed possible to
the most Dutch duchess that ever lived, and, giving me a complacent
nod of recognition, approached her uncle, and said in her smiling,
cheery way, "How is the dear uncle this morning?" And, as she spoke,
she actually bent down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot with
currie and brandy and all the biting pickles I can neither eat nor
name, kissed him, and I did not turn into stone.
"Comfortable as the weather will permit, my darling!"--and again I
did not turn into stone.
"Wouldn't uncle like to take a drive this charming morning?" Polly
asked.
Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and Polly swept away again
to prepare for the drive, taking no more notice of me than if I had
been a poor assistant office lawyer on a salary. And soon the
carriage was at the door, and my uncle, bundled up like a mummy, and
the charming Polly drove gayly away.
How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, as I arose and
strolled into the library, where everything was elegant and prim and
neat, with no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evidences of
literary slovenness on the table, and no books in attractive
disorder, and where I seemed to see the legend staring at me from all
the walls, "No smoking." So I uneasily lounged out of the house.
And a magnificent house it was, a palace, rather, that seemed to
frown upon and bully insignificant me with its splendor, as I walked
away from it towards town.
And why town? There was no use of doing anything at the dingy
office. Eight hundred dollars a year! It wouldn't keep Polly in
gloves, let alone dressing her for one of those fashionable
entertainments to which we went night after night. And so, after a
weary day with nothing in it, I went home to dinner, to find my uncle
quite chirruped up with his drive, and Polly regnant, sublimely
engrossed in her new world of splendor, a dazzling object of
admiration to me, but attentive and even tender to that
hypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India.
Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of servants, who seemed to
know that I couldn't have paid the wages of one of them, and plate
and courses endless. I say, a miserable dinner, on the edge of which
seemed to sit by permission of somebody, like an invited poor
relation, who wishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some of
those nice little dishes that Polly used to set before me with
beaming face, in the dear old days.
And after dinner, and proper attention to the comfort for the night
of our benefactor, there was the Blibgims's party. No long,
confidential interviews, as heretofore, as to what she should wear
and what I should wear, and whether it would do to wear it again.
And Polly went in one coach, and I in another. No crowding into the
hired hack, with all the delightful care about tumbling dresses, and
getting there in good order; and no coming home together to our
little cozy cottage, in a pleasant, excited state of "flutteration,"
and sitting down to talk it all over, and "Was n't it nice?" and "Did
I look as well as anybody?" and "Of course you did to me," and all
that nonsense. We lived in a grand way now, and had our separate
establishments and separate plans, and I used to think that a real
separation couldn't make matters much different. Not that Polly
meant to be any different, or was, at heart; but, you know, she was
so much absorbed in her new life of splendor, and perhaps I was a
little old-fashioned.
I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. There was an army of
dressmakers to see, and a world of shopping to do, and a houseful of
servants to manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her dear,
dear friend, with the artless manners and merry heart of a girl, and
the dignity and grace of a noble woman, the dear friend who lived in
the house of the Seven Gables, to consult about all manner of
important things. I could not, upon my honor, see that there was any
place for me, and I went my own way, not that there was much comfort
in it.
And then I would rather have had charge of a hospital ward than take
care of that uncle. Such coddling as he needed, such humoring of
whims. And I am bound to say that Polly could n't have been more
dutiful to him if he had been a Hindoo idol. She read to him and
talked to him, and sat by him with her embroidery, and was patient
with his crossness, and wearied herself, that I could see, with her
devoted ministrations.
I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and longed for the old
homely simplicity. I was. Nepotism had no charms for me. There was
nothing that I could get Polly that she had not. I could surprise
her with no little delicacies or trifles, delightedly bought with
money saved for the purpose. There was no more coming home weary
with office work and being met at the door with that warm, loving
welcome which the King of England could not buy. There was no long
evening when we read alternately from some favorite book, or laid our
deep housekeeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargain or made light of
a poor one, and were contented and merry with little. I recalled
with longing my little den, where in the midst of the literary
disorder I love, I wrote those stories for the "Antarctic" which
Polly, if nobody else, liked to read. There was no comfort for me in
my magnificent library. We were all rich and in splendor, and our
uncle had come from India. I wished, saving his soul, that the ship
that brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light. It would
always have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us. And
how sacred is the memory of such a loss!
Christmas? What delight could I have in long solicitude and
ingenious devices touching a gift for Polly within my means, and
hitting the border line between her necessities and her extravagant
fancy? A drove of white elephants would n't have been good enough
for her now, if each one carried a castle on his back.
"--and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happy
ever after."--It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book.
"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it," she said half
complainingly.
"Oh, yes, I have," I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jab
with the poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the close
I was thinking"--I stopped, and looked round.
"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"
"Camel's-hair fiddlestick! Now I know you have been asleep for an
hour."
And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's-hair shawl there, nor any
uncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows.
And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and we
were rich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but she
didn't seem to have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort of
the little house was blown away as by the winter wind. And Polly
vowed, half in tears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back,
and she wanted nothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange our
independent comfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion.
And then and there we made it all up, in a manner too particular for
me to mention; and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to My
Uncle in India.
And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the place
where we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had prepared
for each other, and what surprise there was! "Just the thing I
needed." And, "It's perfectly lovely." And, "You should n't have
done it." And, then, a question I never will answer, "Ten? fifteen?
five? twelve?" "My dear, it cost eight hundred dollars, for I have
put my whole year into it, and I wish it was a thousand times
better."
And so, when the great iron tongue of the city bell swept over the
snow the twelve strokes that announced Christmas day, if there was
anywhere a happier home than ours, I am glad of it!
IN THE WILDERNESS
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS:
HOW I KILLED A BEAR
LOST IN THE WOODS
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
A CHARACTER STUDY (Old Phelps)
CAMPING OUT
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE
HOW I KILLED A BEAR
So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounter
with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to
myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of
the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear,
that the celebration of the exploit may be excused.
The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not hunting
for a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was looking
for me. The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met by
chance, the usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors always
a great deal of conversation about bears,--a general expression of
the wish to see one in the woods, and much speculation as to how a
person would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But bears are
scarce and timid, and appear only to a favored few.
It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventure
of any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepers
at our cottage--there were four of them--to send me to the clearing,
on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It was
rather a series of small clearings, running up into the forest, much
overgrown with bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured
there, penetrating through the leafy passages from one opening to
another, and browsing among the bushes. I was kindly furnished with
a six-quart pail, and told not to be gone long.
Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took a
gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if he
also carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge;
though how I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing
still, puzzled me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. I
prefer the rifle: it makes a clean job of death, and does not
prematurely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was a
Sharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten to the pound),--an excellent
weapon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a good
many years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it
--if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, and
the tree was not too far off--nearly every time. Of course, the tree
must have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time no
sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliating
circumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big
shotgun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on the
fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut both
eyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what had
happened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than a
thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable a
naturalist to decide from it to what species it belonged. This
disgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident to
show that, although I went blackberrying armed, there was not much
inequality between me and the bear.
In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer before, our
colored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, was
picking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and
walked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and escaped. Aunt
Chloe was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempting to run, she
sat down on the ground where she was standing, and began to weep and
scream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewildered by this
conduct. He approached and looked at her; he walked around and
surveyed her. Probably he had never seen a colored person before,
and did not know whether she would agree with him: at any rate, after
watching her a few moments, he turned about, and went into the
forest. This is an authentic instance of the delicate consideration
of a bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbearance towards
the African slave of the well-known lion, because the bear had no
thorn in his foot.
When I had climbed the hill,--I set up my rifle against a tree, and
began picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleam
of fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizes
when you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, through
leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing after
clearing. I could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the cracking
of sticks, and the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the
thicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, I
encountered a meek cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, and
then shambled off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb
society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the wood noises to
the cattle, thinking nothing of any real bear. In point of fact,
however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as I
picked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had lost
her cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried her
tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear's milk and honey.
When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inherited
instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father's house
(this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child would
know her father by some family resemblance, and have some language in
which to address him), and told him where the bear lived. The father
took his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into the
woods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when
dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The moral of the
tale was to be kindness to animals.
I was in the midst of this tale when I happened to look some rods
away to the other edge of the clearing, and there was a bear! He was
standing on his hind legs, and doing just what I was doing,--picking
blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, while with the
other he clawed the berries into his mouth,--green ones and all. To
say that I was astonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered
that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about the same
moment the bear saw me, stopped eating berries, and regarded me with
a glad surprise. It is all very well to imagine what you would do
under such circumstances. Probably you wouldn't do it: I didn't.
The bear dropped down on his forefeet, and came slowly towards me.
Climbing a tree was of no use, with so good a climber in the rear.
If I started to run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase; and
although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he can run up hill,
yet I felt that he could get over this rough, brush-tangled ground
faster than I could.
The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred to me how I could
divert his mind until I could fall back upon my military base. My
pail was nearly full of excellent berries, much better than the bear
could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and slowly backed
away from it, keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. The
ruse succeeded.
The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not accustomed to eat
out of a pail, he tipped it over, and nosed about in the fruit,
"gorming" (if there is such a word) it down, mixed with leaves and
dirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. Whenever
he disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he always upsets the
buckets of syrup, and tramples round in the sticky sweets, wasting
more than he eats. The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable.
As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started and ran. Somewhat out
of breath, and shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not a
moment too soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush after
me. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in his
eye. I felt that the time of one of us was probably short. The
rapidity of thought at such moments of peril is well known. I
thought an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, sold
fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the proceeds, while that
bear was loping across the clearing. As I was cocking the gun, I
made a hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole life. I noted,
that, even in such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible to
think of any good thing you have done. The sins come out uncommonly
strong. I recollected a newspaper subscription I had delayed paying
years and years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, and
which now never could be paid to all eternity.
The bear was coming on.
I tried to remember what I had read about encounters with bears. I
couldn't recall an instance in which a man had run away from a bear
in the woods and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear
had run from the man and got off. I tried to think what is the best
way to kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near enough to club
him with the stock. My first thought was to fire at his head; to
plant the ball between his eyes: but this is a dangerous experiment.
The bear's brain is very small; and, unless you hit that, the bear
does not mind a bullet in his head; that is, not at the time. I
remembered that the instant death of the bear would follow a bullet
planted just back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. This
spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands off, side
towards you, like a target. I finally determined to fire at him
generally.
The bear was coming on.
The contest seemed to me very different from anything at Creedmoor.
I had carefully read the reports of the shooting there; but it was
not easy to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitated
whether I had better fire lying on my stomach or lying on my back,
and resting the gun on my toes. But in neither position, I
reflected, could I see the bear until he was upon me. The range was
too short; and the bear wouldn't wait for me to examine the
thermometer, and note the direction of the wind. Trial of the
Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be abandoned; and I bitterly
regretted that I had not read more accounts of offhand shooting.
For the bear was coming on.
I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As my family is
small, this was not difficult. Dread of displeasing my wife, or
hurting her feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What would be her
anxiety as hour after hour passed on, and I did not return! What
would the rest of the household think as the afternoon passed, and no
blackberries came! What would be my wife's mortification when the
news was brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear! I cannot
imagine anything more ignominious than to have a husband eaten by a
bear. And this was not my only anxiety. The mind at such times is
not under control. With the gravest fears the most whimsical ideas
will occur. I looked beyond the mourning friends, and thought what
kind of an epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the stone.
Something like this:
HERE LIE THE REMAINS
OF
_______________
EATEN BY A BEAR
Aug. 20, 1877
It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. That "eaten by
a bear" is intolerable. It is grotesque. And then I thought what an
inadequate language the English is for compact expression. It would
not answer to put upon the stone simply "eaten"; for that is
indefinite, and requires explanation: it might mean eaten by a
cannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essen
signifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. How
simple the thing would be in German!
HIER LIEGT
HOCHWOHLGEBOREN
HERR _____ _______
GEFRESSEN
Aug. 20, 1877
That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten by a beast, and
presumably by a bear,--an animal that has a bad reputation since the
days of Elisha.
The bear was coming on; he had, in fact, come on. I judged that he
could see the whites of my eyes. All my subsequent reflections were
confused. I raised the gun, covered the bear's breast with the
sight, and let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I did not
hear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had stopped. He
was lying down. I then remembered that the best thing to do after
having fired your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge,
keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked back
suspiciously. There was a quiver in the hindlegs, but no other
motion. Still, he might be shamming: bears often sham. To make
sure, I approached, and put a ball into his head. He didn't mind it
now: he minded nothing. Death had come to him with a merciful
suddenness. He was calm in death. In order that he might remain so,
I blew his brains out, and then started for home. I had killed a
bear!
Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to saunter into the house
with an unconcerned air. There was a chorus of voices:
"Where are your blackberries?"
"Why were you gone so long?"
"Where's your pail?"
"I left the pail."
"Left the pail? What for?"
"A bear wanted it."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it."
"Oh, come! You didn't really see a bear?"
"Yes, but I did really see a real bear."
"Did he run?"
"Yes: he ran after me."
"I don't believe a word of it. What did you do?"
"Oh! nothing particular--except kill the bear."
Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" "Where's the bear?"
"If you want to see the bear, you must go up into the woods. I
couldn't bring him down alone."
Having satisfied the household that something extraordinary had
occurred, and excited the posthumous fear of some of them for my
own safety, I went down into the valley to get help. The great
bear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, received my
story with a smile of incredulity; and the incredulity spread to the
other inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as the story was known.
However, as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them to
the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last started off with
me to bring the bear in. Nobody believed there was any bear in the
case; but everybody who could get a gun carried one; and we went into
the woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and sticks, against
all contingencies or surprises,--a crowd made up mostly of scoffers
and jeerers.
But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and pointed out the bear,
lying peacefully wrapped in his own skin, something like terror
seized the boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. It was a
no-mistake bear, by George! and the hero of the fight well, I will
not insist upon that. But what a procession that was, carrying the
bear home! and what a congregation, was speedily gathered in the
valley to see the bear! Our best preacher up there never drew
anything like it on Sunday.
And I must say that my particular friends, who were sportsmen,
behaved very well, on the whole. They didn't deny that it was a
bear, although they said it was small for a bear. Mr... Deane, who
is equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it was a very
fair shot. He is probably the best salmon fisher in the United
States, and he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is no
person in America who is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But
he needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear,
that he had seen that kind of a shot made by a cow's horn.
This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep that night,
my last delicious thought was, "I've killed a bear!"
II
LOST IN THE WOODS
It ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my being lost in the
woods was not premeditated. Nothing could have been more informal.
This apology can be necessary only to those who are familiar with the
Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar with it would see the
absurdity of one going to the Northern Wilderness with the deliberate
purpose of writing about himself as a lost man. It may be true that
a book about this wild tract would not be recognized as complete
without a lost-man story in it, since it is almost as easy for a
stranger to get lost in the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merely
desire to say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in answer
to the popular demand, and I do not wish to be held responsible for
its variation from the typical character of such experiences.
We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au Sable Lake. This is a
gem--emerald or turquoise as the light changes it--set in the virgin
forest. It is not a large body of water, is irregular in form, and
about a mile and a half in length; but in the sweep of its wooded
shores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it,
the lake is probably the most charming in America. Why the young
ladies and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the days and
nights with hooting, and singing sentimental songs, is a mystery even
to the laughing loon.
I left my companions there one Saturday morning, to return to Keene
Valley, intending to fish down the Au Sable River. The Upper Lake
discharges itself into the Lower by a brook which winds through a
mile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the north end of the
Lower Lake, which is a huge sink in the mountains, and mirrors the
savage precipices, the Au Sable breaks its rocky barriers, and flows
through a wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Between
the Lower Lake and the settlements is an extensive forest, traversed
by a cart-path, admirably constructed of loose stones, roots of
trees, decayed logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the river
forms its western boundary. I followed this caricature of a road a
mile or more; then gave my luggage to the guide to carry home, and
struck off through the forest, by compass, to the river. I promised
myself an exciting scramble down this little-frequented canyon, and a
creel full of trout. There was no difficulty in finding the river,
or in descending the steep precipice to its bed: getting into a
scrape is usually the easiest part of it. The river is strewn with
bowlders, big and little, through which the amber water rushes with
an unceasing thunderous roar, now plunging down in white falls, then
swirling round in dark pools. The day, already past meridian, was
delightful; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead.
Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I thought, as I
concealed myself behind a bowlder, and made the first cast. There is
nothing like the thrill of expectation over the first throw in
unfamiliar waters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure only
excites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There was no rise to
the "leader" on the first cast, nor on the twenty-first; and I
cautiously worked my way down stream, throwing right and left. When
I had gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the pools was
unchanged: never were there such places for trout; but the trout were
out of their places. Perhaps they didn't care for the fly: some
trout seem to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. I
replaced the fly with a baited hook: the worm squirmed; the waters
rushed and roared; a cloud sailed across the blue: no trout rose to
the lonesome opportunity. There is a certain companionship in the
presence of trout, especially when you can feel them flopping in your
fish basket; but it became evident that there were no trout in this
wilderness, and a sense of isolation for the first time came over me.
There was no living thing near. The river had by this time entered a
deeper gorge; walls of rocks rose perpendicularly on either side,
--picturesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It was
not possible to climb out of the gorge; it was impossible to find a
way by the side of the river; and getting down the bed, over the
falls, and through the flumes, was not easy, and consumed time.
Was that thunder? Very likely. But thunder showers are always
brewing in these mountain fortresses, and it did not occur to me that
there was anything personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole in
the sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It seemed a
providential time to eat my luncheon; and I took shelter under a
scraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of the rocky slope.
The shower soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping over the
slippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in the
unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. The
thunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains,
and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightning
also darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain.
Every enlightened being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress of
shirt and pantaloons, hates to get wet; and I ignominiously crept
under the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very well at first,
until streams of water began to crawl along the face of the rock, and
trickle down the back of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroic
and humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccompanied by
resignation.
A longer time than I knew was consumed in this and repeated efforts
to wait for the slackening and renewing storm to pass away. In the
intervals of calm I still fished, and even descended to what a
sportsman considers incredible baseness: I put a "sinker" on my line.
It is the practice of the country folk, whose only object is to get
fish, to use a good deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of the
pools, and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I tried this
also. I might as well have fished in a pork barrel. It is true that
in one deep, black, round pool I lured a small trout from the bottom,
and deposited him in the creel; but it was an accident. Though I sat
there in the awful silence (the roar of water and thunder only
emphasized the stillness) full half an hour, I was not encouraged by
another nibble. Hope, however, did not die: I always expected to
find the trout in the next flume; and so I toiled slowly on,
unconscious of the passing time. At each turn of the stream I
expected to see the end, and at each turn I saw a long, narrow
stretch of rocks and foaming water. Climbing out of the ravine was,
in most places, simply impossible; and I began to look with interest
for a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant earth would enable me
to scale the precipice. I did not doubt that I was nearly through
the gorge. I could at length see the huge form of the Giant of the
Valley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the vista; and it
seemed not far off. But it kept its distance, as only a mountain
can, while I stumbled and slid down the rocky way. The rain had now
set in with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it was
growing dark; and I said to myself, "If you don't wish to spend the
night in this horrible chasm, you'd better escape speedily."
Fortunately I reached a place where the face of the precipice was
bushgrown, and with considerable labor scrambled up it.
Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, perhaps within a few
rods, of the house above the entrance of the gorge, and that, in any
event, I should fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struck
boldly into the forest, congratulating myself on having escaped out
of the river. So sure was I of my whereabouts that I did not note
the bend of the river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in my
basket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out.
The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for a thick undergrowth
of moose-bush. It was raining,--in fact, it had been raining, more
or less, for a month,--and the woods were soaked. This moose-bush is
most annoying stuff to travel through in a rain; for the broad leaves
slap one in the face, and sop him with wet. The way grew every
moment more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage brought
night on prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a near-sighted
man, whose glasses the rain rendered useless: such a person ought to
be at home early. On leaving the river bank I had borne to the left,
so as to be sure to strike either the clearing or the road, and not
wander off into the measureless forest. I confidently pursued this
course, and went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not come to
any opening or path only showed that I had slightly mistaken the
distance: I was going in the right direction.
I was so certain of this that I quickened my pace and got up with
alacrity every time I tumbled down amid the slippery leaves and
catching roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the left. It even
occurred to me that I was turning to the left so much that I might
come back to the river again. It grew more dusky, and rained more
violently; but there was nothing alarming in the situation, since I
knew exactly where I was. It was a little mortifying that I had
miscalculated the distance: yet, so far was I from feeling any
uneasiness about this that I quickened my pace again, and, before I
knew it, was in a full run; that is, as full a run as a person can
indulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in the way. No
nervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desired
to look upon myself as the person "not lost, but gone before." As
time passed, and darkness fell, and no clearing or road appeared, I
ran a little faster. It didn't seem possible that the people had
moved, or the road been changed; and yet I was sure of my direction.
I went on with an energy increased by the ridiculousness of the
situation, the danger that an experienced woodsman was in of getting
home late for supper; the lateness of the meal being nothing to the
gibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, and how far I went
on, I do not know; but suddenly I stumbled against an ill-placed
tree, and sat down on the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. It
then occurred to me that I had better verify my course by the
compass. There was scarcely light enough to distinguish the black
end of the needle. To my amazement, the compass, which was made near
Greenwich, was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of the
needle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I was going south
when I was going north. It intimated that, instead of turning to the
left, I had been making a circuit to the right. According to the
compass, the Lord only knew where I was.
The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in a circle is
unexplained. I suppose it arises from the sympathy of the legs with
the brain. Most people reason in a circle: their minds go round and
round, always in the same track. For the last half hour I had been
saying over a sentence that started itself: "I wonder where that road
is!" I had said it over till it had lost all meaning. I kept going
round on it; and yet I could not believe that my body had been
traveling in a circle. Not being able to recognize any tracks, I
have no evidence that I had so traveled, except the general testimony
of lost men.
The compass annoyed me. I've known experienced guides utterly
discredit it. It couldn't be that I was to turn about, and go the
way I had come. Nevertheless, I said to myself, "You'd better keep a
cool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of it. Better listen to
science than to spunk." And I resolved to heed the impartial needle.
I was a little weary of the rough tramping: but it was necessary to
be moving; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedly
chilly. I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along.
A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw.
Every-thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be necessary
to build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't find a dry bit of
wood. Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten log I had no
hatchet to cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the usual
three matches in my pocket. I knew exactly what would happen if I
tried to build a fire. The first match would prove to be wet. The
second match, when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little,
and then go out. There would be only one match left. Death would
ensue if it failed. I should get close to the log, crawl under my
hat, strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go out (the
reader painfully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, and
finally fire the punk,--thank God! And I said to myself, "The public
don't want any more of this thing: it is played out. Either have a
box of matches, or let the first one catch fire."
In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The prospect was cheerless; for,
apart from the comfort that a fire would give, it is necessary, at
night, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the tread
of the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there was one source
of profound satisfaction,--the catamount had been killed. Mr. Colvin,
the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last
official report to the State. Whether he despatched him with a
theodolite or a barometer does not matter: he is officially dead, and
none of the travelers can kill him any more. Yet he has served them a
good turn.
I knew that catamount well. One night when we lay in the bogs of the
South Beaver Meadow, under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serene
midnight was parted by a wild and humanlike cry from a neighboring
mountain. "That's a cat," said the guide. I felt in a moment that
it was the voice of "modern cultchah." "Modern culture," says Mr.
Joseph Cook in a most impressive period,--"modern culture is a child
crying in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." That
describes the catamount exactly. The next day, when we ascended the
mountain, we came upon the traces of this brute,--a spot where he had
stood and cried in the night; and I confess that my hair rose with
the consciousness of his recent presence, as it is said to do when a
spirit passes by.
Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in a dark, drenched,
and howling wilderness can impart, that I experienced; but I thought
what a satire upon my present condition was modern culture, with its
plain thinking and high living! It was impossible to get much
satisfaction out of the real and the ideal,--the me and the not-me.
At this time what impressed me most was the absurdity of my position
looked at in the light of modern civilization and all my advantages
and acquirements. It seemed pitiful that society could do absolutely
nothing for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that it
would now be profitable to exchange all my possessions for the woods
instinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value of
the "culture" that blunts the natural instincts.
It began to be a question whether I could hold out to walk all night;
for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined that a spectre was
walking by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only
recently eaten a hearty luncheon: but the pangs of hunger got hold on
me when I thought that I should have no supper, no breakfast; and, as
the procession of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew
hungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, and
wasting away: already I seemed to be emaciated. It is astonishing
how speedily a jocund, well-conditioned human being can be
transformed into a spectacle of poverty and want, Lose a man in the
Woods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, get his imagination running
on his lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is expecting him,
and he will become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon these
things to excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise him, if he
contemplates an adventure of this kind, to provide himself with
matches, kindling wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, and
not to select a rainy night for it.
Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in trouble! I
had read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure of
the pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal
actuality, that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter to
the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive,
stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insisted
on. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority
to Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation was
an amusing satire on this theory. I fancied that I could feel a
sneer in the woods at my detected conceit. There was something
personal in it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of the
ground were elements of discomfort; but there was, besides these, a
kind of terror in the very character of the forest itself. I think
this arose not more from its immensity than from the kind of
stolidity to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would be
a sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder that the bears
fall to, occasionally, and scratch the bark off the great pines and
maples, tearing it angrily away. One must have some vent to his
feelings. It is a common experience of people lost in the woods to
lose their heads; and even the woodsmen themselves are not free from
this panic when some accident has thrown them out of their reckoning.
Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods is
a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, this
pantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I should
like to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account,
and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least human
being is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on the
lonely shore" is agreeable only when you know you can at any moment
go home.
I had now given up all expectation of finding the road, and was
steering my way as well as I could northward towards the valley. In
my haste I made slow progress. Probably the distance I traveled was
short, and the time consumed not long; but I seemed to be adding mile
to mile, and hour to hour. I had time to review the incidents of the
Russo-Turkish war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question; I
outlined the characters of all my companions left in camp, and
sketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and disparaging
observations they would make on my adventure; I repeated something
like a thousand times, without contradiction, "What a fool you were
to leave the river!" I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard its
loud roar, always deceived by the wind in the tree-tops; I began to
entertain serious doubts about the compass,--when suddenly I became
aware that I was no longer on level ground: I was descending a slope;
I was actually in a ravine. In a moment more I was in a brook newly
formed by the rain. "Thank Heaven!" I cried: "this I shall follow,
whatever conscience or the compass says." In this region, all
streams go, sooner or later, into the valley. This ravine, this
stream, no doubt, led to the river. I splashed and tumbled along
down it in mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fall
showing that I must have wandered to high ground. When I guessed
that I must be close to the river, I suddenly stepped into mud up to
my ankles. It was the road,--running, of course, the wrong way, but
still the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid mud; but man
had made it, and it would take me home. I was at least three miles
from the point I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had before me a
toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of the way in a ditch; but
it is truth to say that I enjoyed every step of it. I was safe; I
knew where I was; and I could have walked till morning. The mind had
again got the upper hand of the body, and began to plume itself on
its superiority: it was even disposed to doubt whether it had been
"lost" at all.
III
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
Trout fishing in the Adirondacks would be a more attractive pastime
than it is but for the popular notion of its danger. The trout is a
retiring and harmless animal, except when he is aroused and forced
into a combat; and then his agility, fierceness, and vindictiveness
become apparent. No one who has studied the excellent pictures
representing men in an open boat, exposed to the assaults of long,
enraged trout flying at them through the open air with open mouth,
ever ventures with his rod upon the lonely lakes of the forest
without a certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of daring
fishermen without a feeling of admiration for their heroism. Most of
their adventures are thrilling, and all of them are, in narration,
more or less unjust to the trout: in fact, the object of them seems
to be to exhibit, at the expense of the trout, the shrewdness, the
skill, and the muscular power of the sportsman. My own simple story
has few of these recommendations.
We had built our bark camp one summer and were staying on one of the
popular lakes of the Saranac region. It would be a very pretty
region if it were not so flat, if the margins of the lakes had not
been flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, and
left a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-world
pictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,--and if the pianos at the hotels
were in tune. It would be an excellent sporting region also (for
there is water enough) if the fish commissioners would stock the
waters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the hair and skin
off from the deers' tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit of
catching the deer by the tails, and of being dragged in mere
wantonness round and round the shores. It is well known that if you
seize a deer by this "holt" the skin will slip off like the peel from
a banana--This reprehensible practice was carried so far that the
traveler is now hourly pained by the sight of peeled-tail deer
mournfully sneaking about the wood.
We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small lake in the heart of the
virgin forest, some ten miles from our camp, which was alive with
trout, unsophisticated, hungry trout: the inlet to it was described
as stiff with them. In my imagination I saw them lying there in
ranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass.
The lake had never been visited except by stray sable hunters in the
winter, and was known as the Unknown Pond. I determined to explore
it, fully expecting, however, that it would prove to be a delusion,
as such mysterious haunts of the trout usually are. Confiding my
purpose to Luke, we secretly made our preparations, and stole away
from the shanty one morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat,
a pair of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple-sugar; while I
had my case of rods, creel, and book of flies, and Luke had an axe
and the kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of this sort in
the woods.
Five miles through a tamarack swamp brought us to the inlet of
Unknown Pond, upon which we embarked our fleet, and paddled down its
vagrant waters. They were at first sluggish, winding among triste
fir-trees, but gradually developed a strong current. At the end of
three miles a loud roar ahead warned us that we were approaching
rapids, falls, and cascades. We paused. The danger was unknown. We
had our choice of shouldering our loads and making a detour through
the woods, or of "shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the more
dangerous course. Shooting the rapids has often been described, and
I will not repeat the description here. It is needless to say that I
drove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the successive
waterfalls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and landed, half a mile
below with whitened hair and a boat half full of water; and that the
guide was upset, and boat, contents, and man were strewn along the
shore.
After this common experience we went quickly on our journey, and, a
couple of hours before sundown, reached the lake. If I live to my
dying day, I never shall forget its appearance. The lake is almost
an exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. The forest
about it was untouched by axe, and unkilled by artificial flooding.
The azure water had a perfect setting of evergreens, in which all the
shades of the fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce were
perfectly blended; and at intervals on the shore in the emerald rim
blazed the ruby of the cardinal flower. It was at once evident that
the unruffled waters had never been vexed by the keel of a boat. But
what chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boiling
of the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vast
kettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would have been astonished at
this common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me when
I say that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I studied the
surface for some time to see upon what sort of flies they were
feeding, in order to suit my cast to their appetites; but they seemed
to be at play rather than feeding, leaping high in the air in
graceful curves, and tumbling about each other as we see them in the
Adirondack pictures.
It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever
kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on
the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated,
unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and
the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be
to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm.
No sportsman, however, will use anything but a fly, except he happens
to be alone.
While Luke launched my boat and arranged his seat in the stern, I
prepared my rod and line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing seven
ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread every
time it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening the
joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No one
devoted to high art would think of using a socket joint. My line was
forty yards of untwisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The "leader"
(I am very particular about my leaders) had been made to order from a
domestic animal with which I had been acquainted. The fisherman
requires as good a catgut as the violinist. The interior of the
house cat, it is well known, is exceedingly sensitive; but it may not
be so well known that the reason why some cats leave the room in
distress when a piano-forte is played is because the two instruments
are not in the same key, and the vibrations of the chords of the one
are in discord with the catgut of the other. On six feet of this
superior article I fixed three artificial flies,--a simple brown
hackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my own invention,
which I thought would be new to the most experienced fly-catcher.
The trout-fly does not resemble any known species of insect. It is a
"conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theory
is that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tame
imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requires
an artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit of
red flannel, a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's
plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object that
will not look like any fly, but still will suggest the universal
conventional fly.
I took my stand in the center of the tipsy boat; and Luke shoved off,
and slowly paddled towards some lily-pads, while I began casting,
unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had all disappeared.
I got out, perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, and
gradually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult to learn
to cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap off the flies at
every throw. Of this, however, we will not speak. I continued
casting for some moments, until I became satisfied that there had
been a miscalculation. Either the trout were too green to know what
I was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled in, and
changed the flies (that is, the fly that was not snapped off). After
studying the color of the sky, of the water, and of the foliage, and
the moderated light of the afternoon, I put on a series of beguilers,
all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the approach of evening.
At the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a splash where the
leader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived
the game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince me
that I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it among
the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over
to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light.
At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three trout
leaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermen
understand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavy
trout taking hold at once, rushing in different directions, smash the
tackle into flinders. I evaded this catch, and threw again. I
recall the moment. A hermit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, uttered
his long, liquid, evening note. Happening to look over my shoulder,
I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the sky (I can't help it that
Marcy is fifty miles off, and cannot be seen from this region: these
incidental touches are always used). The hundred feet of silk
swished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the
water as a three-cent piece (which no slamming will give the weight
of a ten) drops upon the contribution plate. Instantly there was a
rush, a swirl. I struck, and "Got him, by---!" Never mind what Luke
said I got him by. "Out on a fly!" continued that irreverent guide;
but I told him to back water, and make for the center of the lake.
The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a
shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made it
smoke. "Give him the butt!" shouted Luke. It is the usual remark in
such an emergency. I gave him the butt; and, recognizing the fact
and my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bottom, and sulked. It
is the most dangerous mood of a trout; for you cannot tell what he
will do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him
to reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soon
developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight for
the boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostile
intentions. "Look out for him!" cried Luke as he came flying in the
air. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and,
when I picked my traps up, he was spinning across the lake as if he
had a new idea: but the line was still fast. He did not run far. I
gave him the butt again; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift.
In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, was
coming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, who
was used to these encounters, having read of them in the writings of
travelers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defense. The
trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly
at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I
dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail,
and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the
danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg.
This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a
breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plunged
into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the
line on the reel. More butt; more indignation on the part of the
captive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I
was getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake,
and round and round the lake. What I feared was that the trout would
start up the inlet and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a new
fancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never read
of. Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle,
swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in,
and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing his
circle. I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my head
off.--When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about
twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It
would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to
the occasion. Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, I
stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went
the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcys
all round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band of
pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect
circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled and
reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the malicious
beast butt and line, and all, if he would only go the other way for a
change.
When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side.
After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of
a pound. Fish always lose by being "got in and dressed." It is best
to weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large one
I ever caught got away with my leader when I first struck him. He
weighed ten pounds.
IV
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self-sacrificing
sportsmen who have cleared the Adirondack regions of catamounts and
savage trout, what shall be said of the army which has so nobly
relieved them of the terror of the deer? The deer-slayers have
somewhat celebrated their exploits in print; but I think that justice
has never been done them.
The American deer in the wilderness, left to himself, leads a
comparatively harmless but rather stupid life, with only such
excitement as his own timid fancy raises. It was very seldom that
one of his tribe was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wild
animal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, regular in his
habits, affectionate in his family. Unfortunately for his repose,
his haunch is as tender as his heart. Of all wild creatures he is
one of the most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill of an
experienced model. I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatter
at the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points of
projecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner,
striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky with
which Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar. But the
whole proceeding was theatrical.
Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find anything there
natural and unstudied. I presume that these goats have no nonsense
about them when they are alone with the goatherds, any more than the
goatherds have, except when they come to pose in the studio; but the
long ages of culture, the presence always to the eye of the best
models and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the
Temple of Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals,
have had a steady molding, educating influence equal to a society of
decorative art upon the people and the animals who have dwelt in this
artistic atmosphere. The Attic goat has become an artificially
artistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as a
poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is opportunity for a very
instructive essay by Mr. E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Attic
goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.
The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yet
untouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and
all his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position of
the deer--his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the
lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the
moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest--is
still spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of
him which the artists have put upon canvas.
Wherever you go in the Northern forest you will find deer-paths. So
plainly marked and well-trodden are they that it is easy to mistake
them for trails made by hunters; but he who follows one of them is
soon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing through cedar
thickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the intricacies
of a marsh. The "run," in one direction, will lead to water; but, in
the other, it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires,
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The hunters, in
winter, find them congregated in "yards," where they can be
surrounded and shot as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women and
children in their winter villages. These little paths are full of
pitfalls among the roots and stones; and, nimble as the deer is, he
sometimes breaks one of his slender legs in them. Yet he knows how
to treat himself without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a
settlement in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune to break
her leg. She immediately disappeared with a delicacy rare in an
invalid, and was not seen for two weeks. Her friends had given her
up, supposing that she had dragged herself away into the depths of
the woods, and died of starvation, when one day she returned, cured
of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had the sense to shun
the doctor; to lie down in some safe place, and patiently wait for
her leg to heal. I have observed in many of the more refined animals
this sort of shyness, and reluctance to give trouble, which excite
our admiration when noticed in mankind.
The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with possessing
courage only when he is "at bay"; the stag will fight when he can
no longer flee; and the doe will defend her young in the face
of murderous enemies. The deer gets little credit for this
eleventh-hour bravery. But I think that in any truly Christian
condition of society the deer would not be conspicuous for cowardice.
I suppose that if the American girl, even as she is described in
foreign romances, were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behind
fences every time she ventured outdoors, she would become timid, and
reluctant to go abroad. When that golden era comes which the poets
think is behind us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered in
by the opening of the "vials," and the killing of everybody who does
not believe as those nations believe which have the most cannon; when
we all live in real concord,--perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be
respected, and will find that men are not more savage to the weak than
are the cougars and panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think,
it must seem to her a queer world in which the advent of innocence is
hailed by the baying of fierce hounds and the "ping" of the rifle.
Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted in the most manly
fashion. There are several methods, and in none of them is a fair
chance to the deer considered. A favorite method with the natives is
practiced in winter, and is called by them "still hunting." My idea
of still hunting is for one man to go alone into the forest, look
about for a deer, put his wits fairly against the wits of the
keen-scented animal, and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt.
There seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is private
assassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about finding your
man. The still hunting of the natives has all the romance and danger
attending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow gets
deep, many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and keep a
place trodden down, which grows larger as they tramp down the snow in
search of food. In time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard,"
surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their way
to this retreat on snowshoes, and from the top of the banks pick off
the deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul them away to market,
until the enclosure is pretty much emptied. This is one of the
surest methods of exterminating the deer; it is also one of the most
merciful; and, being the plan adopted by our government for
civilizing the Indian, it ought to be popular. The only people who
object to it are the summer sportsmen. They naturally want some
pleasure out of the death of the deer.
Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract the pleasure of
slaying deer through as many seasons as possible, object to the
practice of the hunters, who make it their chief business to
slaughter as many deer in a camping season as they can. Their own
rule, they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison to eat.
Their excuse is specious. What right have these sophists to put
themselves into a desert place, out of the reach of provisions, and
then ground a right to slay deer on their own improvidence? If it is
necessary for these people to have anything to eat, which I doubt, it
is not necessary that they should have the luxury of venison.
One of the most picturesque methods of hunting the poor deer is
called "floating." The person, with murder in his heart, chooses a
cloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which is
noiselessly paddled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lake
or the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a "jack,"
the rays of which are shielded from the boat and its occupants. A
deer comes down to feed upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him.
He looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated by the
bright flames. In that moment the sportsman is supposed to shoot the
deer. As an historical fact, his hand usually shakes so that he
misses the animal, or only wounds him; and the stag limps away to die
after days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunters remain out
all night, get stiff from cold and the cramped position in the boat,
and, when they return in the morning to camp, cloud their future
existence by the assertion that they "heard a big buck" moving along
the shore, but the people in camp made so much noise that he was
frightened off.
By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is hunting with dogs.
The dogs do the hunting, the men the killing. The hounds are sent
into the forest to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover.
They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go baying and
yelping on the track of the poor beast. The deer have their
established runways, as I said; and, when they are disturbed in their
retreat, they are certain to attempt to escape by following one which
invariably leads to some lake or stream. All that the hunter has to
do is to seat himself by one of these runways, or sit in a boat on
the lake, and wait the coming of the pursued deer. The frightened
beast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the hounds, will
often seek the open country, with a mistaken confidence in the
humanity of man. To kill a deer when he suddenly passes one on a
runway demands presence of mind and quickness of aim: to shoot him
from the boat, after he has plunged panting into the lake, requires
the rare ability to hit a moving object the size of a deer's head a
few rods distant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of a
common man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and cut his throat,
is a sure means of getting venison, and has its charms for some.
Even women and doctors of divinity have enjoyed this exquisite
pleasure. It cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wise
Creator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal which we do not
experience in killing a tame one.
The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has never, I believe, been
regarded from the deer's point of view. I happen to be in a
position, by reason of a lucky Adirondack experience, to present it
in that light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little story
has seemed long to the reader: it is too late now to skip it; but he
can recoup himself by omitting the story.
Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, a doe was feeding on
Basin Mountain. The night had been warm and showery, and the morning
opened in an undecided way. The wind was southerly: it is what the
deer call a dog-wind, having come to know quite well the meaning of
"a southerly wind and a cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe
was her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was just
beginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make this
young creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, had
been that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond,
and had not yet returned: he went ostensibly to feed on the succulent
lily-pads there. "He feedeth among the lilies until the day break
and the shadows flee away, and he should be here by this hour; but he
cometh not," she said, "leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the
hills." Clear Pond was too far off for the young mother to go with
her fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a fashionable watering-place
at this season among the deer; and the doe may have remembered, not
without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of a frivolous society
there. But the buck did not come: he was very likely sleeping under
one of the ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone? "I charge you, by
the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not nor awake my
love till he please."
The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender leaves of the young
shoots, and turning from time to time to regard her offspring. The
fawn had taken his morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed of
moss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown eyes, every
movement of his mother. The great eyes followed her with an alert
entreaty; and, if the mother stepped a pace or two farther away in
feeding, the fawn made a half movement, as if to rise and follow her.
You see, she was his sole dependence in all the world. But he was
quickly reassured when she turned her gaze on him; and if, in alarm,
he uttered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, and, with
every demonstration of affection, licked his mottled skin till it
shone again.
It was a pretty picture,--maternal love on the one part, and happy
trust on the other. The doe was a beauty, and would have been so
considered anywhere, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun
that day shone on,--slender limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body,
and aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, intelligent,
affectionate eyes. How alert, supple, free, she was! What untaught
grace in every movement! What a charming pose when she lifted her
head, and turned it to regard her child! You would have had a
companion picture if you had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby
kicking about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above the Au
Sable, in the valley below, while its young mother sat near, with an
easel before her, touching in the color of a reluctant landscape,
giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains,
and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing boy,--art in its
infancy.
The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, and turned her
ear to the south. Had she heard something? Probably it was only the
south wind in the balsams. There was silence all about in the
forest. If the doe had heard anything, it was one of the distant
noises of the world. There are in the woods occasional moanings,
premonitions of change, which are inaudible to the dull ears of men,
but which, I have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. If
the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, they were gone as
soon. With an affectionate glance at her fawn, she continued picking
up her breakfast.
But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, a tremor in her
limbs. She took a step; she turned her head to the south; she
listened intently. There was a sound,--a distant, prolonged note,
bell-toned, pervading the woods, shaking the air in smooth
vibrations. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. She shook
like the sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. It was the
baying of a hound! It was far off,--at the foot of the mountain.
Time enough to fly; time enough to put miles between her and the
hound, before he should come upon her fresh trail; time enough to
escape away through the dense forest, and hide in the recesses of
Panther Gorge; yes, time enough. But there was the fawn. The cry of
the hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The mother
instinctively bounded away a few paces. The fawn started up with an
anxious bleat: the doe turned; she came back; she couldn't leave it.
She bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, "Come, my child:
we are pursued: we must go." She walked away towards the west, and
the little thing skipped after her. It was slow going for the
slender legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping bushes.
The doe bounded in advance, and waited: the fawn scrambled after her,
slipping and tumbling along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whining
a good deal because its mother kept always moving away from it. The
fawn evidently did not hear the hound: the little innocent would even
have looked sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it, if
the brute had been rushing upon him. By all the means at her command
the doe urged her young one on; but it was slow work. She might have
been a mile away while they were making a few rods. Whenever the
fawn caught up, he was quite content to frisk about. He wanted more
breakfast, for one thing; and his mother wouldn't stand still. She
moved on continually; and his weak legs were tangled in the roots of
the narrow deer-path.
Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a panic of terror,--a
short, sharp yelp, followed by a prolonged howl, caught up and
reechoed by other bayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew what
that meant. One hound had caught her trail, and the whole pack
responded to the "view-halloo." The danger was certain now; it was
near. She could not crawl on in this way: the dogs would soon be
upon them. She turned again for flight: the fawn, scrambling after
her, tumbled over, and bleated piteously. The baying, emphasized now
by the yelp of certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was
impossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head erect, and
nostrils distended. She stood perfectly still, but trembling.
Perhaps she was thinking. The fawn took advantage of the situation,
and began to draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have made
up her mind. She let him finish. The fawn, having taken all he
wanted, lay down contentedly, and the doe licked him for a moment.
Then, with the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in a moment
was lost in the forest. She went in the direction of the hounds.
According to all human calculations, she was going into the jaws of
death. So she was: all human calculations are selfish. She kept
straight on, hearing the baying every moment more distinctly. She
descended the slope of the mountain until she reached the more open
forest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, and the cry of the
pack echoed more resoundingly in the great spaces. She was going due
east, when (judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, though
they were still hidden by a ridge) she turned short away to the
north, and kept on at a good pace. In five minutes more she heard
the sharp, exultant yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howl
of pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she turned, and
the fawn was safe.
The doe was in good running condition, the ground was not bad, and
she felt the exhilaration of the chase. For the moment, fear left
her, and she bounded on with the exaltation of triumph. For a
quarter of an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing the
moose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the fallen logs,
pausing neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the hounds grew
fainter behind her. But she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood
slash. It was marvelous to see her skim over it, leaping among its
intricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. No other living
animal could do it. But it was killing work. She began to pant
fearfully; she lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer.
She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower gait; but, once on more
level, free ground, her breath came back to her, and she stretched
away with new courage, and maybe a sort of contempt of her heavy
pursuers.
After running at high speed perhaps half a mile farther, it occurred
to her that it would be safe now to turn to the west, and, by a wide
circuit, seek her fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound that
chilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to the west of her.
The crafty brute had made the circuit of the slash, and cut off her
retreat. There was nothing to do but to keep on; and on she went,
still to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her. In five
minutes more she had passed into a hillside clearing. Cows and young
steers were grazing there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her,
down the mountain slope, were other clearings, broken by patches of
woods. Fences intervened; and a mile or two down lay the valley, the
shining Au Sable, and the peaceful farmhouses. That way also her
hereditary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that lovely
valley. She hesitated: it was only for an instant. She must cross
the Slidebrook Valley if possible, and gain the mountain opposite.
She bounded on; she stopped. What was that? From the valley ahead
came the cry of a searching hound. All the devils were loose this
morning. Every way was closed but one, and that led straight down
the mountain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was a
slender white wooden spire. The doe did not know that it was the
spire of a Christian chapel. But perhaps she thought that human pity
dwelt there, and would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds.
"The hounds are baying on my track:
O white man! will you send me back?"
In a panic, frightened animals will always flee to human-kind from
the danger of more savage foes. They always make a mistake in doing
so. Perhaps the trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth;
perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the future. The
business of this age is murder,--the slaughter of animals, the
slaughter of fellow-men, by the wholesale. Hilarious poets who have
never fired a gun write hunting-songs,--Ti-ra-la: and good bishops
write war-songs,--Ave the Czar!
The hunted doe went down the "open," clearing the fences splendidly,
flying along the stony path. It was a beautiful sight. But consider
what a shot it was! If the deer, now, could only have been caught I
No doubt there were tenderhearted people in the valley who would have
spared her life, shut her up in a stable, and petted her. Was there
one who would have let her go back to her waiting-fawn? It is the
business of civilization to tame or kill.
The doe went on. She left the sawmill on John's Brook to her right;
she turned into a wood-path. As she approached Slide Brook, she saw
a boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not in
sight; but she could hear them coming down the hill. There was no
time for hesitation. With a tremendous burst of speed she cleared
the stream, and, as she touched the bank, heard the "ping" of a rifle
bullet in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to the poor
thing. In a moment more she was in the opening: she leaped into the
traveled road. Which way? Below her in the wood was a load of hay:
a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were running towards
her. She turned south, and flew along the street. The town was up.
Women and children ran to the doors and windows; men snatched their
rifles; shots were fired; at the big boarding-houses, the summer
boarders, who never have anything to do, came out and cheered; a
campstool was thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shooting at
a mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and popped away at her; but
they were accustomed to a mark that stood still. It was all so
sudden! There were twenty people who were just going to shoot her;
when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away across a marsh
toward the foothills. It was a fearful gauntlet to run. But nobody
except the deer considered it in that light. Everybody told what he
was just going to do; everybody who had seen the performance was a
kind of hero,--everybody except the deer. For days and days it was
the subject of conversation; and the summer boarders kept their guns
at hand, expecting another deer would come to be shot at.
The doe went away to the foothills, going now slower, and evidently
fatigued, if not frightened half to death. Nothing is so appalling
to a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer entered
the thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the meadow in
pursuit. By this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out their
tongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, like stupids, and
consequently losing ground when the deer doubled. But, when the doe
had got into the timber, she heard the savage brutes howling across
the meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered
to shoot the dogs.)
The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was game to the
tip of her high-bred ears. But the fearful pace at which she had
just been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beat
like a trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still fled
industriously up the right bank of the stream. When she had gone a
couple of miles, and the dogs were evidently gaining again, she
crossed the broad, deep brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fled
on in the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail. The fording of the
river threw the hounds off for a time. She knew, by their uncertain
yelping up and down the opposite bank, that she had a little respite:
she used it, however, to push on until the baying was faint in her
ears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the ground.
This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused again by the
baying pack, she leaped forward with better speed, though without
that keen feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the morning.
It was still a race for life; but the odds were in her--favor, she
thought. She did not appreciate the dogged persistence of the
hounds, nor had any inspiration told her that the race is not to the
swift.
She was a little confused in her mind where to go; but an instinct
kept her course to the left, and consequently farther away from her
fawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed more
distant or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the stream
again, left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Haystack and
Skylight in the direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not know
her exact course through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and
frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked her
way along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lying
down "dead beat" at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the
remorseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down
the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. If
she could put that piece of water between her and her pursuers, she
would be safe. Had she strength to swim it?
At her first step into the water she saw a sight that sent her back
with a bound. There was a boat mid-lake: two men were in it. One
was rowing: the other had a gun in his hand. They were looking
towards her: they had seen her. (She did not know that they had
heard the baying of hounds on the mountains, and had been lying in
wait for her an hour.) What should she do? The hounds were drawing
near. No escape that way, even if she could still run. With only a
moment's hesitation she plunged into the lake, and struck obliquely
across. Her tired legs could not propel the tired body rapidly. She
saw the boat headed for her. She turned toward the centre of the
lake. The boat turned. She could hear the rattle of the oarlocks.
It was gaining on her. Then there was a silence. Then there was a
splash of the water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the
lake, the words "Confound it all!" and a rattle of the oars again.
The doe saw the boat nearing her. She turned irresolutely to the
shore whence she came: the dogs were lapping the water, and howling
there. She turned again to the center of the lake.
The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. In a moment
more, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the man at the
oars had leaned over and caught her by the tail.
"Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he shouted to the gentleman
in the stern.
The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, smooth-shaven face, and
might have been a minister of some sort of everlasting gospel. He
took the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, and
looked at him with her great, appealing eyes.
"I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!" and he dropped the paddle.
"Oh, let her go!"
"Let H. go!" was the only response of the guide as he slung the deer
round, whipped out his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed
her jugular.
And the gentleman ate that night of the venison.
The buck returned about the middle of the afternoon. The fawn was
bleating piteously, hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. He
looked about in the forest. He took a circuit, and came back. His
doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helpless
sort of way. The fawn appealed for his supper. The buck had nothing
whatever to give his child,--nothing but his sympathy. If he said
anything, this is what he said: "I'm the head of this family; but,
really, this is a novel case. I've nothing whatever for you. I
don't know what to do. I've the feelings of a father; but you can't
live on them. Let us travel."
The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him. They
disappeared in the forest.
V
A CHARACTER STUDY
There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man. Wanted, a
man who would satisfy the conditions of the miocene environment, and
yet would be good enough for an ancestor. We are not particular
about our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote; but we must
have something. Failing to apprehend the primeval man, science has
sought the primitive man where he exists as a survival in present
savage races. He is, at best, only a mushroom growth of the recent
period (came in, probably, with the general raft of mammalian fauna);
but he possesses yet some rudimentary traits that may be studied.
It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitive
man divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggles
with the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, the
ordinary occupation of the metaphysician: take from it (without
eating it) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then let
the mind still dwell on it as an orange. The experiment is perfectly
successful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind. Better
still, consider the telephone: take away from it the metallic disk,
and the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let the
mind run abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come back. I have
tried by this sort of process to get a conception of the primitive
man. I let the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces,
and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking across the
terrace epoch of the quaternary period.
But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results are obtained
by studying the primitive man as he is left here and there in our
era, a witness of what has been; and I find him most to my mind in
the Adirondack system of what geologists call the Champlain epoch. I
suppose the primitive man is one who owes more to nature than to the
forces of civilization. What we seek in him are the primal and
original traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and
unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. He would
retain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of the
ordinary, commonplace man. I should expect to find him, by reason of
an unrelinquished kinship, enjoying a special communion with nature,
--admitted to its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able to
predict its vagaries. He would be a kind of test to us of what we
have lost by our gregarious acquisitions. On the one hand, there
would be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts (which the
fox and the beaver still possess), the ability to find one's way in
the pathless forest, to follow a trail, to circumvent the wild
denizens of the woods; and, on the other hand, there would be the
philosophy of life which the primitive man, with little external aid,
would evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is our
good fortune to know such a man; but it is difficult to present him
to a scientific and caviling generation. He emigrated from somewhat
limited conditions in Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a century
ago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in the
wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure and
freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the
less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads
them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the
society of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that Old
Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, and
never any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which
he plunged. Why should he want to slash away the forest and plow up
the ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter to roam about in
the leafy solitudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to the
chatter of birds and the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in the
streams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in the maples, honey in
the hollow trees, fur on the sables, warmth in hickory logs? Will
not a few days' planting and scratching in the "open" yield potatoes
and rye? And, if there is steadier diet needed than venison and
bear, is the pig an expensive animal? If Old Phelps bowed to the
prejudice or fashion of his age (since we have come out of the
tertiary state of things), and reared a family, built a frame house
in a secluded nook by a cold spring, planted about it some apple
trees and a rudimentary garden, and installed a group of flaming
sunflowers by the door, I am convinced that it was a concession that
did not touch his radical character; that is to say, it did not
impair his reluctance to split oven-wood.
He was a true citizen of the wilderness. Thoreau would have liked
him, as he liked Indians and woodchucks, and the smell of pine
forests; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably have
said to him, "Why on airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you live accordin' to
your preachin'?" You might be misled by the shaggy suggestion of Old
Phelps's given name--Orson--into the notion that he was a mighty
hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The hirsute and grisly
sound of Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untamed
and the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom and
wildness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those unconventional
and humorous qualities of the bear which make the animal so beloved
in literature; and one does not think of Old Phelps so much as a
lover of nature,--to use the sentimental slang of the period,--as a
part of nature itself.
His appearance at the time when as a "guide" he began to come into
public notice fostered this impression,--a sturdy figure with long
body and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-colored
trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head
surmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top,
so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern out
of a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many years
past the possibility of being entered by a comb.
His features were small and delicate, and set in the frame of a
reddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clearing about the
sensitive mouth, which was not seldom wreathed with a childlike and
charming smile. Out of this hirsute environment looked the small
gray eyes, set near together; eyes keen to observe, and quick to
express change of thought; eyes that made you believe instinct can
grow into philosophic judgment. His feet and hands were of
aristocratic smallness, although the latter were not worn away by
ablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you the
impression that here was a man who had just come out of the ground,
--a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially explained by
his humorous relation to-soap. "Soap is a thing," he said, "that I
hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on
him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The
observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this
realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting
to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion
had supplied the place of our artificial breeding to this man?
Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on a log, with a
short pipe in his mouth. If ever man was formed to sit on a log, it
was Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative person. Walking
on a country road, or anywhere in the "open," was irksome to him. He
had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unlike that of the bear: his
short legs bowed out, as if they had been more in the habit of
climbing trees than of walking. On land, if we may use that
expression, he was something like a sailor; but, once in the rugged
trail or the unmarked route of his native forest, he was a different
person, and few pedestrians could compete with him. The vulgar
estimate of his contemporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps "lazy," was
simply a failure to comprehend the conditions of his being. It is
the unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificial
standards for all persons. The primitive man suffers by them much as
the contemplative philosopher does, when one happens to arrive in
this busy, fussy world.
If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, his voice, when
first heard, invariably startles the listener. A small,
high-pitched, half-querulous voice, it easily rises into the shrillest
falsetto; and it has a quality in it that makes it audible in all the
tempests of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like the piping of a
boatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way of letting it
rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, or
wishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until it
dominates everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering
aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an original force,
as the northwest wind or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he is
pottering about the camp-fire, trying to light his pipe with a twig
held in the flame, he is apt to begin some philosophical observation
in a small, slow, stumbling voice, which seems about to end in
defeat; when he puts on some unsuspected force, and the sentence ends
in an insistent shriek. Horace Greeley had such a voice, and could
regulate it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice is not seldom
plaintive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woods
themselves.
When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, as the reader has
already guessed, not understood by his contemporaries. His
neighbors, farmers in the secluded valley, had many of them grown
thrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fertile meadows, and
vigorously attacking the timbered mountains; while Phelps, with not
much more faculty of acquiring property than the roaming deer, had
pursued the even tenor of the life in the forest on which he set out.
They would have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned more
of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than all of them put
together, but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter,
this fisherman, this sitter on a log, and philosopher, was the real
proprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide the
stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its geography or
its topography (though his knowledge was superior in these respects);
there were other trappers, and more deadly hunters, and as intrepid
guides: but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties and
sublimities of the mountains; and, when city strangers broke into the
region, he monopolized the appreciation of these delights and wonders
of nature. I suppose that in all that country he alone had noticed
the sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of the seasons,
taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, and climbed mountains
solely for the sake of the prospect. He alone understood what was
meant by "scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not know
that he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be a
slack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and fisherman; and his
passionate love of the forest and the mountains, if it was noticed,
was accounted to him for idleness. When the appreciative tourist
arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to him all the wonders
of his possessions; he, for the first time, found an outlet for his
enthusiasm, and a response to his own passion. It then became known
what manner of man this was who had grown up here in the
companionship of forests, mountains, and wild animals; that these
scenes had highly developed in him the love of beauty, the aesthetic
sense, delicacy of appreciation, refinement of feeling; and that, in
his solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, self-taught,
had evolved for himself a philosophy and a system of things. And it
was a sufficient system, so long as it was not disturbed by external
skepticism. When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had about
as much to give to it as to receive from it; probably more, in his
own estimation; for there is no conceit like that of isolation.
Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer of Marcy, and
caused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others could
enjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top. To him it was,
in noble symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe.
To stand on it gave him, as he said, "a feeling of heaven
up-h'istedness." He heard with impatience that Mount Washington was a
thousand feet higher, and he had a childlike incredulity about the
surpassing sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation he
seemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hear
it, any more than a lover hears the laudation of the beauty of another
woman than the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he loved, it
made him melancholy to have us speak of scenery elsewhere that was
finer. And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he never
over-praised what he brought us to see, any more than one would
over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remember that when for
the first time, after a toilsome journey through the forest, the
splendors of the Lower Au Sable Pond broke upon our vision,--that
low-lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflected
in its bosom,--he made no outward response to our burst of admiration:
only a quiet gleam of the eye showed the pleasure our appreciation
gave him. As some one said, it was as if his friend had been admired
--a friend about whom he was unwilling to say much himself, but well
pleased to have others praise.
Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as simply the product of the
Adirondacks; not so much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase has
it) as a natural growth amid primal forces. But our study is
interrupted by another influence, which complicates the problem, but
increases its interest. No scientific observer, so far as we know,
has ever been able to watch the development of the primitive man,
played upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of "Greeley's
Weekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated by the woods is a fascinating
study; educated by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon.
No one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what this
newspaper was to such a mountain valley as Keene. If it was not a
Providence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt owing to it that
Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it is
not of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the most
cultivated and best informed portion of the earth's surface--the
Western Reserve of Ohio, as free from conceit as it is from a
suspicion that it lacks anything owes its pre-eminence solely to this
comprehensive journal. It received from it everything except a
collegiate and a classical education,--things not to be desired,
since they interfere with the self-manufacture of man. If Greek had
been in this curriculum, its best known dictum would have been
translated, "Make thyself." This journal carried to the community
that fed on it not only a complete education in all departments of
human practice and theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfying
assurance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in the universe
worth the attention of man. This panoplied its readers in
completeness. Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universal
brotherhood and sisterhood, nothing was omitted; neither the poetry
of Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller; neither the
virtues of association, nor of unbolted wheat. The laws of political
economy and trade were laid down as positively and clearly as the
best way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the millennium
would come, and come only when every foot of the earth was subsoiled.
I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of nature and the
Tri-bune: but he cannot be explained without considering these two
factors. To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune was
Greeley; and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as something
greater than his newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing another
journal equal to it in another part of the universe. At any rate, so
completely did Phelps absorb this paper and this personality that he
was popularly known as "Greeley" in the region where he lived.
Perhaps a fancied resemblance of the two men in the popular mind had
something to do with this transfer of name. There is no doubt that
Horace Greeley owed his vast influence in the country to his genius,
nor much doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural districts to
James Gordon Bennett; that is, to the personality of the man which
the ingenious Bennett impressed upon the country. That he despised
the conventionalities of society, and was a sloven in his toilet, was
firmly believed; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of the
people. To them "the old white coat"--an antique garment of
unrenewed immortality--was as much a subject of idolatry as the
redingote grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seen
it by the campfires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and believed
that he would come again in it to lead them against the enemies of
France. The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said he
was clad. It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he
published in his newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor
(the fact that it was receipted may have excited the animosity of
some of his contemporaries) to show that he wore the best broadcloth,
and that the folds of his trousers followed the city fashion of
falling outside his boots. If this revelation was believed, it made
no sort of impression in the country. The rural readers were not to
be wheedled out of their cherished conception of the personal
appearance of the philosopher of the Tri-bune.
That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he would
have been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission of
Greeley's paper. The subscribers were an army, in which every man
was a general. And I am not surprised to find Old Phelps lately
rising to the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In some
recently-published observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of
reading is laid down this definition: "If I understand the necessity
or use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said or
proclaimed before. Hence, letters, characters, &c., are arranged in
all the perfection they possibly can be, to show how certain language
has been spoken by the, original author. Now, to reproduce by
reading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that no
one standing out of sight could tell the reading from the first time
the language was spoken."
This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard as
good readers read, and as poor readers, as almost any one in this
region. If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hear
nearly the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to have been a
good reader. Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of the
English language at a glance more readily than he did, or knew the
meaning of every mark of punctuation more clearly; but he could not
read proper. 'But how do you know?' says one. From the fact I heard
him in the same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his own
particular way, that, if they had been published properly in print, a
proper reader would have reproduced them again the same way. In the
midst of those remarks Mr. Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce by
reading part of a speech that some one else had made; and his reading
did not sound much more like the man that first read or made
the speech than the clatter of a nail factory sounds like a
well-delivered speech. Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did
not know how to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if not
quite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is ten
times harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, he, like
thousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it on
through his whole life.
Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing one of Horace
Greeley's lectures as he delivered it is a question that cannot
detain us here; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I think,
would please Mr. Greeley.
The first driblets of professional tourists and summer boarders who
arrived among the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found Old
Phelps the chief and best guide of the region. Those who were eager
to throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and camp in the
wilderness, could not but be well satisfied with the aboriginal
appearance of this guide; and when he led off into the woods, axe in
hand, and a huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to be
following the Wandering Jew. The contents--of this sack would have
furnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw,
blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour,
coffee, tea, &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot of
the pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of the
weather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic prediction
about it. He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade of
sportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty and
sublimity of the region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted to
a passion. He loved his profession; and yet it very soon appeared
that he exercised it with reluctance for those who had neither
ideality, nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profanation
amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secret
haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted
him. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men and
giddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition.
And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being
accompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood nor
valued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn't
even like his shrill voice; his quaint talk bored them. It was true
that, at this period, Phelps had lost something of the activity of
his youth; and the habit of contemplative sitting on a log and
talking increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of
the woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about the
woods-life or the various problems of existence, than cut wood, or
busy himself in the drudgery of the camp. His critics went so far as
to say, "Old Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same of
Socrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrates
lived, thought he was lazy. Probably Socrates could cook no better
than Old Phelps, and no doubt went "gumming" about Athens with very
little care of what was in the pot for dinner.
If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he also measured them by
his own standards. He used to write out what he called "short-faced
descriptions" of his comrades in the woods, which were never so
flattering as true. It was curious to see how the various qualities
which are esteemed in society appeared in his eyes, looked at merely
in their relation to the limited world he knew, and judged by their
adaptation to the primitive life. It was a much subtler comparison
than that of the ordinary guide, who rates his traveler by his
ability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, use an oar, hit a
mark, or sing a song. Phelps brought his people to a test of their
naturalness and sincerity, tried by contact with the verities of the
woods. If a person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no
opinion of him or his culture; and yet, although he was perfectly
satisfied with his own philosophy of life, worked out by close
observation of nature and study of the Tri-bune, he was always eager
for converse with superior minds, with those who had the advantage of
travel and much reading, and, above all, with those who had any
original "speckerlation." Of all the society he was ever permitted
to enjoy, I think he prized most that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctor
enjoyed the quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodsman,
and Phelps found new worlds open to him in the wide ranges of the
doctor's mind. They talked by the hour upon all sorts of themes, the
growth of the tree, the habits of wild animals, the migration of
seeds, the succession of oak and pine, not to mention theology, and
the mysteries of the supernatural.
I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several years ago, he
conducted a party to the summit of Mount Marcy by the way he had
"bushed out." This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense of
ownership in it. In a way, it was holy ground; and he would rather
no one should go on it who did not feel its sanctity. Perhaps it was
a sense of some divine relation in it that made him always speak of
it as "Mercy." To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount Marcy was
always "Mount Mercy." By a like effort to soften the personal
offensiveness of the nomenclature of this region, he invariably spoke
of Dix's Peak, one of the southern peaks of the range, as "Dixie."
It was some time since Phelps himself had visited his mountain; and,
as he pushed on through the miles of forest, we noticed a kind of
eagerness in the old man, as of a lover going to a rendezvous. Along
the foot of the mountain flows a clear trout stream, secluded and
undisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the "Mercy Brook" of
the old woodsman. That day when he crossed it, in advance of his
company, he was heard to say in a low voice, as if greeting some
object of which he was shyly fond, "So, little brook, do I meet you
once more?" and when we were well up the mountain, and emerged from
the last stunted fringe of vegetation upon the rock-bound slope, I
saw Old Phelps, who was still foremost, cast himself upon the ground,
and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm that was intended for no mortal
ear, "I'm with you once again!" His great passion very rarely found
expression in any such theatrical burst. The bare summit that day
was swept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in an occasional chilling
cloud. Some of the party, exhausted by the climb, and shivering in
the rude wind, wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea made, and
thought this the guide's business. Fire and tea were far enough from
his thought. He had withdrawn himself quite apart, and wrapped in a
ragged blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazing
out upon the wilderness of peaks. The view from Marcy is peculiar.
It is without softness or relief. The narrow valleys are only dark
shadows; the lakes are bits of broken mirror. From horizon to
horizon there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. You
stand upon the highest billow; you command the situation; you have
surprised Nature in a high creative act; the mighty primal energy has
only just become repose. This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps.
Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling a fire; but the
enthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of want of appreciation
in the rest of the party. When we were descending, he told us, with
mingled humor and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the top
of the mountain on a still day, who began immediately to talk about
the fashions! As he related the scene, stopping and facing us in the
trail, his mild, far-in eyes came to the front, and his voice rose
with his language to a kind of scream.
"Why, there they were, right before the greatest view they ever saw,
talkin' about the fashions!"
Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in which he pronounced
the word "fashions," and then added, with a sort of regretful
bitterness, "I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em there."
In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personified the woods,
mountains, and streams. They had not only personality, but
distinctions of sex. It was something beyond the characterization of
the hunter, which appeared, for instance, when he related a fight
with a panther, in such expressions as, "Then Mr. Panther thought he
would see what he could do," etc. He was in "imaginative sympathy"
with all wild things. The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went away
to the west, through the primeval forests, toward Avalanche and
Colden, and followed the course of the charming Opalescent. When we
reached the leaping stream, Phelps exclaimed,
"Here's little Miss Opalescent!"
"Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent?" some one asked.
"Oh, she's too pretty!" And too pretty she was, with her foam-white
and rainbow dress, and her downfalls, and fountainlike uprising. A
bewitching young person we found her all that summer afternoon.
This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous lady
whose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. She
was built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition
to explore was equal to her size. Phelps and the other guides once
succeeded in raising her to the top of Marcy; but the feat of getting
a hogshead of molasses up there would have been easier. In
attempting to give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as we sat
in the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a moment, while he cast his eye
around the woods: "Waal, there ain't no tree!"
It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks and incidents that I can
put the reader in possession of the peculiarities of my subject; and
this involves the wrenching of things out of their natural order and
continuity, and introducing them abruptly, an abruptness illustrated
by the remark of "Old Man Hoskins" (which Phelps liked to quote),
when one day he suddenly slipped down a bank into a thicket, and
seated himself in a wasps' nest: "I hain't no business here; but here
I be!"
The first time we went into camp on the Upper Au Sable Pond, which
has been justly celebrated as the most prettily set sheet of water in
the region, we were disposed to build our shanty on the south side,
so that we could have in full view the Gothics and that loveliest of
mountain contours. To our surprise, Old Phelps, whose sentimental
weakness for these mountains we knew, opposed this. His favorite
camping ground was on the north side,--a pretty site in itself, but
with no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely mountains, we
should be obliged to row out into the lake: we wanted them always
before our eyes,--at sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze of noon.
With deliberate speech, as if weighing our arguments and disposing of
them, he replied, "Waal, now, them Gothics ain't the kinder scenery
you want ter hog down!"
It was on quiet Sundays in the woods, or in talks by the camp-fire,
that Phelps came out as the philosopher, and commonly contributed the
light of his observations. Unfortunate marriages, and marriages in
general, were, on one occasion, the subject of discussion; and a good
deal of darkness had been cast on it by various speakers; when Phelps
suddenly piped up, from a log where he had sat silent, almost
invisible, in the shadow and smoke, "Waal, now, when you've said all
there is to be said, marriage is mostly for discipline."
Discipline, certainly, the old man had, in one way or another; and
years of solitary communing in the forest had given him, perhaps, a
childlike insight into spiritual concerns. Whether he had formulated
any creed or what faith he had, I never knew. Keene Valley had a
reputation of not ripening Christians any more successfully than
maize, the season there being short; and on our first visit it was
said to contain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accurate
census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who sometimes made abrupt
remarks in trying situations, was not included in this census; but he
was the disciple of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I have
heard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one Sunday, after
a noble sermon of Robertson's had been read in the cathedral
stillness of the forest. His experience was entirely first-hand, and
related with unconsciousness that it was not common to all. There
was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a vivid
realism, in that nearness of God of which he spoke,--"as near
some-times as those trees,"--and of the holy voice, that, in a time
of inward struggle, had seemed to him to come from the depths of the
forest, saying, "Poor soul, I am the way."
In later years there was a "revival" in Keene Valley, the result of
which was a number of young "converts," whom Phelps seemed to regard
as a veteran might raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort of
soldiers they would make.
"Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, "you've kindled a pretty good
fire with light wood. That's what we do of a dark night in the
woods, you know but we do it just so as we can look around and find
the solid wood: so now put on your solid wood."
In the Sunday Bible classes of the period Phelps was a perpetual
anxiety to the others, who followed closely the printed lessons, and
beheld with alarm his discursive efforts to get into freer air and
light. His remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises,
but were outside of the safe path into which the others thought it
necessary to win him from his "speckerlations." The class were one
day on the verses concerning "God's word" being "written on the
heart," and were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of
"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the bottom, and
remarked that he had "thought a good deal about the expression,
'God's word written on the heart,' and had been asking himself how
that was to be done; and suddenly it occurred to him (having been
much interested lately in watching the work of a photographer) that,
when a photograph is going to be taken, all that has to be done is to
put the object in position, and the sun makes the picture; and so he
rather thought that all we had got to do was to put our hearts in
place, and God would do the writin'."
Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. In the woods,
one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as a
doctrine in the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt to
pack these great and fluent mysteries into one word must always be
more or less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never could
see much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd a
good deal better say Legion."
The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic sensibility, was
frequently not to be distinguished from a natural religion, and was
always tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbing
slowly one day up the Balcony,--he was more than usually calm and
slow,--he espied an exquisite fragile flower in the crevice of a
rock, in a very lonely spot.
"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, "it seems as if the
Creator had kept something just to look at himself."
To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond (a retired but rather
uninteresting spot), and who expressed a little disappointment at its
tameness, saying, of this "Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of
this place seems to be its loneliness,"
"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, and its nativeness.
"It lies here just where it was born."
Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A secluded opening
in the woods was a "calm spot." He told of seeing once, or rather
being in, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlooking
the Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky and the lake,
and seemed to be in the midst of it; "only at one place there was an
indentation in it, where it rested on the lake, just enough to keep
it from rolling off." This "resting" of the sphere seemed to give
him great comfort.
One Indian-summer morning in October, some ladies found the old man
sitting on his doorstep smoking a short pipe.
He gave no sign of recognition except a twinkle of the eye, being
evidently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They stood there a
full minute before he opened his mouth: then he did not rise, but
slowly took his pipe from his mouth, and said in a dreamy way,
pointing towards the brook,--
"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple almost denuded of leaves,
which lay like a yellow garment cast at its feet. "I've been
watching that tree all the morning. There hain't been a breath of
wind: but for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just as
you see them now; and at last it's pretty much bare." And after a
pause, pensively: "Waal, I suppose its hour had come."
This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly unappreciated by his
neighbors; but it has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of his
life. Rising after a time, he said, "Now I want you to go with me
and see my golden city I've talked so much about." He led the way to
a hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the forest, the
spectators saw revealed the winding valley and its stream. He said
quietly, "There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, they
saw that vast assemblage of birches and "popples," yellow as gold in
the brooding noonday, and slender spires rising out of the glowing
mass. Without another word, Phelps sat a long time in silent
content: it was to him, as Bunyan says, "a place desirous to be in."
Is this philosopher contented with what life has brought him?
Speaking of money one day, when we had asked him if he should do
differently if he had his life to live over again, he said, "Yes, but
not about money. To have had hours such as I have had in these
mountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr.
Twichell, and others I could name, is worth all the money the world
could give." He read character very well, and took in accurately the
boy nature. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather overdone specimen),--"
Tom's a nice kind of a boy; but he's got to come up against a
snubbin'-post one of these days."--"Boys!" he once said: "you can't
git boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never yet saw a boy
that would look a second time at a sunset. Now, a girl will some
times; but even then it's instantaneous,--comes an goes like the
sunset. As for me," still speaking of scenery, "these mountains
about here, that I see every day, are no more to me, in one sense,
than a man's farm is to him. What mostly interests me now is when I
see some new freak or shape in the face of Nature."
In literature it may be said that Old Phelps prefers the best in the
very limited range that has been open to him. Tennyson is his
favorite among poets an affinity explained by the fact that they are
both lotos-eaters. Speaking of a lecture-room talk of Mr. Beecher's
which he had read, he said, "It filled my cup about as full as I
callerlate to have it: there was a good deal of truth in it, and some
poetry; waal, and a little spice, too. We've got to have the spice,
you know." He admired, for different reasons, a lecture by Greeley
that he once heard, into which so much knowledge of various kinds was
crowded that he said he "made a reg'lar gobble of it." He was not
without discrimination, which he exercised upon the local preaching
when nothing better offered. Of one sermon he said, "The man began
way back at the creation, and just preached right along down; and he
didn't say nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as if he was
tryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up."
Old Phelps used words sometimes like algebraic signs, and had a habit
of making one do duty for a season together for all occasions.
"Speckerlation" and "callerlation" and "fix-up" are specimens of
words that were prolific in expression. An unusual expression, or an
unusual article, would be charactcrized as a "kind of a scientific
literary git-up."
"What is the program for tomorrow?" I once asked him. "Waal, I
callerlate, if they rig up the callerlation they callerlate on, we'll
go to the Boreas." Starting out for a day's tramp in the woods, he
would ask whether we wanted to take a "reg'lar walk, or a random
scoot,"--the latter being a plunge into the pathless forest. When he
was on such an expedition, and became entangled in dense brush, and
maybe a network of "slash" and swamp, he was like an old wizard, as
he looked here and there, seeking a way, peering into the tangle, or
withdrawing from a thicket, and muttering to himself, "There ain't no
speckerlation there." And when the way became altogether
inscrutable,--"Waal, this is a reg'lar random scoot of a rigmarole."
As some one remarked, "The dictionary in his hands is like clay in
the hands of the potter." "A petrifaction was a kind of a hard-wood
chemical git-up."
There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that born of isolation
from the world, and there are no such conceited people as those who
have lived all their lives in the woods. Phelps was, however,
unsophisticated in his until the advent of strangers into his life,
who brought in literature and various other disturbing influences. I
am sorry to say that the effect has been to take off something of the
bloom of his simplicity, and to elevate him into an oracle. I
suppose this is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and Phelps
has gone into print in the local papers. He has been bitten with the
literary "git up." Justly regarding most of the Adirondack
literature as a "perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work,
and written much on the natural history of his region. Long ago he
made a large map of the mountain country; and, until recent surveys,
it was the only one that could lay any claim to accuracy. His
history is no doubt original in form, and unconventional in
expression. Like most of the writers of the seventeenth century, and
the court ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century, he is an
independent speller. Writing of his work on the Adirondacks, he
says, "If I should ever live to get this wonderful thing written, I
expect it will show one thing, if no more; and that is, that every
thing has an opposite. I expect to show in this that literature has
an opposite, if I do not show any thing els. We could not enjoy the
blessings and happiness of riteousness if we did not know innicuty
was in the world: in fact, there would be no riteousness without
innicuty." Writing also of his great enjoyment of being in the
woods, especially since he has had the society there of some people
he names, he adds, "And since I have Literature, Siance, and Art all
spread about on the green moss of the mountain woods or the gravell
banks of a cristle stream, it seems like finding roses, honeysuckels,
and violets on a crisp brown cliff in December. You know I don't
believe much in the religion of seramony; but any riteous thing that
has life and spirit in it is food for me." I must not neglect to
mention an essay, continued in several numbers of his local paper, on
"The Growth of the Tree," in which he demolishes the theory of Mr.
Greeley, whom he calls "one of the best vegetable philosophers,"
about "growth without seed." He treats of the office of sap: "All
trees have some kind of sap and some kind of operation of sap flowing
in their season," the dissemination of seeds, the processes of
growth, the power of healing wounds, the proportion of roots to
branches, &c. Speaking of the latter, he says, "I have thought it
would be one of the greatest curiosities on earth to see a thrifty
growing maple or elm, that had grown on a deep soil interval to be
two feet in diameter, to be raised clear into the air with every root
and fibre down to the minutest thread, all entirely cleared of soil,
so that every particle could be seen in its natural position. I
think it would astonish even the wise ones." From his instinctive
sympathy with nature, he often credits vegetable organism with
"instinctive judgment." "Observation teaches us that a tree is
given powerful instincts, which would almost appear to amount to
judgment in some cases, to provide for its own wants and
necessities."
Here our study must cease. When the primitive man comes into
literature, he is no longer primitive.
VI
CAMPING OUT
It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up only by a constant
effort: Nature claims its own speedily when the effort is relaxed.
If you clear a patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot the
stumps, and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, you say
you have subdued it. But, if you leave it for a season or two, a
kind of barbarism seems to steal out upon it from the circling woods;
coarse grass and brambles cover it; bushes spring up in a wild
tangle; the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit; and the
humorous bear feeds upon them. The last state of that ground is
worse than the first.
Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. There is a splendid city
on the plain; there are temples and theatres on the hills; the
commerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flows
through its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea has
receded: the plain is a pestilent marsh; the temples, the theatres,
the lofty gates have sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs
over them; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in the
world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you of
all that which creates artificial distinctions in society. The
higher the civilization has risen, the more abject is the desolation
of barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot in the
Adirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where the traveler wades in moss
and mire, and the atmosphere is composed of equal active parts of
black-flies, mosquitoes, and midges. It is the village of the
Adirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are falling
to pieces, tenantless; the factory-wheels have stopped; the furnaces
are in ruins; the iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in
helpless detachment; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag proclaim an
arrested industry. Beside this deserted village, even Calamity Pond,
shallow, sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, and its
melancholy shaft that marks the spot where the proprietor of the
iron-works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful.
The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw
aside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfort
of the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy to
understand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most
refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness.
Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomes
fashionable to do so; and then, as speedily as possible, they
introduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in the
wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. It is they who
have strewn the Adirondacks with paper collars and tin cans. The
real enjoyment of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return
to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in as total an
escape as may be from the requirements of civilization. And it
remains to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those who are
most highly civilized. It is wonderful to see how easily the
restraints of society fall off. Of course it is not true that
courtesy depends upon clothes with the best people; but, with others,
behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits are
easily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt
whether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question of
casuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday,
if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm: he only
gratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall he
draw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, or
shout at a loon. Might he fire at a mark with an air-gun that makes
no noise? He will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is no more
likely to catch anything that day than on any other); but may he eat
trout that the guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears he
caught them Saturday night? Is there such a thing as a vacation in
religion? How much of our virtue do we owe to inherited habits?
I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp outside of
civilization is creditable to human nature, or otherwise. We hear
sometimes that the Turk has been merely camping for four centuries in
Europe. I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camping
temporarily in civilized conditions; and that going into the
wilderness is an escape, longed for, into our natural and preferred
state. Consider what this "camping out" is, that is confessedly so
agreeable to people most delicately reared. I have no desire to
exaggerate its delights.
The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. A few bad roads
that penetrate it, a few jolting wagons that traverse them, a few
barn-like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, where the
boarders are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnatural
gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by unique cookery, do little
to destroy the savage fascination of the region. In half an hour, at
any point, one can put himself into solitude and every desirable
discomfort. The party that covets the experience of the camp comes
down to primitive conditions of dress and equipment. There are
guides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the raw
provisions, and the camp equipage; and the motley party of the
temporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps by
a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The
exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint,
partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from the
interminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotony
of trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasional
glimpse of the sky. Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded,
lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy "carries" traversed.
Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law,
and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined; but the voluntary
hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits of
the party rise as the difficulties increase.
For this straggling and stumbling band the world is young again: it
has come to the beginning of things; it has cut loose from tradition,
and is free to make a home anywhere: the movement has all the promise
of a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the primitive
instincts of play and disorder. The free range of the forests
suggests endless possibilities of exploration and possession.
Perhaps we are treading where man since the creation never trod
before; perhaps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we deepen
by scraping out the decayed leaves and the black earth, have never
been tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. We
cross the trails of lurking animals,--paths that heighten our sense
of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infrequent
woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitary
partridge,--all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesomeness of
nature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of
pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it were, a mist
of sound through all the forest (continuous beating waves that have
the rhythm of eternity in them), and the fitful movement of the
air-tides through the balsams and firs and the giant pines,--how these
grand symphonies shut out the little exasperations of our vexed life!
It seems easy to begin life over again on the simplest terms.
Probably it is not so much the desire of the congregation to escape
from the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from himself, that
drives sophisticated people into the wilderness, as it is the
unconquered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt against the
everlasting dress-parade of our civilization. From this monstrous
pomposity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is a
relief. It was only human nature that the jaded Frenchman of the
regency should run away to the New World, and live in a forest-hut
with an Indian squaw; although he found little satisfaction in his
act of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles.
When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to the bank of a
lovely lake where they purpose to enter the primitive life,
everything is waiting for them in virgin expectation. There is a
little promontory jutting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandy
beach, on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins and
shiners come to greet the stranger; the forest is untouched by the
axe; the tender green sweeps the water's edge; ranks of slender firs
are marshaled by the shore; clumps of white-birch stems shine in
satin purity among the evergreens; the boles of giant spruces,
maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of foliage, stretch away
in endless galleries and arcades; through the shifting leaves the
sunshine falls upon the brown earth; overhead are fragments of blue
sky; under the boughs and in chance openings appear the bluer lake
and the outline of the gracious mountains. The discoverers of this
paradise, which they have entered to destroy, note the babbling of
the brook that flows close at hand; they hear the splash of the
leaping fish; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the evening
thrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, who angrily challenges
their right to be there. But the moment of sentiment passes. This
party has come here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Nature
in her poetic attitudinizing.
The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall be its opening,
towards the lake; and in front of it the fire, so that the smoke
shall drift into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes; yonder shall
be the cook's fire and the path to the spring. The whole colony
bestir themselves in the foundation of a new home,--an enterprise
that has all the fascination, and none of the danger, of a veritable
new settlement in the wilderness. The axes of the guides resound in
the echoing spaces; great trunks fall with a crash; vistas are opened
towards the lake and the mountains. The spot for the shanty is
cleared of underbrush; forked stakes are driven into the ground,
cross-pieces are laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground.
In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of a house,
which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered.
For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. The
woodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feet
above, and slashes it perpendicularly; then, with a blunt stick, he
crowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs but
a few of these skins to cover the roof; and they make a perfectly
water-tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime busy hands have
gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingled
the ground underneath the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed:
in theory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread the
blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in a
row, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of the
sloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. The fire is in
front: it is not a fire, but a conflagration--a vast heap of green
logs set on fire--of pitch, and split dead-wood, and crackling
balsams, raging and roaring. By the time, twilight falls, the cook
has prepared supper. Everything has been cooked in a tin pail and a
skillet,--potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder how
everything could have been prepared in so few utensils. When you
eat, the wonder ceases: everything might have been cooked in one
pail. It is a noble meal; and nobly is it disposed of by these
amateur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of trees. Never
were there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to have more of the
bean in them, never such curly pork, never trout with more
Indian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy; and the tea,
drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it,
--it is the sort of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes
the drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no deception
about it: it tastes of tannin and spruce and creosote. Everything, in
short, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is
idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothing
feeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, made
to last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivial
bun: we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient
civilization; and future generations would doubtless turn them up as
Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what the primitive man
wants.
Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from our
conflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impression
of isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisoners
of the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The
trees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand,
--mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the great
galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs
and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are
outlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in the
glare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments and
religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount
encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of
great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We
hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and
the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the
loon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating.
By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, and
arrange the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke-house by
this time: waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only by
lying down, and getting the head well under the eaves, that one can
breathe. No one can find her "things"; nobody has a pillow. At
length the row is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intention
to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke.
Good-night is said a hundred times; positions are readjusted, more
last words, new shifting about, final remarks; it is all so
comfortable and romantic; and then silence. Silence continues for a
minute. The fire flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted up
simultaneously to watch it; showers of sparks sail aloft into the
blue night; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the
sparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fireflies, and
all the leaves murmur, and clap their hands! Some of the sparks do
not go out: we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the fire
has died down. Well, good-night, goodnight. More folding of the
arms to sleep; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand-bag,
or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for a pillow.
Good-night. Was that a remark?--something about a root, a stub in
the ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a hair?"
---"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for the
conversation to become general,--about roots under the shoulder,
stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper
to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground,
the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply.
The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is
also awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise
than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper.
Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in
good earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. It
is interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody has
got the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems
to have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make all
the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like a
war-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he
snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in another
key! One head is raised after another.
"Who is that?"
"Somebody punch him."
"Turn him over."
"Reason with him."
The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before,
it appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises in
indignation. The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go
off again, two or three others have preceded him. They are all
alike. You never can judge what a person is when he is awake. There
are here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put in
solitary confinement. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out to
sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor and
mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always coming
in at the wrong time. Those who are not asleep want to know why the
smoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to get some water, to
throw on another log, to see what time it is, to note whether it
looks like rain. A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure she
heard something behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense.
"Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse."
"Mercy! Are there mice?"
"Plenty."
"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep a
wink! Do they bite?"
"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite out."
"It's horrid!"
Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides have let the fire go out;
the blankets will slip down. Anxiety begins to be expressed about
the dawn.
"What time does the sun rise?"
"Awful early. Did you sleep?
"Not a wink. And you?"
"In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as soon as it is light
enough."
"See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics!
I'd no idea it was so cold: all the first part of the night I was
roasted."
"What were they talking about all night?"
When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washed
its faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobody
admits much sleep; but everybody is refreshed, and declares it
delightful. It is the fresh air all night that invigorates; or maybe
it is the tea, or the slap-jacks. The guides have erected a table of
spruce bark, with benches at the sides; so that breakfast is taken in
form. It is served on tin plates and oak chips. After breakfast
begins the day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedition, or
rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for trout in some stream
two or three miles distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without a
guide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are built novel-reading begins,
worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day passes
in absolute freedom from responsibility to one's self. At night when
the expeditions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adventures
are recounted, every statement of the narrator being disputed and
argued. Everybody has become an adept in woodcraft; but nobody
credits his neighbor with like instinct. Society getting resolved
into its elements, confidence is gone.
Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or two of rain
falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is it going to rain? He says
it does rain. But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes down to
the lake, looks at the sky, and concludes that, if the wind shifts a
p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather we shall have.
Meantime the drops patter thicker on the leaves overhead, and the
leaves, in turn, pass the water down to the table; the sky darkens;
the wind rises; there is a kind of shiver in the woods; and we scud
away into the shanty, taking the remains of our supper, and eating it
as best we can. The rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes.
All the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We
cannot step outdoors without getting a drenching. Like sheep, we are
penned in the little hut, where no one can stand erect. The rain
swirls into the open front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. The
smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The guides at
length conclude that it is going to be damp. The dismal situation
sets us all into good spirits; and it is later than the night before
when we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound sleep,
lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on the bark roof. How
much better off we are than many a shelter-less wretch! We are as
snug as dry herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off to
sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face; this
is followed by another drop; in an instant a stream is established.
He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when he
feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds a
puddle of water soaking through his blanket. By this time, somebody
inquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream
of water under him; another says it is coming into his ear. The roof
appears to be a discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no need
of such a fuss. The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the
protective measure is resented by his neighbor. In the darkness
there is recrimination. One of the guides, who is summoned, suggests
that the rubber blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof.
The inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower-bath is no
worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues to soak down. The fire is
only half alive. The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find
a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. A
few sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless.
The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring in
a half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are reviving
signs of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentary
exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. There
is no chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square.
This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, may continue as
long as the reader desires. There are, those who would like to live
in this free fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases;
and there are some souls so constituted that they cannot exist more
than three days without their worldly--baggage. Taking the party
altogether, from one cause or another it is likely to strike camp
sooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy
sight. The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; the
bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire;
the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with all
the unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty is
a shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire
blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his
usual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by
moving to virgin forests.
And move to them he will, the next season, if not this. For he who
has once experienced the fascination of the woods-life never escapes
its enticement: in the memory nothing remains but its charm.
VII
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks, stands Noon
Mark, a shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, which,
with the aid of the sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to
eat dinner. From its summit you look south into a vast wilderness
basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, and out of whose
bosom you can hear from the heights on a still day the loud murmur of
the Boquet. This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south and
southeast into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top,--the
latter a local name which neither the mountain nor the fastidious
tourist is able to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps
its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, it cannot get
on without this name.
These two mountains, which belong to the great system of which Marcy
is the giant centre, and are in the neighborhood of five thousand
feet high, on the southern outposts of the great mountains, form the
gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This opening between
them is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated and one of the
wildest of the mountain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred
feet high. In former years it is presumed the hunters occasionally
followed the game through; but latterly it is rare to find a guide
who has been that way, and the tin-can and paper-collar tourists have
not yet made it a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherent
difficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little out of
the way.
We went through it last summer; making our way into the jaws from the
foot of the great slides on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs of
the mountain through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled
in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked up with
bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the roads
ingeniously covered with fair-seeming moss. When the climber
occasionally loses sight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes,
and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has dipped
into the sources of the Boquet, which emerges lower down into falls
and rapids, and, recruited by creeping tributaries, goes brawling
through the forest basin, and at last comes out an amiable and
boat-bearing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From the summit
another rivulet trickles away to the south, and finds its way through
a frightful tamarack swamp, and through woods scarred by ruthless
lumbering, to Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly fringe
of dead trees, upon which people of grand intentions and weak
vocabulary are trying to fix the name of Elk Lake. The descent of
the pass on that side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in the
stream itself; and a considerable portion of the distance we swung
ourselves down the faces of considerable falls, and tumbled down
cascades. The descent, however, was made easy by the fact that it
rained, and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why sane
people, often church-members respectably connected, will subject
themselves to this sort of treatment,--be wet to the skin, bruised by
the rocks, and flung about among the bushes and dead wood until the
most necessary part of their apparel hangs in shreds,--is one of the
delightful mysteries of these woods. I suspect that every man is at
heart a roving animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to the
condition of the bear and the catamount.
There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as I have intimated,
is the least frequented portion of this wilderness. Yet we were
surprised to find a well-beaten path a considerable portion of the
way and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere deer's
runway: these are found everywhere in the mountains. It is trodden
by other and larger animals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts.
It bears marks of having been so for a long period, and probably a
period long ago. Large animals are not common in these woods now,
and you seldom meet anything fiercer than the timid deer and the
gentle bear. But in days gone by, Hunter's Pass was the highway of
the whole caravan of animals who were continually going backward; and
forwards, in the aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud
Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now the procession of
them between the heights of Dix and Nipple Top; the elk and the moose
shambling along, cropping the twigs; the heavy bear lounging by with
his exploring nose; the frightened deer trembling at every twig that
snapped beneath his little hoofs, intent on the lily-pads of the
pond; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidling along; and the
velvet-footed panther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the
path with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an overhanging
tree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night and
day, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox and
the comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat,--the
innocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold,
the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industrious
and the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter,--just as
it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my species when I think of it.
This charming society is nearly extinct now: of the larger animals
there only remain the bear, who minds his own business more thoroughly
than any person I know, and the deer, who would like to be friendly
with men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protection
from the savageness of man, and who is treated with the same unpitying
destruction as the snarling catamount. I have read in history that
the amiable natives of Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of the
brutal Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As society is at
present constituted in Christian countries, I would rather for my own
security be a cougar than a fawn.
There is not much of romantic interest in the Adirondacks. Out of
the books of daring travelers, nothing. I do not know that the Keene
Valley has any history. The mountains always stood here, and the Au
Sable, flowing now in shallows and now in rippling reaches over the
sands and pebbles, has for ages filled the air with continuous and
soothing sounds. Before the Vermonters broke into it some
three-quarters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bottoms and
sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I suppose the red Indian lived here
in his usual discomfort, and was as restless as his successors, the
summer boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, and the
moose and the elk left their broad tracks on the sands of the river.
But of the Indian there is no trace. There is a mound in the valley,
much like a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, that may
have been built by some pre-historic race, and may contain treasure
and the seated figure of a preserved chieftain on his slow way
to Paradise. What the gentle and accomplished race of the
Mound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost kills
the early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know. I have
seen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic,
which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found the
history of a race upon.
Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside on one of the little
plateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece of
pottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen
in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and broke
the bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give us
the form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eight
inches across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The bottom is
round, the top flares into four comers, and the rim is rudely but
rather artistically ornamented with criss-cross scratches made when
the clay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about here,
and it is one that the Indians formerly living here could not form.
Was it brought here by roving Indians who may have made an expedition
to the Ohio; was it passed from tribe to tribe; or did it belong to a
race that occupied the country before the Indian, and who have left
traces of their civilized skill in pottery scattered all over the
continent?
If I could establish the fact that this jar was made by a prehistoric
race, we should then have four generations in this lovely valley:-the
amiable Pre-Historic people (whose gentle descendants were probably
killed by the Spaniards in the West Indies); the Red Indians; the
Keene Flaters (from Vermont); and the Summer Boarders, to say nothing
of the various races of animals who have been unable to live here
since the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley being not
productive enough to sustain both. This last incursion has been more
destructive to the noble serenity of the forest than all the
preceding.
But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The western walls of it are
formed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare
as the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, but
rough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I have a great
desire to scale them. I have always had an unreasonable wish to
explore the rough summit of this crabbed hill, which is too broken
and jagged for pleasure and not high enough for glory. This desire
was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that night in the Mud
Pond cabin. The guide had never been through the pass before;
although he was familiar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top
in the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told doesn't
amount to much, none of the guides' stories do, faithfully reported,
and I should not have believed it if I had not had a good deal of
leisure on my hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and I
may say in rather of a starved condition as to any romance in this
region.
The guide said then--and he mentioned it casually, in reply to our
inquiries about ascending the mountain--that there was a cave high up
among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He
scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance
gave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by which
the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant
tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible
for its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener is
always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems
willing to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations and
doubts of the latter.
There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was a
boy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobody
knew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been
inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light late
at night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and now
and then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers
were few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were well
known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and by
men who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eluding
observation. If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or
if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain,
it was impossible to identify them with these invaders who were never
seen. Their not being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of
the belief in their existence. Little indications and rumors, each
trivial in itself, became a mass of testimony that could not be
disposed of because of its very indefiniteness, but which appealed
strongly to man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
The cave existed; and it was inhabited by men who came and went on
mysterious errands, and transacted their business by night. What
this band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they conveyed
their food through the trackless woods to their high eyrie, and what
could induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions discussed,
but never settled. They might be banditti; but there was nothing to
plunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raids
either in the settlements of the hills or the distant lake shore were
unknown. In another age, these might have been hermits, holy men who
had retired from the world to feed the vanity of their godliness in a
spot where they were subject neither to interruption nor comparison;
they would have had a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed
Virgin, with a lamp always burning before it and sending out its
mellow light over the savage waste. A more probable notion was that
they were romantic Frenchmen who had grow weary of vice and
refinement together,--possibly princes, expectants of the throne,
Bourbon remainders, named Williams or otherwise, unhatched eggs, so
to speak, of kings, who had withdrawn out of observation to wait for
the next turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If they were
not Frenchmen, they might be honest-thieves or criminals, escaped
from justice or from the friendly state-prison of New York. This
last supposition was, however, more violent than the others, or seems
so to us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up New York
criminal would be so insane as to run away from his political friends
the keepers, from the easily had companionship of his pals outside,
and from the society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to put
himself into the depths of a wilderness out of which escape, when
escape was desired, is a good deal more difficult than it is out of
the swarming jails of the Empire State? Besides, how foolish for a
man, if he were a really hardened and professional criminal, having
established connections and a regular business, to run away from the
governor's pardon, which might have difficulty in finding him in the
craggy bosom of Nipple Top!
This gang of men--there is some doubt whether they were accompanied
by women--gave little evidence in their appearance of being escaped
criminals or expectant kings. Their movements were mysterious but
not necessarily violent. If their occupation could have been
discovered, that would have furnished a clew to their true character.
But about this the strangers were as close as mice. If anything
could betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, and its
occasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to the opinion, which was
strengthened by a good many indications equally conclusive, that the
cave was the resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Here
they had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies; here they
manufactured those spurious quarters and halves that their
confidants, who were pardoned, were circulating, and which a few
honest men were "nailing to the counter."
This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation satisfies all the
requirements of the known facts, but the lively imagination at once
rejects it as unworthy of the subject. I think the guide put it
forward in order to have it rejected. The fact is,--at least, it has
never been disproved,--these strangers whose movements were veiled
belonged to that dark and mysterious race whose presence anywhere on
this continent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They were
Spaniards! You need not say buccaneers, you need not say
gold-hunters, you need not say swarthy adventurers even: it is enough
to say Spaniards! There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and
daring I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, and it is
not necessary either that he should have the high-sounding name of
Bodadilla or Ojeda.
Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story if the moose, quaffing deep
draughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then throwing
themselves back upon divans, and lazily puffing the fragrant Havana.
After a day of toil, what more natural, and what more probable for a
Spaniard?
Does the reader think these inferences not warranted by the facts?
He does not know the facts. It is true that our guide had never
himself personally visited the cave, but he has always intended to
hunt it up. His information in regard to it comes from his father,
who was a mighty hunter and trapper. In one of his expeditions over
Nipple Top he chanced upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed by
undergrowth. He entered, not without some apprehension engendered by
the legends which make it famous. I think he showed some boldness in
venturing into such a place alone. I confess that, before I went in,
I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth for a little
while, in order to rout out the bears which usually dwell there. He
went in, however. The entrance was low; but the cave was spacious,
not large, but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceiling.
It had long been deserted, but that it was once the residence of
highly civilized beings there could be no doubt. The dead brands in
the centre were the remains of a fire that could not have been
kindled by wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had been
scientifically dissected and handled. There were also remnants of
furniture and pieces of garments scattered about. At the farther
end, in a fissure of the rock, were stones regularly built up, the
rem Yins of a larger fire,--and what the hunter did not doubt was the
smelting furnace of the Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, but
found no silver. That had all been carried away.
But what most provoked his wonder in this rude cave was a chair I
This was not such a seat as a woodman might knock up with an axe,
with rough body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured chair
of commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual pattern and some
elegance. This chair itself was a mute witness of luxury and
mystery. The chair itself might have been accounted for, though I
don't know how; but upon the back of the chair hung, as if the owner
had carelessly flung it there before going out an hour before, a
man's waistcoat. This waistcoat seemed to him of foreign make and
peculiar style, but what endeared it to him was its row of metal
buttons. These buttons were of silver! I forget now whether he did
not say they were of silver coin, and that the coin was Spanish. But
I am not certain about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air of
improbability over my narrative. This rich vestment the hunter
carried away with him. This was all the plunder his expedition
afforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, more
significant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stout
crowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pry
up stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in digging
silver-ore out of the cracks of rocks.
This was the guide's simple story. I asked him what became of the
vest and the buttons, and the bar of iron. The old man wore the vest
until he wore it out; and then he handed it over to the boys, and
they wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons were cut
off, and kept as curiosities. They were about the cabin, and the
children had them to play with. The guide distinctly remembers
playing with them; one of them he kept for a long time, and he didn't
know but he could find it now, but he guessed it had disappeared. I
regretted that he had not treasured this slender verification of an
interesting romance, but he said in those days he never paid much
attention to such things. Lately he has turned the subject over, and
is sorry that his father wore out the vest and did not bring away the
chair. It is his steady purpose to find the cave some time when he
has leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tumbled to pieces.
But about the crowbar? Oh I that is all right. The guide has the
bar at his house in Keene Valley, and has always used it.
I am happy to be able to confirm this story by saying that next
day I saw the crowbar, and had it in my hand. It is short and thick,
and the most interesting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enough
for me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search for the
cave; and, if I find it, my readers shall know the truth about it, if
it destroys the only bit of romance connected with these mountains.
VIII
WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE
My readers were promised an account of Spaniard's Cave on Nipple-Top
Mountain in the Adirondacks, if such a cave exists, and could be
found. There is none but negative evidence that this is a mere cave
of the imagination, the void fancy of a vacant hour; but it is the
duty of the historian to present the negative testimony of a
fruitless expedition in search of it, made last summer. I beg leave
to offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere exploits
of a geographical character.
The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been trodden by few white men
of good character: it is in the heart of a hirsute wilderness; it is
itself a rough and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feet
high, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth of firs and
balsams, and there is no earthly reason why a person should go there.
Therefore we went. In the party of three there was, of course, a
chaplain. The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made the ascent
once before, but not from the northwest side, the direction from
which we approached it. The enthusiasm of this philosopher has grown
with his years, and outlived his endurance: we carried our own
knapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon him for nothing but
moral reflections and a general knowledge of the wilderness. Our
first day's route was through the Gill-brook woods and up one of its
branches to the head of Caribou Pass, which separates Nipple Top from
Colvin.
It was about the first of September; no rain had fallen for several
weeks, and this heart of the forest was as dry as tinder; a lighted
match dropped anywhere would start a conflagration. This dryness has
its advantages: the walking is improved; the long heat has expressed
all the spicy odors of the cedars and balsams, and the woods are
filled with a soothing fragrance; the waters of the streams, though
scant and clear, are cold as ice; the common forest chill is gone
from the air. The afternoon was bright; there was a feeling of
exultation and adventure in stepping off into the open but pathless
forest; the great stems of deciduous trees were mottled with patches
of sunlight, which brought out upon the variegated barks and mosses
of the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. There is nothing like a
primeval wood for color on a sunny day. The shades of green and
brown are infinite; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in the
sun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes brilliant; there
are silvery openings here and there; and everywhere the columns rise
up to the canopy of tender green which supports the intense blue sky
and holds up a part of it from falling through in fragments to the
floor of the forest. Decorators can learn here how Nature dares to
put blue and green in juxtaposition: she has evidently the secret of
harmonizing all the colors.
The way, as we ascended, was not all through open woods; dense masses
of firs were encountered, jagged spurs were to be crossed, and the
going became at length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rocky
bed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cascades offered us
sufficient variety. The deeper we penetrated, the greater the sense
of savageness and solitude; in the silence of these hidden places one
seems to approach the beginning of things. We emerged from the
defile into an open basin, formed by the curved side of the mountain,
and stood silent before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in the
centre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly like this fall,
which some poetical explorer has named the Fairy-Ladder Falls. It
appears to have a height of something like a hundred and fifty feet,
and the water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from left
to right in short steps, which in the moonlight might seem like a
veritable ladder for fairies. Our impression of its height was
confirmed by climbing the very steep slope at its side some three or
four hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flowing over a
broad bed of rock, like a street in the wilderness, slanting up still
towards the sky, and bordered by low firs and balsams, and bowlders
completely covered with moss. It was above the world and open to the
sky.
On account of the tindery condition of the woods we made our fire on
the natural pavement, and selected a smooth place for our bed near by
on the flat rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. This
granite couch we covered with the dry and springy moss, which we
stripped off in heavy fleeces a foot thick from the bowlders. First,
however, we fed upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hills
of moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green leaf, bearing
small, delicate berries, oblong and white as wax, having a faint
flavor of wintergreen and the slightest acid taste, the very essence
of the wilderness; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for palates
accustomed to coarser viands. There must exist somewhere sinless
women who could eat these berries without being reminded of the lost
purity and delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt not
this stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked by any knight of
the Holy Grail who is worthy to eat it, and keeps alive, in the
prodigality of nature, the tradition of the unperverted conditions of
taste before the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, with
a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been a sort of shew-bread
of the wilderness, though I cannot answer for the chaplain, who is by
virtue of his office a little nearer to these mysteries of nature
than I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first cousin
to the blueberry and cranberry. It is commonly called the creeping
snowberry, but I like better its official title of chiogenes,--the
snow-born.
Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal Chamber Camp, in the
enthusiasm of the hour, after darkness fell upon the woods and the
stars came out. We were two thousand five hundred feet above the
common world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the sky, with a
basin of illimitable forests below us and dim mountain-passes-in the
far horizon.
And as we lay there courting sleep which the blinking stars refused
to shower down, our philosopher discoursed to us of the principle of
fire, which he holds, with the ancients, to be an independent element
that comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see flame spring up
and vanish, and is in some way vital and indestructible, and has a
mysterious relation to the source of all things. "That flame," he
says, "you have put out, but where has it gone?" We could not say,
nor whether it is anything like the spirit of a man which is here for
a little hour, and then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of the
correlation of forces found no sort of favor at that elevation, and
we went to sleep leaving the principle of fire in the apostolic
category of "any other creature."
At daylight we were astir; and, having pressed the principle of fire
into our service to make a pot of tea, we carefully extinguished it
or sent it into another place, and addressed ourselves to the climb
of some thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of scaling
an Alpine peak has a compensating glory; but the dead lift of our
bodies up Nipple Top had no stimulus of this sort. It is simply hard
work, for which the strained muscles only get the approbation of the
individual conscience that drives them to the task. The pleasure of
such an ascent is difficult to explain on the spot, and I suspect
consists not so much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the mind
experiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do not object to the
elevation of this mountain, nor to the uncommonly steep grade by
which it attains it, but only to the other obstacles thrown in the
way of the climber. All the slopes of Nipple Top are hirsute and
jagged to the last degree. Granite ledges interpose; granite
bowlders seem to have been dumped over the sides with no more attempt
at arrangement than in a rip-rap wall; the slashes and windfalls of a
century present here and there an almost impenetrable chevalier des
arbres; and the steep sides bristle with a mass of thick balsams,
with dead, protruding spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. The
mountain has had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a wolf; or
rather the elements, the frightful tempests, the frosts, the heavy
snows, the coaxing sun, and the avalanches have had their way with it
until its surface is in hopeless confusion. We made our way very
slowly; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what appeared to be
the summit, a ridge deeply covered with moss, low balsams, and
blueberry-bushes.
I say, appeared to be; for we stood in thick fog or in the heart of
clouds which limited our dim view to a radius of twenty feet. It was
a warm and cheerful fog, stirred by little wind, but moving,
shifting, and boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up black
from below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead As a fog it could
not have been improved; as a medium for viewing the landscape it was
a failure and we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a
Russian bath, to await revelations.
We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopeful
lightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a moment
of the spectral sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise
vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it was
again; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caught
sight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtain
was instantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled
up from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell was
broken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and
before we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead as
big as a farm. "See! quick!" The old man was dancing like a
lunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down,
three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of it
yonder the tawny side of Dix,--the vision of a second, snatched away
in the rolling fog. The play had just begun. Before we could turn,
there was the gorge of Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to the
bottom. The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking over the
clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable Valley,
and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinel
mountains about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses were as
fleeting as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the sea
of mist. The expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity kept
us exultingly on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise when
the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge of
Colvin, seemingly within a stone's throw, heaved up like an island
out of the ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longer
for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening sides of rock
gashed by avalanches. The fantastic clouds, torn and streaming,
hurried up from the south in haste as if to a witch's rendezvous,
hiding and disclosing the great summit in their flight. The mist
boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit where we stood,
and plunged again into the depths. Objects were forming and
disappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog,
and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in an
original process of creation. The sun strove, and his very striving
called up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought new
masses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, above
and below, changed with incredible swiftness. Such glory of abyss
and summit, of color and form and transformation, is seldom granted
to mortal eyes. For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain
was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses and its
savagery, and the great basins of wilderness with their shining
lakes, and the giant peaks of the region, were one by one disclosed,
and hidden and again tranquil in the sunshine.
Where was the cave? There was ample surface in which to look for it.
If we could have flitted about, like the hawks that came circling
round, over the steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices,
I have no doubt we should have found it. But moving about on this
mountain is not a holiday pastime; and we were chiefly anxious to
discover a practicable mode of descent into the great wilderness
basin on the south, which we must traverse that afternoon before
reaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was enough for us to
have discovered the general whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and we
left the fixing of its exact position to future explorers.
The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; but
we found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thickly
together, slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos;
and when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the general
slope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable going. The slope for
a couple of thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed of
granite rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not be
determined, and at short intervals we nearly went out of sight in
holes under the treacherous carpeting. Add to this that stems of
great trees were laid longitudinally and transversely and criss-cross
over and among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good deal of
work needs to be done to make this a practicable highway for anything
but a squirrel....
We had had no water since our daylight breakfast: our lunch on the
mountain had been moistened only by the fog. Our thirst began to be
that of Tantalus, because we could hear the water running deep down
among the rocks, but we could not come at it. The imagination drank
the living stream, and we realized anew what delusive food the
imagination furnishes in an actual strait. A good deal of the crime
of this world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the unlicensed
play of the imagination in adverse circumstances. This reflection
had nothing to do with our actual situation; for we added to our
imagination patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and
probably all the Christian virtues would have been developed in us if
the descent had been long enough. Before we reached the bottom of
Caribou Pass, the water burst out from the rocks in a clear stream
that was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roaring brook
that issues from the Pass to the south. It is a stream full of
character, not navigable even for trout in the upper part, but a
succession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delight
an artist. It is not an easy bed for anything except water to
descend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the stream
flows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our party
began to show signs of exhaustion.
This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the day before,--his
imagination being in better working order than his stomach: he had
eaten little that day, and his legs became so groggy that he was
obliged to rest at short intervals. Here was a situation! The
afternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven miles of unknown
wilderness to traverse, a portion of it swampy, in which a progress
of more than a mile an hour is difficult, and the condition of the
guide compelled even a slower march. What should we do in that
lonesome solitude if the guide became disabled? We couldn't carry
him out; could we find our own way out to get assistance? The guide
himself had never been there before; and although he knew the general
direction of our point of egress, and was entirely adequate to
extricate himself from any position in the woods, his knowledge was
of that occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible to
communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that led from the Au
Sable Pond, the other side of the mountain-range, to an inlet on Mud
Pond. We knew that if we traveled southwestward far enough we must
strike that trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we reached
that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, there would be only a row
of a couple of miles to the house at the foot of the lake. If no
boat was there, then we must circle the lake three or four miles
farther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in particular. The
prospect was not pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we had not
expected to pass that night in the woods. The pleasure of the
excursion began to develop itself.
We stumbled on in the general direction marked out, through a forest
that began to seem endless as hour after hour passed, compelled as we
were to make long detours over the ridges of the foothills to avoid
the swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake long tongues
into the firm ground. The guide became more ill at every step, and
needed frequent halts and long rests. Food he could not eat; and
tea, water, and even brandy he rejected. Again and again the old
philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and illness, would
collapse in a heap on the ground, an almost comical picture of
despair, while we stood and waited the waning of the day, and peered
forward in vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook we
encountered, we suggested a halt for the night, while it was still
light enough to select a camping-place, but the plucky old man
wouldn't hear of it: the trail might be only a quarter of a mile
ahead, and we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as a
guide seemed to be at stake; and, besides, he confessed to a notion
that his end was near, and he didn't want to die like a dog in the
woods. And yet, if this was his last journey, it seemed not an
inappropriate ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up the
ghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the solemn silences he
felt most at home in. There is a popular theory, held by civilians,
that a soldier likes to die in battle. I suppose it is as true that
a woodsman would like to "pass in his chips,"--the figure seems to be
inevitable, struck down by illness and exposure, in the forest
solitude, with heaven in sight and a tree-root for his pillow.
The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not get out of the
woods that night, he would never go out; and, yielding to his dogged
resolution, we kept on in search of the trail, although the gathering
of dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily cross the
trail without recognizing it. We were traveling by the light in the
upper sky, and by the forms of the tree-stems, which every moment
grew dimmer. At last the end came. We had just felt our way over
what seemed to be a little run of water, when the old man sunk down,
remarking, "I might as well die here as anywhere," and was silent.
Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. We could neither see the
guide nor each other. We became at once conscious that miles of
night on all sides shut us in. The sky was clouded over: there
wasn't a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first thought
was to build a fire, which would drive back the thick darkness into
the woods, and boil some water for our tea. But it was too dark to
use the axe. We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a blaze,
and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could find by groping
about. The fire was only a temporary affair, but it sufficed to boil
a can of water. The water we obtained by feeling about the stones of
the little run for an opening big enough to dip our cup in. The
supper to be prepared was fortunately simple. It consisted of a
decoction of tea and other leaves which had got into the pail, and a
part of a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in a
knapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled and hacked at with
a hunting-knife, becomes an uninteresting object. But we ate of it
with thankfulness, washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterly
thought of the morrow. Would our old friend survive the night?
Would he be in any condition to travel in the morning? How were we
to get out with him or without him?
The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, and desired only
to be let alone. We tried to tempt him with the offer of a piece of
toast: it was no temptation. Tea we thought would revive him: he
refused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken his life: he
couldn't touch it. We were at the end of our resources. He seemed
to think that if he were at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon,
or a piece of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more how to
doctor him than if he had been a sick bear. He withdrew within
himself, rolled himself up, so to speak, in his primitive habits, and
waited for the healing power of nature. Before our feeble fire
disappeared, we smoothed a level place near it for Phelps to lie on,
and got him over to it. But it didn't suit: it was too open. In
fact, at the moment some drops of rain fell. Rain was quite outside
of our program for the night. But the guide had an instinct about
it; and, while we were groping about some yards distant for a place
where we could lie down, he crawled away into the darkness, and
curled himself up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as a
bear would do, I suppose, with his back against the trunk, and there
passed the night comparatively dry and comfortable; but of this we
knew nothing till morning, and had to trust to the assurance of a
voice out of the darkness that he was all right.
Our own bed where we spread our blankets was excellent in one
respect,--there was no danger of tumbling out of it. At first the
rain pattered gently on the leaves overhead, and we congratulated
ourselves on the snugness of our situation. There was something
cheerful about this free life. We contrasted our condition with that
of tired invalids who were tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep in
vain. Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac in
the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. The rain had ceased
to patter, and began to fall with a steady determination, a sort of
soak, soak, all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket,
and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a little, and there
was a moaning on high. Not contented with dripping, the rain was
driven into our faces. Another suspicious circumstance was noticed.
Little rills of water got established along the sides under the
blankets, cold, undeniable streams, that interfered with drowsiness.
Pools of water settled on the bed; and the chaplain had a habit of
moving suddenly, and letting a quart or two inside, and down my neck.
It began to be evident that we and our bed were probably the wettest
objects in the woods. The rubber was an excellent catch-all. There
was no trouble about ventilation, but we found that we had
established our quarters without any provision for drainage. There
was not exactly a wild tempest abroad; but there was a degree of
liveliness in the thrashing limbs and the creaking of the
tree-branches which rubbed against each other, and the pouring rain
increased in volume and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out of
the question, with so much to distract our attention. In fine, our
misery became so perfect that we both broke out into loud and
sarcastic laughter over the absurdity of our situation. We had
subjected ourselves to all this forlornness simply for pleasure.
Whether Old Phelps was still in existence, we couldn't tell: we could
get no response from him. With daylight, if he continued ill and
could not move, our situation would be little improved. Our supplies
were gone, we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was pouring down on
us. This was summer recreation. The whole thing was so excessively
absurd that we laughed again, louder than ever. We had plenty of
this sort of amusement. Suddenly through the night we heard a sort
of reply that started us bolt upright. This was a prolonged squawk.
It was like the voice of no beast or bird with which we were
familiar. At first it was distant; but it rapidly approached,
tearing through the night and apparently through the tree-tops, like
the harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it; in fact, as I
said, a squawk. It came close to us, and then turned, and as rapidly
as it came fled away through the forest, and we lost the unearthly
noise far up the mountain-slope.
"What was that, Phelps?" we cried out. But no response came; and we
wondered if his spirit had been rent away, or if some evil genius had
sought it, and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit,
had shot off into the void in rage and disappointment.
The night had no other adventure. The moon at length coming up
behind the clouds lent a spectral aspect to the forest, and deceived
us for a time into the notion that day was at hand; but the rain
never ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item of solid
misery wanting that we could conceive.
Day was slow a-coming, and didn't amount to much when it came, so
heavy were the clouds; but the rain slackened. We crawled out of our
water-cure "pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite relief he
announced himself not only alive, but in a going condition. I looked
at my watch. It had stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water out
of it, and shook it; but, not being constructed on the hydraulic
principle, it refused to go. Some hours later we encountered a
huntsman, from whom I procured some gun-grease; with this I filled
the watch, and heated it in by the fire. This is a most effectual
way of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece.
The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had been
made in a slight depression: the under rubber blanket spread in this
had prevented the rain from soaking into the ground, and we had been
lying in what was in fact a well-contrived bathtub. While Old Phelps
was pulling himself together, and we were wringing some gallons of
water out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the
"squawk," and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was not a
bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of the woods, larger
than the domestic animal, and an ugly customer, who is fond of fish,
and carries a pelt that is worth two or three dollars in the market.
Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap; and he is altogether
hateful in his ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that is
heard in the woods. We shall remember him as one of the least
pleasant phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the storm,
fearing any moment the advent to one of us of the grimmest messenger.
We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, and, before the
shades had yet lifted from the saturated bushes, pursued our march.
It was a relief to be again in motion, although our progress was
slow, and it was a question every rod whether the guide could go on.
We had the day before us; but if we did not find a boat at the inlet
a day might not suffice, in the weak condition of the guide, to
extricate us from our ridiculous position. There was nothing heroic
in it; we had no object: it was merely, as it must appear by this
time, a pleasure excursion, and we might be lost or perish in it
without reward and with little sympathy. We had something like a
hour and a half of stumbling through the swamp when suddenly we stood
in the little trail! Slight as it was, it appeared to us a very
Broadway to Paradise if broad ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailed
it and sank down in it like one reprieved from death. But the boat?
Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a mile down to the inlet.
The boat was there. Our shout to the guide would have roused him out
of a death-slumber. He came down the trail with the agility of an
aged deer: never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as that
shout. It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat of
water, pushed off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-mile
row through the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, and
over the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in the morning
breeze. The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all its
shores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open to
the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all the
mountain-ranges we had a sense of escape and freedom that almost
made the melancholy scene lovely.
How lightly past hardship sits upon us! All the misery of the night
vanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin at
Mud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear
fits him in the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire,
solicitude about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffering,
and willingness to hear the now growing tale of our adventure. Then
came, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went,
and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that
perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling of strength
without any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor which
is too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep.
HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND
By Charles Dudley Warner
New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee.
To conquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completely
subdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever.
What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternately
invaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of the
tropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoasts
are fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year a
contest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the
gulf. The result of this is a compromise: the compromise is called
Thaw. It is the normal condition in New England. The New-Englander
is a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable.
This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. A person
thoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at the Bongos.
Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, by
incessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards made his theology.
Thank God, New England is not in Paris!
Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice and
walruses, make it unpleasant for New England. This icy cover, like
the lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down,
that is winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf
Stream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from
under the ribs of the equator,--a white knight of the South going up
to battle the giant of the North. The two meet in New England, and
have it out there.
This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly a
delusion as to New England. For Ireland it is quite another thing.
Potatoes ripen in Ireland before they are planted in New England.
That is the reason the Irish emigrate--they desire two crops the same
year. The Gulf Stream gets shunted off from New England by the
formation of the coast below: besides, it is too shallow to be of any
service. Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and fill
all the New-England air with the chill of death till June: after that
the fogs drift down from Newfoundland. There never was such a
mockery as this Gulf Stream. It is like the English influence on
France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg.
Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example:
the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy is
an anachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is not
a boy. In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses'
milk that belongs to the children: in New England he has all the
cream from the Public Cow. What can you expect in a country where
one knows not today what the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makes
the man. Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he
has all climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will become the
prophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. The New-Englander
is the man without a climate. Why is his country recognized? You
won't find it on any map of Paris.
And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater must
include the less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimes
happens.
And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One of
them is the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of
June, or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summer
solstice. As Tourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe the
unpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead;
so is Gross Alain; so is little Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead before
things get any better.
That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What is
revolution? It is turning society over, and putting the best
underground for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What has
this to do with New England? In the language of that flash of social
lightning, Beranger, "May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"
Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winter
appears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical;
but it is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above the
horizon twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away in
liquid repentance. One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots
and close by the fences. From about the trunks of the trees it has
long departed: the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it.
The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line by man: the
fence, in short, is dogma: icy prejudice lingers near it.
The snow has disappeared; but the landscape is a ghastly sight,
--bleached, dead. The trees are stakes; the grass is of no color; and
the bare soil is not brown with a healthful brown; life has gone out
of it. Take up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth,
inanimate. Pull it in pieces: there is no hope in it: it is a part
of the past; it is the refuse of last year. This is the condition to
which winter has reduced the landscape. When the snow, which was a
pall, is removed, you see how ghastly it is. The face of the country
is sodden. It needs now only the south wind to sweep over it, full
of the damp breath of death; and that begins to blow. No prospect
would be more dreary.
And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. He opens the
window. He goes out, and catches cold. He is stirred by the
mysterious coming of something. If there is sign of change nowhere
else, we detect it in the newspaper. In sheltered corners of that
truculent instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of the few
among the many begin to grow the violets of tender sentiment, the
early greens of yearning. The poet feels the sap of the new year
before the marsh-willow. He blossoms in advance of the catkins. Man
is greater than Nature. The poet is greater than man: he is nature
on two legs,--ambulatory.
At first there is no appearance of conflict. The winter garrison
seems to have withdrawn. The invading hosts of the South are
entering without opposition. The hard ground softens; the sun lies
warm upon the southern bank, and water oozes from its base. If you
examine the buds of the lilac and the flowering shrubs, you cannot
say that they are swelling; but the varnish with which they were
coated in the fall to keep out the frost seems to be cracking. If
the sugar-maple is hacked, it will bleed,--the pure white blood of
Nature.
At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a softened aspect:
its color, we say, has warmth in it On such a day you may meet a
caterpillar on the footpath, and turn out for him. The house-fly thaws
out; a company of cheerful wasps take possession of a chamber-window.
It is oppressive indoors at night, and the window is raised. A flock of
millers, born out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather for
the season: it is so every year. The delusion is complete, when, on a
mild evening, the tree-toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on the
edge of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, "Did you hear the
frogs last night?" That seems to open the new world. One thinks of his
childhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. It fills one with
sentiment and a tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man is a
strange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the sermons and
warnings of the church, to the calls of duty, to the pleadings of his
better nature, he is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the spring
multiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees the maid-servant
leaning on the area-gate in sweet converse with some one leaning on the
other side; or in the park, which is still too damp for anything but
true affection, he sees her seated by the side of one who is able to
protect her from the policeman, and hears her sigh, "How sweet it is to
be with those we love to be with!"
All this is very well; but next morning the newspaper nips these
early buds of sentiment. The telegraph announces, "Twenty feet of
snow at Ogden, on the Pacific Road; winds blowing a gale at Omaha,
and snow still falling; mercury frozen at Duluth; storm-signals at
Port Huron."
Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, your early season?
Before noon it rains, by three o'clock it hails; before night the
bleak storm-cloud of the northwest envelops the sky; a gale is
raging, whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the snow is
drifted in banks, and two feet deep on a level. Early in the
seventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented the weather-glass.
Before that, men had suffered without knowing the degree of their
suffering. A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of using mercury
in a thermometer; and Fahrenheit constructed the instrument which
adds a new because distinct terror to the weather. Science names and
registers the ills of life; and yet it is a gain to know the names
and habits of our enemies. It is with some satisfaction in our
knowledge that we say the thermometer marks zero.
In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, and
taken possession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood,
has retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. We
say it is better to have it now than later. We have a conceit of
understanding things.
The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow is
uncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. The
first day there is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail;
the third day a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares that
the temperature is delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His
neighbor dies of some disease newly named by science; but he dies all
the same as if it hadn't been newly named. Science has not
discovered any name that is not fatal.
This is called the breaking-up of winter.
Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to stand
still, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that the
worst is over. If he should live a thousand years, he would be
deceived every year. And this is called an age of skepticism. Man
never believed in so many things as now: he never believed so much in
himself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what she
will do. He communicates with the next world by means of an alphabet
which he has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of the
spirit-wire. To be sure, neither of them says anything; but they
talk. Is not that something? He suspends the law of gravitation as
to his own body--he has learned how to evade it--as tyrants suspend
the legal writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks for his
body, she cannot have it. He says of himself, "I am infallible; I am
sublime." He believes all these things. He is master of the
elements. Shakespeare sends him a poem just made, and as good a poem
as the man could write himself. And yet this man--he goes out of
doors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in three
days. "On the 21st of January," exclaimed Mercier, "all kings felt
for the backs of their necks." This might be said of all men in New
England in the spring. This is the season that all the poets
celebrate. Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a genial
spring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All later poets have
sung the same song. "Voila tout!" That is the root of poetry.
Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high in air, the "conk" of
the wild-geese. Looking up, you see the black specks of that
adventurous triangle, winging along in rapid flight northward.
Perhaps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappears
in the north. There is no mistaking that sign. This unmusical
"conk" is sweeter than the "kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probably
these birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back south again
after spying out the nakedness of the land; but they have made their
sign. Next day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a bluebird.
This rumor, unhappily for the bird (which will freeze to death), is
confirmed. In less than three days everybody has seen a bluebird;
and favored people have heard a robin or rather the yellow-breasted
thrush, misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubt true: for
angle-worms have been seen on the surface of the ground; and,
wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly on hand.
About this time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grass
has a little color. But you say that it is the grass of last fall.
It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last fall became the
grass of this spring. It looks "warmed over." The green is rusty.
The lilac-buds have certainly swollen a little, and so have those of
the soft maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten as you think
it ought to, and it is only when the rain turns to snow that you see
any decided green color by contrast with the white. The snow
gradually covers everything very quietly, however. Winter comes back
without the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable.
Neither party in the fight now makes much fuss over it; and you might
think that Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not find
about this time, in the Woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the modest
blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume.
The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, in
its blind way, is trying to express itself.
And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in the trees. The
blackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villages
of them,--communes, rather. They do not believe in God, these
black-birds. They think they can take care of themselves. We shall see.
But they are well informed. They arrived just as the last snow-bank
melted. One cannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass;
not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks sloping
south. The dark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin to
show. Even Fahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward movement:
the mercury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-five
degrees. It is time for the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disappeared
than we desire it.
There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, and there is.
softness in the south wind. The song-sparrow is singing in the
apple-tree. Another bird-note is heard,--two long, musical whistles,
liquid but metallic. A brown bird this one, darker than the
song-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, and smaller,
yet bigger than the queer little chipping-bird. He wants a familiar
name, this sweet singer, who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He is
such a contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, as
usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, spoiled beauties! They
wrangle from morning till night, these beautiful, high-tempered
aristocrats.
Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by the
peeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings of
a double hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets,
most delightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope,
devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so much
thought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them! And a
northeast storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown all
these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail hat is offered
up to the implacable season. In fact, Nature is not to be
forestalled nor hurried in this way. Things cannot be pushed.
Nature hesitates. The woman who does not hesitate in April is lost.
The appearance of the bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it.
They assemble. For two days they hold a noisy convention, with high
debate, in the tree-tops. Something is going to happen.
Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. There is a wind
called Auster, another called Eurus, another called Septentrio,
another Meridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are the
eight great winds of the classical dictionary,--arsenal of mystery
and terror and of the unknown,--besides the wind Euroaquilo of St.
Luke. This is the wind that drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete
upon the African Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get to
Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into Holmes's Hole. The
Euroaquilo is no respecter of persons.
These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, circle about New
England. They form a ring about it: they lie in wait on its borders,
but only to spring upon it and harry it. They follow each other in
contracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere:
they meet and cross each other, all at a moment. This New England is
set apart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred
elsewhere come here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, in
choruses. If New England were not mostly rock, these winds would
carry it off; but they would bring it all back again, as happens with
the sandy portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus
brings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is full of dust.
This is called one of the compensations of Nature.
This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: A
moaning south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain to
snow; what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; a
north wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snow
increases the evaporation and the cold. This was the office of the
northeast wind: it made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; but
then it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The
air was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the wind changed,
went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a cat
by its tail. The mercury approached zero. This was nothing
uncommon. We know all these winds. We are familiar with the
different "forms of water."
All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be
permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the
instruments. The opera was to come,--the Flying Dutchman of the air.
There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;
only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind
of the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Its
breath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible.
It peddles rheumatism, and plants consumption.
The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of the
weather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, from
the glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast,
leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the other
conflicting winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos.
It was the Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marching
into the "dreaded wood of La Sandraie."
Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is
no name.
Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does
it leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is
prostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent
medicines. This is an epic; this is destiny. You think Providence
is expelled out of New England? Listen!
Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica
--earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild
work of the armies trampling over New England--daring to hold up its
tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of
Nature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots it
was vivid green. There was a mild rain,--mild, but chilly. The
clouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. There was a
softness on the hills. The birds suddenly were on every tree,
glancing through the air, filling it with song, sometimes shaking
raindrops from their wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. He
thinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are off. He is fond
of Nature, this cat, as we all are: he wants to possess it. At four
o'clock in the morning there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds.
Not all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived; but there are
enough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is certainly charming.
The gardener comes to talk about seeds: he uncovers the straw-berries
and the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the peas.
You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. In the shade there is
still frost in the ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates; puts
forth one hepatica at a time, and waits to see the result; pushes up
the grass slowly, perhaps draws it in at night.
This indecision we call Spring.
It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack for ninety days,
expecting every day a reprieve. Men grow hardened to it, however.
This is the order with man,--hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust,
facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetious
about spring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous.
When a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "It
bores me to die," said the journalist Carra to the headsman at the
foot of the guillotine: "I would like to have seen the continuation."
One is also interested to see how spring is going to turn out.
A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the mellow earth,
--all these begin to beget confidence. The night, even, has been warm.
But what is this in the morning journal, at breakfast?--"An area of
low pressure is moving from the Tortugas north." You shudder.
What is this Low Pressure itself,--it? It is something frightful,
low, crouching, creeping, advancing; it is a foreboding; it is
misfortune by telegraph; it is the "'93" of the atmosphere.
This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What is that? Old
Prob. is the new deity of the Americans, greater than AEolus, more
despotic than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightning
his messenger. He is a mystery made of six parts electricity, and
one part "guess." This deity is worshiped by the Americans; his name
is on every man's lips first in the morning; he is the Frankenstein
of modern science. Housed at Washington, his business is to direct
the storms of the whole country upon New England, and to give notice
in advance. This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and then
gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his part: it is all one to
him. His great power is in the low pressure.
On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, along
the Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in the
Atchafalaya swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux
and Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmospheric
disasters. Low pressure may be no worse than the others: it is
better known, and is most used to inspire terror. It can be summoned
any time also from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses of
the Okeechobee.
When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what it
means. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do?
Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers in
anticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering by
anticipation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The wind
is from the northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a
northeast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. Together they make
spring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest!--there
is no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After that
the weather changes into something winter-like.
A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow
to the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks
up. He is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands
behind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, "Po' birdie!"
They appear to understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb;
but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither of
these little things could take care of itself in a New-England spring
not in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette,
looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and the
evergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, "It looks
like the depths of spring." To this has man come: to his
facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May.
Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open the
morning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low
pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By
the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the
color of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are
twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts
contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and
herd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we might think the
dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them,
sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a
red tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature,
color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a few
days--is it not so?--through the green masses of the trees will flash
the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhaps
tomorrow.
But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clear
overhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden;
they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain,
or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of
the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon
drives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from
the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary
winds of New England), from all points of the compass. The fine snow
becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes
as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the
bleak scene.
During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens.
Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. This
is a sign of colder weather.
The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take no
pleasure in biting in such weather.
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last
year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years.
Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the
spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During
this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost
immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth
violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow,
and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive
haste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows
are deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a
burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink,
the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the
world, of color.
In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed with
the white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day the
mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.
There was no Spring.
The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the
Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost
his head after that.
When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers
have four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and
kills them in a night.
That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninety
degrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful.
Many people survive it.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
By Charles Dudley Warner
PREFACE
When I consented to prepare this volume for a series, which should
deal with the notables of American history with some familiarity and
disregard of historic gravity, I did not anticipate the seriousness
of the task. But investigation of the subject showed me that while
Captain John Smith would lend himself easily enough to the purely
facetious treatment, there were historic problems worthy of a
different handling, and that if the life of Smith was to be written,
an effort should be made to state the truth, and to disentangle the
career of the adventurer from the fables and misrepresentations that
have clustered about it.
The extant biographies of Smith, and the portions of the history of
Virginia that relate to him, all follow his own narrative, and accept
his estimate of himself, and are little more than paraphrases of his
story as told by himself. But within the last twenty years some new
contemporary evidence has come to light, and special scholars have
expended much critical research upon different portions of his
career. The result of this modern investigation has been to
discredit much of the romance gathered about Smith and Pocahontas,
and a good deal to reduce his heroic proportions. A vague report of
--these scholarly studies has gone abroad, but no effort has been made
to tell the real story of Smith as a connected whole in the light of
the new researches.
This volume is an effort to put in popular form the truth about
Smith's adventures, and to estimate his exploits and character. For
this purpose I have depended almost entirely upon original
contemporary material, illumined as it now is by the labors of
special editors. I believe that I have read everything that is
attributed to his pen, and have compared his own accounts with other
contemporary narratives, and I think I have omitted the perusal of
little that could throw any light upon his life or character. For
the early part of his career--before he came to Virginia--there is
absolutely no authority except Smith himself; but when he emerges
from romance into history, he can be followed and checked by
contemporary evidence. If he was always and uniformly untrustworthy
it would be less perplexing to follow him, but his liability to tell
the truth when vanity or prejudice does not interfere is annoying to
the careful student.
As far as possible I have endeavored to let the actors in these pages
tell their own story, and I have quoted freely from Capt. Smith
himself, because it is as a writer that he is to be judged no less
than as an actor. His development of the Pocahontas legend has been
carefully traced, and all the known facts about that Indian--or
Indese, as some of the old chroniclers call the female North
Americans--have been consecutively set forth in separate chapters.
The book is not a history of early Virginia, nor of the times of
Smith, but merely a study of his life and writings. If my estimate
of the character of Smith is not that which his biographers have
entertained, and differs from his own candid opinion, I can only
plead that contemporary evidence and a collation of his own stories
show that he was mistaken. I am not aware that there has been before
any systematic effort to collate his different accounts of his
exploits. If he had ever undertaken the task, he might have
disturbed that serene opinion of himself which marks him as a man who
realized his own ideals.
The works used in this study are, first, the writings of Smith, which
are as follows:
"A True Relation," etc., London, 1608.
"A Map of Virginia, Description and Appendix," Oxford, 1612.
"A Description of New England," etc., London, 1616.
"New England's Trials," etc., London, 1620. Second edition,
enlarged, 1622.
"The Generall Historie," etc., London, 1624. Reissued, with date of
title-page altered, in 1626, 1627, and twice in 1632.
"An Accidence: or, The Pathway to Experience," etc., London, 1626.
"A Sea Grammar," etc., London, 1627. Also editions in 1653 and 1699.
"The True Travels," etc., London, 1630.
"Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England," etc.,
London, 1631.
Other authorities are:
"The Historie of Travaile into Virginia," etc., by William Strachey,
Secretary of the colony 1609 to 1612. First printed for the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1849.
"Newport's Relatyon," 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.
"Wingfield's Discourse," etc., 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.
"Purchas his Pilgrimage," London, 1613.
"Purchas his Pilgrimes," London, 1625-6.
"Ralph Hamor's True Discourse," etc., London, 1615.
"Relation of Virginia," by Henry Spelman, 1609. First printed by J.
F. Hunnewell, London, 1872.
"History of the Virginia Company in London," by Edward D. Neill,
Albany, 1869.
"William Stith's History of Virginia," 1753, has been consulted for
the charters and letters-patent. The Pocahontas discussion has been
followed in many magazine papers. I am greatly indebted to the
scholarly labors of Charles Deane, LL.D., the accomplished editor of
the "True Relation," and other Virginia monographs. I wish also to
acknowledge the courtesy of the librarians of the Astor, the Lenox,
the New York Historical, Yale, and Cornell libraries, and of Dr. J.
Hammond Trumbull, the custodian of the Brinley collection, and the
kindness of Mr. S. L. M. Barlow of New York, who is ever ready to
give students access to his rich "Americana."
C. D. W.
HARTFORD, June, 1881
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
BIRTH AND TRAINING
Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of a
woman. A tender interest in his fame is assured. Still more
fortunate is he if he is able to record his own achievements and give
to them that form and color and importance which they assume in his
own gallant consciousness. Captain John Smith, the first of an
honored name, had this double good fortune.
We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of
the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across
the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads
cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of
his laureates--
"To see bright honor sparkled all in gore."
But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent,
narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cutting
as the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and for
one of the few romances that illumine our early history.
Captain John Smith understood his good fortune in being the recorder
of his own deeds, and he preceded Lord Beaconsfield (in "Endymion")
in his appreciation of the value of the influence of women upon the
career of a hero. In the dedication of his "General Historie" to
Frances, Duchess of Richmond, he says:
"I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why should
I sticke to hazard my reputation in recording? He that acteth two
parts is the more borne withall if he come short, or fayle in one of
them. Where shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar whose
atchievments shine as cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did in
the field? I confesse, my hand though able to wield a weapon among
the Barbarous, yet well may tremble in handling a Pen among so many
judicious; especially when I am so bold as to call so piercing and so
glorious an Eye, as your Grace, to view these poore ragged lines.
Yet my comfort is that heretofore honorable and vertuous Ladies, and
comparable but amongst themselves, have offered me rescue and
protection in my greatest dangers: even in forraine parts, I have
felt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Tragabigzanda, when I
was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When I
overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable Lady
Callamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of my extremities,
that blessed Pokahontas, the great King's daughter of Virginia, oft
saved my life. When I escaped the cruelties of Pirats and most
furious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and driven
ashore in France, the good Lady Chanoyes bountifully assisted me."
It is stated in his "True Travels" that John Smith was born in
Willoughby, in Lincolnshire. The year of his birth is not given, but
it was probably in 1579, as it appears by the portrait prefixed to
that work that he was aged 37 years in 1616. We are able to add also
that the rector of the Willoughby Rectory, Alford, finds in the
register an entry of the baptism of John, son of George Smith, under
date of Jan. 9, 1579. His biographers, following his account,
represent him as of ancient lineage: "His father actually descended
from the ancient Smiths of Crudley in Lancashire, his mother from the
Rickands at great Heck in Yorkshire;" but the circumstances of his
boyhood would indicate that like many other men who have made
themselves a name, his origin was humble. If it had been otherwise
he would scarcely have been bound as an apprentice, nor had so much
difficulty in his advancement. But the boy was born with a merry
disposition, and in his earliest years was impatient for adventure.
The desire to rove was doubtless increased by the nature of his
native shire, which offered every inducement to the lad of spirit to
leave it.
Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It is
frequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part of
the year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby is
a considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles and
a half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of the
chalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, and
the scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All the
villages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.
The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, and
we can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by the
number of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from the
Saxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.
The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.
Such was John Smith. The sea was the natural element of his
neighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of the
sea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who were
recruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars had
often cloven the Baltic Sea.
Willoughby boasts some antiquity. Its church is a spacious
structure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and a
tower at the west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latin
inscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of one
Gilbert West, who died in 1404. The church is dedicated to St.
Helen. In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place of
worship. According to the parliamentary returns of 1825, the parish
including the hamlet of Sloothby contained 108 houses and 514
inhabitants. All the churches in Lincolnshire indicate the existence
of a much larger population who were in the habit of attending
service than exists at present. Many of these now empty are of size
sufficient to accommodate the entire population of several villages.
Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the adjacent
village of Sloothby.
The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water had
more influence on the boy's mind than the free, schools of Alford and
Louth which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold his
books and satchel and intended to run away to sea: but the death of
his father stayed him. Both his parents being now dead, he was left
with, he says, competent means; but his guardians regarding his
estate more than himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so that
he was forced to stay at home.
At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S.
Tendall of Lynn. The articles, however, did not bind him very fast,
for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of his
master and did not see him again for eight years. These details
exhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.
At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of the
great soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France. The
narrative is not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, in
a month or so the services of John were found to be of no value, and
he was sent back to his friends, who on his return generously gave
him ten shillings (out of his own estate) to be rid of him. He is
next heard of enjoying his liberty at Paris and making the
acquaintance of a Scotchman named David Hume, who used his purse--ten
shillings went a long ways in those days--and in return gave him
letters of commendation to prefer him to King James. But the boy had
a disinclination to go where he was sent. Reaching Rouen, and being
nearly out of money, he dropped down the river to Havre de Grace, and
began to learn to be a soldier.
Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV.,
nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared. But
he was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time in
possession of that soldier. Our adventurer not only makes no
reference to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor to
Henry, but he does not tell who held Paris when he visited it.
Apparently state affairs did not interest him. His reference to a
"peace" helps us to fix the date of his first adventure in France.
Henry published the Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and on
the 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with Philip
II. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France. The
Duc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith's "Duke of
Mercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises in
the League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanish
protection. However, fortune was against him and he submitted to
Henry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about for an
opportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to the
Emperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of his
French followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise the
siege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000
men.
Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,
he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving and
fighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the best
market, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked and
hewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for three
or four years. At the end of that time he bethought himself that he
had not delivered his letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusan
for Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained by
illness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On his
recovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment from
the Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his way
as a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.
The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the county
of Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph to
the great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place to
him after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company,
and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good ways
from any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs--less
substantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond--and there he
heroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War,"
read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance and
ring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose food
was thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact his
men kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged in
this ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to be
drawn out of it by the charming discourse of a noble Italian named
Theodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln,
and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town,
with a castle, which belonged to the Earls of Lincoln, and was
situated on the River Bane, only fourteen miles from Boston, a name
that at once establishes a connection between Smith's native county
and our own country, for it is nearly as certain that St. Botolph
founded a monastery at Boston, Lincoln, in the year 654, as it is
that he founded a club afterwards in Boston, Massachusetts.
Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not long
content the restless Smith, who soon set out again for the
Netherlands in search of adventures.
The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of a
belligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it in
ours, whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready,
for a compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese,
or go wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handle
arms and ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whose
anti-Christian contests filled his soul with lamentations; and
besides he was tired of seeing Christians slaughter each other. Like
most heroes, he had a vivid imagination that made him credulous, and
in the Netherlands he fell into the toils of three French gallants,
one of whom pretended to be a great lord, attended by his gentlemen,
who persuaded him to accompany them to the "Duchess of Mercury,"
whose lord was then a general of Rodolphus of Hungary, whose favor
they could command. Embarking with these arrant cheats, the vessel
reached the coast of Picardy, where his comrades contrived to take
ashore their own baggage and Smith's trunk, containing his money and
goodly apparel, leaving him on board. When the captain, who was in
the plot, was enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble lords had
disappeared with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single piece
of gold in his pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay his
passage.
Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,
occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of his
misfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,
wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on a
man-of-war. Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief and
cold, and rescued by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove in
Brittany, he chanced upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, and
the two out swords and fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfaction of
wounding the rascal, and the inhabitants of a ruined tower near by,
who witnessed the combat, were quite satisfied with the event.
Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought up
in England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished better
than ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France,
viewing the castles and strongholds, and at length embarked at
Marseilles on a ship for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vessel
anchored under the lee of the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, in
Savoy.
The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound for
Rome, regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, swore
that his nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, and
declared that they never should have fair weather so long as he was
on board. To end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But God
got him ashore on the little island, whose only inhabitants were
goats and a few kine. The next day a couple of trading vessels
anchored near, and he was taken off and so kindly used that he
decided to cast in his fortune with them. Smith's discourse of his
adventures so entertained the master of one of the vessels, who is
described as "this noble Britaine, his neighbor, Captaine la Roche,
of Saint Malo," that the much-tossed wanderer was accepted as a
friend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria, where they
discharged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting for some time
among the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more freight, they
at length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for some days betwixt
the isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it presently
appeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la Roche,
was looking for.
An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired to
speak to her. The reply was so "untoward" that a man was slain,
whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then his
stem, and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which the
Britaine lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and then
surrendered to save herself from sinking. The noble Britaine and
John Smith then proceeded to rifle her. He says that "the Silkes,
Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, and
Suitanies, which is gold and silver, they unloaded in four-and-twenty
hours was wonderful, whereof having sufficient, and tired with toils,
they cast her off with her company, with as much good merchandise as
would have freighted another Britaine, that was but two hundred
Tunnes, she four or five hundred." Smith's share of this booty was
modest. When the ship returned he was set ashore at "the Road of
Antibo in Piamon," "with five hundred chiqueenes [sequins] and a
little box God sent him worth neere as much more." He always
devoutly acknowledged his dependence upon divine Providence, and took
willingly what God sent him.
II
FIGHTING IN HUNGARY
Smith being thus "refurnished," made the tour of Italy, satisfied
himself with the rarities of Rome, where he saw Pope Clement the
Eighth and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the fair
city of Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through the
north he came into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and,
introduced by an Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice of
Baron Kisell, general of artillery, he obtained employment, and went
to Vienna with Colonel Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regiment
he was to serve.
He was now on the threshold of his long-desired campaign against the
Turks. The arrival on the scene of this young man, who was scarcely
out of his teens, was a shadow of disaster to the Turks. They had
been carrying all before them. Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, was
a weak and irresolute character, and no match for the enterprising
Sultan, Mahomet III., who was then conducting the invasion of Europe.
The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Mathias, who was to succeed him,
and Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, also to become Emperor of Germany,
were much abler men, and maintained a good front against the Moslems
in Lower Hungary, but the Turks all the time steadily advanced. They
had long occupied Buda (Pesth), and had been in possession of the
stronghold of Alba Regalis for some sixty years. Before Smith's
advent they had captured the important city of Caniza, and just as he
reached the ground they had besieged the town of Olumpagh, with two
thousand men. But the addition to the armies of Germany, France,
Styria, and Hungary of John Smith, "this English gentleman," as he
styles himself, put a new face on the war, and proved the ruin of the
Turkish cause. The Bashaw of Buda was soon to feel the effect of
this re-enforcement.
Caniza is a town in Lower Hungary, north of the River Drave, and just
west of the Platen Sea, or Lake Balatin, as it is also called. Due
north of Caniza a few miles, on a bend of the little River Raab
(which empties into the Danube), and south of the town of Kerment,
lay Smith's town of Olumpagh, which we are able to identify on a map
of the period as Olimacum or Oberlymback. In this strong town the
Turks had shut up the garrison under command of Governor Ebersbraught
so closely that it was without intelligence or hope of succor.
In this strait, the ingenious John Smith, who was present in the
reconnoitering army in the regiment of the Earl of Meldritch, came to
the aid of Baron Kisell, the general of artillery, with a plan of
communication with the besieged garrison. Fortunately Smith had made
the acquaintance of Lord Ebersbraught at Gratza, in Styria, and had
(he says) communicated to him a system of signaling a message by the
use of torches. Smith seems to have elaborated this method of
signals, and providentially explained it to Lord Ebersbraught, as if
he had a presentiment of the latter's use of it. He divided the
alphabet into two parts, from A to L and from M to Z. Letters were
indicated and words spelled by the means of torches: "The first part,
from A to L, is signified by showing and holding one linke so oft as
there is letters from A to that letter you name; the other part, from
M to Z, is mentioned by two lights in like manner. The end of a word
is signifien by showing of three lights."
General Kisell, inflamed by this strange invention, which Smith made
plain to him, furnished him guides, who conducted him to a high
mountain, seven miles distant from the town, where he flashed his
torches and got a reply from the governor. Smith signaled that they
would charge on the east of the town in the night, and at the alarum
Ebersbraught was to sally forth. General Kisell doubted that he
should be able to relieve the town by this means, as he had only ten
thousand men; but Smith, whose fertile brain was now in full action,
and who seems to have assumed charge of the campaign, hit upon a
stratagem for the diversion and confusion of the Turks.
On the side of the town opposite the proposed point of attack lay the
plain of Hysnaburg (Eisnaburg on Ortelius's map). Smith fastened two
or three charred pieces of match to divers small lines of an hundred
fathoms in length, armed with powder. Each line was tied to a stake
at each end. After dusk these lines were set up on the plain, and
being fired at the instant the alarm was given, they seemed to the
Turks like so many rows of musketeers. While the Turks therefore
prepared to repel a great army from that side, Kisell attacked with
his ten thousand men, Ebersbraught sallied out and fell upon the
Turks in the trenches, all the enemy on that side were slain or
drowned, or put to flight. And while the Turks were busy routing
Smith's sham musketeers, the Christians threw a couple of thousand
troops into the town. Whereupon the Turks broke up the siege and
retired to Caniza. For this exploit General Kisell received great
honor at Kerment, and Smith was rewarded with the rank of captain,
and the command of two hundred and fifty horsemen. From this time
our hero must figure as Captain John Smith. The rank is not high,
but he has made the title great, just as he has made the name of John
Smith unique.
After this there were rumors of peace for these tormented countries;
but the Turks, who did not yet appreciate the nature of this force,
called John Smith, that had come into the world against them, did not
intend peace, but went on levying soldiers and launching them into
Hungary. To oppose these fresh invasions, Rudolph II., aided by the
Christian princes, organized three armies: one led by the Archduke
Mathias and his lieutenant, Duke Mercury, to defend Low Hungary; the
second led by Ferdinand, the Archduke of Styria, and the Duke of
Mantua, his lieutenant, to regain Caniza; the third by Gonzago,
Governor of High Hungary, to join with Georgio Busca, to make an
absolute conquest of Transylvania.
In pursuance of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirty
thousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besieged
Stowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strong
by art and nature that it was thought impregnable.
This stronghold, situated on the northeast of the Platen Sea, was,
like Caniza and Oberlympack, one of the Turkish advanced posts, by
means of which they pushed forward their operations from Buda on the
Danube.
This noble friend of Smith, the Duke of Mercury, whom Haylyn styles
Duke Mercurio, seems to have puzzled the biographers of Smith. In
fact, the name of "Mercury" has given a mythological air to Smith's
narration and aided to transfer it to the region of romance. He was,
however, as we have seen, identical with a historical character of
some importance, for the services he rendered to the Church of Rome,
and a commander of some considerable skill. He is no other than
Philip de Lorraine, Duc de Mercceur.'
[So far as I know, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the first to identify
him. There is a sketch of him in the "Biographie Universelle," and a
life with an account of his exploits in Hungary, entitled:
Histoire de Duc Mercoeur, par Bruseles de Montplain Champs, Cologne,
1689-97]
At the siege of Alba Regalis, the Turks gained several successes by
night sallies, and, as usual, it was not till Smith came to the front
with one of his ingenious devices that the fortune of war changed.
The Earl Meldritch, in whose regiment Smith served, having heard from
some Christians who escaped from the town at what place there were
the greatest assemblies and throngs of people in the city, caused
Captain Smith to put in practice his "fiery dragons." These
instruments of destruction are carefully described: "Having prepared
fortie or fiftie round-bellied earthen pots, and filled them with
hand Gunpowder, then covered them with Pitch, mingled with Brimstone
and Turpentine, and quartering as many Musket-bullets, that hung
together but only at the center of the division, stucke them round in
the mixture about the pots, and covered them againe with the same
mixture, over that a strong sear-cloth, then over all a goode
thicknesse of Towze-match, well tempered with oyle of Linseed,
Campheer, and powder of Brimstone, these he fitly placed in slings,
graduated so neere as they could to the places of these assemblies."
These missiles of Smith's invention were flung at midnight, when the
alarum was given, and "it was a perfect sight to see the short
flaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after their
fall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes was
most wonderful to heare."
While Smith was amusing the Turks in this manner, the Earl Rosworme
planned an attack on the opposite suburb, which was defended by a
muddy lake, supposed to be impassable. Furnishing his men with
bundles of sedge, which they threw before them as they advanced in
the dark night, the lake was made passable, the suburb surprised, and
the captured guns of the Turks were turned upon them in the city to
which they had retreated. The army of the Bashaw was cut to pieces
and he himself captured.
The Earl of Meldritch, having occupied the town, repaired the walls
and the ruins of this famous city that had been in the possession of
the Turks for some threescore years.
It is not our purpose to attempt to trace the meteoric course of
Captain Smith in all his campaigns against the Turks, only to
indicate the large part he took in these famous wars for the
possession of Eastern Europe. The siege of Alba Regalis must have
been about the year 1601--Smith never troubles himself with any
dates--and while it was undecided, Mahomet III.--this was the prompt
Sultan who made his position secure by putting to death nineteen of
his brothers upon his accession--raised sixty thousand troops for its
relief or its recovery. The Duc de Mercoeur went out to meet this
army, and encountered it in the plains of Girke. In the first
skirmishes the Earl Meldritch was very nearly cut off, although he
made "his valour shine more bright than his armour, which seemed then
painted with Turkish blood." Smith himself was sore wounded and had
his horse slain under him. The campaign, at first favorable to the
Turks, was inconclusive, and towards winter the Bashaw retired to
Buda. The Duc de Mercoeur then divided his army. The Earl of
Rosworme was sent to assist the Archduke Ferdinand, who was besieging
Caniza; the Earl of Meldritch, with six thousand men, was sent to
assist Georgio Busca against the Transylvanians; and the Duc de
Mercoeur set out for France to raise new forces. On his way he
received great honor at Vienna, and staying overnight at Nuremberg,
he was royally entertained by the Archdukes Mathias and Maximilian.
The next morning after the feast--how it chanced is not known--he was
found dead His brother-inlaw died two days afterwards, and the hearts
of both, with much sorrow, were carried into France.
We now come to the most important event in the life of Smith before
he became an adventurer in Virginia, an event which shows Smith's
readiness to put in practice the chivalry which had in the old
chronicles influenced his boyish imagination; and we approach it with
the satisfaction of knowing that it loses nothing in Smith's
narration.
It must be mentioned that Transylvania, which the Earl of Meldritch,
accompanied by Captain Smith, set out to relieve, had long been in a
disturbed condition, owing to internal dissensions, of which the
Turks took advantage. Transylvania, in fact, was a Turkish
dependence, and it gives us an idea of the far reach of the Moslem
influence in Europe, that Stephen VI., vaivode of Transylvania, was,
on the commendation of Sultan Armurath III., chosen King of Poland.
To go a little further back than the period of Smith's arrival, John
II. of Transylvania was a champion of the Turk, and an enemy of
Ferdinand and his successors. His successor, Stephen VI., surnamed
Battori, or Bathor, was made vaivode by the Turks, and afterwards, as
we have said, King of Poland. He was succeeded in 1575 by his
brother Christopher Battori, who was the first to drop the title of
vaivode and assume that of Prince of Transylvania. The son of
Christopher, Sigismund Battori, shook off the Turkish bondage,
defeated many of their armies, slew some of their pashas, and gained
the title of the Scanderbeg of the times in which he lived. Not able
to hold out, however, against so potent an adversary, he resigned his
estate to the Emperor Rudolph II., and received in exchange the
dukedoms of Oppelon and Ratibor in Silesia, with an annual pension of
fifty thousand joachims. The pension not being well paid, Sigismund
made another resignation of his principality to his cousin Andrew
Battori, who had the ill luck to be slain within the year by the
vaivode of Valentia. Thereupon Rudolph, Emperor and King of Hungary,
was acknowledged Prince of Transylvania. But the Transylvania
soldiers did not take kindly to a foreign prince, and behaved so
unsoldierly that Sigismund was called back. But he was unable to
settle himself in his dominions, and the second time he left his
country in the power of Rudolph and retired to Prague, where, in
1615, he died unlamented.
It was during this last effort of Sigismund to regain his position
that the Earl of Meldritch, accompanied by Smith, went to
Transylvania, with the intention of assisting Georgio Busca, who was
the commander of the Emperor's party. But finding Prince Sigismund
in possession of the most territory and of the hearts of the people,
the earl thought it best to assist the prince against the Turk,
rather than Busca against the prince. Especially was he inclined to
that side by the offer of free liberty of booty for his worn and
unpaid troops, of what they could get possession of from the Turks.
This last consideration no doubt persuaded the troops that Sigismund
had "so honest a cause." The earl was born in Transylvania, and the
Turks were then in possession of his father's country. In this
distracted state of the land, the frontiers had garrisons among the
mountains, some of which held for the emperor, some for the prince,
and some for the Turk. The earl asked leave of the prince to make an
attempt to regain his paternal estate. The prince, glad of such an
ally, made him camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunder
the Turks. Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of the
frontiers into what Smith calls the Land of Zarkam--among rocky
mountains, where were some Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes,
Renegadoes, and such like, which he forced into the Plains of Regall,
where was a city of men and fortifications, strong in itself, and so
environed with mountains that it had been impregnable in all these
wars.
It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did not
always attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in which
he was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the city
of Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases. But the region
is sufficiently identified. On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was the
town of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode or
Prince of Transylvania. South of this capital was the town
Millenberg, and southwest of this was a very strong fortress,
commanding a narrow pass leading into Transylvania out of Hungary,
probably where the River Maruct: broke through the mountains. We
infer that it was this pass that the earl captured by a stratagem,
and carrying his army through it, began the siege of Regall in the
plain. "The earth no sooner put on her green habit," says our
knight-errant, "than the earl overspread her with his troops."
Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the Christians
encamped on the plain before it.
In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age of
chivalry, about which Smith had read so much. We cannot but
recognize that this is his opportunity. His idle boyhood had been
soaked in old romances, and he had set out in his youth to do what
equally dreamy but less venturesome devourers of old chronicles were
content to read about. Everything arranged itself as Smith would
have had it. When the Christian army arrived, the Turks sallied out
and gave it a lively welcome, which cost each side about fifteen
hundred men. Meldritch had but eight thousand soldiers, but he was
re-enforced by the arrival of nine thousand more, with six-and-twenty
pieces of ordnance, under Lord Zachel Moyses, the general of the
army, who took command of the whole.
After the first skirmish the Turks remained within their fortress,
the guns of which commanded the plain, and the Christians spent a
month in intrenching themselves and mounting their guns.
The Turks, who taught Europe the art of civilized war, behaved all
this time in a courtly and chivalric manner, exchanging with the
besiegers wordy compliments until such time as the latter were ready
to begin. The Turks derided the slow progress of the works, inquired
if their ordnance was in pawn, twitted them with growing fat for want
of exercise, and expressed the fear that the Christians should depart
without making an assault.
In order to make the time pass pleasantly, and exactly in accordance
with the tales of chivalry which Smith had read, the Turkish Bashaw
in the fortress sent out his challenge: "That to delight the ladies,
who did long to see some courtlike pastime, the Lord Tubashaw did
defy any captaine that had the command of a company, who durst combat
with him for his head."
This handsome offer to swap heads was accepted; lots were cast for
the honor of meeting the lord, and, fortunately for us, the choice
fell upon an ardent fighter of twenty-three years, named Captain John
Smith. Nothing was wanting to give dignity to the spectacle. Truce
was made; the ramparts of this fortress-city in the mountains (which
we cannot find on the map) were "all beset with faire Dames and men
in Armes"; the Christians were drawn up in battle array; and upon the
theatre thus prepared the Turkish Bashaw, armed and mounted, entered
with a flourish of hautboys; on his shoulders were fixed a pair of
great wings, compacted of eagles' feathers within a ridge of silver
richly garnished with gold and precious stones; before him was a
janissary bearing his lance, and a janissary walked at each side
leading his steed.
This gorgeous being Smith did not keep long waiting. Riding into the
field with a flourish of trumpets, and only a simple page to bear his
lance, Smith favored the Bashaw with a courteous salute, took
position, charged at the signal, and before the Bashaw could say
"Jack Robinson," thrust his lance through the sight of his beaver,
face, head and all, threw him dead to the ground, alighted, unbraced
his helmet, and cut off his head. The whole affair was over so
suddenly that as a pastime for ladies it must have been
disappointing. The Turks came out and took the headless trunk, and
Smith, according to the terms of the challenge, appropriated the head
and presented it to General Moyses.
This ceremonious but still hasty procedure excited the rage of one
Grualgo, the friend of the Bashaw, who sent a particular challenge to
Smith to regain his friend's head or lose his own, together with his
horse and armor. Our hero varied the combat this time. The two
combatants shivered lances and then took to pistols; Smith received a
mark upon the "placard," but so wounded the Turk in his left arm that
he was unable to rule his horse. Smith then unhorsed him, cut off
his head, took possession of head, horse, and armor, but returned the
rich apparel and the body to his friends in the most gentlemanly
manner.
Captain Smith was perhaps too serious a knight to see the humor of
these encounters, but he does not lack humor in describing them, and
he adopted easily the witty courtesies of the code he was
illustrating. After he had gathered two heads, and the siege still
dragged, he became in turn the challenger, in phrase as courteously
and grimly facetious as was permissible, thus:
"To delude time, Smith, with so many incontradictible perswading
reasons, obtained leave that the Ladies might know he was not so much
enamored of their servants' heads, but if any Turke of their ranke
would come to the place of combat to redeem them, should have also
his, upon like conditions, if he could winne it."
This considerate invitation was accepted by a person whom Smith, with
his usual contempt for names, calls "Bonny Mulgro." It seems
difficult to immortalize such an appellation, and it is a pity that
we have not the real one of the third Turk whom Smith honored by
killing. But Bonny Mulgro, as we must call the worthiest foe that
Smith's prowess encountered, appeared upon the field. Smith
understands working up a narration, and makes this combat long and
doubtful. The challenged party, who had the choice of weapons, had
marked the destructiveness of his opponent's lance, and elected,
therefore, to fight with pistols and battle-axes. The pistols proved
harmless, and then the battle-axes came in play, whose piercing bills
made sometime the one, sometime the other, to have scarce sense to
keep their saddles. Smith received such a blow that he lost his
battle-axe, whereat the Turks on the ramparts set up a great shout.
"The Turk prosecuted his advantage to the utmost of his power; yet
the other, what by the readiness of his horse, and his judgment and
dexterity in such a business, beyond all men's expectations, by God's
assistance, not only avoided the Turke's violence, but having drawn
his Faulchion, pierced the Turke so under the Culets throrow backe
and body, that although he alighted from his horse, he stood not long
ere he lost his head, as the rest had done."
There is nothing better than this in all the tales of chivalry, and
John Smith's depreciation of his inability to equal Caesar in
describing his own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the Duchess
of Richmond, must be taken as an excess of modesty. We are prepared
to hear that these beheadings gave such encouragement to the whole
army that six thousand soldiers, with three led horses, each preceded
by a soldier bearing a Turk's head on a lance, turned out as a guard
to Smith and conducted him to the pavilion of the general, to whom he
presented his trophies. General Moyses (occasionally Smith calls him
Moses) took him in his arms and embraced him with much respect, and
gave him a fair horse, richly furnished, a scimeter, and a belt worth
three hundred ducats. And his colonel advanced him to the position
of sergeant-major of his regiment. If any detail was wanting to
round out and reward this knightly performance in strict accord with
the old romances, it was supplied by the subsequent handsome conduct
of Prince Sigismund.
When the Christians had mounted their guns and made a couple of
breaches in the walls of Regall, General Moyses ordered an attack one
dark night "by the light that proceeded from the murdering muskets
and peace-making cannon." The enemy were thus awaited, "whilst their
slothful governor lay in a castle on top of a high mountain, and like
a valiant prince asketh what's the matter, when horrour and death
stood amazed at each other, to see who should prevail to make him
victorious." These descriptions show that Smith could handle the pen
as well as the battleaxe, and distinguish him from the more vulgar
fighters of his time. The assault succeeded, but at great cost of
life. The Turks sent a flag of truce and desired a "composition,"
but the earl, remembering the death of his father, continued to
batter the town and when he took it put all the men in arms to the
sword, and then set their heads upon stakes along the walls, the
Turks having ornamented the walls with Christian heads when they
captured the fortress. Although the town afforded much pillage, the
loss of so many troops so mixed the sour with the sweet that General
Moyses could only allay his grief by sacking three other towns,
Veratis, Solmos, and Kapronka. Taking from these a couple of
thousand prisoners, mostly women and children, Earl Moyses marched
north to Weisenberg (Alba Julia), and camped near the palace of
Prince Sigismund.
When Sigismund Battori came out to view his army he was made
acquainted with the signal services of Smith at "Olumpagh,
Stowell-Weisenberg, and Regall," and rewarded him by conferring upon
him, according to the law of--arms, a shield of arms with "three
Turks' heads." This was granted by a letter-patent, in Latin, which
is dated at "Lipswick, in Misenland, December 9, 1603" It recites that
Smith was taken captive by the Turks in Wallachia November 18, 1602;
that he escaped and rejoined his fellow-soldiers. This patent,
therefore, was not given at Alba Julia, nor until Prince Sigismund had
finally left his country, and when the Emperor was, in fact, the
Prince of Transylvania. Sigismund styles himself, by the grace of
God, Duke of Transylvania, etc. Appended to this patent, as published
in Smith's "True Travels," is a certificate by William Segar, knight
of the garter and principal king of arms of England, that he had seen
this patent and had recorded a copy of it in the office of the Herald
of Armes. This certificate is dated August 19, 1625, the year after
the publication of the General Historie.
Smith says that Prince Sigismund also gave him his picture in gold,
and granted him an annual pension of three hundred ducats. This
promise of a pension was perhaps the most unsubstantial portion of
his reward, for Sigismund himself became a pensioner shortly after
the events last narrated.
The last mention of Sigismund by Smith is after his escape from
captivity in Tartaria, when this mirror of virtues had abdicated.
Smith visited him at "Lipswicke in Misenland," and the Prince "gave
him his Passe, intimating the service he had done, and the honors he
had received, with fifteen hundred ducats of gold to repair his
losses." The "Passe" was doubtless the "Patent" before introduced,
and we hear no word of the annual pension.
Affairs in Transylvania did not mend even after the capture of
Regall, and of the three Turks' heads, and the destruction of so many
villages. This fruitful and strong country was the prey of faction,
and became little better than a desert under the ravages of the
contending armies. The Emperor Rudolph at last determined to conquer
the country for himself, and sent Busca again with a large army.
Sigismund finding himself poorly supported, treated again with the
Emperor and agreed to retire to Silicia on a pension. But the Earl
Moyses, seeing no prospect of regaining his patrimony, and
determining not to be under subjection to the Germans, led his troops
against Busca, was defeated, and fled to join the Turks. Upon this
desertion the Prince delivered up all he had to Busca and retired to
Prague. Smith himself continued with the imperial party, in the
regiment of Earl Meldritch. About this time the Sultan sent one
Jeremy to be vaivode of Wallachia, whose tyranny caused the people to
rise against him, and he fled into Moldavia. Busca proclaimed Lord
Rodoll vaivode in his stead. But Jeremy assembled an army of forty
thousand Turks, Tartars, and Moldavians, and retired into Wallachia.
Smith took active part in Rodoll's campaign to recover Wallachia, and
narrates the savage war that ensued. When the armies were encamped
near each other at Raza and Argish, Rodoll cut off the heads of
parties he captured going to the Turkish camp, and threw them into
the enemy's trenches. Jeremy retorted by skinning alive the
Christian parties he captured, hung their skins upon poles, and their
carcasses and heads on stakes by them. In the first battle Rodoll
was successful and established himself in Wallachia, but Jeremy
rallied and began ravaging the country. Earl Meldritch was sent
against him, but the Turks' force was much superior, and the
Christians were caught in a trap. In order to reach Rodoll, who was
at Rottenton, Meldritch with his small army was obliged to cut his
way through the solid body of the enemy. A device of Smith's
assisted him. He covered two or three hundred trunks--probably small
branches of trees--with wild-fire. These fixed upon the heads of
lances and set on fire when the troops charged in the night, so
terrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay.
Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leagues
of Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the last
desperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of the
Prince were slain, and Smith himself was left for dead on the field.
On this bloody field over thirty thousand lay headless, armless,
legless, all cut and mangled, who gave knowledge to the world how
dear the Turk paid for his conquest of Transylvania and Wallachia--a
conquest that might have been averted if the three Christian armies
had been joined against the "cruel devouring Turk." Among the slain
were many Englishmen, adventurers like the valiant Captain whom Smith
names, men who "left there their bodies in testimony of their minds."
And there, "Smith among the slaughtered dead bodies, and many a
gasping soule with toils and wounds lay groaning among the rest, till
being found by the Pillagers he was able to live, and perceiving by
his armor and habit, his ransome might be better than his death, they
led him prisoner with many others." The captives were taken to
Axopolis and all sold as slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall,
who forwarded him by way of Adrianople to Constantinople, to be a
slave to his mistress. So chained by the necks in gangs of twenty
they marched to the city of Constantine, where Smith was delivered
over to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young Charatza Tragabigzanda.
III
CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING
Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure.
Noble ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, and
Smith was far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted to
talk with her slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feign
herself too sick to go to the bath, or to accompany the other women
when they went to weep over the graves, as their custom is once a
week, in order to stay at home to hear from Smith how it was that
Bogall took him prisoner, as the Bashaw had written her, and whether
Smith was a Bohemian lord conquered by the Bashaw's own hand, whose
ransom could adorn her with the glory of her lover's conquests.
Great must have been her disgust with Bogall when she heard that he
had not captured this handsome prisoner, but had bought him in the
slave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave increased,
and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest. But she
had no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell him,
she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in the
country of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be).
If all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he might
have been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, and
we might never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to her
brother, it was her intention, for she told him so, that he should
only sojourn in Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and what
it was to be a Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smith
himself does not dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into a
Turk and the husband of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He had
no doubt that he was commended to the kindest treatment by her
brother; but Tymor "diverted all this to the worst of cruelty."
Within an hour of his arrival, he was stripped naked, his head and
face shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring of iron, with a long stake
bowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and he was scantily clad in
goat's skin. There were many other slaves, but Smith being the last,
was treated like a dog, and made the slave of slaves.
The geographer is not able to follow Captain Smith to Nalbrits.
Perhaps Smith himself would have been puzzled to make a map of his
own career after he left Varna and passed the Black Sea and came
through the straits of Niger into the Sea Disbacca, by some called
the Lake Moetis, and then sailed some days up the River Bruapo to
Cambria, and two days more to Nalbrits, where the Tyrnor resided.
Smith wrote his travels in London nearly thirty years after, and it
is difficult to say how much is the result of his own observation and
how much he appropriated from preceding romances. The Cambrians may
have been the Cossacks, but his description of their habits and also
those of the "Crym-Tartars" belongs to the marvels of Mandeville and
other wide-eyed travelers. Smith fared very badly with the Tymor.
The Tymor and his friends ate pillaw; they esteemed "samboyses" and
"musselbits" "great dainties, and yet," exclaims Smith, "but round
pies, full of all sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with variety
of herbs." Their best drink was "coffa" and sherbet, which is only
honey and water. The common victual of the others was the entrails
of horses and "ulgries" (goats?) cut up and boiled in a caldron with
"cuskus," a preparation made from grain. This was served in great
bowls set in the ground, and when the other prisoners had raked it
thoroughly with their foul fists the remainder was given to the
Christians. The same dish of entrails used to be served not many
years ago in Upper Egypt as a royal dish to entertain a distinguished
guest.
It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith's
information, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region.
We must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hope
of deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whom
he firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made no
sign. Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He was
employed in thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor's
home. The Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat,
spurn, and revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himself
under these insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brains
with a thrashing bat--"for they had no flails," he explains--put on
the dead man's clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsack
with corn, mounted his horse and rode away into the unknown desert,
where he wandered many days before he found a way out. If we may
believe Smith this wilderness was more civilized in one respect than
some parts of our own land, for on all the crossings of the roads
were guide-boards. After traveling sixteen days on the road that
leads to Muscova, Smith reached a Muscovite garrison on the River
Don. The governor knocked off the iron from his neck and used him so
kindly that he thought himself now risen from the dead. With his
usual good fortune there was a lady to take interest in him--"the
good Lady Callamata largely supplied all his wants."
After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tour
of Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says,
with Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars in
Barbary, this restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with several
comrades on a French man-of-war. His observations on and tales about
North Africa are so evidently taken from the books of other travelers
that they add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reason
he found no fighting going on worth his while. But good fortune
attended his return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham.
They made a few unimportant captures, and at length fell in with two
Spanish men-of-war, which gave Smith the sort of entertainment he
most coveted. A sort of running fight, sometimes at close quarters,
and with many boardings and repulses, lasted for a couple of days and
nights, when having battered each other thoroughly and lost many men,
the pirates of both nations separated and went cruising, no doubt,
for more profitable game. Our wanderer returned to his native land,
seasoned and disciplined for the part he was to play in the New
World. As Smith had traveled all over Europe and sojourned in
Morocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he visited Prince
Sigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the year 1605 that he
reached England. He had arrived at the manly age of twenty-six
years, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful drama of
discovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then engaged.
IV
FIRST ATTEMPTS IN VIRGINIA
John Smith has not chosen to tell us anything of his life during the
interim--perhaps not more than a year and a half--between his return
from Morocco and his setting sail for Virginia. Nor do his
contemporaries throw any light upon this period of his life.
One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had a
reckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations or
friends of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained of
that "competent means" which he says he inherited, but which does not
seem to have been available in his career. From the time when he set
out for France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a short
sojourn in Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by his
wits and by the strong hand. His purse was now and then replenished
by a lucky windfall, which enabled him to extend his travels and seek
more adventures. This is the impression that his own story makes
upon the reader in a narrative that is characterized by the
boastfulness and exaggeration of the times, and not fuller of the
marvelous than most others of that period.
The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. We
should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town.
Did he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself
at the Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine
thread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to
them? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite
likely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour
were full of chaff, not always of the choicest, about the attractions
of the Virgin-land, whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England;
where the prisoners were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans were
made of it; and where--an unheard-of thing--you might become an
alderman without having been a scavenger.
Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco?
Alas! we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man of
piety according to his lights, and it is probable that he may have
had the then rising prejudice against theatres. After his return
from Virginia he and his exploits were the subject of many a stage
play and spectacle, but whether his vanity was more flattered by this
mark of notoriety than his piety was offended we do not know. There
is certainly no sort of evidence that he engaged in the common
dissipation of the town, nor gave himself up to those pleasures which
a man rescued from the hardships of captivity in Tartaria might be
expected to seek. Mr. Stith says that it was the testimony of his
fellow soldiers and adventurers that "they never knew a soldier,
before him, so free from those military vices of wine, tobacco,
debts, dice, and oathes."
But of one thing we may be certain: he was seeking adventure
according to his nature, and eager for any heroic employment; and it
goes without saying that he entered into the great excitement of the
day--adventure in America. Elizabeth was dead. James had just come
to the throne, and Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted an
extensive patent of Virginia, was in the Tower. The attempts to make
any permanent lodgment in the countries of Virginia had failed. But
at the date of Smith's advent Captain Bartholomew Gosnold had
returned from a voyage undertaken in 1602 under the patronage of the
Earl of Southampton, and announced that he had discovered a direct
passage westward to the new continent, all the former voyagers having
gone by the way of the West Indies. The effect of this announcement
in London, accompanied as it was with Gosnold's report of the
fruitfulness of the coast of New England which he explored, was
something like that made upon New York by the discovery of gold in
California in 1849. The route by the West Indies, with its incidents
of disease and delay, was now replaced by the direct course opened by
Gosnold, and the London Exchange, which has always been quick to
scent any profit in trade, shared the excitement of the distinguished
soldiers and sailors who were ready to embrace any chance of
adventure that offered.
It is said that Captain Gosnold spent several years in vain, after
his return, in soliciting his friends and acquaintances to join him
in settling this fertile land he had explored; and that at length he
prevailed upon Captain John Smith, Mr. Edward Maria Wingfield, the
Rev. Mr. Robert Hunt, and others, to join him. This is the first
appearance of the name of Captain John Smith in connection with
Virginia. Probably his life in London had been as idle as
unprofitable, and his purse needed replenishing. Here was a way open
to the most honorable, exciting, and profitable employment. That its
mere profit would have attracted him we do not believe; but its
danger, uncertainty, and chance of distinction would irresistibly
appeal to him. The distinct object of the projectors was to
establish a colony in Virginia. This proved too great an undertaking
for private persons. After many vain projects the scheme was
commended to several of the nobility, gentry, and merchants, who came
into it heartily, and the memorable expedition of 1606 was organized.
The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtained
from King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.
Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor of
Captain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary of
Westminster, had from the first taken great interest in the project.
He was chaplain of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drake
was fitting out his expedition to America, and was eager to further
it. By his diligent study he became the best English geographer of
his time; he was the historiographer of the East India Company, and
the best informed man in England concerning the races, climates, and
productions of all parts of the globe. It was at Hakluyt's
suggestion that two vessels were sent out from Plymouth in 1603 to
verify Gosnold's report of his new short route. A further
verification of the feasibility of this route was made by Captain
George Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of Southampton.
The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed the
planting of two colonies in the territories of America commonly
called Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were Sir
Thos. Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt and
Edward Maria Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. They
were permitted to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and
41st degrees of latitude.
The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam,
Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representing
Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who were
authorized to make a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48th
degrees of latitude.
The--letters commended and generously accepted this noble work of
colonization, "which may, by the Providence of Almighty God,
hereafter tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of
Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and
miserable ignorance of all true knowledge and worship of God, and may
in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to human
civility and to a settled and quiet government." The conversion of
the Indians was as prominent an object in all these early adventures,
English or Spanish, as the relief of the Christians has been in all
the Russian campaigns against the Turks in our day.
Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, to
which John Smith was attached, it is necessary to glance briefly at
the previous attempt to make settlements in this portion of America.
Although the English had a claim upon America, based upon the
discovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of the continent from the
38th to the 68th north parallel by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, they took
no further advantage of it than to send out a few fishing vessels,
until Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a noted and skillful seaman, took out
letters-patent for discovery, bearing date the 11th of January, 1578.
Gilbert was the half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and thirteen years
his senior. The brothers were associated in the enterprise of 1579,
which had for its main object the possession of Newfoundland. It is
commonly said, and in this the biographical dictionaries follow one
another, that Raleigh accompanied his brother on this voyage of 1579
and went with him to Newfoundland. The fact is that Gilbert did not
reach Newfoundland on that voyage, and it is open to doubt if Raleigh
started with him. In April, 1579, when Gilbert took active steps
under the charter of 1578, diplomatic difficulties arose, growing out
of Elizabeth's policy with the Spaniards, and when Gilbert's ships
were ready to sail he was stopped by an order from the council.
Little is known of this unsuccessful attempt of Gilbert's. He did,
after many delays, put to sea, and one of his contemporaries, John
Hooker, the antiquarian, says that Raleigh was one of the assured
friends that accompanied him. But he was shortly after driven back,
probably from an encounter with the Spaniards, and returned with the
loss of a tall ship.
Raleigh had no sooner made good his footing at the court of Elizabeth
than he joined Sir Humphrey in a new adventure. But the Queen
peremptorily retained Raleigh at court, to prevent his incurring the
risks of any "dangerous sea-fights." To prevent Gilbert from
embarking on this new voyage seems to have been the device of the
council rather than the Queen, for she assured Gilbert of her good
wishes, and desired him, on his departure, to give his picture to
Raleigh for her, and she contributed to the large sums raised to meet
expenses "an anchor guarded by a lady," which the sailor was to wear
at his breast. Raleigh risked L 2,000 in the venture, and equipped a
ship which bore his name, but which had ill luck. An infectious
fever broke out among the crew, and the "Ark Raleigh" returned to
Plymouth. Sir Humphrey wrote to his brother admiral, Sir George
Peckham, indignantly of this desertion, the reason for which he did
not know, and then proceeded on his voyage with his four remaining
ships. This was on the 11th of January, 1583. The expedition was so
far successful that Gilbert took formal possession of Newfoundland
for the Queen. But a fatality attended his further explorations: the
gallant admiral went down at sea in a storm off our coast, with his
crew, heroic and full of Christian faith to the last, uttering, it is
reported, this courageous consolation to his comrades at the last
moment: "Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to heaven by
sea as by land."
In September, 1583, a surviving ship brought news of the disaster to
Falmouth. Raleigh was not discouraged. Within six months of this
loss he had on foot another enterprise. His brother's patent had
expired. On the 25th of March, 1584, he obtained from Elizabeth a
new charter with larger powers, incorporating himself, Adrian
Gilbert, brother of Sir Humphrey, and John Davys, under the title of
"The College of the Fellowship for the Discovery of the Northwest
Passage." But Raleigh's object was colonization. Within a few days
after his charter was issued he despatched two captains, Philip
Amadas and Arthur Barlow, who in July of that year took possession of
the island of Roanoke.
The name of Sir Walter Raleigh is intimately associated with Carolina
and Virginia, and it is the popular impression that he personally
assisted in the discovery of the one and the settlement of the other.
But there is no more foundation for the belief that he ever visited
the territory of Virginia, of which he was styled governor, than that
he accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. An allusion by
William Strachey, in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia,"
hastily read, may have misled some writers. He speaks of an
expedition southward, "to some parts of Chawonock and the Mangoangs,
to search them there left by Sir Walter Raleigh." But his further
sketch of the various prior expeditions shows that he meant to speak
of settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and other agents of Raleigh in
colonization. Sir Walter Raleigh never saw any portion of the coast
of the United States.
In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama,
but his plans were frustrated. His only personal expedition to the
New World was that to Guana in 1595.
The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described by
Captain Smith in his compilation called the "General Historie," and
by Mr. Strachey. They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames. On
the 2d of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water,
"where they felt a most delicate sweet smell," but saw no land.
Presently land appeared, which they took to be the continent, and
coasted along to the northward a hundred and thirty miles before
finding a harbor. Entering the first opening, they landed on what
proved to be the Island of Roanoke. The landing-place was sandy and
low, but so productive of grapes or vines overrunning everything,
that the very surge of the sea sometimes overflowed them. The
tallest and reddest cedars in the world grew there, with pines,
cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods plenty of deer, conies,
and fowls in incredible abundance.
After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, proper
people and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King's
brother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey). The name of the
King was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa. The name of this
King might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the new
possession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen.
Granganameo was a friendly savage who liked to trade. The first
thing he took a fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole through
it and hung it about his neck for a breastplate. The liberal
Christians sold it to him for the low price of twenty deer-skins,
worth twenty crowns, and they also let him have a copper kettle for
fifty skins. They drove a lively traffic with the savages for much
of such "truck," and the chief came on board and ate and drank
merrily with the strangers. His wife and children, short of stature
but well-formed and bashful, also paid them a visit. She wore a long
coat of leather, with a piece of leather about her loins, around her
forehead a band of white coral, and from her ears bracelets of pearls
of the bigness of great peas hung down to her middle. The other
women wore pendants of copper, as did the children, five or six in an
ear. The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks of trees.
Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indians
exhibited towards their visitors. They kept them supplied with game
and fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to the
residence of Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) came
running to the river to welcome them; took them to her house and set
them before a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them;
removed the stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water;
set plenty of victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, and
took pains to see all things well ordered for their comfort. "More
love they could not express to entertain us." It is noted that these
savages drank wine while the grape lasted. The visitors returned all
this kindness with suspicion.
They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead of
lodging in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at their
jealousy, sent down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all,
and mats to cover them from the rain in the night, and caused several
of her men and thirty women to sit all night on the shore over
against them. "A more kind, loving people cannot be," say the
voyagers.
In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens of
the wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, and
two natives, Wanchese and Manteo. The "lord proprietary" obtained
the Queen's permission to name the new lands "Virginia," in her
honor, and he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend,
Propria insignia Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et Gubernatoris
Virginia.
The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, and
the amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh at
once to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimate
salvation of the "poor seduced infidell" who wore the pearls. A
fleet of seven vessels, with one hundred householders, and many
things necessary to begin a new state, departed from Plymouth in
April, 1585. Sir Richard Grenville had command of the expedition,
and Mr. Ralph Lane was made governor of the colony, with Philip
Amadas for his deputy. Among the distinguished men who accompanied
them were Thomas Hariot, the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, the
naval discoverer. The expedition encountered as many fatalities as
those that befell Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destined
also to an early and memorable death. But the new colony suffered
more from its own imprudence and want of harmony than from natural
causes.
In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony and
returned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way. The
colonists pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon found
themselves involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct was
less friendly than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of the
whites. In June, when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he had
discovered against the life of the colony, and it was short of
supplies, Sir Francis Drake appeared off Roanoke, returning homeward
with his fleet from the sacking of St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St.
Augustine. Lane, without waiting for succor from England, persuaded
Drake to take him and all the colony back home. Meantime Raleigh,
knowing that the colony would probably need aid, was preparing a
fleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir Richard
Grenville, and an "advice ship," plentifully freighted, to send in
advance to give intelligence of his coming. Great was Grenville's
chagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat had
arrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England.
However, he established fifteen men ("fifty," says the "General
Historie") on the island, provisioned for two years, and then
returned home.
[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, under
command of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a Spanish
Plate-fleet. Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanish
convoy of 53 ships of war. Left behind his comrades, in embarking
from an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terrible
fight for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his men
nearly all slain. He died uttering aloud these words: "Here dies Sir
Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have
ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his
country, queen, religion, and honor."]
Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much better
furnished than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conducted
to the River James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it.
If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on
till the arrival of Grenville.
Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,
but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited with
first bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called
tobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its
capacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, when
burned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of
the melancholy spirit.
The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has
been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lane
home; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in
America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the
ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.
But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It was
already known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had
begun to make its way in the Orient. In the early part of the
century the Spaniards had discovered its virtues. It is stated by
John Neander, in his "Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626,
that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered by
Fernando Cortez in 1519. The name Nicotiana he derives from D.
Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council of Francis II., who first
introduced the plant into France. At the date of this volume (1626)
tobacco was in general use all over Europe and in the East. Pictures
are given of the Persian water pipes, and descriptions of the mode of
preparing it for use. There are reports and traditions of a very
ancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as well as in India,
but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be tobacco, and
to be referred to as such by many writers, and described as
"intoxicating," was really India hemp, or some plant very different
from the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidence
that in the Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhat
a novelty, and the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habit
only of the low. The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of old
Mahomet Ali, possessed an ancient Turkish MS which related an
occurrence at Smyrna about the year 1610, namely, the punishment of
some sailors for the use of tobacco, which showed that it was a
novelty and accounted a low vice at that time. The testimony of the
trustworthy George Sandys, an English traveler into Turkey, Egypt,
and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621, treasurer of the colony in
Virginia), is to the same effect as given in his "Relation,"
published in London in 1621. In his minute description of the people
and manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium, which makes
the Turks "giddy-headed" and "turbulent dreamers," he says: "But
perhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which they
take through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood to
containe it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them by
the English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa
[Murad III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust through
the nose of a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), no
question but it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless they
will take it in corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that which
in England is not saleable, doth passe here among them for most
excellent."
Mr. Stith ("History of Virginia," 1746) gives Raleigh credit for the
introduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says,
"We are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but it
is certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable of
singular strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefit
to mankind, and advantage to the nation." Mr. Thomas Hariot, in his
observations on the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemed
their tobacco, of which plenty was found, their "chief physicke."
It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his
"Annales" (1615) says: "Tobacco was first brought and made known in
England by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used by
most men and many women." In a side-note to the edition of 1631 we
read: "Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use,
when all men wondered what it meant." It was first commended for its
medicinal virtues. Harrison's "Chronologie," under date of 1573,
says: "In these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe
called 'Tabaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby
it passeth from the mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlie
taken-up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseases
ingendred in the longes and inward partes, and not without effect."
But Barnaby Rich, in "The Honestie of this Age," 1614, disagrees with
Harrison about its benefit: "They say it is good for a cold, for a
pose, for rewmes, for aches, for dropsies, and for all manner of
diseases proceeding of moyst humours; but I cannot see but that those
that do take it fastest are as much (or more) subject to all these
infirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself) as those that have nothing
at all to do with it." He learns that 7,000 shops in London live by
the trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates that there is paid for
it L 399,375 a year, "all spent in smoake." Every base groom must
have his pipe with his pot of ale; it "is vendible in every taverne,
inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops, grosers shops,
chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company that, from
morning till night, are still taking of tobacco." Numbers of houses
and shops had no other trade to live by. The wrath of King James was
probably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it was
somewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue it
became.
The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession of
imaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiable
desire to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of their
visitors. They generally told their questioners what they wanted to
know, if they could ascertain what sort of information would please
them. If they had known the taste of the sixteenth century for the
marvelous they could not have responded more fitly to suit it. They
filled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot full of tales of a wonderful copper
mine on the River Maratock (Roanoke), where the metal was dipped out
of the stream in great bowls. The colonists had great hopes of this
river, which Mr: Hariot thought flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, or
very near the South Sea. The Indians also conveyed to the mind of
this sagacious observer the notion that they had a very respectably
developed religion; that they believed in one chief god who existed
from all eternity, and who made many gods of less degree; that for
mankind a woman was first created, who by one of the gods brought
forth children; that they believed in the immortality of the soul,
and that for good works a soul will be conveyed to bliss in the
tabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso, a great pit
in the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets, and where they
burn continually. The Indians knew this because two men lately dead
had revived and come back to tell them of the other world. These
stories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told of
themselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bible
and rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told them
there was no virtue in the material book itself, only in its
doctrines. We must do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, that
he had some little suspicion of the "subtiltie" of the weroances
(chiefs) and the priests.
Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant his
colony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville had
left on Roanoke Island. In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and a
hundred and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, who
was appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as a
Council, who were incorporated under the name of "The Governor and
Assistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia," with instructions to
change their settlement to Chesapeake Bay. The expedition found
there no one of the colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen the
writers disagree), nothing but the bones of one man where the
plantation had been; the houses were unhurt, but overgrown with
weeds, and the fort was defaced. Captain Stafford, with twenty men,
went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists. He heard that the fifty
had been set upon by three hundred Indians, and, after a sharp
skirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone to a small
island near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knew
whither.
Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who were
suspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided by
Mateo, the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition from
England. By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe. In August of
this year Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title of
Lord of Roanoke and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity. The
same month Elinor, the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of Ananias
Dare, gave birth to a daughter, the first white child born in this
part of the continent, who was named Virginia.
Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council as
to the proper person to return to England for supplies. White
himself was finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leaving
about a hundred settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form a
plantation.
The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention of
Europe about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vessels
was more attractive than the colonization of America. It was not
until 1590 that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief of
the Hatorask colony, and then it was too late. White did, indeed,
start out from Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but the
temptation to chase prizes was too strong for him, and he went on a
cruise of his own, and left the colony to its destruction.
In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships,
from Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatan
they went to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place they
had left the colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found no
man, nor sign that any had been there lately. Preparing to go to
Roanoke next day, a boat was upset and Captain Spicer and six of the
crew were drowned. This accident so discouraged the sailors that
they could hardly be persuaded to enter on the search for the colony.
At last two boats, with nineteen men, set out for Hatorask, and
landed at that part of Roanoke where the colony had been left. When
White left the colony three years before, the men had talked of going
fifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to leave some sign of
their departure. The searchers found not a man of the colony; their
houses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been built. All
about were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up again and
scattered, and on a post was carved the name "CROATAN." This signal,
which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope that he
should find his comrades at Croatan. But one mischance or another
happening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to run
down to the West Indies and "refresh" (chiefly with a little Spanish
plunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; but
instead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan. The men
of the abandoned colonies were never again heard of. Years after, in
1602, Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of Samuel
Mace, a mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search of
the survivors of White's colony. Mace spent a month lounging about
the Hatorask coast and trading with the natives, but did not land on
Croatan, or at any place where the lost colony might be expected to
be found; but having taken on board some sassafras, which at that
time brought a good price in England, and some other barks which were
supposed to be valuable, he basely shirked the errand on which he was
hired to go, and took himself and his spicy woods home.
The "Lost Colony" of White is one of the romances of the New World.
Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did not
allow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in search
of Spanish prizes. If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it was
probable that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, and
the little Virginia Dare, were with them. But White, as we have
seen, had such confidence in Providence that he left his dear
relatives to its care, and made no attempt to visit Croatan.
Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for the
lost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolous
allegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate of
these deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is that
the colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and
Indian tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe are
said to confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children with
white skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that have
had no intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of light
hair and blue eyes among the native races of America and of New
Guinea, are facts so well attested that no theory of amalgamation can
be sustained by such rare physical manifestations. According to
Captain John Smith, who wrote of Captain Newport's explorations in
1608, there were no tidings of the waifs, for, says Smith, Newport
returned "without a lump of gold, a certainty of the South Sea, or
one of the lost company sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh."
In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to have
inquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, "what
he knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of
certaine men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd like
me."
[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw children
with chestnut-colored hair.]
We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the "Historie of Travaile
into Virginia Britannia," published from the manuscript by the
Hakluyt Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of these
deserted colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rate
authority for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 and
remained there two years, as secretary of the colony, and was a man
of importance. His "Historie" was probably written between 1612 and
1616. In the first portion of it, which is descriptive of the
territory of Virginia, is this important passage: "At Peccarecamek
and Ochanahoen, by the relation of Machumps, the people have houses
built with stone walls, and one story above another, so taught them
by those English who escaped the slaughter of Roanoke. At what time
this our colony, under the conduct of Captain Newport, landed within
the Chesapeake Bay, where the people breed up tame turkies about
their houses, and take apes in the mountains, and where, at Ritanoe,
the Weroance Eyanaco, preserved seven of the English alive--four men,
two boys, and one young maid (who escaped [that is from Roanoke] and
fled up the river of Chanoke), to beat his copper, of which he hath
certain mines at the said Ritanoe, as also at Pamawauk are said to be
store of salt stones."
This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of Machumps. This
pleasing story is not mentioned in Captain Newport's "Discoveries"
(May, 1607). Machumps, who was the brother of Winganuske, one of the
many wives of Powhatan, had been in England. He was evidently a
lively Indian. Strachey had heard him repeat the "Indian grace," a
sort of incantation before meat, at the table of Sir Thomas Dale. If
he did not differ from his red brothers he had a powerful
imagination, and was ready to please the whites with any sort of a
marvelous tale. Newport himself does not appear to have seen any of
the "apes taken in the mountains." If this story is to be accepted
as true we have to think of Virginia Dare as growing up to be a woman
of twenty years, perhaps as other white maidens have been, Indianized
and the wife of a native. But the story rests only upon a romancing
Indian. It is possible that Strachey knew more of the matter than he
relates, for in his history he speaks again of those betrayed people,
"of whose end you shall hereafter read in this decade." But the
possessed information is lost, for it is not found in the remainder
of this "decade" of his writing, which is imperfect. Another
reference in Strachey is more obscure than the first. He is speaking
of the merciful intention of King James towards the Virginia savages,
and that he does not intend to root out the natives as the Spaniards
did in Hispaniola, but by degrees to change their barbarous nature,
and inform them of the true God and the way to Salvation, and that
his Majesty will even spare Powhatan himself. But, he says, it is
the intention to make "the common people likewise to understand, how
that his Majesty has been acquainted that the men, women, and
children of the first plantation of Roanoke were by practice of
Powhatan (he himself persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserably
slaughtered, without any offense given him either by the first
planted (who twenty and odd years had peaceably lived intermixed with
those savages, and were out of his territory) or by those who are now
come to inhabit some parts of his distant lands," etc.
Strachey of course means the second plantation and not the first,
which, according to the weight of authority, consisted of only
fifteen men and no women.
In George Percy's Discourse concerning Captain Newport's exploration
of the River James in 1607 (printed in Purchas's "Pilgrims") is
this sentence: "At Port Cotage, in our voyage up the river, we saw a
savage boy, about the age of ten years, which had a head of hair of a
perfect yellow, and reasonably white skin, which is a miracle amongst
all savages." Mr. Neill, in his "History of the Virginia Company,"
says that this boy "was no doubt the offspring of the colonists left
at Roanoke by White, of whom four men, two boys, and one young maid
had been preserved from slaughter by an Indian Chief." Under the
circumstances, "no doubt" is a very strong expression for a historian
to use.
This belief in the sometime survival of the Roanoke colonists, and
their amalgamation with the Indians, lingered long in colonial
gossip. Lawson, in his History, published in London in 1718,
mentions a tradition among the Hatteras Indians, "that several of
their ancestors were white people and could talk from a book; the
truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being among these Indians
and no others."
But the myth of Virginia Dare stands no chance beside that of
Pocahontas.
V
FIRST PLANTING OF THE COLONY
The way was now prepared for the advent of Captain John Smith in
Virginia. It is true that we cannot give him his own title of its
discoverer, but the plantation had been practically abandoned, all
the colonies had ended in disaster, all the governors and captains
had lacked the gift of perseverance or had been early drawn into
other adventures, wholly disposed, in the language of Captain John
White, "to seek after purchase and spoils," and but for the energy
and persistence of Captain Smith the expedition of 1606 might have
had no better fate. It needed a man of tenacious will to hold a
colony together in one spot long enough to give it root. Captain
Smith was that man, and if we find him glorying in his exploits, and
repeating upon single big Indians the personal prowess that
distinguished him in Transylvania and in the mythical Nalbrits, we
have only to transfer our sympathy from the Turks to the
Sasquesahanocks if the sense of his heroism becomes oppressive.
Upon the return of Samuel Mace, mariner, who was sent out in 1602 to
search for White's lost colony, all Raleigh's interest in the
Virginia colony had, by his attainder, escheated to the crown. But
he never gave up his faith in Virginia: neither the failure of nine
several expeditions nor twelve years imprisonment shook it. On the
eve of his fall he had written, "I shall yet live to see it an
English nation:" and he lived to see his prediction come true.
The first or Virginian colony, chartered with the Plymouth colony in
April, 1606, was at last organized by the appointment of Sir Thomas
Smith, the 'Chief of Raleigh's assignees, a wealthy London merchant,
who had been ambassador to Persia, and was then, or shortly after,
governor of the East India Company, treasurer and president of the
meetings of the council in London; and by the assignment of the
transportation of the colony to Captain Christopher Newport, a
mariner of experience in voyages to the West Indies and in plundering
the Spaniards, who had the power to appoint different captains and
mariners, and the sole charge of the voyage. No local councilors
were named for Virginia, but to Captain Newport, Captain Bartholomew
Gosnold, and Captain John Ratcliffe were delivered sealed
instructions, to be opened within twenty-four hours after their
arrival in Virginia, wherein would be found the names of the persons
designated for the Council.
This colony, which was accompanied by the prayers and hopes of
London, left the Thames December 19, 1606, in three vessels--the
Susan Constant, one hundred tons, Captain Newport, with seventy-one
persons; the God-Speed, forty tons, Captain Gosnold, with fifty-two
persons; and a pinnace of twenty tons, the Discovery, Captain
Ratcliffe, with twenty persons. The Mercure Francais, Paris, 1619,
says some of the passengers were women and children, but there is
no other mention of women. Of the persons embarked, one hundred and
five were planters, the rest crews. Among the planters were Edward
Maria Wingfield, Captain John Smith, Captain John Martin, Captain
Gabriel Archer, Captain George Kendall, Mr. Robert Hunt, preacher,
and Mr. George Percie, brother of the Earl of Northumberland,
subsequently governor for a brief period, and one of the writers from
whom Purchas compiled. Most of the planters were shipped as
gentlemen, but there were four carpenters, twelve laborers, a
blacksmith, a sailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a tailor, a
drummer, and a chirurgeon.
The composition of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement,
since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too many
gentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen,
like the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably more
solicitous of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way to
increase riches, than of making a state. They were instructed to
explore every navigable river they might find, and to follow the main
branches, which would probably lead them in one direction to the East
Indies or South Sea, and in the other to the Northwest Passage. And
they were forcibly reminded that the way to prosper was to be of one
mind, for their own and their country's good.
This last advice did not last the expedition out of sight of land.
They sailed from Blackwell, December 19, 1606, but were kept six
weeks on the coast of England by contrary winds. A crew of saints
cabined in those little caravels and tossed about on that coast for
six weeks would scarcely keep in good humor. Besides, the position
of the captains and leaders was not yet defined. Factious quarrels
broke out immediately, and the expedition would likely have broken up
but for the wise conduct and pious exhortations of Mr. Robert Hunt,
the preacher. This faithful man was so ill and weak that it was
thought he could not recover, yet notwithstanding the stormy weather,
the factions on board, and although his home was almost in sight,
only twelve miles across the Downs, he refused to quit the ship. He
was unmoved, says Smith, either by the weather or by "the scandalous
imputations (of some few little better than atheists, of the greatest
rank amongst us)." With "the water of his patience" and "his godly
exhortations" he quenched the flames of envy and dissension.
They took the old route by the West Indies. George Percy notes that
on the 12th of February they saw a blazing star, and presently a
storm. They watered at the Canaries, traded with savages at San
Domingo, and spent three weeks refreshing themselves among the
islands. The quarrels revived before they reached the Canaries, and
there Captain Smith was seized and put in close confinement for
thirteen weeks.
We get little light from contemporary writers on this quarrel. Smith
does not mention the arrest in his "True Relation," but in his
"General Historie," writing of the time when they had been six weeks
in Virginia, he says: "Now Captain Smith who all this time from their
departure from the Canaries was restrained as a prisoner upon the
scandalous suggestion of some of the chiefs (envying his repute) who
fancied he intended to usurp the government, murder the Council, and
make himself King, that his confedcrates were dispersed in all three
ships, and that divers of his confederates that revealed it, would
affirm it, for this he was committed a prisoner; thirteen weeks he
remained thus suspected, and by that time they should return they
pretended out of their commiserations, to refer him to the Council in
England to receive a check, rather than by particulating his designs
make him so odious to the world, as to touch his life, or utterly
overthrow his reputation. But he so much scorned their charity and
publically defied the uttermost of their cruelty, he wisely prevented
their policies, though he could not suppress their envies, yet so
well he demeaned himself in this business, as all the company did see
his innocency, and his adversaries' malice, and those suborned to
accuse him accused his accusers of subornation; many untruths were
alleged against him; but being apparently disproved, begot a general
hatred in the hearts of the company against such unjust Commanders,
that the President was adjudged to give him L 200, so that all he had
was seized upon, in part of satisfaction, which Smith presently
returned to the store for the general use of the colony."--
Neither in Newport's "Relatyon" nor in Mr. Wingfield's "Discourse" is
the arrest mentioned, nor does Strachey speak of it.
About 1629, Smith, in writing a description of the Isle of Mevis
(Nevis) in his "Travels and Adventures," says: "In this little [isle]
of Mevis, more than twenty years agone, I have remained a good time
together, to wod and water--and refresh my men." It is
characteristic of Smith's vivid imagination, in regard to his own
exploits, that he should speak of an expedition in which he had no
command, and was even a prisoner, in this style: "I remained," and
"my men." He goes on: "Such factions here we had as commonly attend
such voyages, and a pair of gallows was made, but Captaine Smith, for
whom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them; but not
any one of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into his
power, to determine of at his pleasure, whom with much mercy he
favored, that most basely and unjustly would have betrayed him." And
it is true that Smith, although a great romancer, was often
magnanimous, as vain men are apt to be.
King James's elaborate lack of good sense had sent the expedition to
sea with the names of the Council sealed up in a box, not to be
opened till it reached its destination. Consequently there was no
recognized authority. Smith was a young man of about twenty-eight,
vain and no doubt somewhat "bumptious," and it is easy to believe
that Wingfield and the others who felt his superior force and
realized his experience, honestly suspected him of designs against
the expedition. He was the ablest man on board, and no doubt was
aware of it. That he was not only a born commander of men, but had
the interest of the colony at heart, time was to show.
The voyagers disported themselves among the luxuries of the West
Indies. At Guadaloupe they found a bath so hot that they boiled
their pork in it as well as over the fire. At the Island of Monaca
they took from the bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full of
birds in three or four hours. These, it is useless to say, were
probably not the "barnacle geese" which the nautical travelers used
to find, and picture growing upon bushes and dropping from the eggs,
when they were ripe, full-fledged into the water. The beasts were
fearless of men. Wild birds and natives had to learn the whites
before they feared them.
"In Mevis, Mona, and the Virgin Isles," says the "General Historie,"
"we spent some time, where with a lothsome beast like a crocodile,
called a gwayn [guana], tortoises, pellicans, parrots, and fishes, we
feasted daily."
Thence they made sail-in search of Virginia, but the mariners lost
their reckoning for three days and made no land; the crews were
discomfited, and Captain Ratcliffe, of the pinnace, wanted to up helm
and return to England. But a violent storm, which obliged them "to
hull all night," drove them to the port desired. On the 26th of
April they saw a bit of land none of them had ever seen before.
This, the first land they descried, they named Cape Henry, in honor
of the Prince of Wales; as the opposite cape was called Cape Charles,
for the Duke of York, afterwards Charles I. Within these capes they
found one of the most pleasant places in the world, majestic
navigable rivers, beautiful mountains, hills, and plains, and a
fruitful and delightsome land.
Mr. George Percy was ravished at the sight of the fair meadows and
goodly tall trees. As much to his taste were the large and delicate
oysters, which the natives roasted, and in which were found many
pearls. The ground was covered with fine and beautiful strawberries,
four times bigger than those in England.
Masters Wingfield, Newport, and Gosnold., with thirty men, went
ashore on Cape Henry, where they were suddenly set upon by savages,
who came creeping upon all-fours over the hills, like bears, with
their bows in their hands; Captain Archer was hurt in both hands, and
a sailor dangerously wounded in two places on his body. It was a bad
omen.
The night of their arrival they anchored at Point Comfort, now
Fortress Monroe; the box was opened and the orders read, which
constituted Edward Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith,
Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall
the Council, with power to choose a President for a year. Until the
13th of May they were slowly exploring the River Powhatan, now the
James, seeking a place for the settlement. They selected a peninsula
on the north side of the river, forty miles from its mouth, where
there was good anchorage, and which could be readily fortified. This
settlement was Jamestown. The Council was then sworn in, and Mr.
Wingfield selected President. Smith being under arrest was not sworn
in of the Council, and an oration was made setting forth the reason
for his exclusion.
When they had pitched upon a site for the fort, every man set to
work, some to build the fort, others to pitch the tents, fell trees
and make clapboards to reload the ships, others to make gardens and
nets. The fort was in the form of a triangle with a half-moon at
each corner, intended to mount four or five guns.
President Wingfield appears to have taken soldierly precautions, but
Smith was not at all pleased with him from the first. He says "the
President's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms,
or fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the form
of a half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of Captain
Kendall." He also says there was contention between Captain
Wingfield and Captain Gosnold about the site of the city.
The landing was made at Jamestown on the 14th of May, according to
Percy. Previous to that considerable explorations were made. On the
18th of April they launched a shallop, which they built the day
before, and "discovered up the bay." They discovered a river on the
south side running into the mainland, on the banks of which were good
stores of mussels and oysters, goodly trees, flowers of all colors,
and strawberries. Returning to their ships and finding the water
shallow, they rowed over to a point of land, where they found from
six to twelve fathoms of water, which put them in good comfort,
therefore they named that part of the land Cape Comfort. On the 29th
they set up a cross on Chesapeake Bay, on Cape Henry, and the next
day coasted to the Indian town of Kecoughton, now Hampton, where they
were kindly entertained. When they first came to land the savages
made a doleful noise, laying their paws to the ground and scratching
the earth with their nails. This ceremony, which was taken to be a
kind of idolatry, ended, mats were brought from the houses, whereon
the guests were seated, and given to eat bread made of maize, and
tobacco to smoke. The savages also entertained them with dancing and
singing and antic tricks and grimaces. They were naked except a
covering of skins about the loins, and many were painted in black and
red, with artificial knots of lovely colors, beautiful and pleasing
to the eye. The 4th of May they were entertained by the chief of
Paspika, who favored them with a long oration, making a foul noise
and vehement in action, the purport of which they did not catch. The
savages were full of hospitality. The next day the weroance, or
chief, of Rapahanna sent a messenger to invite them to his seat. His
majesty received them in as modest a proud fashion as if he had been
a prince of a civil government. His body was painted in crimson and
his face in blue, and he wore a chain of beads about his neck and in
his ears bracelets of pearls and a bird's claw. The 8th of May they
went up the river to the country Apomatica, where the natives
received them in hostile array, the chief, with bow and arrows in one
hand, and a pipe of tobacco in the other, offering them war or peace.
These savages were as stout and able as any heathen or Christians in
the world. Mr. Percy said they bore their years well. He saw among
the Pamunkeys a savage reported to be 160, years old, whose eyes were
sunk in his head, his teeth gone his hair all gray, and quite a big
beard, white as snow; he was a lusty savage, and could travel as fast
as anybody.
The Indians soon began to be troublesome in their visits to the
plantations, skulking about all night, hanging around the fort by
day, bringing sometimes presents of deer, but given to theft of small
articles, and showing jealousy of the occupation. They murmured,
says Percy, at our planting in their country. But worse than the
disposition of the savages was the petty quarreling in the colony
itself.
In obedience to the orders to explore for the South Sea, on the 22d
of May, Newport, Percy, Smith, Archer, and twenty others were sent in
the shallop to explore the Powhatan, or James River.
Passing by divers small habitations, and through a land abounding in
trees, flowers, and small fruits, a river full of fish, and of
sturgeon such as the world beside has none, they came on the 24th,
having passed the town of Powhatan, to the head of the river, the
Falls, where they set up the cross and proclaimed King James of
England.
Smith says in his "General Historie" they reached Powhatan on the
26th. But Captain Newport's "Relatyon" agrees with Percy's, and
with, Smith's "True Relation." Captain Newport, says Percy,
permitted no one to visit Powhatan except himself.
Captain Newport's narration of the exploration of the James is
interesting, being the first account we have of this historic river.
At the junction of the Appomattox and the James, at a place he calls
Wynauk, the natives welcomed them with rejoicing and entertained them
with dances. The Kingdom of Wynauk was full of pearl-mussels. The
king of this tribe was at war with the King of Paspahegh. Sixteen
miles above this point, at an inlet, perhaps Turkey Point, they were
met by eight savages in a canoe, one of whom was intelligent enough
to lay out the whole course of the river, from Chesapeake Bay to its
source, with a pen and paper which they showed him how to use. These
Indians kept them company for some time, meeting them here and there
with presents of strawberries, mulberries, bread, and fish, for which
they received pins, needles, and beads. They spent one night at
Poore Cottage (the Port Cotage of Percy, where he saw the white boy),
probably now Haxall. Five miles above they went ashore near the now
famous Dutch Gap, where King Arahatic gave them a roasted deer, and
caused his women to bake cakes for them. This king gave Newport his
crown, which was of deer's hair dyed red. He was a subject of the
great King Powhatan. While they sat making merry with the savages,
feasting and taking tobacco and seeing the dances, Powhatan himself
appeared and was received with great show of honor, all rising from
their seats except King Arahatic, and shouting loudly. To Powhatan
ample presents were made of penny-knives, shears, and toys, and he
invited them to visit him at one of his seats called Powhatan, which
was within a mile of the Falls, where now stands the city of
Richmond. All along the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters,
offering food to the strangers. The habitation of Powhatan was
situated on a high hill by the water side, with a meadow at its foot
where was grown wheat, beans, tobacco, peas, pompions, flax, and
hemp.
Powhatan served the whites with the best he had, and best of all with
a friendly welcome and with interesting discourse of the country.
They made a league of friendship. The next day he gave them six men
as guides to the falls above, and they left with him one man as a
hostage.
On Sunday, the 24th of May, having returned to Powhatan's seat, they
made a feast for him of pork, cooked with peas, and the Captain and
King ate familiarly together; "he eat very freshly of our meats,
dranck of our beere, aquavite, and sack." Under the influence of
this sack and aquavite the King was very communicative about the
interior of the country, and promised to guide them to the mines of
iron and copper; but the wary chief seems to have thought better of
it when he got sober, and put them off with the difficulties and
dangers of the way.
On one of the islets below the Falls, Captain Newport set up a cross
with the inscription "Jacobus, Rex, 1607," and his own name beneath,
and James was proclaimed King with a great shout. Powhatan was
displeased with their importunity to go further up the river, and
departed with all the Indians, except the friendly Navirans, who had
accompanied them from Arahatic. Navirans greatly admired the cross,
but Newport hit upon an explanation of its meaning that should dispel
the suspicions of Powhatan. He told him that the two arms of the
cross signified King Powhatan and himself, the fastening of it in the
middle was their united league, and the shout was the reverence he
did to Powhatan. This explanation being made to Powhatan greatly
contented him, and he came on board and gave them the kindest
farewell when they dropped down the river. At Arahatic they found
the King had provided victuals for them, but, says Newport, "the King
told us that he was very sick and not able to sit up long with us."
The inability of the noble red man to sit up was no doubt due to too
much Christian sack and aquavite, for on "Monday he came to the water
side, and we went ashore with him again. He told us that our hot
drinks, he thought, caused him grief, but that he was well again, and
we were very welcome."
It seems, therefore, that to Captain Newport, who was a good sailor
in his day, and has left his name in Virginia in Newport News, must
be given the distinction of first planting the cross in Virginia,
with a lie, and watering it, with aquavite.
They dropped down the river to a place called Mulberry Shade, where
the King killed a deer and prepared for them another feast, at which
they had rolls and cakes made of wheat. "This the women make and are
very cleanly about it. We had parched meal, excellent good, sodd
[cooked] beans, which eat as sweet as filbert kernels, in a manner,
strawberries; and mulberries were shaken off the tree, dropping on
our heads as we sat. He made ready a land turtle, which we ate; and
showed that he was heartily rejoiced in our company." Such was the
amiable disposition of the natives before they discovered the purpose
of the whites to dispossess them of their territory. That night they
stayed at a place called "Kynd Woman's Care," where the people
offered them abundant victual and craved nothing in return.
Next day they went ashore at a place Newport calls Queen Apumatuc's
Bower. This Queen, who owed allegiance to Powhatan, had much land
under cultivation, and dwelt in state on a pretty hill. This ancient
representative of woman's rights in Virginia did honor to her sex.
She came to meet the strangers in a show as majestical as that of
Powhatan himself: "She had an usher before her, who brought her to
the matt prepared under a faire mulberry-tree; where she sat down by
herself, with a stayed countenance. She would permitt none to stand
or sitt neare her. She is a fatt, lustie, manly woman. She had much
copper about her neck, a coronet of copper upon her hed. She had
long, black haire, which hanged loose down her back to her myddle;
which only part was covered with a deare's skyn, and ells all naked.
She had her women attending her, adorned much like herself (except
they wanted the copper). Here we had our accustomed eates, tobacco,
and welcome. Our Captaine presented her with guyfts liberally,
whereupon shee cheered somewhat her countenance, and requested him to
shoote off a piece; whereat (we noted) she showed not near the like
feare as Arahatic, though he be a goodly man."
The company was received with the same hospitality by King Pamunkey,
whose land was believed to be rich in copper and pearls. The copper
was so flexible that Captain Newport bent a piece of it the thickness
of his finger as if it had been lead. The natives were unwilling to
part with it. The King had about his neck a string of pearls as big
as peas, which would have been worth three or four hundred pounds, if
the pearls had been taken from the mussels as they should have been.
Arriving on their route at Weanock, some twenty miles above the fort,
they were minded to visit Paspahegh and another chief Jamestown lay
in the territory of Paspahegh--but suspicious signs among the natives
made them apprehend trouble at the fort, and they hastened thither to
find their suspicions verified. The day before, May 26th, the colony
had been attacked by two hundred Indians (four hundred, Smith says),
who were only beaten off when they had nearly entered the fort, by
the use of the artillery. The Indians made a valiant fight for an
hour; eleven white men were wounded, of whom one died afterwards, and
a boy was killed on the pinnace. This loss was concealed from the
Indians, who for some time seem to have believed that the whites
could not be hurt. Four of the Council were hurt in this fight, and
President Wingfield, who showed himself a valiant gentleman, had a
shot through his beard. They killed eleven of the Indians, but their
comrades lugged them away on their backs and buried them in the woods
with a great noise. For several days alarms and attacks continued,
and four or five men were cruelly wounded, and one gentleman, Mr.
Eustace Cloville, died from the effects of five arrows in his body.
Upon this hostility, says Smith, the President was contented the fort
should be palisaded, and the ordnance mounted, and the men armed and
exercised. The fortification went on, but the attacks continued, and
it was unsafe for any to venture beyond the fort.
Dissatisfaction arose evidently with President Wingfield's
management. Captain Newport says: "There being among the gentlemen
and all the company a murmur and grudge against certain proceedings
and inconvenient courses [Newport] put up a petition to the Council
for reformation." The Council heeded this petition, and urged to
amity by Captain Newport, the company vowed faithful love to each
other and obedience to the superiors. On the 10th of June, Captain
Smith was sworn of the Council. In his "General Historie," not
published till 1624, he says: "Many were the mischiefs that daily
sprung from their ignorant (yet ambitious) spirits; but the good
doctrine and exhortation of our preacher Mr. Hunt, reconciled them
and caused Captain Smith to be admitted to the Council." The next
day they all partook of the holy communion.
In order to understand this quarrel, which was not by any means
appeased by this truce, and to determine Captain Smith's
responsibility for it, it is necessary to examine all the witnesses.
Smith is unrestrained in his expression of his contempt for
Wingfield. But in the diary of Wingfield we find no accusation
against Smith at this date. Wingfield says that Captain Newport
before he departed asked him how he thought himself settled in the
government, and that he replied "that no disturbance could endanger
him or the colony, but it must be wrought either by Captain Gosnold
or Mr. Archer, for the one was strong with friends and followers and
could if he would; and the other was troubled with an ambitious
spirit and would if he could."
The writer of Newport's "Relatyon" describes the Virginia savages as
a very strong and lusty race, and swift warriors. "Their skin is
tawny; not so borne, but with dyeing and painting themselves, in
which they delight greatly." That the Indians were born white was,
as we shall see hereafter, a common belief among the first settlers
in Virginia and New England. Percy notes a distinction between maids
and married women: "The maids shave close the fore part and sides of
their heads, and leave it long behind, where it is tied up and hangs
down to the hips. The married women wear their hair all of a length,
but tied behind as that of maids is. And the women scratch on their
bodies and limbs, with a sharp iron, pictures of fowls, fish, and
beasts, and rub into the 'drawings' lively colors which dry into the
flesh and are permanent." The "Relatyon" says the people are witty
and ingenious and allows them many good qualities, but makes this
exception: "The people steal anything comes near them; yea, are so
practiced in this art, that looking in our face, they would with
their foot, between their toes, convey a chisel, knife, percer, or
any indifferent light thing, which having once conveyed, they hold it
an injury to take the same from them. They are naturally given to
treachery; howbeit we could not find it in our travel up the river,
but rather a most kind and loving people."
VI
QUARRELS AND HARDSHIPS
On Sunday, June 21st, they took the communion lovingly together.
That evening Captain Newport gave a farewell supper on board his
vessel. The 22d he sailed in the Susan Constant for England,
carrying specimens of the woods and minerals, and made the short
passage of five weeks. Dudley Carleton, in a letter to John
Chamberlain dated Aug. 18, 1607, writes "that Captain Newport has
arrived without gold or silver, and that the adventurers, cumbered by
the presence of the natives, have fortified themselves at a place
called Jamestown." The colony left numbered one hundred and four.
The good harmony of the colony did not last. There were other
reasons why the settlement was unprosperous. The supply of wholesome
provisions was inadequate. The situation of the town near the
Chickahominy swamps was not conducive to health, and although
Powhatan had sent to make peace with them, and they also made a
league of amity with the chiefs Paspahegh and Tapahanagh, they
evidently had little freedom of movement beyond sight of their guns.
Percy says they were very bare and scant of victuals, and in wars and
dangers with the savages.
Smith says in his "True Relation," which was written on the spot, and
is much less embittered than his "General Historie," that they were
in good health and content when Newport departed, but this did not
long continue, for President Wingfield and Captain Gosnold, with the
most of the Council, were so discontented with each other that
nothing was done with discretion, and no business transacted with
wisdom. This he charges upon the "hard-dealing of the President,"
the rest of the Council being diversely affected through his
audacious command. "Captain Martin, though honest, was weak and
sick; Smith was in disgrace through the malice of others; and God
sent famine and sickness, so that the living were scarce able to bury
the dead. Our want of sufficient good food, and continual watching,
four or five each night, at three bulwarks, being the chief cause;
only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon we would so greedily
surfeit, as it cost many their lives; the sack, Aquavite, and other
preservations of our health being kept in the President's hands, for
his own diet and his few associates."
In his "General Historie," written many years later, Smith enlarges
this indictment with some touches of humor characteristic of him. He
says:
"Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten days
scarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extreme
weakness and sicknes oppressed us. And thereat none need marvaile if
they consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the ships
stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of
Bisket, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange
with us for money, Saxefras, furres, or love. But when they
departed, there remained neither taverne, beere-house, nor place of
reliefe, but the common Kettell. Had we beene as free from all
sinnes as gluttony, and drunkennesse, we might have been canonized
for Saints. But our President would never have been admitted, for
ingrissing to his private, Oatmeale, Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitz, Beef,
Egges, or what not, but the Kettell: that indeed he allowed equally
to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat, and as much
barley boyled with water for a man a day, and this being fryed some
twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many wormes as
graines; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran than
corrne, our drinke was water, our lodgings Castles in the ayre; with
this lodging and dyet, our extreme toile in bearing and planting
Pallisadoes, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labour in
the extremitie of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause
sufficient to have made us miserable in our native countrey, or any
other place in the world."
Affairs grew worse. The sufferings of this colony in the summer
equaled that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in the winter and spring.
Before September forty-one were buried, says Wingfield; fifty, says
Smith in one statement, and forty-six in another; Percy gives a list
of twenty-four who died in August and September. Late in August
Wingfield said, "Sickness had not now left us seven able men in our
town." "As yet," writes Smith in September, "we had no houses to
cover us, our tents were rotten, and our cabins worse than nought."
Percy gives a doleful picture of the wretchedness of the colony: "Our
men were destroyed with cruel sickness, as swellings, fluxes,
burning-fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the
most part they died of mere famine.... We watched every three nights,
lying on the cold bare ground what weather soever came, worked all
the next day, which brought our men to be most feeble wretches, our
food was but a small can of barley, sod in water to five men a day,
our drink but cold water taken out of the river, which was at the
flood very salt, at a low tide full of shrimp and filth, which was
the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space of
five months in this miserable distress, but having five able men to
man our bulwarks upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to put
a terror in the savage hearts, we had all perished by those wild and
cruel Pagans, being in that weak state as we were: our men night and
day groaning in every corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear. If
there were any conscience in men, it would make their hearts to bleed
to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without
relief, every night and day, for the space of six weeks: some
departing out of the world; many times three or four in a night; in
the morning their bodies trailed out of their cabins, like dogs, to
be buried. In this sort did I see the mortality of divers of our
people."
A severe loss to the colony was the death on the 22d of August of
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the Council, a brave and
adventurous mariner, and, says Wingfield, a "worthy and religious
gentleman." He was honorably buried, "having all the ordnance in the
fort shot off with many volleys of small shot." If the Indians had
known that those volleys signified the mortality of their comrades,
the colony would no doubt have been cut off entirely. It is a
melancholy picture, this disheartened and half-famished band of men
quarreling among themselves; the occupation of the half-dozen able
men was nursing the sick and digging graves. We anticipate here by
saying, on the authority of a contemporary manuscript in the State
Paper office, that when Captain Newport arrived with the first supply
in January, 1608, "he found the colony consisting of no more than
forty persons; of those, ten only able men."
After the death of Gosnold, Captain Kendall was deposed from the
Council and put in prison for sowing discord between the President
and Council, says Wingfield; for heinous matters which were proved
against him, says Percy; for "divers reasons," says Smith, who
sympathized with his dislike of Wingfield. The colony was in very
low estate at this time, and was only saved from famine by the
providential good-will of the Indians, who brought them corn half
ripe, and presently meat and fruit in abundance.
On the 7th of September the chief Paspahegh gave a token of peace by
returning a white boy who had run away from camp, and other runaways
were returned by other chiefs, who reported that they had been well
used in their absence. By these returns Mr. Wingfield was convinced
that the Indians were not cannibals, as Smith believed.
On the 10th of September Mr. Wingfield was deposed from the
presidency and the Council, and Captain John Ratcliffe was elected
President. Concerning the deposition there has been much dispute;
but the accounts of it by Captain Smith and his friends, so long
accepted as the truth, must be modified by Mr. Wingfield's "Discourse
of Virginia," more recently come to light, which is, in a sense, a
defense of his conduct.
In his "True Relation" Captain Smith is content to say that "Captain
Wingfield, having ordered the affairs in such sort that he was hated
of them all, in which respect he was with one accord deposed from the
presidency."
In the "General Historie" the charges against him, which we have
already quoted, are extended, and a new one is added, that is, a
purpose of deserting the colony in the pinnace: "the rest seeing the
President's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by
flight (who all this time had neither felt want nor sickness), so
moved our dead spirits we deposed him."
In the scarcity of food and the deplorable sickness and death, it was
inevitable that extreme dissatisfaction should be felt with the
responsible head. Wingfield was accused of keeping the best of the
supplies to himself. The commonalty may have believed this. Smith
himself must have known that the supplies were limited, but have been
willing to take advantage of this charge to depose the President, who
was clearly in many ways incompetent for his trying position. It
appears by Mr. Wingfield's statement that the supply left with the
colony was very scant, a store that would only last thirteen weeks
and a half, and prudence in the distribution of it, in the
uncertainty of Newport's return, was a necessity. Whether Wingfield
used the delicacies himself is a question which cannot be settled.
In his defense, in all we read of him, except that written by Smith
and his friends, he seems to be a temperate and just man, little
qualified to control the bold spirits about him.
As early as July, "in his sickness time, the President did easily
fortell his own deposing from his command," so much did he differ
from the Council in the management of the colony. Under date of
September 7th he says that the Council demanded a larger allowance
for themselves and for some of the sick, their favorites, which he
declined to give without their warrants as councilors. Captain
Martin of the Council was till then ignorant that only store for
thirteen and a half weeks was in the hands of the Cape Merchant, or
treasurer, who was at that time Mr. Thomas Studley. Upon a
representation to the Council of the lowness of the stores, and the
length of time that must elapse before the harvest of grain, they
declined to enlarge the allowance, and even ordered that every meal
of fish or flesh should excuse the allowance of porridge. Mr.
Wingfield goes on to say: "Nor was the common store of oyle, vinegar,
sack, and aquavite all spent, saving two gallons of each: the sack
reserved for the Communion table, the rest for such extremities as
might fall upon us, which the President had only made known to
Captain Gosnold; of which course he liked well. The vessels wear,
therefore, boonged upp. When Mr. Gosnold was dead, the President did
acquaint the rest of the Council with the said remnant; but, Lord,
how they then longed for to supp up that little remnant: for they had
now emptied all their own bottles, and all other that they could
smell out."
Shortly after this the Council again importuned the President for
some better allowance for themselves and for the sick. He protested
his impartiality, showed them that if the portions were distributed
according to their request the colony would soon starve; he still
offered to deliver what they pleased on their warrants, but would not
himself take the responsibility of distributing all the stores, and
when he divined the reason of their impatience he besought them to
bestow the presidency among themselves, and he would be content to
obey as a private. Meantime the Indians were bringing in supplies of
corn and meat, the men were so improved in health that thirty were
able to work, and provision for three weeks' bread was laid up.
Nevertheless, says Mr. Wingfield, the Council had fully plotted to
depose him. Of the original seven there remained, besides Mr.
Wingfield, only three in the Council. Newport was in England,
Gosnold was dead, and Kendall deposed. Mr. Wingfield charged that
the three--Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin--forsook the instructions of
his Majesty, and set up a Triumvirate. At any rate, Wingfield was
forcibly deposed from the Council on the 10th of September. If the
object had been merely to depose him, there was an easier way, for
Wingfield was ready to resign. But it appears, by subsequent
proceedings, that they wished to fasten upon him the charge of
embezzlement, the responsibility of the sufferings of the colony, and
to mulct him in fines. He was arrested, and confined on the pinnace.
Mr. Ratcliffe was made President.
On the 11th of September Mr. Wingfield was brought before the Council
sitting as a court, and heard the charges against him. They were, as
Mr. Wingfield says, mostly frivolous trifles. According to his
report they were these:
First, Mister President [Radcliffe] said that I had denied him a
penny whitle, a chicken, a spoonful of beer, and served him with foul
corn; and with that pulled some grain out of a bag, showing it to the
company.
Then starts up Mr. Smith and said that I had told him plainly how he
lied; and that I said, though we were equal here, yet if we were in
England, he [I] would think scorn his man should be my companion.
Mr. Martin followed with: "He reported that I do slack the service
in the colony, and do nothing but tend my pot, spit, and oven; but he
hath starved my son, and denied him a spoonful of beer. I have
friends in England shall be revenged on him, if ever he come in
London."
Voluminous charges were read against Mr. Wingfield by Mr. Archer, who
had been made by the Council, Recorder of Virginia, the author,
according to Wingfield, of three several mutinies, as "always
hatching of some mutiny in my time."
Mr. Percy sent him word in his prison that witnesses were hired to
testify against him by bribes of cakes and by threats. If Mr. Percy,
who was a volunteer in this expedition, and a man of high character,
did send this information, it shows that he sympathized with him, and
this is an important piece of testimony to his good character.
Wingfield saw no way of escape from the malice of his accusers, whose
purpose he suspected was to fine him fivefold for all the supplies
whose disposition he could not account for in writing: but he was
finally allowed to appeal to the King for mercy, and recommitted to
the pinnace. In regard to the charge of embezzlement, Mr. Wingfield
admitted that it was impossible to render a full account: he had no
bill of items from the Cape Merchant when he received the stores, he
had used the stores for trade and gifts with the Indians; Captain
Newport had done the same in his expedition, without giving any
memorandum. Yet he averred that he never expended the value of these
penny whittles [small pocket-knives] to his private use.
There was a mutinous and riotous spirit on shore, and the Council
professed to think Wingfield's life was in danger. He says: "In all
these disorders was Mr. Archer a ringleader." Meantime the Indians
continued to bring in supplies, and the Council traded up and down
the river for corn, and for this energy Mr. Wingfield gives credit to
"Mr. Smith especially," "which relieved the colony well." To the
report that was brought him that he was charged with starving the
colony, he replies with some natural heat and a little show of
petulance, that may be taken as an evidence of weakness, as well as
of sincerity, and exhibiting the undignified nature of all this
squabbling:
"I did alwaises give every man his allowance faithfully, both of
corne, oyle, aquivite, etc., as was by the counsell proportioned:
neyther was it bettered after my tyme, untill, towards th' end of
March, a bisket was allowed to every working man for his breakfast,
by means of the provision brought us by Captn. Newport: as will
appeare hereafter. It is further said, I did much banquit and
ryot. I never had but one squirrel roasted; whereof I gave part
to Mr. Ratcliffe then sick: yet was that squirrel given me. I did
never heate a flesh pott but when the comon pott was so used
likewise. Yet how often Mr. President's and the Counsellors' spitts
have night and daye bene endaungered to break their backes-so, laden
with swanns, geese, ducks, etc.! how many times their flesh potts
have swelled, many hungrie eies did behold, to their great longing:
and what great theeves and theeving thear hath been in the comon
stoare since my tyme, I doubt not but is already made knowne to his
Majesty's Councell for Virginia."
Poor Wingfield was not left at ease in his confinement. On the 17th
he was brought ashore to answer the charge of Jehu [John?] Robinson
that he had with Robinson and others intended to run away with the
pinnace to Newfoundland; and the charge by Mr. Smith that he had
accused Smith of intending mutiny. To the first accuser the jury
awarded one hundred pounds, and to the other two hundred pounds
damages, for slander. "Seeing their law so speedy and cheap," Mr.
Wingfield thought he would try to recover a copper kettle he had lent
Mr. Crofts, worth half its weight in gold. But Crofts swore that
Wingfield had given it to him, and he lost his kettle: "I told Mr.
President I had not known the like law, and prayed they would be more
sparing of law till we had more witt or wealthe." Another day they
obtained from Wingfield the key to his coffers, and took all his
accounts, note-books, and "owne proper goods," which he could never
recover. Thus was I made good prize on all sides.
During one of Smith's absences on the river President Ratcliffe did
beat James Read, the blacksmith. Wingfield says the Council were
continually beating the men for their own pleasure. Read struck
back.
For this he was condemned to be hanged; but "before he turned of the
lather," he desired to speak privately with the President, and
thereupon accused Mr. Kendall--who had been released from the pinnace
when Wingfield was sent aboard--of mutiny. Read escaped. Kendall
was convicted of mutiny and shot to death. In arrest of judgment he
objected that the President had no authority to pronounce judgment
because his name was Sicklemore and not Ratcliffe. This was true,
and Mr. Martin pronounced the sentence. In his "True Relation,"
Smith agrees with this statement of the death of Kendall, and says
that he was tried by a jury. It illustrates the general looseness of
the "General Historie," written and compiled many years afterwards,
that this transaction there appears as follows: "Wingfield and
Kendall being in disgrace, seeing all things at random in the absence
of Smith, the company's dislike of their President's weakness, and
their small love to Martin's never-mending sickness, strengthened
themselves with the sailors and other confederates to regain their
power, control, and authority, or at least such meanes aboard the
pinnace (being fitted to sail as Smith had appointed for trade) to
alter her course and to goe for England. Smith unexpectedly
returning had the plot discovered to him, much trouble he had to
prevent it, till with store of sakre and musket-shot he forced them
to stay or sink in the river, which action cost the life of Captain
Kendall."
In a following sentence he says: "The President [Ratcliffe] and
Captain Archer not long after intended also to have abandoned the
country, which project also was curbed and suppressed by Smith."
Smith was always suppressing attempts at flight, according to his own
story, unconfirmed by any other writers. He had before accused
President Wingfield of a design to escape in the pinnace.
Communications were evidently exchanged with Mr. Wingfield on the
pinnace, and the President was evidently ill at ease about him. One
day he was summoned ashore, but declined to go, and requested an
interview with ten gentlemen. To those who came off to him he said
that he had determined to go to England to make known the weakness of
the colony, that he could not live under the laws and usurpations of
the Triumvirate; however, if the President and Mr. Archer would go,
he was willing to stay and take his fortune with the colony, or he
would contribute one hundred pounds towards taking the colony home.
"They did like none of my proffers, but made divers shott at uss in
the pynnasse." Thereupon he went ashore and had a conference.
On the 10th of December Captain Smith departed on his famous
expedition up the Chickahominy, during which the alleged Pocahontas
episode occurred. Mr. Wingfield's condensed account of this journey
and captivity we shall refer to hereafter. In Smith's absence
President Ratcliffe, contrary to his oath, swore Mr. Archer one of
the Council; and Archer was no sooner settled in authority than he
sought to take Smith's life. The enmity of this man must be regarded
as a long credit mark to Smith. Archer had him indicted upon a
chapter in Leviticus (they all wore a garb of piety) for the death of
two men who were killed by the Indians on his expedition. "He had
had his trials the same daie of his retourne," says Wingfield, "and I
believe his hanging the same, or the next daie, so speedy is our law
there. But it pleased God to send Captain Newport unto us the same
evening, to our unspeakable comfort; whose arrivall saved Mr. Smyth's
leif and mine, because he took me out of the pynnasse, and gave me
leave to lyve in the towne. Also by his comyng was prevented a
parliament, which the newe counsailor, Mr. Recorder, intended thear
to summon."
Captain Newport's arrival was indeed opportune. He was the only one
of the Council whose character and authority seem to have been
generally respected, the only one who could restore any sort of
harmony and curb the factious humors of the other leaders. Smith
should have all credit for his energy in procuring supplies, for his
sagacity in dealing with the Indians, for better sense than most of
the other colonists exhibited, and for more fidelity to the objects
of the plantation than most of them; but where ability to rule is
claimed for him, at this juncture we can but contrast the deference
shown by all to Newport with the want of it given to Smith.
Newport's presence at once quelled all the uneasy spirits.
Newport's arrival, says Wingfield, "saved Mr Smith's life and mine."
Smith's account of the episode is substantially the same. In his
"True Relation" he says on his return to the fort "each man with
truest signs of joy they could express welcomed me, except Mr.
Archer, and some two or three of his, who was then in my absence
sworn councilor, though not with the consent of Captain Martin; great
blame and imputation was laid upon me by them for the loss of our two
men which the Indians slew: insomuch that they purposed to depose me,
but in the midst of my miseries, it pleased God to send Captain
Newport, who arriving there the same night, so tripled our joy, as
for a while those plots against me were deferred, though with much
malice against me, which Captain Newport in short time did plainly
see." In his "Map of Virginia," the Oxford tract of 1612, Smith does
not allude to this; but in the "General Historie" it had assumed a
different aspect in his mind, for at the time of writing that he was
the irresistible hero, and remembered himself as always nearly
omnipotent in Virginia. Therefore, instead of expressions of
gratitude to Newport we read this: "Now in Jamestown they were all in
combustion, the strongest preparing once more to run away with the
pinnace; which with the hazard of his life, with Sakre, falcon and
musket shot, Smith forced now the third time to stay or sink. Some
no better than they should be, had plotted to put him to death by the
Levitical law, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending that
the fault was his, that led them to their ends; but he quickly took
such order with such Lawyers, that he laid them by the heels till he
sent some of them prisoners to England."
Clearly Captain Smith had no authority to send anybody prisoner to
England. When Newport returned, April 10th, Wingfield and Archer
went with him. Wingfield no doubt desired to return. Archer was so
insolent, seditious, and libelous that he only escaped the halter by
the interposition of Newport. The colony was willing to spare both
these men, and probably Newport it was who decided they should go.
As one of the Council, Smith would undoubtedly favor their going. He
says in the "General Historie": "We not having any use of
parliaments, plaises, petitions, admirals, recorders, interpreters,
chronologers, courts of plea, or justices of peace, sent Master
Wingfield and Captain Archer home with him, that had engrossed all
those titles, to seek some better place of employment." Mr.
Wingfield never returned. Captain Archer returned in 1609, with the
expedition of Gates and Somers, as master of one of the ships.
Newport had arrived with the first supply on the 8th of January,
1608. The day before, according to Wingfield, a fire occurred which
destroyed nearly all the town, with the clothing and provisions.
According to Smith, who is probably correct in this, the fire did not
occur till five or six days after the arrival of the ship. The date
is uncertain, and some doubt is also thrown upon the date of the
arrival of the ship. It was on the day of Smith's return from
captivity: and that captivity lasted about four weeks if the return
was January 8th, for he started on the expedition December 10th.
Smith subsequently speaks of his captivity lasting six or seven
weeks.
In his "General Historie" Smith says the fire happened after the
return of the expedition of Newport, Smith, and Scrivener to the
Pamunkey: "Good Master Hunt, our Preacher, lost all his library, and
all he had but the clothes on his back; yet none ever heard him
repine at his loss." This excellent and devoted man is the only one
of these first pioneers of whom everybody speaks well, and he
deserved all affection and respect.
One of the first labors of Newport was to erect a suitable church.
Services had been held under many disadvantages, which Smith depicts
in his "Advertisements for Unexperienced Planters," published in
London in 1631:
"When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang an
awning (which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow us
from the Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewed
trees, till we cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two
neighboring trees, in foule weather we shifted into an old rotten
tent, for we had few better, and this came by the way of adventure
for me; this was our Church, till we built a homely thing like a
barne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth, so
was also the walls: the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but
the most part farre much worse workmanship, that could neither well
defend wind nor raine, yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and
evening, every day two Sermons, and every three moneths the holy
Communion, till our Minister died, [Robert Hunt] but our Prayers
daily, with an Homily on Sundaies."
It is due to Mr. Wingfield, who is about to disappear from Virginia,
that something more in his defense against the charges of Smith and
the others should be given. It is not possible now to say how the
suspicion of his religious soundness arose, but there seems to have
been a notion that he had papal tendencies. His grandfather, Sir
Richard Wingfield, was buried in Toledo, Spain. His father, Thomas
Maria Wingfield, was christened by Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole.
These facts perhaps gave rise to the suspicion. He answers them with
some dignity and simplicity, and with a little querulousness:
"It is noised that I combyned with the Spanniards to the distruccion
of the Collony; that I ame an atheist, because I carryed not a Bible
with me, and because I did forbid the preacher to preache; that I
affected a kingdome; that I did hide of the comon provision in the
ground.
"I confesse I have alwayes admyred any noble vertue and prowesse, as
well in the Spanniards (as in other nations): but naturally I have
alwayes distrusted and disliked their neighborhoode. I sorted many
bookes in my house, to be sent up to me at my goeing to Virginia;
amongst them a Bible. They were sent up in a trunk to London, with
divers fruite, conserves, and preserves, which I did sett in Mr.
Crofts his house in Ratcliff. In my beeing at Virginia, I did
understand my trunk was thear broken up, much lost, my sweetmeates
eaten at his table, some of my bookes which I missed to be seene in
his hands: and whether amongst them my Bible was so ymbeasiled or
mislayed by my servants, and not sent me, I knowe not as yet.
"Two or three Sunday mornings, the Indians gave us allarums at our
towne. By that tymes they weare answered, the place about us well
discovered, and our devyne service ended, the daie was farr spent.
The preacher did aske me if it were my pleasure to have a sermon: hee
said hee was prepared for it. I made answere, that our men were
weary and hungry, and that he did see the time of the daie farr past
(for at other tymes bee never made such question, but, the service
finished he began his sermon); and that, if it pleased him, wee would
spare him till some other tyme. I never failed to take such noates
by wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend,
unless some raynie day hindred my endeavor. My mynde never swelled
with such ympossible mountebank humors as could make me affect any
other kingdome than the kingdom of heaven.
"As truly as God liveth, I gave an ould man, then the keeper of the
private store, 2 glasses with sallet oyle which I brought with me out
of England for my private stoare, and willed him to bury it in the
ground, for that I feared the great heate would spoile it.
Whatsoever was more, I did never consent unto or know of it, and as
truly was it protested unto me, that all the remaynder before
mencioned of the oyle, wyne, &c., which the President receyved of me
when I was deposed they themselves poored into their owne bellyes.
"To the President's and Counsell's objections I saie that I doe knowe
curtesey and civility became a governor. No penny whittle was asked
me, but a knife, whereof I have none to spare The Indyans had long
before stoallen my knife. Of chickins I never did eat but one, and
that in my sicknes. Mr. Ratcliff had before that time tasted Of 4 or
5. I had by my owne huswiferie bred above 37, and the most part of
them my owne poultrye; of all which, at my comyng awaie, I did not
see three living. I never denyed him (or any other) beare, when I
had it. The corne was of the same which we all lived upon.
"Mr. Smyth, in the time of our hungar, had spread a rumor in the
Collony, that I did feast myself and my servants out of the comon
stoare, with entent (as I gathered) to have stirred the discontented
company against me. I told him privately, in Mr. Gosnold's tent,
that indeede I had caused half a pint of pease to be sodden with a
peese of pork, of my own provision, for a poore old man, which in a
sicknes (whereof he died) he much desired; and said, that if out of
his malice he had given it out otherwise, that hee did tell a leye.
It was proved to his face, that he begged in Ireland like a rogue,
without a lycence. To such I would not my nam should be a
companyon."
The explanation about the Bible as a part of his baggage is a little
far-fetched, and it is evident that that book was not his daily
companion. Whether John Smith habitually carried one about with him
we are not informed. The whole passage quoted gives us a curious
picture of the mind and of the habits of the time. This allusion to
John Smith's begging is the only reference we can find to his having
been in Ireland. If he was there it must have been in that interim
in his own narrative between his return from Morocco and his going to
Virginia. He was likely enough to seek adventure there, as the
hangers-on of the court in Raleigh's day occasionally did, and
perhaps nothing occurred during his visit there that he cared to
celebrate. If he went to Ireland he probably got in straits there,
for that was his usual luck.
Whatever is the truth about Mr. Wingfield's inefficiency and
embezzlement of corn meal, Communion sack, and penny whittles, his
enemies had no respect for each other or concord among themselves.
It is Wingfield's testimony that Ratcliffe said he would not have
been deposed if he had visited Ratcliffe during his sickness. Smith
said that Wingfield would not have been deposed except for Archer;
that the charges against him were frivolous. Yet, says Wingfield, "I
do believe him the first and only practiser in these practices," and
he attributed Smith's hostility to the fact that "his name was
mentioned in the intended and confessed mutiny by Galthrop." Noother
reference is made to this mutiny. Galthrop was one of those who died
in the previous August.
One of the best re-enforcements of the first supply was Matthew
Scrivener, who was appointed one of the Council. He was a sensible
man, and he and Smith worked together in harmony for some time. They
were intent upon building up the colony. Everybody else in the camp
was crazy about the prospect of gold: there was, says Smith, "no
talk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load
gold, such a bruit of gold that one mad fellow desired to be buried
in the sands, lest they should by their art make gold of his bones."
He charges that Newport delayed his return to England on account of
this gold fever, in order to load his vessel (which remained fourteen
weeks when it might have sailed in fourteen days) with gold-dust.
Captain Martin seconded Newport in this; Smith protested against it;
he thought Newport was no refiner, and it did torment him "to see all
necessary business neglected, to fraught such a drunken ship with so
much gilded durt." This was the famous load of gold that proved to
be iron pyrites.
In speaking of the exploration of the James River as far as the Falls
by Newport, Smith, and Percy, we have followed the statements of
Percy and the writer of Newport's discovery that they saw the great
Powhatan. There is much doubt of this. Smith in his "True Relation"
does not say so; in his voyage up the Chickahominy he seems to have
seen Powhatan for the first time; and Wingfield speaks of Powhatan,
on Smith's return from that voyage, as one "of whom before we had no
knowledge." It is conjectured that the one seen at Powhatan's seat
near the Falls was a son of the "Emperor." It was partly the
exaggeration of the times to magnify discoveries, and partly English
love of high titles, that attributed such titles as princes,
emperors, and kings to the half-naked barbarians and petty chiefs of
Virginia.
In all the accounts of the colony at this period, no mention is made
of women, and it is not probable that any went over with the first
colonists. The character of the men was not high. Many of them were
"gentlemen" adventurers, turbulent spirits, who would not work, who
were much better fitted for piratical maraudings than the labor of
founding a state. The historian must agree with the impression
conveyed by Smith, that it was poor material out of which to make a
colony.
VII
SMITH TO THE FRONT
It is now time to turn to Smith's personal adventures among the
Indians during this period. Almost our only authority is Smith
himself, or such presumed writings of his companions as he edited or
rewrote. Strachey and others testify to his energy in procuring
supplies for the colony, and his success in dealing with the Indians,
and it seems likely that the colony would have famished but for his
exertions. Whatever suspicion attaches to Smith's relation of his
own exploits, it must never be forgotten that he was a man of
extraordinary executive ability, and had many good qualities to
offset his vanity and impatience of restraint.
After the departure of Wingfield, Captain Smith was constrained to
act as Cape Merchant; the leaders were sick or discontented, the rest
were in despair, and would rather starve and rot than do anything for
their own relief, and the Indian trade was decreasing. Under these
circumstances, Smith says in his "True Relation," "I was sent to the
mouth of the river, to Kegquoughtan [now Hampton], an Indian Towne,
to trade for corn, and try the river for fish." The Indians,
thinking them near famished, tantalized them with offers of little
bits of bread in exchange for a hatchet or a piece of copper, and
Smith offered trifles in return. The next day the Indians were
anxious to trade. Smith sent men up to their town, a display of
force was made by firing four guns, and the Indians kindly traded,
giving fish, oysters, bread, and deer. The town contained eighteen
houses, and heaps of grain. Smith obtained fifteen bushels of it,
and on his homeward way he met two canoes with Indians, whom he
accompanied to their villages on the south side of the river, and got
from them fifteen bushels more.
This incident is expanded in the "General Historie." After the lapse
of fifteen years Smith is able to remember more details, and to
conceive himself as the one efficient man who had charge of
everything outside the fort, and to represent his dealings with the
Indians in a much more heroic and summary manner. He was not sent on
the expedition, but went of his own motion. The account opens in
this way: "The new President [Ratcliffe] and Martin, being little
beloved, of weake judgement in dangers, and loose industrie in peace,
committed the management of all things abroad to Captain Smith; who
by his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow,
others to binde thatch, some to builde houses, others to thatch them,
himselfe always bearing the greatest taske for his own share, so that
in short time he provided most of them with lodgings, neglecting any
for himselfe. This done, seeing the Salvage superfluities beginne to
decrease (with some of his workmen) shipped himself in the Shallop to
search the country for trade."
In this narration, when the Indians trifled with Smith he fired a
volley at them, ran his boat ashore, and pursued them fleeing towards
their village, where were great heaps of corn that he could with
difficulty restrain his soldiers [six or seven] from taking. The
Indians then assaulted them with a hideous noise: "Sixty or seventy
of them, some black, some red, some white, some particoloured, came
in a square order, singing and dancing out of the woods, with their
Okee (which is an Idol made of skinnes, stuffed with mosse, and
painted and hung with chains and copper) borne before them; and in
this manner being well armed with clubs, targets, bowes and arrowes,
they charged the English that so kindly received them with their
muskets loaden with pistol shot, that down fell their God, and divers
lay sprawling on the ground; the rest fled againe to the woods, and
ere long sent men of their Quiyoughkasoucks [conjurors] to offer
peace and redeeme the Okee." Good feeling was restored, and the
savages brought the English "venison, turkies, wild fowl, bread all
that they had, singing and dancing in sign of friendship till they
departed." This fantastical account is much more readable than the
former bare narration.
The supplies which Smith brought gave great comfort to the despairing
colony, which was by this time reasonably fitted with houses. But it
was not long before they again ran short of food. In his first
narrative Smith says there were some motions made for the President
and Captain Arthur to go over to England and procure a supply, but it
was with much ado concluded that the pinnace and the barge should go
up the river to Powhatan to trade for corn, and the lot fell to Smith
to command the expedition. In his "General Historie" a little
different complexion is put upon this. On his return, Smith says, he
suppressed an attempt to run away with the pinnace to England. He
represents that what food "he carefully provided the rest carelessly
spent," and there is probably much truth in his charges that the
settlers were idle and improvident. He says also that they were in
continual broils at this time. It is in the fall of 1607, just
before his famous voyage up the Chickahominy, on which he departed
December 10th--that he writes: "The President and Captain Arthur
intended not long after to have abandoned the country, which project
was curbed and suppressed by Smith. The Spaniard never more greedily
desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to abandon the
country than he to keep it. But finding plenty of corn in the river
of Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places stood
with baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching,
the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that
we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, and
putchamins, fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we
could eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to
go to England."
While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyage
to Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a town
on the south side of the river, above Jamestown. Here the women and
children fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade.
They had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoil
them. On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north side
of the James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, but
evidently nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return. He
obtained ten bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives,
who closely watched and dogged the expedition.
Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan. Smith had the
barge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was to
follow to take the supplies at convenient landings. On the 9th of
November he set out in the barge to explore the Chickahominy, which
is described as emptying into the James at Paspahegh, eight miles
above the fort. The pinnace was to ascend the river twenty miles to
Point Weanock, and to await Smith there. All the month of November
Smith toiled up and down the Chickahominy, discovering and visiting
many villages, finding the natives kindly disposed and eager to
trade, and possessing abundance of corn. Notwithstanding this
abundance, many were still mutinous. At this time occurred the
President's quarrel with the blacksmith, who, for assaulting the
President, was condemned to death, and released on disclosing a
conspiracy of which Captain Kendall was principal; and the latter was
executed in his place. Smith returned from a third voyage to the
Chickahominy with more supplies, only to find the matter of sending
the pinnace to England still debated.
This project, by the help of Captain Martin, he again quieted and at
last set forward on his famous voyage into the country of Powhatan
and Pocahontas.
VIII
THE FAMOUS CHICKAHOMINY VOYAGE
We now enter upon the most interesting episode in the life of the
gallant captain, more thrilling and not less romantic than the
captivity in Turkey and the tale of the faithful love of the fair
young mistress Charatza Tragabigzanda.
Although the conduct of the lovely Charatza in despatching Smith to
her cruel brother in Nalbrits, where he led the life of a dog, was
never explained, he never lost faith in her. His loyalty to women
was equal to his admiration of them, and it was bestowed without
regard to race or complexion. Nor is there any evidence that the
dusky Pocahontas, who is about to appear, displaced in his heart the
image of the too partial Tragabigzanda. In regard to women, as to
his own exploits, seen in the light of memory, Smith possessed a
creative imagination. He did not create Pocahontas, as perhaps he
may have created the beautiful mistress of Bashaw Bogall, but he
invested her with a romantic interest which forms a lovely halo about
his own memory.
As this voyage up the Chickahominy is more fruitful in its
consequences than Jason's voyage to Colchis; as it exhibits the
energy, daring, invention, and various accomplishments of Captain
Smith, as warrior, negotiator, poet, and narrator; as it describes
Smith's first and only captivity among the Indians; and as it was
during this absence of four weeks from Jamestown, if ever, that
Pocahontas interposed to prevent the beating out of Smith's brains
with a club, I shall insert the account of it in full, both Smith's
own varying relations of it, and such contemporary notices of it as
now come to light. It is necessary here to present several accounts,
just as they stand, and in the order in which they were written, that
the reader may see for himself how the story of Pocahontas grew to
its final proportions. The real life of Pocahontas will form the
subject of another chapter.
The first of these accounts is taken from "The True Relation,"
written by Captain John Smith, composed in Virginia, the earliest
published work relating to the James River Colony. It covers a
period of a little more than thirteen months, from the arrival at
Cape Henry on April 26, 1607, to the return of Captain Nelson in the
Phoenix, June 2, 1608. The manuscript was probably taken home by
Captain Nelson, and it was published in London in 1608. Whether it
was intended for publication is doubtful; but at that time all news
of the venture in Virginia was eagerly sought, and a narrative of
this importance would naturally speedily get into print.
In the several copies of it extant there are variations in the
titlepage, which was changed while the edition was being printed.
In some the name of Thomas Watson is given as the author, in others
"A Gentleman of the Colony," and an apology appears signed "T. H.,"
for the want of knowledge or inadvertence of attributing it to any
one except Captain Smith.
There is no doubt that Smith was its author. He was still in
Virginia when it was printed, and the printers made sad work of parts
of his manuscript. The question has been raised, in view of the
entire omission of the name of Pocahontas in connection with this
voyage and captivity, whether the manuscript was not cut by those who
published it. The reason given for excision is that the promoters of
the Virginia scheme were anxious that nothing should appear to
discourage capitalists, or to deter emigrants, and that this story of
the hostility and cruelty of Powhatan, only averted by the tender
mercy of his daughter, would have an unfortunate effect. The answer
to this is that the hostility was exhibited by the captivity and the
intimation that Smith was being fatted to be eaten, and this was
permitted to stand. It is wholly improbable that an incident so
romantic, so appealing to the imagination, in an age when
wonder-tales were eagerly welcomed, and which exhibited such tender
pity in the breast of a savage maiden, and such paternal clemency in a
savage chief, would have been omitted. It was calculated to lend a
lively interest to the narration, and would be invaluable as an
advertisement of the adventure.
[For a full bibliographical discussion of this point the reader is
referred to the reprint of "The True Relation," by Charles Deane,
Esq., Boston, 1864, the preface and notes to which are a masterpiece
of critical analysis.]
That some portions of "The True Relation" were omitted is possible.
There is internal evidence of this in the abrupt manner in which it
opens, and in the absence of allusions to the discords during the
voyage and on the arrival. Captain Smith was not the man to pass
over such questions in silence, as his subsequent caustic letter sent
home to the Governor and Council of Virginia shows. And it is
probable enough that the London promoters would cut out from the
"Relation" complaints and evidence of the seditions and helpless
state of the colony. The narration of the captivity is consistent as
it stands, and wholly inconsistent with the Pocahontas episode.
We extract from the narrative after Smith's departure from Apocant,
the highest town inhabited, between thirty and forty miles up the
river, and below Orapaks, one of Powhatan's seats, which also appears
on his map. He writes:
"Ten miles higher I discovered with the barge; in the midway a great
tree hindered my passage, which I cut in two: heere the river became
narrower, 8, 9 or 10 foote at a high water, and 6 or 7 at a lowe: the
stream exceeding swift, and the bottom hard channell, the ground most
part a low plaine, sandy soyle, this occasioned me to suppose it
might issue from some lake or some broad ford, for it could not be
far to the head, but rather then I would endanger the barge, yet to
have beene able to resolve this doubt, and to discharge the
imputating malicious tungs, that halfe suspected I durst not for so
long delaying, some of the company, as desirous as myself, we
resolved to hier a canow, and returne with the barge to Apocant,
there to leave the barge secure, and put ourselves upon the
adventure: the country onely a vast and wilde wilderness, and but
only that Towne: within three or foure mile we hired a canow, and 2
Indians to row us ye next day a fowling: having made such provision
for the barge as was needfull, I left her there to ride, with
expresse charge not any to go ashore til my returne. Though some
wise men may condemn this too bould attempt of too much indiscretion,
yet if they well consider the friendship of the Indians, in
conducting me, the desolatenes of the country, the probabilitie of
some lacke, and the malicious judges of my actions at home, as also
to have some matters of worth to incourage our adventurers in
england, might well have caused any honest minde to have done the
like, as wel for his own discharge as for the publike good: having 2
Indians for my guide and 2 of our own company, I set forward, leaving
7 in the barge; having discovered 20 miles further in this desart,
the river stil kept his depth and bredth, but much more combred with
trees; here we went ashore (being some 12 miles higher than ye barge
had bene) to refresh our selves, during the boyling of our vituals:
one of the Indians I tooke with me, to see the nature of the soile,
and to cross the boughts of the river, the other Indian I left with
M. Robbinson and Thomas Emry, with their matches light and order to
discharge a peece, for my retreat at the first sight of any Indian,
but within a quarter of an houre I heard a loud cry, and a hollowing
of Indians, but no warning peece, supposing them surprised, and that
the Indians had betraid us, presently I seazed him and bound his arme
fast to my hand in a garter, with my pistoll ready bent to be
revenged on him: he advised me to fly and seemed ignorant of what was
done, but as we went discoursing, I was struck with an arrow on the
right thigh, but without harme: upon this occasion I espied 2 Indians
drawing their bowes, which I prevented in discharging a french
pistoll: by that I had charged again 3 or 4 more did the 'like, for
the first fell downe and fled: at my discharge they did the like, my
hinde I made my barricade, who offered not to strive, 20 or 30
arrowes were shot at me but short, 3 or 4 times I had discharged my
pistoll ere the king of Pamauck called Opeckakenough with 200 men,
environed me, each drawing their bowe, which done they laid them upon
the ground, yet without shot, my hinde treated betwixt them and me of
conditions of peace, he discovered me to be the captaine, my request
was to retire to ye boate, they demanded my armes, the rest they
saide were slaine, onely me they would reserve: the Indian importuned
me not to shoot. In retiring being in the midst of a low quagmire,
and minding them more than my steps, I stept fast into the quagmire,
and also the Indian in drawing me forth: thus surprised, I resolved
to trie their mercies, my armes I caste from me, till which none
durst approch me: being ceazed on me, they drew me out and led me to
the King, I presented him with a compasse diall, describing by my
best meanes the use thereof, whereat he so amazedly admired, as he
suffered me to proceed in a discourse of the roundnes of the earth,
the course of the sunne, moone, starres and plannets, with kinde
speeches and bread he requited me, conducting me where the canow lay
and John Robinson slaine, with 20 or 30 arrowes in him. Emry I saw
not, I perceived by the abundance of fires all over the woods, at
each place I expected when they would execute me, yet they used me
with what kindnes they could: approaching their Towne which was
within 6 miles where I was taken, onely made as arbors and covered
with mats, which they remove as occasion requires: all the women and
children, being advertised of this accident came forth to meet, the
King well guarded with 20 bow men 5 flanck and rear and each flanck
before him a sword and a peece, and after him the like, then a
bowman, then I on each hand a boweman, the rest in file in the reare,
which reare led forth amongst the trees in a bishion, eache his bowe
and a handfull of arrowes, a quiver at his back grimly painted: on
eache flanck a sargeant, the one running alwaiss towards the front
the other towards the reare, each a true pace and in exceeding good
order, this being a good time continued, they caste themselves in a
ring with a daunce, and so eache man departed to his lodging, the
captain conducting me to his lodging, a quarter of Venison and some
ten pound of bread I had for supper, what I left was reserved for me,
and sent with me to my lodging: each morning three women presented me
three great platters of fine bread, more venison than ten men could
devour I had, my gowne, points and garters, my compas and a tablet
they gave me again, though 8 ordinarily guarded me, I wanted not what
they could devise to content me: and still our longer acquaintance
increased our better affection: much they threatened to assault our
forte as they were solicited by the King of Paspahegh, who shewed at
our fort great signs of sorrow for this mischance: the King took
great delight in understanding the manner of our ships and sayling
the seas, the earth and skies and of our God: what he knew of the
dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine men
cloathed at a place called Ocanahonun, cloathed like me, the course
of our river, and that within 4 or 5 daies journey of the falles, was
a great turning of salt water: I desired he would send a messenger to
Paspahegh, with a letter I would write, by which they should
understand, how kindly they used me, and that I was well, lest they
should revenge my death; this he granted and sent three men, in such
weather, as in reason were unpossible, by any naked to be indured:
their cruell mindes towards the fort I had deverted, in describing
the ordinance and the mines in the fields, as also the revenge
Captain Newport would take of them at his returne, their intent, I
incerted the fort, the people of Ocanahomm and the back sea, this
report they after found divers Indians that confirmed: the next day
after my letter, came a salvage to my lodging, with his sword to have
slaine me, but being by my guard intercepted, with a bowe and arrow
he offred to have effected his purpose: the cause I knew not, till
the King understanding thereof came and told me of a man a dying
wounded with my pistoll: he tould me also of another I had slayne,
yet the most concealed they had any hurte: this was the father of him
I had slayne, whose fury to prevent, the King presently conducted me
to another kingdome, upon the top of the next northerly river, called
Youghtanan, having feasted me, he further led me to another branch of
the river called Mattapament, to two other hunting townes they led
me, and to each of these Countries, a house of the great Emperor of
Pewhakan, whom as yet I supposed to be at the Fals, to him I tolde
him I must goe, and so returne to Paspahegh, after this foure or five
dayes march we returned to Rasawrack, the first towne they brought me
too, where binding the mats in bundles, they marched two dayes
journey and crossed the River of Youghtanan, where it was as broad as
Thames: so conducting me too a place called Menapacute in Pamunke,
where ye King inhabited; the next day another King of that nation
called Kekataugh, having received some kindness of me at the Fort,
kindly invited me to feast at his house, the people from all places
flocked to see me, each shewing to content me. By this the great
King hath foure or five houses, each containing fourscore or an
hundred foote in length, pleasantly seated upon an high sandy hill,
from whence you may see westerly a goodly low country, the river
before the which his crooked course causeth many great Marshes of
exceeding good ground. An hundred houses, and many large plaines are
here together inhabited, more abundance of fish and fowle, and a
pleasanter seat cannot be imagined: the King with fortie bowmen to
guard me, intreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which they there
presented me with a mark at six score to strike therewith but to
spoil the practice I broke the cocke, whereat they were much
discontented though a chaunce supposed. From hence this kind King
conducted me to a place called Topahanocke, a kingdome upon another
river northward; the cause of this was, that the yeare before, a
shippe had beene in the River of Pamunke, who having been kindly
entertained by Powhatan their Emperour, they returned thence, and
discovered the River of Topahanocke, where being received with like
kindnesse, yet he slue the King, and tooke of his people, and they
supposed I were bee, but the people reported him a great man that was
Captaine, and using mee kindly, the next day we departed. This River
of Topahanock, seemeth in breadth not much lesse than that we dwell
upon. At the mouth of the River is a Countrey called Cuttata women,
upwards is Marraugh tacum Tapohanock, Apparnatuck, and Nantaugs
tacum, at Topmanahocks, the head issuing from many Mountains, the
next night I lodged at a hunting town of Powhatam's, and the next day
arrived at Waranacomoco upon the river of Parnauncke, where the great
king is resident: by the way we passed by the top of another little
river, which is betwixt the two called Payankatank. The most of this
country though Desert, yet exceeding fertil, good timber, most hils
and in dales, in each valley a cristall spring.
"Arriving at Weramacomoco, their Emperour, proudly lying upon a
Bedstead a foote high upon tenne or twelve Mattes, richly hung with
manie Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a
great covering of Rahaughcums: At heade sat a woman, at his feete
another, on each side sitting upon a Matte upon the ground were
raunged his chiefe men on each side the fire, tenne in a ranke and
behinde them as many yong women, each a great Chaine of white Beades
over their shoulders: their heades painted in redde and with such a
grave and Majeslicall countenance, as drove me into admiration to see
such state in a naked Salvage, bee kindlv welcomed me with good
wordes, and great Platters of sundrie victuals, asiuring mee his
friendship and my libertie within foure dayes, bee much delighted in
Opechan Conough's relation of what I had described to him, and oft
examined me upon the same. Hee asked me the cause of our comming, I
tolde him being in fight with the Spaniards our enemie, being over
powred, neare put to retreat, and by extreme weather put to this
shore, where landing at Chesipiack, the people shot us, but at
Kequoughtan they kindly used us, wee by signes demaunded fresh water,
they described us up the River was all fresh water, at Paspahegh,
also they kindly used us, our Pinnasse being leake wee were inforced
to stay to mend her, till Captain Newport my father came to conduct
us away. He demaunded why we went further with our Boate, I tolde
him, in that I would have occasion to talke of the backe Sea, that on
the other side the maine, where was salt water, my father had a
childe slaine, which we supposed Monocan his enemie, whose death we
intended to revenge. After good deliberation, hee began to describe
me the countreys beyond the Falles, with many of the rest, confirming
what not only Opechancanoyes, and an Indian which had been prisoner
to Pewhatan had before tolde mee, but some called it five days, some
sixe, some eight, where the sayde water dashed amongst many stones
and rocks, each storme which caused oft tymes the heade of the River
to bee brackish: Anchanachuck he described to bee the people that had
slaine my brother, whose death hee would revenge. Hee described also
upon the same Sea, a mighty nation called Pocoughtronack, a fierce
nation that did eate men and warred with the people of Moyaoncer, and
Pataromerke, Nations upon the toppe of the heade of the Bay, under
his territories, where the yeare before they had slain an hundred, he
signified their crownes were shaven, long haire in the necke, tied on
a knot, Swords like Pollaxes.
"Beyond them he described people with short Coates, and Sleeves to
the Elbowes, that passed that way in Shippes like ours. Many
Kingdomes hee described mee to the heade of the Bay, which seemed to
bee a mightie River, issuing from mightie mountaines, betwixt the two
seas; the people clothed at Ocamahowan. He also confirmed, and the
Southerly Countries also, as the rest, that reported us to be within
a day and a halfe of Mangoge, two dayes of Chawwonock, 6 from
Roonock, to the South part of the backe sea: he described a countrie
called Anone, where they have abundance of Brasse, and houses walled
as ours. I requited his discourse, seeing what pride he had in his
great and spacious Dominions, seeing that all hee knewe were under
his Territories.
"In describing to him the territories of Europe which was subject to
our great King whose subject I was, the innumerable multitude of his
ships, I gave him to understand the noyse of Trumpets and terrible
manner of fighting were under Captain Newport my father, whom I
intituled the Meworames which they call King of all the waters, at
his greatnesse bee admired and not a little feared; he desired mee to
forsake Paspahegh, and to live with him upon his River, a countrie
called Capa Howasicke; he promised to give me corne, venison, or what
I wanted to feede us, Hatchets and Copper wee should make him, and
none should disturbe us. This request I promised to performe: and
thus having with all the kindnes hee could devise, sought to content
me, he sent me home with 4 men, one that usually carried my Gonne and
Knapsacke after me, two other loded with bread, and one to accompanie
me."
The next extract in regard to this voyage is from President
Wingfield's "Discourse of Virginia," which appears partly in the form
of a diary, but was probably drawn up or at least finished shortly
after Wingfield's return to London in May, 1608. He was in Jamestown
when Smith returned from his captivity, and would be likely to allude
to the romantic story of Pocahontas if Smith had told it on his
escape. We quote:
"Decem.--The 10th of December, Mr. Smyth went up the ryver of the
Chechohomynies to trade for corne; he was desirous to see the heade
of that river; and, when it was not passible with the shallop, he
hired a cannow and an Indian to carry him up further. The river the
higher grew worse and worse. Then hee went on shoare with his guide,
and left Robinson and Emmery, and twoe of our Men, in the cannow;
which were presently slayne by the Indians, Pamaonke's men, and hee
himself taken prysoner, and, by the means of his guide, his lief was
saved; and Pamaonche, haveing him prisoner, carryed him to his
neybors wyroances, to see if any of them knew him for one of those
which had bene, some two or three eeres before us, in a river amongst
them Northward, and taken awaie some Indians from them by force. At
last he brought him to the great Powaton (of whome before wee had no
knowledg), who sent him home to our towne the 8th of January."
The next contemporary document to which we have occasion to refer is
Smith's Letter to the Treasurer and Council of Virginia in England,
written in Virginia after the arrival of Newport there in September,
1608, and probably sent home by him near the close of that year. In
this there is no occasion for a reference to Powhatan or his
daughter, but he says in it: "I have sent you this Mappe of the Bay
and Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countryes and Nations
that inhabit them as you may see at large." This is doubtless the
"Map of Virginia," with a description of the country, published some
two or three years after Smith's return to England, at Oxford, 1612.
It is a description of the country and people, and contains little
narrative. But with this was published, as an appendix, an account
of the proceedings of the Virginia colonists from 1606 to 1612, taken
out of the writings of Thomas Studley and several others who had been
residents in Virginia. These several discourses were carefully
edited by William Symonds, a doctor of divinity and a man of learning
and repute, evidently at the request of Smith. To the end of the
volume Dr. Symonds appends a note addressed to Smith, saying:
"I return you the fruit of my labors, as Mr. Cranshaw requested me,
which I bestowed in reading the discourses and hearing the relations
of such as have walked and observed the land of Virginia with you."
These narratives by Smith's companions, which he made a part of his
Oxford book, and which passed under his eye and had his approval, are
uniformly not only friendly to him, but eulogistic of him, and
probably omit no incident known to the writers which would do him
honor or add interest to him as a knight of romance. Nor does it
seem probable that Smith himself would have omitted to mention the
dramatic scene of the prevented execution if it had occurred to him.
If there had been a reason in the minds of others in 1608 why it
should not appear in the "True Relation," that reason did not exist
for Smith at this time, when the discords and discouragements of the
colony were fully known. And by this time the young girl Pocahontas
had become well known to the colonists at Jamestown. The account of
this Chickahominy voyage given in this volume, published in 1612, is
signed by Thomas Studley, and is as follows:
"The next voyage he proceeded so farre that with much labour by
cutting of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Barge
could passe no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of
shot, commanding none should go ashore till his returne; himselfe
with 2 English and two Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but he
was not long absent, but his men went ashore, whose want of
government gave both occasion and opportunity to the Salvages to
surprise one George Casson, and much failed not to have cut of the
boat and all the rest. Smith little dreaming of that accident, being
got to the marshes at the river's head, 20 miles in the desert, had
his 2 men slaine (as is supposed) sleeping by the Canowe, whilst
himselfe by fowling sought them victual, who finding he was beset by
200 Salvages, 2 of them he slew, stil defending himselfe with the aid
of a Salvage his guid (whome bee bound to his arme and used as his
buckler), till at last slipping into a bogmire they tooke him
prisoner: when this news came to the fort much was their sorrow for
his losse, fewe expecting what ensued. A month those Barbarians kept
him prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made of
him, yet he so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he not only
diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his own liberty,
and got himselfe and his company such estimation amongst them, that
those Salvages admired him as a demi-God. So returning safe to the
Fort, once more staied the pinnas her flight for England, which til
his returne could not set saile, so extreme was the weather and so
great the frost."
The first allusion to the salvation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas
occurs in a letter or "little booke" which he wrote to Queen Anne in
1616, about the time of the arrival in England of the Indian
Princess, who was then called the Lady Rebecca, and was wife of John
Rolfe, by whom she had a son, who accompanied them. Pocahontas had
by this time become a person of some importance. Her friendship had
been of substantial service to the colony. Smith had acknowledged
this in his "True Relation," where he referred to her as the
"nonpareil" of Virginia. He was kind-hearted and naturally
magnanimous, and would take some pains to do the Indian convert a
favor, even to the invention of an incident that would make her
attractive. To be sure, he was vain as well as inventive, and here
was an opportunity to attract the attention of his sovereign and
increase his own importance by connecting his name with hers in a
romantic manner. Still, we believe that the main motive that
dictated this epistle was kindness to Pocahontas. The sentence that
refers to her heroic act is this: "After some six weeks [he was
absent only four weeks] fatting amongst those Salvage Countries, at
the minute of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her own
braines to save mine, and not only that, but so prevailed with her
father [of whom he says, in a previous paragraph, "I received from
this great Salvage exceeding great courtesie"], that I was safely
conducted to Jamestown."
This guarded allusion to the rescue stood for all known account of
it, except a brief reference to it in his "New England's Trials" of
1622, until the appearance of Smith's "General Historie" in London,
1624. In the first edition of "New England's Trials," 1620, there is
no reference to it. In the enlarged edition of 1622, Smith gives a
new version to his capture, as resulting from "the folly of them that
fled," and says: "God made Pocahontas, the King's daughter the means
to deliver me."
The "General Historie" was compiled--as was the custom in making up
such books at the time from a great variety of sources. Such parts
of it as are not written by Smith--and these constitute a
considerable portion of the history--bear marks here and there of his
touch. It begins with his description of Virginia, which appeared in
the Oxford tract of 1612; following this are the several narratives
by his comrades, which formed the appendix of that tract. The one
that concerns us here is that already quoted, signed Thomas Studley.
It is reproduced here as "written by Thomas Studley, the first Cape
Merchant in Virginia, Robert Fenton, Edward Harrington, and I. S."
[John Smith]. It is, however, considerably extended, and into it is
interjected a detailed account of the captivity and the story of the
stones, the clubs, and the saved brains.
It is worthy of special note that the "True Relation" is not
incorporated in the "General Historie." This is the more remarkable
because it was an original statement, written when the occurrences it
describes were fresh, and is much more in detail regarding many
things that happened during the period it covered than the narratives
that Smith uses in the "General Historie." It was his habit to use
over and over again his own publications. Was this discarded because
it contradicted the Pocahontas story--because that story could not be
fitted into it as it could be into the Studley relation?
It should be added, also, that Purchas printed an abstract of the
Oxford tract in his "Pilgrimage," in 1613, from material furnished
him by Smith. The Oxford tract was also republished by Purchas in
his "Pilgrimes," extended by new matter in manuscript supplied by
Smith. The "Pilgrimes" did not appear till 1625, a year after the
"General Historie," but was in preparation long before. The
Pocahontas legend appears in the "Pilgrimes," but not in the earlier
"Pilgrimage."
We have before had occasion to remark that Smith's memory had the
peculiarity of growing stronger and more minute in details the
further he was removed in point of time from any event he describes.
The revamped narrative is worth quoting in full for other reasons.
It exhibits Smith's skill as a writer and his capacity for rising
into poetic moods. This is the story from the "General Historie":
"The next voyage hee proceeded so farre that with much labour by
cutting of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Barge
could pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of
shot, commanding none should goe ashore till his return: himselfe
with two English and two Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but he
was not long absent, but his men went ashore, whose want of
government, gave both occasion and opportunity to the Salvages to
surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not to
have cut of the boat and all the rest. Smith little dreaming of that
accident, being got to the marshes at the river's head, twentie myles
in the desert, had his two men slaine (as is supposed) sleeping by
the Canowe, whilst himselfe by fowling sought them victuall, who
finding he was beset with 200 Salvages, two of them hee slew, still
defending himself with the ayd of a Salvage his guide, whom he bound
to his arme with his garters, and used him as a buckler, yet he was
shot in his thigh a little, and had many arrowes stucke in his
cloathes but no great hurt, till at last they tooke him prisoner.
When this newes came to Jamestowne, much was their sorrow for his
losse, fewe expecting what ensued. Sixe or seven weekes those
Barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphes and conjurations
they made of him, yet hee so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he
not onely diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his
owne libertie, and got himself and his company such estimation
amongst them, that those Salvages admired him more than their owne
Quiyouckosucks. The manner how they used and delivered him, is as
followeth.
"The Salvages having drawne from George Cassen whether Captaine Smith
was gone, prosecuting that opportunity they followed him with 300
bowmen, conducted by the King of Pamaunkee, who in divisions
searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Entry by the
fireside, those they shot full of arrowes and slew. Then finding the
Captaine as is said, that used the Salvage that was his guide as his
shield (three of them being slaine and divers others so gauld) all
the rest would not come neere him. Thinking thus to have returned to
his boat, regarding them, as he marched, more then his way, slipped
up to the middle in an oasie creeke and his Salvage with him, yet
durst they not come to him till being neere dead with cold, he threw
away his armes. Then according to their composition they drew him
forth and led him to the fire, where his men were slaine. Diligently
they chafed his benumbed limbs. He demanding for their Captaine,
they shewed him Opechankanough, King of Pamaunkee, to whom he gave a
round Ivory double compass Dyall. Much they marvailed at the playing
of the Fly and Needle, which they could see so plainly, and yet not
touch it, because of the glass that covered them. But when he
demonstrated by that Globe-like Jewell, the roundnesse of the earth
and skies, the spheare of the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, and how the
Sunne did chase the night round about the world continually: the
greatnesse of the Land and Sea, the diversitie of Nations, varietie
of Complexions, and how we were to them Antipodes, and many other
such like matters, they all stood as amazed with admiration.
Notwithstanding within an houre after they tyed him to a tree, and as
many as could stand about him prepared to shoot him, but the King
holding up the Compass in his hand, they all laid downe their Bowes
and Arrowes, and in a triumphant manner led him to Orapaks, where he
was after their manner kindly feasted and well used.
"Their order in conducting him was thus: Drawing themselves all in
fyle, the King in the middest had all their Peeces and Swords borne
before him. Captaine Smith was led after him by three great
Salvages, holding him fast by each arme: and on each side six went in
fyle with their arrowes nocked. But arriving at the Towne (which was
but onely thirtie or fortie hunting houses made of Mats, which they
remove as they please, as we our tents) all the women and children
staring to behold him, the souldiers first all in file performe the
forme of a Bissom so well as could be: and on each flanke, officers
as Serieants to see them keepe their orders. A good time they
continued this exercise, and then cast themselves in a ring, dauncing
in such severall Postures, and singing and yelling out such hellish
notes and screeches: being strangely painted, every one his quiver of
arrowes, and at his backe a club: on his arme a Fox or an Otters
skinne, or some such matter for his vambrace: their heads and
shoulders painted red, with oyle and Pocones mingled together, which
Scarlet like colour made an exceeding handsome shew, his Bow in his
hand, and the skinne of a Bird with her wings abroad dryed, tyed on
his head, a peece of copper, a white shell, a long feather, with a
small rattle growing at the tayles of their snaks tyed to it, or some
such like toy. All this time Smith and the King stood in the middest
guarded, as before is said, and after three dances they all departed.
Smith they conducted to a long house, where thirtie or fortie tall
fellowes did guard him, and ere long more bread and venison were
brought him then would have served twentie men. I thinke his
stomacke at that time was not very good; what he left they put in
baskets and tyed over his head. About midnight they set the meat
again before him, all this time not one of them would eat a bit with
him, till the next morning they brought him as much more, and then
did they eate all the old, and reserved the new as they had done the
other, which made him think they would fat him to eat him. Yet in
this desperate estate to defend him from the cold, one Maocassater
brought him his gowne, in requitall of some beads and toyes Smith had
given him at his first arrival in Firginia.
"Two days a man would have slaine him (but that the guard prevented
it) for the death of his sonne, to whom they conducted him to recover
the poore man then breathing his last. Smith told them that at James
towne he had a water would doe it if they would let him fetch it, but
they would not permit that: but made all the preparations they could
to assault James towne, craving his advice, and for recompence he
should have life, libertie, land, and women. In part of a Table
booke he writ his mind to them at the Fort, what was intended, how
they should follow that direction to affright the messengers, and
without fayle send him such things as he writ for. And an Inventory
with them. The difficultie and danger he told the Salvaves, of the
Mines, great gunnes, and other Engins, exceedingly affrighted them,
yet according to his request they went to James towne in as bitter
weather as could be of frost and snow, and within three days returned
with an answer.
"But when they came to James towne, seeing men sally out as he had
told them they would, they fled: yet in the night they came again to
the same place where he had told them they should receive an answer,
and such things as he had promised them, which they found
accordingly, and with which they returned with no small expedition,
to the wonder of them all that heard it, that he could either divine
or the paper could speake. Then they led him to the Youthtanunds,
the Mattapanients, the Payankatanks, the Nantaughtacunds and
Onawmanients, upon the rivers of Rapahanock and Patawomek, over all
those rivers and backe againe by divers other severall Nations, to
the King's habitation at Pamaunkee, where they entertained him with
most strange and fearefull conjurations;
'As if neare led to hell,
Amongst the Devils to dwell.'
"Not long after, early in a morning, a great fire was made in a long
house, and a mat spread on the one side as on the other; on the one
they caused him to sit, and all the guard went out of the house, and
presently came skipping in a great grim fellow, all painted over with
coale mingled with oyle; and many Snakes and Wesels skins stuffed
with mosse, and all their tayles tyed together, so as they met on the
crowne of his head in a tassell; and round about the tassell was a
Coronet of feathers, the skins hanging round about his head, backe,
and shoulders, and in a manner covered his face; with a hellish voyce
and a rattle in his hand. With most strange gestures and passions he
began his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of meale;
which done three more such like devils came rushing in with the like
antique tricks, painted halfe blacke, halfe red: but all their eyes
were painted white, and some red stroakes like Mutchato's along their
cheekes: round about him those fiends daunced a pretty while, and
then came in three more as ugly as the rest; with red eyes and
stroakes over their blacke faces, at last they all sat downe right
against him; three of them on the one hand of the chiefe Priest, and
three on the other. Then all with their rattles began a song, which
ended, the chiefe Priest layd downe five wheat cornes: then strayning
his arms and hands with such violence that he sweat, and his veynes
swelled, he began a short Oration: at the conclusion they all gave a
short groane; and then layd downe three graines more. After that
began their song againe, and then another Oration, ever laying down
so many cornes as before, til they had twice incirculed the fire;
that done they tooke a bunch of little stickes prepared for that
purpose, continuing still their devotion, and at the end of every
song and Oration they layd downe a sticke betwixt the divisions of
Corne. Til night, neither he nor they did either eate or drinke, and
then they feasted merrily, and with the best provisions they could
make. Three dayes they used this Ceremony: the meaning whereof they
told him was to know if he intended them well or no. The circle of
meale signified their Country, the circles of corne the bounds of the
Sea, and the stickes his Country. They imagined the world to be flat
and round, like a trencher, and they in the middest. After this they
brought him a bagge of gunpowder, which they carefully preserved till
the next spring, to plant as they did their corne, because they would
be acquainted with the nature of that seede. Opitchapam, the King's
brother, invited him to his house, where with many platters of bread,
foule, and wild beasts, as did environ him, he bid him wellcome: but
not any of them would eate a bit with him, but put up all the
remainder in Baskets. At his returne to Opechancanoughs, all the
King's women and their children flocked about him for their parts, as
a due by Custome, to be merry with such fragments.
"But his waking mind in hydeous dreames did oft see wondrous shapes
Of bodies strange, and huge in growth, and of stupendious makes."
"At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan their
Emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood
wondering at him, as he had beene a monster, till Powhatan and his
trayne had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire
upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made
of Rarowcun skinnes and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand
did sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years, and along on each
side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with
all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads
bedecked with the white downe of Birds; but everyone with something:
and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. At his entrance
before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queene of
Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and
another brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a Towell to dry
them: having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they
could. A long consultation was held, but the conclusion was two
great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could layd
hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and
being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines. Pocahontas,
the King's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got his
head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death:
whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make him
hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper: for they thought him as
well of all occupations as themselves. For the King himselfe will
make his owne robes, shooes, bowes, arrowes, pots, plant, hunt, or
doe any thing so well as the rest.
'They say he bore a pleasant shew,
But sure his heart was sad
For who can pleasant be, and rest,
That lives in feare and dread.
And having life suspected, doth
If still suspected lead.'
"Two days after, Powhatan having disguised himselfe in the most
fearfullest manner he could, caused Capt. Smith to be brought forth
to a great house in the woods and there upon a mat by the fire to be
left alone. Not long after from behinde a mat that divided the
house, was made the most dolefullest noyse he ever heard: then
Powhatan more like a devill than a man with some two hundred more as
blacke as himseffe, came unto him and told him now they were friends,
and presently he should goe to James town, to send him two great
gunnes, and a gryndstone, for which he would give him the country of
Capahowojick, and for ever esteeme him as his sonn Nantaquoud. So to
James towne with 12 guides Powhatan sent him. That night they
quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this
long time of his imprisonment) every houre to be put to one death or
other; for all their feasting. But almightie God (by his divine
providence) had mollified the hearts of those sterne Barbarians with
compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, where
Smith having used the salvages with what kindnesse he could, he
shewed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demiculverings and a
millstone to carry Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavie; but
when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among
the boughs of a great tree loaded with Isickles, the yce and branches
came so tumbling downe, that the poore Salvages ran away halfe dead
with feare. But at last we regained some conference with them and
gave them such toys: and sent to Powhatan, his women, and children
such presents, and gave them in generall full content. Now in James
Towne they were all in combustion, the strongest preparing once more
to run away with the Pinnace; which with the hazard of his life, with
Sakre falcon and musketshot, Smith forced now the third time to stay
or sinke. Some no better then they should be had plotted with the
President, the next day to have put him to death by the Leviticall
law, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending the fault was his
that had led them to their ends; but he quickly tooke such order with
such Lawyers, that he layed them by the heeles till he sent some of
them prisoners for England. Now ever once in four or five dayes,
Pocahontas with her attendants, brought him so much provision, that
saved many of their lives, that els for all this had starved with
hunger.
'Thus from numbe death our good God sent reliefe,
The sweete asswager of all other griefe.'
"His relation of the plenty he had scene, especially at Werawocomoco,
and of the state and bountie of Powhatan (which till that time was
unknowne), so revived their dead spirits (especially the love of
Pocahontas) as all men's feare was abandoned."
We should like to think original, in the above, the fine passage, in
which Smith, by means of a simple compass dial, demonstrated the
roundness of the earth, and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, and
stars, and how the sun did chase the night round about the world
continually; the greatness of the land and sea, the diversity of
nations, variety of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes,
so that the Indians stood amazed with admiration.
Captain Smith up to his middle in a Chickahominy swamp, discoursing
on these high themes to a Pamunkey Indian, of whose language Smith
was wholly ignorant, and who did not understand a word of English, is
much more heroic, considering the adverse circumstances, and appeals
more to the imagination, than the long-haired Iopas singing the song
of Atlas, at the banquet given to AEneas, where Trojans and Tyrians
drained the flowing bumpers while Dido drank long draughts of love.
Did Smith, when he was in the neighborhood of Carthage pick up some
such literal translations of the song of Atlas' as this:
"He sang the wandering moon, and the labors of the Sun;
From whence the race of men and flocks; whence rain and lightning;
Of Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, and the twin Triones;
Why the winter suns hasten so much to touch themselves in the ocean,
And what delay retards the slow nights."
The scene of the rescue only occupies seven lines and the reader
feels that, after all, Smith has not done full justice to it. We
cannot, therefore, better conclude this romantic episode than by
quoting the description of it given with an elaboration of language
that must be, pleasing to the shade of Smith, by John Burke in his
History of Virginia:
"Two large stones were brought in, and placed at the feet of the
emperor; and on them was laid the head of the prisoner; next a large
club was brought in, with which Powhatan, for whom, out of respect,
was reserved this honor, prepared to crush the head of his captive.
The assembly looked on with sensations of awe, probably not unmixed
with pity for the fate of an enemy whose bravery had commanded their
admiration, and in whose misfortunes their hatred was possibly
forgotten.
"The fatal club was uplifted: the breasts of the company already
by anticipation felt the dreadful crash, which was to bereave the
wretched victim of life: when the young and beautiful Pocahontas, the
beloved daughter of the emperor, with a shriek of terror
and agony threw herself on the body of Smith; Her hair was loose, and
her eyes streaming with tears, while her whole manner bespoke the
deep distress and agony of her bosom. She cast a beseeching
look at her furious and astonished father, deprecating his wrath, and
imploring his pity and the life of his prisoner, with all the
eloquence of mute but impassioned sorrow.
"The remainder of this scene is honorable to Powhatan. It will
remain a lasting monument, that tho' different principles of action,
and the influence of custom, have given to the manners and opinions
of this people an appearance neither amiable nor virtuous, they still
retain the noblest property of human character, the touch of pity and
the feeling of humanity.
"The club of the emperor was still uplifted; but pity had touched his
bosom, and his eye was every moment losing its fierceness; he looked
around to collect his fortitude, or perhaps to find an excuse for his
weakness in the faces of his attendants. But every eye was suffused
with the sweetly contagious softness. The generous savage no longer
hesitated. The compassion of the rude state is neither ostentatious
nor dilating: nor does it insult its object by the exaction of
impossible conditions. Powhatan lifted his grateful and delighted
daughter, and the captive, scarcely yet assured of safety, from the
earth...."
"The character of this interesting woman, as it stands in the
concurrent accounts of all our historians, is not, it is with
confidence affirmed, surpassed by any in the whole range of history;
and for those qualities more especially which do honor to our nature
--an humane and feeling heart, an ardor and unshaken constancy in her
attachments--she stands almost without a rival.
"At the first appearance of the Europeans her young heart was
impressed with admiration of the persons and manners of the
strangers; but it is not during their prosperity that she displays
her attachment. She is not influenced by awe of their greatness, or
fear of their resentment, in the assistance she affords them. It was
during their severest distresses, when their most celebrated chief
was a captive in their hands, and was dragged through the country as
a spectacle for the sport and derision of their people, that she
places herself between him and destruction.
"The spectacle of Pocahontas in an attitude of entreaty, with her
hair loose, and her eyes streaming with tears, supplicating with her
enraged father for the life of Captain Smith when he was about to
crush the head of his prostrate victim with a club, is a situation
equal to the genius of Raphael. And when the royal savage directs
his ferocious glance for a moment from his victim to reprove his
weeping daughter, when softened by her distress his eye loses its
fierceness, and he gives his captive to her tears, the painter will
discover a new occasion for exercising his talents."
The painters have availed themselves of this opportunity. In one
picture Smith is represented stiffly extended on the greensward (of
the woods), his head resting on a stone, appropriately clothed in a
dresscoat, knee-breeches, and silk stockings; while Powhatan and the
other savages stand ready for murder, in full-dress parade costume;
and Pocahontas, a full-grown woman, with long, disheveled hair, in
the sentimental dress and attitude of a Letitia E. Landon of the
period, is about to cast herself upon the imperiled and well-dressed
Captain.
Must we, then, give up the legend altogether, on account of the
exaggerations that have grown up about it, our suspicion of the
creative memory of Smith, and the lack of all contemporary allusion
to it? It is a pity to destroy any pleasing story of the past, and
especially to discharge our hard struggle for a foothold on this
continent of the few elements of romance. If we can find no evidence
of its truth that stands the test of fair criticism, we may at least
believe that it had some slight basis on which to rest. It is not at
all improbable that Pocahontas, who was at that time a precocious
maid of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age (although Smith
mentions her as a child of ten years old when she came to the camp
after his release), was touched with compassion for the captive, and
did influence her father to treat him kindly.
IX
SMITH'S WAY WITH THE INDIANS
As we are not endeavoring to write the early history of Virginia, but
only to trace Smith's share in it, we proceed with his exploits after
the arrival of the first supply, consisting of near a hundred men, in
two ships, one commanded by Captain Newport and the other by Captain
Francis Nelson. The latter, when in sight of Cape Henry, was driven
by a storm back to the West Indies, and did not arrive at James River
with his vessel, the Phoenix, till after the departure of Newport for
England with his load of "golddust," and Master Wingfield and Captain
Arthur.
In his "True Relation," Smith gives some account of his exploration
of the Pamunkey River, which he sometimes calls the "Youghtamand,"
upon which, where the water is salt, is the town of Werowocomoco. It
can serve no purpose in elucidating the character of our hero to
attempt to identify all the places he visited.
It was at Werowocomoco that Smith observed certain conjurations of
the medicine men, which he supposed had reference to his fate. From
ten o'clock in the morning till six at night, seven of the savages,
with rattles in their hands, sang and danced about the fire, laying
down grains of corn in circles, and with vehement actions, casting
cakes of deer suet, deer, and tobacco into the fire, howling without
ceasing. One of them was "disfigured with a great skin, his head
hung around with little skins of weasels and other vermin, with a
crownlet of feathers on his head, painted as ugly as the devil." So
fat they fed him that he much doubted they intended to sacrifice him
to the Quiyoughquosicke, which is a superior power they worship: a
more uglier thing cannot be described. These savages buried their
dead with great sorrow and weeping, and they acknowledge no
resurrection. Tobacco they offer to the water to secure a good
passage in foul weather. The descent of the crown is to the first
heirs of the king's sisters, "for the kings have as many women as
they will, the subjects two, and most but one."
After Smith's return, as we have read, he was saved from a plot to
take his life by the timely arrival of Captain Newport. Somewhere
about this time the great fire occurred. Smith was now one of the
Council; Martin and Matthew Scrivener, just named, were also
councilors. Ratcliffe was still President. The savages, owing to
their acquaintance with and confidence in Captain Smith, sent in
abundance of provision. Powhatan sent once or twice a week "deer,
bread, raugroughcuns (probably not to be confounded with the
rahaughcuns [raccoons] spoken of before, but probably 'rawcomens,'
mentioned in the Description of Virginia), half for Smith, and half
for his father, Captain Newport." Smith had, in his intercourse with
the natives, extolled the greatness of Newport, so that they
conceived him to be the chief and all the rest his children, and
regarded him as an oracle, if not a god.
Powhatan and the rest had, therefore, a great desire to see this
mighty person. Smith says that the President and Council greatly
envied his reputation with the Indians, and wrought upon them to
believe, by giving in trade four times as much as the price set by
Smith, that their authority exceeded his as much as their bounty.
We must give Smith the credit of being usually intent upon the
building up of the colony, and establishing permanent and livable
relations with the Indians, while many of his companions in authority
seemed to regard the adventure as a temporary occurrence, out of
which they would make what personal profit they could. The
new-comers on a vessel always demoralized the trade with the Indians,
by paying extravagant prices. Smith's relations with Captain Newport
were peculiar. While he magnified him to the Indians as the great
power, he does not conceal his own opinion of his ostentation and
want of shrewdness. Smith's attitude was that of a priest who puts
up for the worship of the vulgar an idol, which he knows is only a
clay image stuffed with straw.
In the great joy of the colony at the arrival of the first supply,
leave was given to sailors to trade with the Indians, and the
new-comers soon so raised prices that it needed a pound of copper to
buy a quantity of provisions that before had been obtained for an
ounce. Newport sent great presents to Powhatan, and, in response to
the wish of the "Emperor," prepared to visit him. "A great coyle
there was to set him forward," says Smith. Mr. Scrivener and Captain
Smith, and a guard of thirty or forty, accompanied him. On this
expedition they found the mouth of the Pamaunck (now York) River.
Arriving at Werowocomoco, Newport, fearing treachery, sent Smith with
twenty men to land and make a preliminary visit. When they came
ashore they found a network of creeks which were crossed by very shaky
bridges, constructed of crotched sticks and poles, which had so much
the appearance of traps that Smith would not cross them until many of
the Indians had preceded him, while he kept others with him as
hostages. Three hundred savages conducted him to Powhatan, who
received him in great state. Before his house were ranged forty or
fifty great platters of fine bread. Entering his house, "with loude
tunes they made all signs of great joy." In the first account
Powhatan is represented as surrounded by his principal women and chief
men, "as upon a throne at the upper end of the house, with such
majesty as I cannot express, nor yet have often seen, either in Pagan
or Christian." In the later account he is "sitting upon his bed of
mats, his pillow of leather embroidered (after their rude manner with
pearls and white beads), his attire a fair robe of skins as large as
an Irish mantel; at his head and feet a handsome young woman; on each
side of his house sat twenty of his concubines, their heads and
shoulders painted red, with a great chain of white beads about each of
their necks. Before those sat his chiefest men in like order in his
arbor-like house." This is the scene that figures in the old
copper-plate engravings. The Emperor welcomed Smith with a kind
countenance, caused him to sit beside him, and with pretty discourse
they renewed their old acquaintance. Smith presented him with a suit
of red cloth, a white greyhound, and a hat. The Queen of Apamatuc, a
comely young savage, brought him water, a turkeycock, and bread to
eat. Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to see
his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry
countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to
send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had
offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to
carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally
feasted, and entertained with singing, dancing, and orations.
The next day Captain Newport came ashore. The two monarchs exchanged
presents. Newport gave Powhatan a white boy thirteen years old,
named Thomas Savage. This boy remained with the Indians and served
the colony many years as an interpreter. Powhatan gave Newport in
return a bag of beans and an Indian named Namontack for his servant.
Three or four days they remained, feasting, dancing, and trading with
the Indians.
In trade the wily savage was more than a match for Newport. He
affected great dignity; it was unworthy such great werowances to
dicker; it was not agreeable to his greatness in a peddling manner to
trade for trifles; let the great Newport lay down his commodities all
together, and Powhatan would take what he wished, and recompense him
with a proper return. Smith, who knew the Indians and their
ostentation, told Newport that the intention was to cheat him, but
his interference was resented. The result justified Smith's
suspicion. Newport received but four bushels of corn when he should
have had twenty hogsheads. Smith then tried his hand at a trade.
With a few blue beads, which he represented as of a rare substance,
the color of the skies, and worn by the greatest kings in the world,
he so inflamed the desire of Powhatan that he was half mad to possess
such strange jewels, and gave for them 200 to 300 bushels of corn,
"and yet," says Smith, "parted good friends."
At this time Powhatan, knowing that they desired to invade or explore
Monacan, the country above the Falls, proposed an expedition, with
men and boats, and "this faire tale had almost made Captain Newport
undertake by this means to discover the South Sea," a project which
the adventurers had always in mind. On this expedition they
sojourned also with the King of Pamaunke.
Captain Newport returned to England on the 10th of April. Mr.
Scrivener and Captain Smith were now in fact the sustainers of the
colony. They made short expeditions of exploration. Powhatan and
other chiefs still professed friendship and sent presents, but the
Indians grew more and more offensive, lurking about and stealing all
they could lay hands on. Several of them were caught and confined in
the fort, and, guarded, were conducted to the morning and evening
prayers. By threats and slight torture, the captives were made to
confess the hostile intentions of Powhatan and the other chiefs,
which was to steal their weapons and then overpower the colony.
Rigorous measures were needed to keep the Indians in check, but the
command from England not to offend the savages was so strict that
Smith dared not chastise them as they deserved. The history of the
colony all this spring of 1608 is one of labor and discontent, of
constant annoyance from the Indians, and expectations of attacks. On
the 20th of April, while they were hewing trees and setting corn, an
alarm was given which sent them all to their arms. Fright was turned
into joy by the sight of the Phoenix, with Captain Nelson and his
company, who had been for three months detained in the West Indies,
and given up for lost.
Being thus re-enforced, Smith and Scrivener desired to explore the
country above the Falls, and got ready an expedition. But this,
Martin, who was only intent upon loading the return ship with "his
phantastical gold," opposed, and Nelson did not think he had
authority to allow it, unless they would bind themselves to pay the
hire of the ships. The project was therefore abandoned. The Indians
continued their depredations. Messages daily passed between the fort
and the Indians, and treachery was always expected. About this time
the boy Thomas Savage was returned, with his chest and clothing.
The colony had now several of the Indians detained in the fort. At
this point in the "True Relation" occurs the first mention of
Pocahontas. Smith says: "Powhatan, understanding we detained certain
Salvages, sent his daughter, a child of tenne years old, which not
only for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceeded any of
his people, but for wit and spirit, the only nonpareil of his
country." She was accompanied by his trusty messenger Rawhunt, a
crafty and deformed savage, who assured Smith how much Powhatan loved
and respected him and, that he should not doubt his kindness, had sent
his child, whom he most esteemed, to see him, and a deer, and bread
besides for a present; "desiring us that the boy might come again,
which he loved exceedingly, his little daughter he had taught this
lesson also: not taking notice at all of the Indians that had been
prisoners three days, till that morning that she saw their fathers
and friends come quietly and in good terms to entreat their liberty."
Opechancanough (the King of "Pamauk") also sent asking the release of
two that were his friends; and others, apparently with confidence in
the whites, came begging for the release of the prisoners. "In the
afternoon they being gone, we guarded them [the prisoners] as before
to the church, and after prayer gave them to Pocahuntas, the King's
daughter, in regard to her father's kindness in sending her: after
having well fed them, as all the time of their imprisonment, we gave
them their bows, arrows, or what else they had, and with much content
sent them packing; Pocahuntas, also, we requited with such trifles as
contented her, to tell that we had used the Paspaheyans very kindly
in so releasing them."
This account would show that Pocahontas was a child of uncommon
dignity and self-control for her age. In his letter to Queen Anne,
written in 1616, he speaks of her as aged twelve or thirteen at the
time of his captivity, several months before this visit to the fort.
The colonists still had reasons to fear ambuscades from the savages
lurking about in the woods. One day a Paspahean came with a
glittering mineral stone, and said he could show them great abundance
of it. Smith went to look for this mine, but was led about hither
and thither in the woods till he lost his patience and was convinced
that the Indian was fooling him, when he gave him twenty lashes with
a rope, handed him his bows and arrows, told him to shoot if he
dared, and let him go. Smith had a prompt way with the Indians. He
always traded "squarely" with them, kept his promises, and never
hesitated to attack or punish them when they deserved it. They
feared and respected him.
The colony was now in fair condition, in good health, and contented;
and it was believed, though the belief was not well founded, that
they would have lasting peace with the Indians. Captain Nelson's
ship, the Phoenix, was freighted with cedar wood, and was despatched
for England June 8, 1608. Captain Martin, "always sickly and
unserviceable, and desirous to enjoy the credit of his supposed art
of finding the gold mine," took passage. Captain Nelson probably
carried Smith's "True Relation."
X
DISCOVERY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
On the same, day that Nelson sailed for England, Smith set out to
explore the Chesapeake, accompanying the Phoenix as far as Cape
Henry, in a barge of about three tons. With him went Dr. Walter
Russell, six gentlemen, and seven soldiers. The narrative of the
voyage is signed by Dr. Russell, Thomas Momford, gentleman, and Anas
Todkill, soldier. Master Scrivener remained at the fort, where his
presence was needed to keep in check the prodigal waste of the stores
upon his parasites by President Ratcliffe.
The expedition crossed the bay at "Smith's Isles," named after the
Captain, touched at Cape Charles, and coasted along the eastern
shore. Two stout savages hailed them from Cape Charles, and directed
them to Accomack, whose king proved to be the most comely and civil
savage they had yet encountered.
He told them of a strange accident that had happened. The parents of
two children who had died were moved by some phantasy to revisit
their dead carcasses, "whose benumbed bodies reflected to the eyes of
the beholders such delightful countenances as though they had
regained their vital spirits." This miracle drew a great part of the
King's people to behold them, nearly all of whom died shortly
afterward. These people spoke the language of Powhatan. Smith
explored the bays, isles, and islets, searching for harbors and
places of habitation. He was a born explorer and geographer, as his
remarkable map of Virginia sufficiently testifies. The company was
much tossed about in the rough waves of the bay, and had great
difficulty in procuring drinking-water. They entered the
Wighcocomoco, on the east side, where the natives first threatened
and then received them with songs, dancing, and mirth. A point on
the mainland where they found a pond of fresh water they named "Poynt
Ployer in honer of the most honorable house of Monsay, in Britaine,
that in an extreme extremitie once relieved our Captain." This
reference to the Earl of Ployer, who was kind to Smith in his youth,
is only an instance of the care with which he edited these narratives
of his own exploits, which were nominally written by his companions.
The explorers were now assailed with violent storms, and at last took
refuge for two days on some uninhabited islands, which by reason of
the ill weather and the hurly-burly of thunder, lightning, wind, and
rain, they called "Limbo." Repairing their torn sails with their
shirts, they sailed for the mainland on the east, and ran into a
river called Cuskarawook (perhaps the present Annomessie), where the
inhabitants received them with showers of arrows, ascending the trees
and shooting at them. The next day a crowd came dancing to the
shore, making friendly signs, but Smith, suspecting villainy,
discharged his muskets into them. Landing toward evening, the
explorers found many baskets and much blood, but no savages. The
following day, savages to the number, the account wildly says, of two
or three thousand, came to visit them, and were very friendly. These
tribes Smith calls the Sarapinagh, Nause, Arseek, and Nantaquak, and
says they are the best merchants of that coast. They told him of a
great nation, called the Massawomeks, of whom he set out in search,
passing by the Limbo, and coasting the west side of Chesapeake Bay.
The people on the east side he describes as of small stature.
They anchored at night at a place called Richard's Cliffs, north of
the Pawtuxet, and from thence went on till they reached the first
river navigable for ships, which they named the Bolus, and which by
its position on Smith's map may be the Severn or the Patapsco.
The men now, having been kept at the oars ten days, tossed about by
storms, and with nothing to eat but bread rotten from the wet,
supposed that the Captain would turn about and go home. But he
reminded them how the company of Ralph Lane, in like circumstances,
importuned him to proceed with the discovery of Moratico, alleging
that they had yet a dog that boiled with sassafrks leaves would
richly feed them. He could not think of returning yet, for they were
scarce able to say where they had been, nor had yet heard of what
they were sent to seek. He exhorted them to abandon their childish
fear of being lost in these unknown, large waters, but he assured
them that return he would not, till he had seen the Massawomeks and
found the Patowomek.
On the 16th of June they discovered the River Patowomek (Potomac),
seven miles broad at the mouth, up which they sailed thirty miles
before they encountered any inhabitants. Four savages at length
appeared and conducted them up a creek where were three or four
thousand in ambush, "so strangely painted, grimed, and disguised,
shouting, yelling, and crying as so many spirits from hell could not
have showed more terrible." But the discharge of the firearms and
the echo in the forest so appeased their fury that they threw down
their bows, exchanged hostages, and kindly used the strangers. The
Indians told him that Powhatan had commanded them to betray them, and
the serious charge is added that Powhatan, "so directed from the
discontents at Jamestown because our Captain did cause them to stay
in their country against their wills." This reveals the suspicion
and thoroughly bad feeling existing among the colonists.
The expedition went up the river to a village called Patowomek, and
thence rowed up a little River Quiyough (Acquia Creek?) in search of
a mountain of antimony, which they found. The savages put this
antimony up in little bags and sold it all over the country to paint
their bodies and faces, which made them look like Blackamoors dusted
over with silver. Some bags of this they carried away, and also
collected a good amount of furs of otters, bears, martens, and minks.
Fish were abundant, "lying so thick with their heads above water, as
for want of nets (our barge driving among them) we attempted to catch
them with a frying-pan; but we found it a bad instrument to catch
fish with; neither better fish, more plenty, nor more variety for
small fish, had any of us ever seen in any place, so swimming in the
water, but they are not to be caught with frying-pans."
In all his encounters and quarrels with the treacherous savages Smith
lost not a man; it was his habit when he encountered a body of them
to demand their bows, arrows, swords, and furs, and a child or two as
hostages.
Having finished his discovery he returned. Passing the mouth of the
Rappahannock, by some called the Tappahannock, where in shoal water
were many fish lurking in the weeds, Smith had his first experience
of the Stingray. It chanced that the Captain took one of these fish
from his sword, "not knowing her condition, being much the fashion of
a Thornbeck, but a long tayle like a riding rodde whereon the middest
is a most poysonne sting of two or three inches long, bearded like a
saw on each side, which she struck into the wrist of his arme neare
an inch and a half." The arm and shoulder swelled so much, and the
torment was so great, that "we all with much sorrow concluded his
funerale, and prepared his grave in an island by, as himself
directed." But it "pleased God by a precious oyle Dr. Russell
applied to it that his tormenting paine was so assuged that he ate of
that fish to his supper."
Setting sail for Jamestown, and arriving at Kecoughtan, the sight of
the furs and other plunder, and of Captain Smith wounded, led the
Indians to think that he had been at war with the Massawomeks; which
opinion Smith encouraged. They reached Jamestown July 21st, in fine
spirits, to find the colony in a mutinous condition, the last
arrivals all sick, and the others on the point of revenging
themselves on the silly President, who had brought them all to misery
by his riotous consumption of the stores, and by forcing them to work
on an unnecessary pleasure-house for himself in the woods. They were
somewhat appeased by the good news of the discovery, and in the
belief that their bay stretched into the South Sea; and submitted on
condition that Ratclifte should be deposed and Captain Smith take
upon himself the government, "as by course it did belong." He
consented, but substituted Mr. Scrivener, his dear friend, in the
presidency, distributed the provisions, appointed honest men to
assist Mr. Scrivener, and set out on the 24th, with twelve men, to
finish his discovery.
He passed by the Patowomek River and hasted to the River Bolus, which
he had before visited. In the bay they fell in with seven or eight
canoes full of the renowned Massawomeks, with whom they had a fight,
but at length these savages became friendly and gave them bows,
arrows, and skins. They were at war with the Tockwoghes. Proceeding
up the River Tockwogh, the latter Indians received them with
friendship, because they had the weapons which they supposed had been
captured in a fight with the Massawomeks. These Indians had
hatchets, knives, pieces of iron and brass, they reported came from
the Susquesahanocks, a mighty people, the enemies of the Massawomeks,
living at the head of the bay. As Smith in his barge could not
ascend to them, he sent an interpreter to request a visit from them.
In three or four days sixty of these giant-like people came down with
presents of venison, tobacco-pipes three feet in length, baskets,
targets, and bows and arrows. Some further notice is necessary of
this first appearance of the Susquehannocks, who became afterwards so
well known, by reason of their great stature and their friendliness.
Portraits of these noble savages appeared in De Bry's voyages, which
were used in Smith's map, and also by Strachey. These beautiful
copperplate engravings spread through Europe most exaggerated ideas
of the American savages.
"Our order," says Smith, "was daily to have prayers, with a psalm, at
which solemnity the poor savages wondered." When it was over the
Susquesahanocks, in a fervent manner, held up their hands to the sun,
and then embracing the Captain, adored him in like manner. With a
furious manner and "a hellish voyce" they began an oration of their
loves, covered him with their painted bear-skins, hung a chain of
white beads about his neck, and hailed his creation as their governor
and protector, promising aid and victuals if he would stay and help
them fight the Massawomeks. Much they told him of the Atquanachuks,
who live on the Ocean Sea, the Massawomeks and other people living on
a great water beyond the mountain (which Smith understood to be some
great lake or the river of Canada), and that they received their
hatchets and other commodities from the French. They moumed greatly
at Smith's departure. Of Powhatan they knew nothing but the name.
Strachey, who probably enlarges from Smith his account of the
same people, whom he calls Sasquesahanougs, says they were
well-proportioned giants, but of an honest and simple disposition.
Their language well beseemed their proportions, "sounding from them as
it were a great voice in a vault or cave, as an ecco." The picture of
one of these chiefs is given in De Bry, and described by Strachey,"
the calf of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard about, and all the
rest of his limbs so answerable to the same proportions that he seemed
the goodliest man they ever saw."
It would not entertain the reader to follow Smith in all the small
adventures of the exploration, during which he says he went about
3,000 miles (three thousand miles in three or four weeks in a
rowboat is nothing in Smith's memory), "with such watery diet in these
great waters and barbarous countries." Much hardship he endured,
alternately skirmishing and feasting with the Indians; many were the
tribes he struck an alliance with, and many valuable details he added
to the geographical knowledge of the region. In all this exploration
Smith showed himself skillful as he was vigorous and adventurous.
He returned to James River September 7th. Many had died, some were
sick, Ratcliffe, the late President, was a prisoner for mutiny,
Master Scrivener had diligently gathered the harvest, but much of the
provisions had been spoiled by rain. Thus the summer was consumed,
and nothing had been accomplished except Smith's discovery.
XI
SMITH'S PRESIDENCY AND PROWESS
On the 10th of September, by the election of the Council and the
request of the company, Captain Smith received the letters-patent,
and became President. He stopped the building of Ratcliffe's
"palace," repaired the church and the storehouse, got ready the
buildings for the supply expected from England, reduced the fort to a
"five square form," set and trained the watch and exercised the
company every Saturday on a plain called Smithfield, to the amazement
of the on-looking Indians.
Captain Newport arrived with a new supply of seventy persons. Among
them were Captain Francis West, brother to Lord Delaware, Captain
Peter Winne, and Captain Peter Waldo, appointed on the Council, eight
Dutchmen and Poles, and Mistress Forest and Anne Burrows her maid,
the first white women in the colony.
Smith did not relish the arrival of Captain Newport nor the
instructions under which he returned. He came back commanded to
discover the country of Monacan (above the Falls) and to perform the
ceremony of coronation on the Emperor Powhatan.
How Newport got this private commission when he had returned to
England without a lump of gold, nor any certainty of the South Sea,
or one of the lost company sent out by Raleigh; and why he brought a
"fine peeced barge" which must be carried over unknown mountains
before it reached the South Sea, he could not understand. "As for
the coronation of Powhatan and his presents of basin and ewer, bed,
bedding, clothes, and such costly novelties, they had been much
better well spared than so ill spent, for we had his favor and better
for a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of soliciting
made him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much as
nothing at all." Smith evidently understood the situation much
better than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him in
his rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions.
There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need not
turn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster.
To send out Poles and Dutchmen to make pitch, tar, and glass would
have been well enough if the colony had been firmly established and
supplied with necessaries; and they might have sent two hundred
colonists instead of seventy, if they had ordered them to go to work
collecting provisions of the Indians for the winter, instead of
attempting this strange discovery of the South Sea, and wasting their
time on a more strange coronation. "Now was there no way," asks
Smith, "to make us miserable," but by direction from England to
perform this discovery and coronation, "to take that time, spend what
victuals we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carry
victuals, ammunition, the hurt or the sick, but on their own backs?"
Smith seems to have protested against all this nonsense, but though
he was governor, the Council overruled him. Captain Newport decided
to take one hundred and twenty men, fearing to go with a less number
and journey to Werowocomoco to crown Powhatan. In order to save time
Smith offered to take a message to Powhatan, and induce him to come
to Jamestown and receive the honor and the presents. Accompanied by
only four men he crossed by land to Werowocomoco, passed the
Pamaunkee (York) River in a canoe, and sent for Powhatan, who was
thirty miles off. Meantime Pocahontas, who by his own account was a
mere child, and her women entertained Smith in the following manner:
"In a fayre plaine they made a fire, before which, sitting upon a
mat, suddenly amongst the woods was heard such a hydeous noise and
shreeking that the English betook themselves to their armes, and
seized upon two or three old men, by them supposing Powhatan with all
his power was come to surprise them. But presently Pocahontas came,
willing him to kill her if any hurt were intended, and the beholders,
which were men, women and children, satisfied the Captaine that there
was no such matter. Then presently they were presented with this
anticke: Thirty young women came naked out of the woods, only covered
behind and before with a few greene leaves, their bodies all painted,
some of one color, some of another, but all differing; their leader
had a fayre payre of Bucks hornes on her head, and an Otters skinne
at her girdle, and another at her arme, a quiver of arrows at her
backe, a bow and arrows in her hand; the next had in her hand a
sword, another a club, another a pot-sticke: all horned alike; the
rest every one with their several devises. These fiends with most
hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast
themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with most
excellent ill-varietie, oft falling into their infernal passions, and
solemnly again to sing and dance; having spent nearly an hour in this
Mascarado, as they entered, in like manner they departed.
"Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited him to their
lodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all these
Nymphs more tormented him than ever, with crowding, pressing, and
hanging about him, most tediously crying, 'Love you not me? Love you
not me?' This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of all
the Salvage dainties they could devise: some attending, others
singing and dancing about them: which mirth being ended, with fire
brands instead of torches they conducted him to his lodging."
The next day Powhatan arrived. Smith delivered up the Indian
Namontuck, who had just returned from a voyage to England--whither it
was suspected the Emperor wished him to go to spy out the weakness of
the English tribe--and repeated Father Newport's request that
Powhatan would come to Jamestown to receive the presents and join in
an expedition against his enemies, the Monacans.
Powhatan's reply was worthy of his imperial highness, and has been
copied ever since in the speeches of the lords of the soil to the
pale faces: "If your king has sent me present, I also am a king, and
this is my land: eight days I will stay to receive them. Your father
is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will I
bite at such a bait; as for the Monacans, I can revenge my own
injuries."
This was the lofty potentate whom Smith, by his way of management,
could have tickled out of his senses with a glass bead, and who would
infinitely have preferred a big shining copper kettle to the
misplaced honor intended to be thrust upon him, but the offer of
which puffed him up beyond the reach of negotiation. Smith returned
with his message. Newport despatched the presents round by water a
hundred miles, and the Captains, with fifty soldiers, went over land
to Werowocomoco, where occurred the ridiculous ceremony of the
coronation, which Smith describes with much humor. "The next day,"
he says, "was appointed for the coronation. Then the presents were
brought him, his bason and ewer, bed and furniture set up, his
scarlet cloke and apparel, with much adoe put on him, being persuaded
by Namontuck they would not hurt him. But a foule trouble there was
to make him kneel to receive his Crown; he not knowing the majesty
nor wearing of a Crown, nor bending of the knee, endured so many
persuasions, examples and instructions as tyred them all. At last by
bearing hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three having
the crown in their hands put it on his head, when by the warning of a
pistoll the boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that the
king start up in a horrible feare, till he saw all was well. Then
remembering himself to congratulate their kindness he gave his old
shoes and his mantell to Captain Newport!"
The Monacan expedition the King discouraged, and refused to furnish
for it either guides or men. Besides his old shoes, the crowned
monarch charitably gave Newport a little heap of corn, only seven or
eight bushels, and with this little result the absurd expedition
returned to Jamestown.
Shortly after Captain Newport with a chosen company of one hundred
and twenty men (leaving eighty with President Smith in the fort) and
accompanied by Captain Waldo, Lieutenant Percy, Captain Winne, Mr.
West, and Mr. Scrivener, who was eager for adventure, set off for the
discovery of Monacan. The expedition, as Smith predicted, was
fruitless: the Indians deceived them and refused to trade, and the
company got back to Jamestown, half of them sick, all grumbling, and
worn out with toil, famine, and discontent.
Smith at once set the whole colony to work, some to make glass, tar,
pitch, and soap-ashes, and others he conducted five miles down the
river to learn to fell trees and make clapboards. In this company
were a couple of gallants, lately come over, Gabriel Beadle and John
Russell, proper gentlemen, but unused to hardships, whom Smith has
immortalized by his novel cure of their profanity. They took gayly
to the rough life, and entered into the attack on the forest so
pleasantly that in a week they were masters of chopping: "making it
their delight to hear the trees thunder as they fell, but the axes so
often blistered their tender fingers that many times every third blow
had a loud othe to drown the echo; for remedie of which sinne the
President devised how to have every man's othes numbered, and at
night for every othe to have a Canne of water powred downe his
sleeve, with which every offender was so washed (himself and all),
that a man would scarce hear an othe in a weake." In the clearing of
our country since, this excellent plan has fallen into desuetude, for
want of any pious Captain Smith in the logging camps.
These gentlemen, says Smith, did not spend their time in wood-logging
like hirelings, but entered into it with such spirit that thirty of
them would accomplish more than a hundred of the sort that had to be
driven to work; yet, he sagaciously adds, "twenty good workmen had
been better than them all."
Returning to the fort, Smith, as usual, found the time consumed and
no provisions got, and Newport's ship lying idle at a great charge.
With Percy he set out on an expedition for corn to the Chickahominy,
which the insolent Indians, knowing their want, would not supply.
Perceiving that it was Powhatan's policy to starve them (as if it was
the business of the Indians to support all the European vagabonds and
adventurers who came to dispossess them of their country), Smith gave
out that he came not so much for corn as to revenge his imprisonment
and the death of his men murdered by the Indians, and proceeded to
make war. This high-handed treatment made the savages sue for peace,
and furnish, although they complained of want themselves, owing to a
bad harvest, a hundred bushels of corn.
This supply contented the company, who feared nothing so much as
starving, and yet, says Smith, so envied him that they would rather
hazard starving than have him get reputation by his vigorous conduct.
There is no contemporary account of that period except this which
Smith indited. He says that Newport and Ratcliffe conspired not only
to depose him but to keep him out of the fort; since being President
they could not control his movements, but that their horns were much
too short to effect it.
At this time in the "old Taverne," as Smith calls the fort, everybody
who had money or goods made all he could by trade; soldiers, sailors,
and savages were agreed to barter, and there was more care to
maintain their damnable and private trade than to provide the things
necessary for the colony. In a few weeks the whites had bartered
away nearly all the axes, chisels, hoes, and picks, and what powder,
shot, and pikeheads they could steal, in exchange for furs, baskets,
young beasts and such like commodities. Though the supply of furs
was scanty in Virginia, one master confessed he had got in one voyage
by this private trade what he sold in England for thirty pounds.
"These are the Saint-seeming Worthies of Virginia," indignantly
exclaims the President, "that have, notwithstanding all this, meate,
drinke, and wages." But now they began to get weary of the country,
their trade being prevented. "The loss, scorn, and misery was the
poor officers, gentlemen and careless governors, who were bought and
sold." The adventurers were cheated, and all their actions
overthrown by false information and unwise directions.
Master Scrivener was sent with the barges and pinnace to
Werowocomoco, where by the aid of Namontuck he procured a little
corn, though the savages were more ready to fight than to trade. At
length Newport's ship was loaded with clapboards, pitch, tar, glass,
frankincense (?) and soapashes, and despatched to England. About two
hundred men were left in the colony. With Newport, Smith sent his
famous letter to the Treasurer and Council in England. It is so good
a specimen of Smith's ability with the pen, reveals so well his
sagacity and knowledge of what a colony needed, and exposes so
clearly the ill-management of the London promoters, and the condition
of the colony, that we copy it entire. It appears by this letter
that Smith's "Map of Virginia," and his description of the country
and its people, which were not published till 1612, were sent by this
opportunity. Captain Newport sailed for England late in the autumn
of 1608. The letter reads:
RIGHT HONORABLE, ETC.:
I received your letter wherein you write that our minds are so set
upon faction, and idle conceits in dividing the country without your
consents, and that we feed you but with ifs and ands, hopes and some
few proofes; as if we would keepe the mystery of the businesse to
ourselves: and that we must expressly follow your instructions sent
by Captain Newport: the charge of whose voyage amounts to neare two
thousand pounds, the which if we cannot defray by the ships returne
we are likely to remain as banished men. To these particulars I
humbly intreat your pardons if I offend you with my rude answer.
For our factions, unless you would have me run away and leave the
country, I cannot prevent them; because I do make many stay that
would else fly away whither. For the Idle letter sent to my Lord of
Salisbury, by the President and his confederates, for dividing the
country, &c., what it was I know not, for you saw no hand of mine to
it; nor ever dream't I of any such matter. That we feed you with
hopes, &c. Though I be no scholar, I am past a schoolboy; and I
desire but to know what either you and these here doe know, but that
I have learned to tell you by the continuall hazard of my life. I
have not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some cause
you to believe much more than is true.
Expressly to follow your directions by Captain Newport, though they
be performed, I was directly against it; but according to our
commission, I was content to be overouled by the major part of the
Councill, I feare to the hazard of us all; which now is generally
confessed when it is too late. Onely Captaine Winne and Captaine
Walclo I have sworne of the Councill, and crowned Powhattan according
to your instructions.
For the charge of the voyage of two or three thousand pounds we have
not received the value of one hundred pounds, and for the quartered
boat to be borne by the souldiers over the falls. Newport had 120 of
the best men he could chuse. If he had burnt her to ashes, one might
have carried her in a bag, but as she is, five hundred cannot to a
navigable place above the falls. And for him at that time to find in
the South Sea a mine of gold; or any of them sent by Sir Walter
Raleigh; at our consultation I told them was as likely as the rest.
But during this great discovery of thirtie miles (which might as well
have been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound of
copper at a seasonable tyme), they had the pinnace and all the boats
with them but one that remained with me to serve the fort. In their
absence I followed the new begun works of Pitch and Tarre, Glasse,
Sope-ashes, Clapboord, whereof some small quantities we have sent
you. But if you rightly consider what an infinite toyle it is in
Russia and Swethland, where the woods are proper for naught els, and
though there be the helpe both of man and beast in those ancient
commonwealths, which many an hundred years have used it, yet
thousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live,
but from hand to mouth, and though your factors there can buy as much
in a week as will fraught you a ship, or as much as you please, you
must not expect from us any such matter, which are but as many of
ignorant, miserable soules, that are scarce able to get wherewith to
live, and defend ourselves against the inconstant Salvages: finding
but here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want all things
else the Russians have. For the Coronation of Powhattan, by whose
advice you sent him such presents, I know not; but this give me leave
to tell you, I feare they will be the confusion of us all ere we
heare from you again. At your ships arrivall, the Salvages harvest
was newly gathered, and we going to buy it, our owne not being halve
sufficient for so great a number. As for the two ships loading of
corne Newport promised to provide us from Powhattan, he brought us
but fourteen bushels; and from the Monacans nothing, but the most of
the men sicke and neare famished. From your ship we had not
provision in victuals worth twenty pound, and we are more than two
hundred to live upon this, the one halfe sicke, the other little
better. For the saylers (I confesse), they daily make good cheare,
but our dyet is a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that.
Though there be fish in the Sea, fowles in the ayre, and beasts in
the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wilde, and we so weake
and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them. Captaine Newport we much
suspect to be the Author of these inventions. Now that you should
know, I have made you as great a discovery as he, for less charge
than he spendeth you every meale; I had sent you this mappe of the
Countries and Nations that inhabit them, as you may see at large.
Also two barrels of stones, and such as I take to be good. Iron ore
at the least; so divided, as by their notes you may see in what
places I found them. The souldiers say many of your officers
maintaine their families out of that you sent us, and that Newport
hath an hundred pounds a year for carrying newes. For every master
you have yet sent can find the way as well as he, so that an hundred
pounds might be spared, which is more than we have all, that helps to
pay him wages. Cap. Ratliffe is now called Sicklemore, a poore
counterfeited Imposture. I have sent you him home least the Company
should cut his throat. What he is, now every one can tell you: if he
and Archer returne againe, they are sufficient to keep us always in
factions. When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirty
carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons,
and diggers up of trees roots, well provided, then a thousand of such
as we have; for except wee be able both to lodge them, and feed them,
the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can be
made good for anything. Thus if you please to consider this account,
and the unnecessary wages to Captaine Newport, or his ships so long
lingering and staying here (for notwithstanding his boasting to leave
us victuals for 12 months, though we had 89 by this discovery lame
and sicke, and but a pinte of corne a day for a man, we were
constrained to give him three hogsheads of that to victuall him
homeward), or yet to send into Germany or Poleland for glassemen and
the rest, till we be able to sustaine ourselves, and releeve them
when they come. It were better to give five hundred pound a ton for
those grosse Commodities in Denmarke, then send for them hither, till
more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our weake and
unskilfull bodies, to satisfy this desire of present profit, we can
scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another. And I
humbly intreat you hereafter, let us have what we should receive, and
not stand to the Saylers courtesie to leave us what they please, els
you may charge us what you will, but we not you with anything. These
are the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying such a
foundation that ere this might have given much better content and
satisfaction, but as yet you must not look for any profitable
returning. So I humbly rest.
After the departure of Newport, Smith, with his accustomed
resolution, set to work to gather supplies for the winter. Corn had
to be extorted from the Indians by force. In one expedition to
Nansemond, when the Indians refused to trade, Smith fired upon them,
and then landed and burned one of their houses; whereupon they
submitted and loaded his three boats with corn. The ground was
covered with ice and snow, and the nights were bitterly cold. The
device for sleeping warm in the open air was to sweep the snow away
from the ground and build a fire; the fire was then raked off from
the heated earth and a mat spread, upon which the whites lay warm,
sheltered by a mat hung up on the windward side, until the ground got
cold, when they builded a fire on another place. Many a cold winter
night did the explorers endure this hardship, yet grew fat and lusty
under it.
About this time was solemnized the marriage of John Laydon and Anne
Burrows, the first in Virginia. Anne was the maid of Mistress
Forrest, who had just come out to grow up with the country, and John
was a laborer who came with the first colony in 1607. This was
actually the "First Family of Virginia," about which so much has been
eloquently said.
Provisions were still wanting. Mr. Scrivener and Mr. Percy returned
from an expedition with nothing. Smith proposed to surprise
Powhatan, and seize his store of corn, but he says he was hindered in
this project by Captain Winne and Mr. Scrivener (who had heretofore
been considered one of Smith's friends), whom he now suspected of
plotting his ruin in England.
Powhatan on his part sent word to Smith to visit him, to send him men
to build a house, give him a grindstone, fifty swords, some big guns,
a cock and a hen, much copper and beads, in return for which he
would load his ship with corn. Without any confidence in the crafty
savage, Smith humored him by sending several workmen, including four
Dutchmen, to build him a house. Meantime with two barges and the
pinnace and forty-six men, including Lieutenant Percy, Captain Wirt,
and Captain William Phittiplace, on the 29th of December he set out
on a journey to the Pamaunky, or York, River.
The first night was spent at "Warraskogack," the king of which
warned Smith that while Powhatan would receive him kindly he was only
seeking an opportunity to cut their throats and seize their arms.
Christmas was kept with extreme winds, rain, frost and snow among the
savages at Kecoughton, where before roaring fires they made merry
with plenty of oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowls and good bread. The
President and two others went gunning for birds, and brought down one
hundred and forty-eight fowls with three shots.
Ascending the river, on the 12th of January they reached
Werowocomoco. The river was frozen half a mile from the shore, and
when the barge could not come to land by reason of the ice and muddy
shallows, they effected a landing by wading. Powhatan at their
request sent them venison, turkeys, and bread; the next day he
feasted them, and then inquired when they were going, ignoring his
invitation to them to come. Hereupon followed a long game of fence
between Powhatan and Captain Smith, each trying to overreach the
other, and each indulging profusely in lies and pledges. Each
professed the utmost love for the other.
Smith upbraided him with neglect of his promise to supply them with
corn, and told him, in reply to his demand for weapons, that he had
no arms to spare. Powhatan asked him, if he came on a peaceful
errand, to lay aside his weapons, for he had heard that the English
came not so much for trade as to invade his people and possess his
country, and the people did not dare to bring in their corn while the
English were around.
Powhatan seemed indifferent about the building. The Dutchmen who had
come to build Powhatan a house liked the Indian plenty better than
the risk of starvation with the colony, revealed to Powhatan the
poverty of the whites, and plotted to betray them, of which plot
Smith was not certain till six months later. Powhatan discoursed
eloquently on the advantage of peace over war: "I have seen the death
of all my people thrice," he said, "and not any one living of those
three generations but myself; I know the difference of peace and war
better than any in my country. But I am now old and ere long must
die." He wanted to leave his brothers and sisters in peace. He
heard that Smith came to destroy his country. He asked him what good
it would do to destroy them that provided his food, to drive them
into the woods where they must feed on roots and acorns; "and be so
hunted by you that I can neither rest, eat nor sleep, but my tired
men must watch, and if a twig but break every one crieth, there
cometh Captain Smith!" They might live in peace, and trade, if Smith
would only lay aside his arms. Smith, in return, boasted of his
power to get provisions, and said that he had only been restrained
from violence by his love for Powhatan; that the Indians came armed
to Jamestown, and it was the habit of the whites to wear their arms.
Powhatan then contrasted the liberality of Newport, and told Smith
that while he had used him more kindly than any other chief, he had
received from him (Smith) the least kindness of any.
Believing that the palaver was only to get an opportunity to cut his
throat, Smith got the savages to break the ice in order to bring up
the barge and load it with corn, and gave orders for his soldiers to
land and surprise Powhatan; meantime, to allay his suspicions,
telling him the lie that next day he would lay aside his arms and
trust Powhatan's promises. But Powhatan was not to be caught with
such chaff. Leaving two or three women to talk with the Captain he
secretly fled away with his women, children, and luggage. When Smith
perceived this treachery he fired into the "naked devils" who were in
sight. The next day Powhatan sent to excuse his flight, and
presented him a bracelet and chain of pearl and vowed eternal
friendship.
With matchlocks lighted, Smith forced the Indians to load the boats;
but as they were aground, and could not be got off till high water,
he was compelled to spend the night on shore. Powhatan and the
treacherous Dutchmen are represented as plotting to kill Smith that
night. Provisions were to be brought him with professions of
friendship, and Smith was to be attacked while at supper. The
Indians, with all the merry sports they could devise, spent the time
till night, and then returned to Powhatan.
The plot was frustrated in the providence of God by a strange means.
"For Pocahuntas his dearest jewele and daughter in that dark night
came through the irksome woods, and told our Captaine good cheer
should be sent us by and by; but Powhatan and all the power he could
make would after come and kill us all, if they that brought it could
not kill us with our own weapons when we were at supper. Therefore
if we would live she wished us presently to be gone. Such things as
she delighted in he would have given her; but with the tears rolling
down her cheeks she said she durst not to be seen to have any; for if
Powhatan should know it, she were but dead, and so she ran away by
herself as she came."
[This instance of female devotion is exactly paralleled in
D'Albertis's "New Guinea." Abia, a pretty Biota girl of seventeen,
made her way to his solitary habitation at the peril of her life, to
inform him that the men of Rapa would shortly bring him insects and
other presents, in order to get near him without suspicion, and then
kill him. He tried to reward the brave girl by hanging a gold chain
about her neck, but she refused it, saying it would betray her. He
could only reward her with a fervent kiss, upon which she fled.
Smith omits that part of the incident.]
In less than an hour ten burly fellows arrived with great platters of
victuals, and begged Smith to put out the matches (the smoke of which
made them sick) and sit down and eat. Smith, on his guard, compelled
them to taste each dish, and then sent them back to Powhatan. All
night the whites watched, but though the savages lurked about, no
attack was made. Leaving the four Dutchmen to build Powhatan's
house, and an Englishman to shoot game for him, Smith next evening
departed for Pamaunky.
No sooner had he gone than two of the Dutchmen made their way
overland to Jamestown, and, pretending Smith had sent them, procured
arms, tools, and clothing. They induced also half a dozen sailors,
"expert thieves," to accompany them to live with Powhatan; and
altogether they stole, besides powder and shot, fifty swords, eight
pieces, eight pistols, and three hundred hatchets. Edward Boynton
and Richard Savage, who had been left with Powhatan, seeing the
treachery, endeavored to escape, but were apprehended by the Indians.
At Pamaunky there was the same sort of palaver with Opechancanough,
the king, to whom Smith the year before had expounded the mysteries
of history, geography, and astronomy. After much fencing in talk,
Smith, with fifteen companions, went up to the King's house, where
presently he found himself betrayed and surrounded by seven hundred
armed savages, seeking his life. His company being dismayed, Smith
restored their courage by a speech, and then, boldly charging the
King with intent to murder him, he challenged him to a single combat
on an island in the river, each to use his own arms, but Smith to be
as naked as the King. The King still professed friendship, and laid
a great present at the door, about which the Indians lay in ambush to
kill Smith. But this hero, according to his own account, took prompt
measures. He marched out to the King where he stood guarded by fifty
of his chiefs, seized him by his long hair in the midst of his men,
and pointing a pistol at his breast led, him trembling and near dead
with fear amongst all his people. The King gave up his arms, and the
savages, astonished that any man dare treat their king thus, threw
down their bows. Smith, still holding the King by the hair, made
them a bold address, offering peace or war. They chose peace.
In the picture of this remarkable scene in the "General Historie,"
the savage is represented as gigantic in stature, big enough to crush
the little Smith in an instant if he had but chosen. Having given
the savages the choice to load his ship with corn or to load it
himself with their dead carcasses, the Indians so thronged in with
their commodities that Smith was tired of receiving them, and leaving
his comrades to trade, he lay down to rest. When he was asleep the
Indians, armed some with clubs, and some with old English swords,
entered into the house. Smith awoke in time, seized his arms, and
others coming to his rescue, they cleared the house.
While enduring these perils, sad news was brought from Jamestown.
Mr. Scrivener, who had letters from England (writes Smith) urging him
to make himself Caesar or nothing, declined in his affection for
Smith, and began to exercise extra authority. Against the advice of
the others, he needs must make a journey to the Isle of Hogs, taking
with him in the boat Captain Waldo, Anthony Gosnoll (or Gosnold,
believed to be a relative of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold), and eight
others. The boat was overwhelmed in a storm, and sunk, no one knows
how or where. The savages were the first to discover the bodies of
the lost. News of this disaster was brought to Captain Smith (who
did not disturb the rest by making it known) by Richard Wiffin, who
encountered great dangers on the way. Lodging overnight at
Powhatan's, he saw great preparations for war, and found himself in
peril. Pocahontas hid him for a time, and by her means, and
extraordinary bribes, in three days' travel he reached Smith.
Powhatan, according to Smith, threatened death to his followers if
they did not kill Smith. At one time swarms of natives, unarmed,
came bringing great supplies of provisions; this was to put Smith off
his guard, surround him with hundreds of savages, and slay him by an
ambush. But he also laid in ambush and got the better of the crafty
foe with a superior craft. They sent him poisoned food, which made
his company sick, but was fatal to no one. Smith apologizes for
temporizing with the Indians at this time, by explaining that his
purpose was to surprise Powhatan and his store of provisions. But
when they stealthily stole up to the seat of that crafty chief, they
found that those "damned Dutchmen" had caused Powhatan to abandon his
new house at Werowocomoco, and to carry away all his corn and
provisions.
The reward of this wearisome winter campaign was two hundred weight
of deer-suet and four hundred and seventy-nine bushels of corn for
the general store. They had not to show such murdering and
destroying as the Spaniards in their "relations," nor heaps and mines
of gold and silver; the land of Virginia was barbarous and
ill-planted, and without precious jewels, but no Spanish relation
could show, with such scant means, so much country explored, so many
natives reduced to obedience, with so little bloodshed.
XII
TRIALS OF THE SETTLEMENT
Without entering at all into the consideration of the character of
the early settlers of Virginia and of Massachusetts, one contrast
forces itself upon the mind as we read the narratives of the
different plantations. In Massachusetts there was from the beginning
a steady purpose to make a permanent settlement and colony, and
nearly all those who came over worked, with more or less friction,
with this end before them. The attempt in Virginia partook more of
the character of a temporary adventure. In Massachusetts from the
beginning a commonwealth was in view. In Virginia, although the
London promoters desired a colony to be fixed that would be
profitable to themselves, and many of the adventurers, Captain Smith
among them, desired a permanent planting, a great majority of those
who went thither had only in mind the advantages of trade, the
excitement of a free and licentious life, and the adventure of
something new and startling. It was long before the movers in it
gave up the notion of discovering precious metals or a short way to
the South Sea. The troubles the primitive colony endured resulted
quite as much from its own instability of purpose, recklessness, and
insubordination as from the hostility of the Indians. The majority
spent their time in idleness, quarreling, and plotting mutiny.
The ships departed for England in December, 1608. When Smith
returned from his expedition for food in the winter of 1609, he found
that all the provision except what he had gathered was so rotted from
the rain, and eaten by rats and worms, that the hogs would scarcely
eat it. Yet this had been the diet of the soldiers, who had consumed
the victuals and accomplished nothing except to let the savages have
the most of the tools and a good part of the arms.
Taking stock of what he brought in, Smith found food enough to last
till the next harvest, and at once organized the company into bands
of ten or fifteen, and compelled them to go to work. Six hours a day
were devoted to labor, and the remainder to rest and merry exercises.
Even with this liberal allowance of pastime a great part of the
colony still sulked. Smith made them a short address, exhibiting his
power in the letters-patent, and assuring them that he would enforce
discipline and punish the idle and froward; telling them that those
that did not work should not eat, and that the labor of forty or
fifty industrious men should not be consumed to maintain a hundred
and fifty idle loiterers. He made a public table of good and bad
conduct; but even with this inducement the worst had to be driven to
work by punishment or the fear of it.
The Dutchmen with Powhatan continued to make trouble, and
confederates in the camp supplied them with powder and shot, swords
and tools. Powhatan kept the whites who were with him to instruct
the Indians in the art of war. They expected other whites to join
them, and those not coming, they sent Francis, their companion,
disguised as an Indian, to find out the cause. He came to the Glass
house in the woods a mile from Jamestown, which was the rendezvous
for all their villainy. Here they laid an ambush of forty men for
Smith, who hearing of the Dutchman, went thither to apprehend him.
The rascal had gone, and Smith, sending twenty soldiers to follow and
capture him, started alone from the Glass house to return to the
fort. And now occurred another of those personal adventures which
made Smith famous by his own narration.
On his way he encountered the King of Paspahegh, "a most strong,
stout savage," who, seeing that Smith had only his falchion,
attempted to shoot him. Smith grappled him; the savage prevented his
drawing his blade, and bore him into the river to drown him. Long
they struggled in the water, when the President got the savage by the
throat and nearly strangled him, and drawing his weapon, was about to
cut off his head, when the King begged his life so pitifully, that
Smith led him prisoner to the fort and put him in chains.
In the pictures of this achievement, the savage is represented as
about twice the size and stature of Smith; another illustration that
this heroic soul was never contented to take one of his size.
The Dutchman was captured, who, notwithstanding his excuses that he
had escaped from Powhatan and did not intend to return, but was only
walking in the woods to gather walnuts, on the testimony of Paspahegh
of his treachery, was also "laid by the heels." Smith now proposed
to Paspahegh to spare his life if he would induce Powhatan to send
back the renegade Dutchmen. The messengers for this purpose reported
that the Dutchmen, though not detained by Powhatan, would not come,
and the Indians said they could not bring them on their backs fifty
miles through the woods. Daily the King's wives, children, and
people came to visit him, and brought presents to procure peace and
his release. While this was going on, the King, though fettered,
escaped. A pursuit only resulted in a vain fight with the Indians.
Smith then made prisoners of two Indians who seemed to be hanging
around the camp, Kemps and Tussore, "the two most exact villains in
all the country," who would betray their own king and kindred for a
piece of copper, and sent them with a force of soldiers, under Percy,
against Paspahegh. The expedition burned his house, but did not
capture the fugitive. Smith then went against them himself, killed
six or seven, burned their houses, and took their boats and fishing
wires. Thereupon the savages sued for peace, and an amnesty was
established that lasted as long as Smith remained in the country.
Another incident occurred about this time which greatly raised
Smith's credit in all that country. The Chicahomanians, who always
were friendly traders, were great thieves. One of them stole a
Pistol, and two proper young fellows, brothers, known to be his
confederates, were apprehended. One of them was put in the dungeon
and the other sent to recover the pistol within twelve hours, in
default of which his brother would be hanged. The President, pitying
the wretched savage in the dungeon, sent him some victuals and
charcoal for a fire. "Ere midnight his brother returned with the
pistol, but the poor savage in the dungeon was so smothered with the
smoke he had made, and so piteously burnt, that we found him dead.
The other most lamentably bewailed his death, and broke forth in such
bitter agonies, that the President, to quiet him, told him that if
hereafter they would not steal, he would make him alive again; but he
(Smith) little thought he could be recovered." Nevertheless, by a
liberal use of aqua vitae and vinegar the Indian was brought again to
life, but "so drunk and affrighted that he seemed lunatic, the which
as much tormented and grieved the other as before to see him dead."
Upon further promise of good behavior Smith promised to bring the
Indian out of this malady also, and so laid him by a fire to sleep.
In the morning the savage had recovered his perfect senses, his
wounds were dressed, and the brothers with presents of copper were
sent away well contented. This was spread among the savages for a
miracle, that Smith could make a man alive that was dead. He
narrates a second incident which served to give the Indians a
wholesome fear of the whites: "Another ingenious savage of Powhatan
having gotten a great bag of powder and the back of an armour at
Werowocomoco, amongst a many of his companions, to show his
extraordinary skill, he did dry it on the back as he had seen the
soldiers at Jamestown. But he dried it so long, they peeping over it
to see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or two
more, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more to
meddle with gunpowder."
"These and many other such pretty incidents," says Smith, "so amazed
and affrighted Powhatan and his people that from all parts they
desired peace;" stolen articles were returned, thieves sent to
Jamestown for punishment, and the whole country became as free for
the whites as for the Indians.
And now ensued, in the spring of 1609, a prosperous period of three
months, the longest season of quiet the colony had enjoyed, but only
a respite from greater disasters. The friendship of the Indians and
the temporary subordination of the settlers we must attribute to
Smith's vigor, shrewdness, and spirit of industry. It was much
easier to manage the Indian's than the idle and vicious men that
composed the majority of the settlement.
In these three months they manufactured three or four lasts (fourteen
barrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced some
specimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort,
which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repaired
the church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected a
block-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationed
to trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians to
pass except on the President's order. Even the domestic animals
partook the industrious spirit: "of three sowes in eighteen months
increased 60 and od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought up
themselves without having any meat given them." The hogs were
transferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built and
garrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take "exercise" in
cutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot. They were
building a fort on high ground, intended for an easily defended
retreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their thriving plans.
Upon examination of the corn stored in casks, it was found
half-rotten, and the rest consumed by rats, which had bred in thousands
from the few which came over in the ships. The colony was now at its
wits end, for there was nothing to eat except the wild products of
the country. In this prospect of famine, the two Indians, Kemps and
Tussore, who had been kept fettered while showing the whites how to
plant the fields, were turned loose; but they were unwilling to
depart from such congenial company. The savages in the neighborhood
showed their love by bringing to camp, for sixteen days, each day at
least a hundred squirrels, turkeys, deer, and other wild beasts. But
without corn, the work of fortifying and building had to be
abandoned, and the settlers dispersed to provide victuals. A party
of sixty or eighty men under Ensign Laxon were sent down the river to
live on oysters; some twenty went with Lieutenant Percy to try
fishing at Point Comfort, where for six weeks not a net was cast,
owing to the sickness of Percy, who had been burnt with gunpowder;
and another party, going to the Falls with Master West, found nothing
to eat but a few acorns.
Up to this time the whole colony was fed by the labors of thirty or
forty men: there was more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and
man; it was dried, pounded, and mixed with caviare, sorrel, and other
herbs, to make bread; bread was also made of the "Tockwhogh" root,
and with the fish and these wild fruits they lived very well. But
there were one hundred and fifty of the colony who would rather
starve or eat each other than help gather food. These "distracted,
gluttonous loiterers" would have sold anything they had--tools, arms,
and their houses--for anything the savages would bring them to eat.
Hearing that there was a basket of corn at Powhatan's, fifty miles
away, they would have exchanged all their property for it. To
satisfy their factious humors, Smith succeeded in getting half of it:
"they would have sold their souls," he says, for the other half,
though not sufficient to last them a week.
The clamors became so loud that Smith punished the ringleader, one
Dyer, a crafty fellow, and his ancient maligner, and then made one of
his conciliatory addresses. Having shown them how impossible it was
to get corn, and reminded them of his own exertions, and that he had
always shared with them anything he had, he told them that he should
stand their nonsense no longer; he should force the idle to work, and
punish them if they railed; if any attempted to escape to
Newfoundland in the pinnace they would arrive at the gallows; the
sick should not starve; every man able must work, and every man who
did not gather as much in a day as he did should be put out of the
fort as a drone.
Such was the effect of this speech that of the two hundred only seven
died in this pinching time, except those who were drowned; no man
died of want. Captain Winne and Master Leigh had died before this
famine occurred. Many of the men were billeted among the savages,
who used them well, and stood in such awe of the power at the fort
that they dared not wrong the whites out of a pin. The Indians
caught Smith's humor, and some of the men who ran away to seek Kemps
and Tussore were mocked and ridiculed, and had applied to them
--Smith's law of "who cannot work must not eat;" they were almost
starved and beaten nearly to death. After amusing himself with them,
Kemps returned the fugitives, whom Smith punished until they were
content to labor at home, rather than adventure to live idly among
the savages, "of whom," says our shrewd chronicler, "there was more
hope to make better christians and good subjects than the one half of
them that counterfeited themselves both." The Indians were in such
subjection that any who were punished at the fort would beg the
President not to tell their chief, for they would be again punished
at home and sent back for another round.
We hear now of the last efforts to find traces of the lost colony of
Sir Walter Raleigh. Master Sicklemore returned from the Chawwonoke
(Chowan River) with no tidings of them; and Master Powell, and Anas
Todkill who had been conducted to the Mangoags, in the regions south
of the James, could learn nothing but that they were all dead. The
king of this country was a very proper, devout, and friendly man; he
acknowledged that our God exceeded his as much as our guns did his
bows and arrows, and asked the President to pray his God for him, for
all the gods of the Mangoags were angry.
The Dutchmen and one Bentley, another fugitive, who were with
Powhatan, continued to plot against the colony, and the President
employed a Swiss, named William Volday, to go and regain them with
promises of pardon. Volday turned out to be a hypocrite, and a
greater rascal than the others. Many of the discontented in the fort
were brought into the scheme, which was, with Powhatan's aid, to
surprise and destroy Jamestown. News of this getting about in the
fort, there was a demand that the President should cut off these
Dutchmen. Percy and Cuderington, two gentlemen, volunteered to do
it; but Smith sent instead Master Wiffin and Jeffrey Abbot, to go and
stab them or shoot them. But the Dutchmen were too shrewd to be
caught, and Powhatan sent a conciliatory message that he did not
detain the Dutchmen, nor hinder the slaying of them.
While this plot was simmering, and Smith was surrounded by treachery
inside the fort and outside, and the savages were being taught that
King James would kill Smith because he had used the Indians so
unkindly, Captain Argall and Master Thomas Sedan arrived out in a
well-furnished vessel, sent by Master Cornelius to trade and fish for
sturgeon. The wine and other good provision of the ship were so
opportune to the necessities of the colony that the President seized
them. Argall lost his voyage; his ship was revictualed and sent back
to England, but one may be sure that this event was so represented as
to increase the fostered dissatisfaction with Smith in London. For
one reason or another, most of the persons who returned had probably
carried a bad report of him. Argall brought to Jamestown from London
a report of great complaints of him for his dealings with the savages
and not returning ships freighted with the products of the country.
Misrepresented in London, and unsupported and conspired against in
Virginia, Smith felt his fall near at hand. On the face of it he was
the victim of envy and the rascality of incompetent and bad men; but
whatever his capacity for dealing with savages, it must be confessed
that he lacked something which conciliates success with one's own
people. A new commission was about to be issued, and a great supply
was in preparation under Lord De La Ware.
XIII
SMITH'S LAST DAYS IN VIRGINIA
The London company were profoundly dissatisfied with the results of
the Virginia colony. The South Sea was not discovered, no gold had
turned up, there were no valuable products from the new land, and the
promoters received no profits on their ventures. With their
expectations, it is not to be wondered at that they were still
further annoyed by the quarreling amongst the colonists themselves,
and wished to begin over again.
A new charter, dated May 23, 1609, with enlarged powers, was got from
King James. Hundreds of corporators were named, and even thousands
were included in the various London trades and guilds that were
joined in the enterprise. Among the names we find that of Captain
John Smith. But he was out of the Council, nor was he given then or
ever afterward any place or employment in Virginia, or in the
management of its affairs. The grant included all the American coast
two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of Point Comfort,
and all the territory from the coast up into the land throughout from
sea to sea, west and northwest. A leading object of the project
still being (as we have seen it was with Smith's precious crew at
Jamestown) the conversion and reduction of the natives to the true
religion, no one was permitted in the colony who had not taken the
oath of supremacy.
Under this charter the Council gave a commission to Sir Thomas West,
Lord Delaware, Captain-General of Virginia; Sir Thomas Gates,
Lieutenant-General; Sir George Somers, Admiral; Captain Newport,
Vice-Admiral; Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshal; Sir Frederick Wainman,
General of the Horse, and many other officers for life.
With so many wealthy corporators money flowed into the treasury, and
a great expedition was readily fitted out. Towards the end of May,
1609, there sailed from England nine ships and five hundred people,
under the command of Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain
Newport. Each of these commanders had a commission, and the one who
arrived first was to call in the old commission; as they could not
agree, they all sailed in one ship, the Sea Venture.
This brave expedition was involved in a contest with a hurricane; one
vessel was sunk, and the Sea Venture, with the three commanders, one
hundred and fifty men, the new commissioners, bills of lading, all
sorts of instructions, and much provision, was wrecked on the
Bermudas. With this company was William Strachey, of whom we shall
hear more hereafter. Seven vessels reached Jamestown, and brought,
among other annoyances, Smith's old enemy, Captain Ratcliffe, alias
Sicklemore, in command of a ship. Among the company were also
Captains Martin, Archer, Wood, Webbe, Moore, King, Davis, and several
gentlemen of good means, and a crowd of the riff-raff of London.
Some of these Captains whom Smith had sent home, now returned with
new pretensions, and had on the voyage prejudiced the company against
him. When the fleet was first espied, the President thought it was
Spaniards, and prepared to defend himself, the Indians promptly
coming to his assistance.
This hurricane tossed about another expedition still more famous,
that of Henry Hudson, who had sailed from England on his third voyage
toward Nova Zembla March 25th, and in July and August was beating
down the Atlantic coast. On the 18th of August he entered the Capes
of Virginia, and sailed a little way up the Bay. He knew he was at
the mouth of the James River, "where our Englishmen are," as he says.
The next day a gale from the northeast made him fear being driven
aground in the shallows, and he put to sea. The storm continued for
several days. On the 21st "a sea broke over the fore-course and
split it;" and that night something more ominous occurred: "that
night [the chronicle records] our cat ran crying from one side of the
ship to the other, looking overboard, which made us to wonder, but we
saw nothing." On the 26th they were again off the bank of Virginia,
and in the very bay and in sight of the islands they had seen on the
18th. It appeared to Hudson "a great bay with rivers," but too
shallow to explore without a small boat. After lingering till the
29th, without any suggestion of ascending the James, he sailed
northward and made the lucky stroke of river exploration which
immortalized him.
It seems strange that he did not search for the English colony, but
the adventurers of that day were independent actors, and did not care
to share with each other the glories of discovery.
The first of the scattered fleet of Gates and Somers came in on the
11th, and the rest straggled along during the three or four days
following. It was a narrow chance that Hudson missed them all, and
one may imagine that the fate of the Virginia colony and of the New
York settlement would have been different if the explorer of the
Hudson had gone up the James.
No sooner had the newcomers landed than trouble began. They would
have deposed Smith on report of the new commission, but they could
show no warrant. Smith professed himself willing to retire to
England, but, seeing the new commission did not arrive, held on to
his authority, and began to enforce it to save the whole colony from
anarchy. He depicts the situation in a paragraph: "To a thousand
mischiefs these lewd Captains led this lewd company, wherein were
many unruly gallants, packed thither by their friends to escape ill
destinies, and those would dispose and determine of the government,
sometimes to one, the next day to another; today the old commission
must rule, tomorrow the new, the next day neither; in fine, they
would rule all or ruin all; yet in charity we must endure them thus
to destroy us, or by correcting their follies, have brought the
world's censure upon us to be guilty of their blouds. Happie had we
beene had they never arrived, and we forever abandoned, as we were
left to our fortunes; for on earth for their number was never more
confusion or misery than their factions occasioned." In this company
came a boy, named Henry Spelman, whose subsequent career possesses
considerable interest.
The President proceeded with his usual vigor: he "laid by the heels"
the chief mischief-makers till he should get leisure to punish them;
sent Mr. West with one hundred and twenty good men to the Falls to
make a settlement; and despatched Martin with near as many and their
proportion of provisions to Nansemond, on the river of that name
emptying into the James, obliquely opposite Point Comfort.
Lieutenant Percy was sick and had leave to depart for England when he
chose. The President's year being about expired, in accordance with
the charter, he resigned, and Captain Martin was elected President.
But knowing his inability, he, after holding it three hours, resigned
it to Smith, and went down to Nansemond. The tribe used him kindly,
but he was so frightened with their noisy demonstration of mirth that
he surprised and captured the poor naked King with his houses, and
began fortifying his position, showing so much fear that the savages
were emboldened to attack him, kill some of his men, release their
King, and carry off a thousand bushels of corn which had been
purchased, Martin not offering to intercept them. The frightened
Captain sent to Smith for aid, who despatched to him thirty good
shot. Martin, too chicken-hearted to use them, came back with them
to Jamestown, leaving his company to their fortunes. In this
adventure the President commends the courage of one George Forrest,
who, with seventeen arrows sticking into him and one shot through
him, lived six or seven days.
Meantime Smith, going up to the Falls to look after Captain West, met
that hero on his way to Jamestown. He turned him back, and found
that he had planted his colony on an unfavorable flat, subject not
only to the overflowing of the river, but to more intolerable
inconveniences. To place him more advantageously the President sent
to Powhatan, offering to buy the place called Powhatan, promising to
defend him against the Monacans, to pay him in copper, and make a
general alliance of trade and friendship.
But "those furies," as Smith calls West and his associates, refused
to move to Powhatan or to accept these conditions. They contemned
his authority, expecting all the time the new commission, and,
regarding all the Monacans' country as full of gold, determined that
no one should interfere with them in the possession of it. Smith,
however, was not intimidated from landing and attempting to quell
their mutiny. In his "General Historie" it is written "I doe more
than wonder to think how onely with five men he either durst or would
adventure as he did (knowing how greedy they were of his bloud) to
come amongst them." He landed and ordered the arrest of the chief
disturbers, but the crowd hustled him off. He seized one of their
boats and escaped to the ship which contained the provision.
Fortunately the sailors were friendly and saved his life, and a
considerable number of the better sort, seeing the malice of
Ratcliffe and Archer, took Smith's part.
Out of the occurrences at this new settlement grew many of the
charges which were preferred against Smith. According to the
"General Historie" the company of Ratcliffe and Archer was a
disorderly rabble, constantly tormenting the Indians, stealing their
corn, robbing their gardens, beating them, and breaking into their
houses and taking them prisoners. The Indians daily complained to
the President that these "protectors" he had given them were worse
enemies than the Monacans, and desired his pardon if they defended
themselves, since he could not punish their tormentors. They even
proposed to fight for him against them. Smith says that after
spending nine days in trying to restrain them, and showing them how
they deceived themselves with "great guilded hopes of the South Sea
Mines," he abandoned them to their folly and set sail for Jamestown.
No sooner was he under way than the savages attacked the fort, slew
many of the whites who were outside, rescued their friends who were
prisoners, and thoroughly terrified the garrison. Smith's ship
happening to go aground half a league below, they sent off to him,
and were glad to submit on any terms to his mercy. He "put by the
heels" six or seven of the chief offenders, and transferred the
colony to Powhatan, where were a fort capable of defense against all
the savages in Virginia, dry houses for lodging, and two hundred
acres of ground ready to be planted. This place, so strong and
delightful in situation, they called Non-such. The savages appeared
and exchanged captives, and all became friends again.
At this moment, unfortunately, Captain West returned. All the
victuals and munitions having been put ashore, the old factious
projects were revived. The soft-hearted West was made to believe
that the rebellion had been solely on his account. Smith, seeing
them bent on their own way, took the row-boat for Jamestown. The
colony abandoned the pleasant Non-such and returned to the open air
at West's Fort. On his way down, Smith met with the accident that
suddenly terminated his career in Virginia.
While he was sleeping in his boat his powder-bag was accidentally
fired; the explosion tore the flesh from his body and thighs, nine or
ten inches square, in the most frightful manner. To quench the
tormenting fire, frying him in his clothes, he leaped into the deep
river, where, ere they could recover him, he was nearly drowned. In
this pitiable condition, without either surgeon or surgery, he was to
go nearly a hundred miles.
It is now time for the appearance upon the scene of the boy Henry
Spelman, with his brief narration, which touches this period of
Smith's life. Henry Spelman was the third son of the distinguished
antiquarian, Sir Henry Spelman, of Coughan, Norfolk, who was married
in 1581. It is reasonably conjectured that he could not have been
over twenty-one when in May, 1609, he joined the company going to
Virginia. Henry was evidently a scapegrace, whose friends were
willing to be rid of him. Such being his character, it is more than
probable that he was shipped bound as an apprentice, and of course
with the conditions of apprenticeship in like expeditions of that
period--to be sold or bound out at the end of the voyage to pay for
his passage. He remained for several years in Virginia, living most
of the time among the Indians, and a sort of indifferent go between
of the savages and the settlers. According to his own story it was
on October 20, 1609, that he was taken up the river to Powhatan by
Captain Smith, and it was in April, 1613, that he was rescued from
his easy-setting captivity on the Potomac by Captain Argall. During
his sojourn in Virginia, or more probably shortly after his return to
England, he wrote a brief and bungling narration of his experiences
in the colony, and a description of Indian life. The MS. was not
printed in his time, but mislaid or forgotten. By a strange series
of chances it turned up in our day, and was identified and prepared
for the press in 1861. Before the proof was read, the type was
accidentally broken up and the MS. again mislaid. Lost sight of for
several years, it was recovered and a small number of copies of it
were printed at London in 1872, edited by Mr. James F. Hunnewell.
Spelman's narration would be very important if we could trust it. He
appeared to have set down what he saw, and his story has a certain
simplicity that gains for it some credit. But he was a reckless boy,
unaccustomed to weigh evidence, and quite likely to write as facts
the rumors that he heard. He took very readily to the ways of Indian
life. Some years after, Spelman returned to Virginia with the title
of Captain, and in 1617 we find this reference to him in the "General
Historie": "Here, as at many other times, we are beholden to Capt.
Henry Spilman, an interpreter, a gentleman that lived long time in
this country, and sometimes a prisoner among the Salvages, and done
much good service though but badly rewarded." Smith would probably
not have left this on record had he been aware of the contents of the
MS. that Spelman had left for after-times.
Spelman begins his Relation, from which I shall quote substantially,
without following the spelling or noting all the interlineations,
with the reason for his emigration, which was, "being in displeasure
of my friends, and desirous to see other countries." After a brief
account of the voyage and the joyful arrival at Jamestown, the
Relation continues:
"Having here unloaded our goods and bestowed some senight or
fortnight in viewing the country, I was carried by Capt. Smith, our
President, to the Falls, to the little Powhatan, where, unknown to
me, he sold me to him for a town called Powhatan; and, leaving me
with him, the little Powhatan, he made known to Capt. West how he had
bought a town for them to dwell in. Whereupon Capt. West, growing
angry because he had bestowed cost to begin a town in another place,
Capt. Smith desiring that Capt. West would come and settle himself
there, but Capt. West, having bestowed cost to begin a town in
another place, misliked it, and unkindness thereupon arising between
them, Capt. Smith at that time replied little, but afterward combined
with Powhatan to kill Capt. West, which plot took but small effect,
for in the meantime Capt. Smith was apprehended and sent aboard for
England."
That this roving boy was "thrown in" as a makeweight in the trade for
the town is not impossible; but that Smith combined with Powhatan to
kill Captain West is doubtless West's perversion of the offer of the
Indians to fight on Smith's side against him.
According to Spelman's Relation, he stayed only seven or eight days
with the little Powhatan, when he got leave to go to Jamestown, being
desirous to see the English and to fetch the small articles that
belonged to him. The Indian King agreed to wait for him at that
place, but he stayed too long, and on his return the little Powhatan
had departed, and Spelman went back to Jamestown. Shortly after, the
great Powhatan sent Thomas Savage with a present of venison to
President Percy. Savage was loath to return alone, and Spelman was
appointed to go with him, which he did willingly, as victuals were
scarce in camp. He carried some copper and a hatchet, which he
presented to Powhatan, and that Emperor treated him and his comrade
very kindly, seating them at his own mess-table. After some three
weeks of this life, Powhatan sent this guileless youth down to decoy
the English into his hands, promising to freight a ship with corn if
they would visit him. Spelman took the message and brought back the
English reply, whereupon Powhatan laid the plot which resulted in the
killing of Captain Ratcliffe and thirty-eight men, only two of his
company escaping to Jamestown. Spelman gives two versions of this
incident. During the massacre Spelman says that Powhatan sent him
and Savage to a town some sixteen miles away. Smith's "General
Historie" says that on this occasion "Pocahuntas saved a boy named
Henry Spilman that lived many years afterward, by her means, among
the Patawomekes." Spelman says not a word about Pocahuntas. On the
contrary, he describes the visit of the King of the Patawomekes to
Powhatan; says that the King took a fancy to him; that he and Dutch
Samuel, fearing for their lives, escaped from Powhatan's town; were
pursued; that Samuel was killed, and that Spelman, after dodging
about in the forest, found his way to the Potomac, where he lived
with this good King Patomecke at a place called Pasptanzie for more
than a year. Here he seems to have passed his time agreeably, for
although he had occasional fights with the squaws of Patomecke, the
King was always his friend, and so much was he attached to the boy
that he would not give him up to Captain Argall without some copper
in exchange.
When Smith returned wounded to Jamestown, he was physically in no
condition to face the situation. With no medical attendance, his
death was not improbable. He had no strength to enforce discipline
nor organize expeditions for supplies; besides, he was acting under a
commission whose virtue had expired, and the mutinous spirits
rebelled against his authority. Ratcliffe, Archer, and the others
who were awaiting trial conspired against him, and Smith says he
would have been murdered in his bed if the murderer's heart had not
failed him when he went to fire his pistol at the defenseless sick
man. However, Smith was forced to yield to circumstances. No sooner
had he given out that he would depart for England than they persuaded
Mr. Percy to stay and act as President, and all eyes were turned in
expectation of favor upon the new commanders. Smith being thus
divested of authority, the most of the colony turned against him;
many preferred charges, and began to collect testimony. "The ships
were detained three weeks to get up proofs of his ill-conduct"--"time
and charges," says Smith, dryly, "that might much better have been
spent."
It must have enraged the doughty Captain, lying thus helpless, to see
his enemies triumph, the most factious of the disturbers in the
colony in charge of affairs, and become his accusers. Even at this
distance we can read the account with little patience, and should
have none at all if the account were not edited by Smith himself.
His revenge was in his good fortune in setting his own story afloat
in the current of history. The first narrative of these events,
published by Smith in his Oxford tract of 1612, was considerably
remodeled and changed in his "General Historie" of 1624. As we have
said before, he had a progressive memory, and his opponents ought to
be thankful that the pungent Captain did not live to work the story
over a third time.
It is no doubt true, however, that but for the accident to our hero,
he would have continued to rule till the arrival of Gates and Somers
with the new commissions; as he himself says, "but had that unhappy
blast not happened, he would quickly have qualified the heat of those
humors and factions, had the ships but once left them and us to our
fortunes; and have made that provision from among the salvages, as we
neither feared Spaniard, Salvage, nor famine: nor would have left
Virginia nor our lawful authority, but at as dear a price as we had
bought it, and paid for it."
He doubtless would have fought it out against all comers; and who
shall say that he does not merit the glowing eulogy on himself which
he inserts in his General History? "What shall I say but this, we
left him, that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide,
and experience his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and
indignity, more than any dangers; that upon no danger would send them
where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want
what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather
want than borrow; or starve than not pay; that loved action more than
words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose
adventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths."
A handsomer thing never was said of another man than Smith could say
of himself, but he believed it, as also did many of his comrades, we
must suppose. He suffered detraction enough, but he suffered also
abundant eulogy both in verse and prose. Among his eulogists, of
course, is not the factious Captain Ratcliffe. In the English
Colonial State papers, edited by Mr. Noel Sainsbury, is a note, dated
Jamestown, October 4, 1609, from Captain "John Radclyffe comenly
called," to the Earl of Salisbury, which contains this remark upon
Smith's departure after the arrival of the last supply: "They heard
that all the Council were dead but Capt. [John] Smith, President, who
reigned sole Governor, and is now sent home to answer some
misdemeanor."
Captain Archer also regards this matter in a different light from
that in which Smith represents it. In a letter from Jamestown,
written in August, he says:
"In as much as the President [Smith], to strengthen his authority,
accorded with the variances and gave not any due respect to many
worthy gentlemen that were in our ships, wherefore they generally,
with my consent, chose Master West, my Lord De La Ware's brother,
their Governor or President de bene esse, in the absence of Sir
Thomas Gates, or if he be miscarried by sea, then to continue till we
heard news from our counsell in England. This choice of him they
made not to disturb the old President during his term, but as his
authority expired, then to take upon him the sole government, with
such assistants of the captains or discreet persons as the colony
afforded.
"Perhaps you shall have it blamed as a mutinie by such as retaine old
malice, but Master West, Master Piercie, and all the respected
gentlemen of worth in Virginia, can and will testify otherwise upon
their oaths. For the King's patent we ratified, but refused to be
governed by the President--that is, after his time was expired and
only subjected ourselves to Master West, whom we labor to have next
President."
It is clear from this statement that the attempt was made to
supersede Smith even before his time expired, and without any
authority (since the new commissions were still with Gates and Somers
in Bermuda), for the reason that Smith did not pay proper respect to
the newly arrived "gentlemen." Smith was no doubt dictatorial and
offensive, and from his point of view he was the only man who
understood Virginia, and knew how successfully to conduct the affairs
of the colony. If this assumption were true it would be none the
less disagreeable to the new-comers.
At the time of Smith's deposition the colony was in prosperous
condition. The "General Historie" says that he left them "with
three ships, seven boats, commodities ready to trade, the harvest
newly gathered, ten weeks' provision in store, four hundred ninety
and odd persons, twenty-four pieces of ordnance, three hundred
muskets, snaphances and fire-locks, shot, powder, and match
sufficient, curats, pikes, swords, and morrios, more than men; the
Salvages, their language and habitations well known to a hundred
well-trained and expert soldiers; nets for fishing; tools of all
kinds to work; apparel to supply our wants; six mules and a horse;
five or six hundred swine; as many hens and chickens; some goats;
some sheep; what was brought or bred there remained." Jamestown was
also strongly palisaded and contained some fifty or sixty houses;
besides there were five or six other forts and plantations, "not so
sumptuous as our succerers expected, they were better than they
provided any for us."
These expectations might well be disappointed if they were founded
upon the pictures of forts and fortifications in Virginia and in the
Somers Islands, which appeared in De Bry and in the "General
Historie," where they appear as massive stone structures with all the
finish and elegance of the European military science of the day.
Notwithstanding these ample provisions for the colony, Smith had
small expectation that it would thrive without him. "They regarding
nothing," he says, "but from hand to mouth, did consume what we had,
took care for nothing but to perfect some colorable complaint against
Captain Smith."
Nor was the composition of the colony such as to beget high hopes of
it. There was but one carpenter, and three others that desired to
learn, two blacksmiths, ten sailors; those called laborers were for
the most part footmen, brought over to wait upon the adventurers, who
did not know what a day's work was--all the real laborers were the
Dutchmen and Poles and some dozen others. "For all the rest were
poor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving men, libertines, and such like,
ten times more fit to spoil a commonwealth than either begin one or
help to maintain one. For when neither the fear of God, nor the law,
nor shame, nor displeasure of their friends could rule them here,
there is small hope ever to bring one in twenty of them to be good
there." Some of them proved more industrious than was expected;
"but ten good workmen would have done more substantial work in a day
than ten of them in a week."
The disreputable character of the majority of these colonists is
abundantly proved by other contemporary testimony. In the letter of
the Governor and Council of Virginia to the London Company, dated
Jamestown, July 7, 1610, signed by Lord De La Ware, Thomas Gates,
George Percy, Ferd. Wenman, and William Strachey, and probably
composed by Strachey, after speaking of the bountiful capacity of the
country, the writer exclaims: "Only let me truly acknowledge there
are not one hundred or two of deboisht hands, dropt forth by year
after year, with penury and leysure, ill provided for before they
come, and worse governed when they are here, men of such distempered
bodies and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes,
either of goodness or punishment, can deterr from their habituall
impieties, or terrifie from a shameful death, that must be the
carpenters and workmen in this so glorious a building."
The chapter in the "General Historie" relating to Smith's last days
in Virginia was transferred from the narrative in the appendix to
Smith's "Map of Virginia," Oxford, 1612, but much changed in the
transfer. In the "General Historie" Smith says very little about the
nature of the charges against him. In the original narrative signed
by Richard Pots and edited by Smith, there are more details of the
charges. One omitted passage is this: "Now all those Smith had
either whipped or punished, or in any way disgraced, had free power
and liberty to say or sweare anything, and from a whole armful of
their examinations this was concluded."
Another omitted passage relates to the charge, to which reference is
made in the "General Historie," that Smith proposed to marry
Pocahontas:
"Some propheticall spirit calculated he had the salvages in such
subjection, he would have made himself a king by marrying Pocahuntas,
Powhatan's daughter. It is true she was the very nonpareil
of his kingdom, and at most not past thirteen or fourteen years of
age. Very oft she came to our fort with what she could get for
Capt. Smith, that ever loved and used all the country well, but her
especially he ever much respected, and she so well requited it, that
when her father intended to have surprised him, she by stealth in
the dark night came through the wild woods and told him of it.
But her marriage could in no way have entitled him by any right
to the kingdom, nor was it ever suspected he had such a thought, or
more regarded her or any of them than in honest reason and discretion
he might. If he would he might have married her, or have
done what he listed. For there were none that could have hindered
his determination."
It is fair, in passing, to remark that the above allusion to the
night visit of Pocahontas to Smith in this tract of 1612 helps to
confirm the story, which does not appear in the previous narration of
Smith's encounter with Powhatan at Werowocomoco in the same tract,
but is celebrated in the "General Historie." It is also hinted
plainly enough that Smith might have taken the girl to wife, Indian
fashion.
XIV
THE COLONY WITHOUT SMITH
It was necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginia
colony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters and
speedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion of
Smith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read in
his narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted and
spoiled and murdered all they encountered.
The day before Captain Smith sailed, Captain Davis arrived in a small
pinnace with sixteen men. These, with a company from the fort under
Captain Ratcliffe, were sent down to Point Comfort. Captain West and
Captain Martin, having lost their boats and half their men among the
savages at the Falls, returned to Jamestown. The colony now lived
upon what Smith had provided, "and now they had presidents with all
their appurtenances." President Percy was so sick he could neither go
nor stand. Provisions getting short, West and Ratcliffe went abroad
to trade, and Ratcliffe and twenty-eight of his men were slain by an
ambush of Powhatan's, as before related in the narrative of Henry
Spelman. Powhatan cut off their boats, and refused to trade, so that
Captain West set sail for England. What ensued cannot be more
vividly told than in the "General Historie":
"Now we all found the losse of Capt. Smith, yea his greatest
maligners could now curse his losse; as for corne provision and
contribution from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds,
with clubs and arrowes; as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheep, horse,
or what lived, our commanders, officers and salvages daily consumed
them, some small proportions sometimes we tasted, till all was
devoured; then swords, arms, pieces or anything was traded with the
salvages, whose cruell fingers were so oft imbrued in our blouds,
that what by their crueltie, our Governor's indiscretion, and the
losse of our ships, of five hundred within six months after Capt.
Smith's departure, there remained not past sixty men, women and
children, most miserable and poore creatures; and those were
preserved for the most part, by roots, herbes, acorns, walnuts,
berries, now and then a little fish; they that had starch in these
extremities made no small use of it, yea, even the very skinnes of
our horses. Nay, so great was our famine, that a salvage we slew and
buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so did
divers one another boyled, and stewed with roots and herbs. And one
amongst the rest did kill his wife, poudered her and had eaten part
of her before it was knowne, for which he was executed, as he well
deserved; now whether she was better roasted, boyled, or carbonaded,
I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.
This was that time, which still to this day we called the starving
time; it were too vile to say and scarce to be believed what we
endured; but the occasion was our owne, for want of providence,
industrie and government, and not the barreness and defect of the
country as is generally supposed."
This playful allusion to powdered wife, and speculation as to how she
was best cooked, is the first instance we have been able to find of
what is called "American humor," and Captain Smith has the honor of
being the first of the "American humorists" who have handled subjects
of this kind with such pleasing gayety.
It is to be noticed that this horrible story of cannibalism and
wife-eating appears in Smith's "General Historie" of 1624, without a
word of contradiction or explanation, although the company as early as
1610 had taken pains to get at the facts, and Smith must have seen
their "Declaration," which supposes the story was started by enemies
of the colony. Some reported they saw it, some that Captain Smith
said so, and some that one Beadle, the lieutenant of Captain Davis,
did relate it. In "A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie in
Virginia," published by the advice and direction of the Council of
Virginia, London, 1610, we read:
"But to clear all doubt, Sir Thomas Yates thus relateth the tragedie:
"There was one of the company who mortally hated his wife, and
therefore secretly killed her, then cut her in pieces and hid her in
divers parts of his house: when the woman was missing, the man
suspected, his house searched, and parts of her mangled body were
discovered, to excuse himself he said that his wife died, that he hid
her to satisfie his hunger, and that he fed daily upon her. Upon
this his house was again searched, when they found a good quantitie
of meale, oatmeale, beanes and pease. Hee therefore was arraigned,
confessed the murder, and was burned for his horrible villainy."
This same "True Declaration," which singularly enough does not
mention the name of Captain Smith, who was so prominent an actor in
Virginia during the period to which it relates, confirms all that
Smith said as to the character of the colonists, especially the new
supply which landed in the eight vessels with Ratcliffe and Archer.
"Every man overvalueing his own strength would be a commander; every
man underprizing another's value, denied to be commanded." They were
negligent and improvident. "Every man sharked for his present
bootie, but was altogether careless of succeeding penurie." To
idleness and faction was joined treason. About thirty "unhallowed
creatures," in the winter of 1610, some five months before the
arrival of Captain Gates, seized upon the ship Swallow, which had
been prepared to trade with the Indians, and having obtained corn
conspired together and made a league to become pirates, dreaming of
mountains of gold and happy robberies. By this desertion they
weakened the colony, which waited for their return with the
provisions, and they made implacable enemies of the Indians by their
violence. "These are that scum of men," which, after roving the seas
and failing in their piracy, joined themselves to other pirates they
found on the sea, or returned to England, bound by a mutual oath to
discredit the land, and swore they were drawn away by famine. "These
are they that roared at the tragicall historie of the man eating up
his dead wife in Virginia"--"scandalous reports of a viperous
generation."
If further evidence were wanting, we have it in "The New Life of
Virginia," published by authority of the Council, London, 1612. This
is the second part of the "Nova Britannia," published in London,
1609. Both are prefaced by an epistle to Sir Thomas Smith, one of
the Council and treasurer, signed "R. I." Neither document contains
any allusion to Captain John Smith, or the part he played in
Virginia. The "New Life of Virginia," after speaking of the tempest
which drove Sir Thomas Gates on Bermuda, and the landing of the eight
ships at Jamestown, says: "By which means the body of the plantation
was now augmented with such numbers of irregular persons that it soon
became as so many members without a head, who as they were bad and
evil affected for the most part before they went hence; so now being
landed and wanting restraint, they displayed their condition in all
kinds of looseness, those chief and wisest guides among them (whereof
there were not many) did nothing but bitterly contend who should be
first to command the rest, the common sort, as is ever seen in such
cases grew factious and disordered out of measure, in so much as the
poor colony seemed (like the Colledge of English fugitives in Rome)
as a hostile camp within itself; in which distemper that envious man
stept in, sowing plentiful tares in the hearts of all, which grew to
such speedy confusion, that in few months ambition, sloth and
idleness had devoured the fruit of former labours, planting and
sowing were clean given over, the houses decayed, the church fell to
ruin, the store was spent, the cattle consumed, our people starved,
and the Indians by wrongs and injuries made our enemies.... As for
those wicked Impes that put themselves a shipboard, not knowing
otherwise how to live in England; or those ungratious sons that daily
vexed their fathers hearts at home, and were therefore thrust upon
the voyage, which either writing thence, or being returned back to
cover their own leudnes, do fill mens ears with false reports of
their miserable and perilous life in Virginia, let the imputation of
misery be to their idleness, and the blood that was spilt upon their
own heads that caused it."
Sir Thomas Gates affirmed that after his first coming there he had
seen some of them eat their fish raw rather than go a stone's cast to
fetch wood and dress it.
The colony was in such extremity in May, 1610, that it would have
been extinct in ten days but for the arrival of Sir Thomas Gates and
Sir George Somers and Captain Newport from the Bermudas. These
gallant gentlemen, with one hundred and fifty souls, had been wrecked
on the Bermudas in the Sea Venture in the preceding July. The
terrors of the hurricane which dispersed the fleet, and this
shipwreck, were much dwelt upon by the writers of the time, and the
Bermudas became a sort of enchanted islands, or realms of the
imagination. For three nights, and three days that were as black as
the nights, the water logged Sea Venture was scarcely kept afloat by
bailing. We have a vivid picture of the stanch Somers sitting upon
the poop of the ship, where he sat three days and three nights
together, without much meat and little or no sleep, conning the ship
to keep her as upright as he could, until he happily descried land.
The ship went ashore and was wedged into the rocks so fast that it
held together till all were got ashore, and a good part of the goods
and provisions, and the tackling and iron of the ship necessary for
the building and furnishing of a new ship.
This good fortune and the subsequent prosperous life on the island
and final deliverance was due to the noble Somers, or Sommers, after
whom the Bermudas were long called "Sommers Isles," which was
gradually corrupted into "The Summer Isles." These islands of
Bermuda had ever been accounted an enchanted pile of rocks and a
desert inhabitation for devils, which the navigator and mariner
avoided as Scylla and Charybdis, or the devil himself. But this
shipwrecked company found it the most delightful country in the
world, the climate was enchanting, delicious fruits abounded, the
waters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag the
fishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosing
about the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eaten
covered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered the
island that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminish
their number. The friendly disposition of the birds seemed most to
impress the writer of the "True Declaration of Virginia." He
remembers how the ravens fed Elias in the brook Cedron; "so God
provided for our disconsolate people in the midst of the sea by
foules; but with an admirable difference; unto Elias the ravens
brought meat, unto our men the foules brought (themselves) for meate:
for when they whistled, or made any strange noyse, the foules would
come and sit on their shoulders, they would suffer themselves to be
taken and weighed by our men, who would make choice of the fairest
and fattest and let flie the leane and lightest, an accident [the
chronicler exclaims], I take it [and everybody will take it], that
cannot be paralleled by any Historie, except when God sent abundance
of Quayles to feed his Israel in the barren wilderness."
The rescued voyagers built themselves comfortable houses on the
island, and dwelt there nine months in good health and plentifully
fed. Sunday was carefully observed, with sermons by Mr. Buck, the
chaplain, an Oxford man, who was assisted in the services by Stephen
Hopkins, one of the Puritans who were in the company. A marriage was
celebrated between Thomas Powell, the cook of Sir George Somers, and
Elizabeth Persons, the servant of Mrs. Horlow. Two children were
also born, a boy who was christened Bermudas and a girl Bermuda. The
girl was the child of Mr. John Rolfe and wife, the Rolfe who was
shortly afterward to become famous by another marriage. In order
that nothing should be wanting to the ordinary course of a civilized
community, a murder was committed. In the company were two Indians,
Machumps and Namontack, whose acquaintance we have before made,
returning from England, whither they had been sent by Captain Smith.
Falling out about something, Machumps slew Namontack, and having made
a hole to bury him, because it was too short he cut off his legs and
laid them by him. This proceeding Machumps concealed till he was in
Virginia.
Somers and Gates were busy building two cedar ships, the Deliverer,
of eighty tons, and a pinnace called the Patience. When these were
completed, the whole company, except two scamps who remained behind
and had adventures enough for a three-volume novel, embarked, and on
the 16th of May sailed for Jamestown, where they arrived on the 23d
or 24th, and found the colony in the pitiable condition before
described. A few famished settlers watched their coming. The church
bell was rung in the shaky edifice, and the emaciated colonists
assembled and heard the "zealous and sorrowful prayer" of Chaplain
Buck. The commission of Sir Thomas Gates was read, and Mr. Percy
retired from the governorship.
The town was empty and unfurnished, and seemed like the ruin of some
ancient fortification rather than the habitation of living men. The
palisades were down; the ports open; the gates unhinged; the church
ruined and unfrequented; the houses empty, torn to pieces or burnt;
the people not able to step into the woods to gather fire-wood; and
the Indians killing as fast without as famine and pestilence within.
William Strachey was among the new-comers, and this is the story that
he despatched as Lord Delaware's report to England in July. On
taking stock of provisions there was found only scant rations for
sixteen days, and Gates and Somers determined to abandon the
plantation, and, taking all on board their own ships, to make their
way to Newfoundland, in the hope of falling in with English vessels.
Accordingly, on the 7th of June they got on board and dropped down
the James.
Meantime the news of the disasters to the colony, and the supposed
loss of the Sea Venture, had created a great excitement in London,
and a panic and stoppage of subscriptions in the company. Lord
Delaware, a man of the highest reputation for courage and principle,
determined to go himself, as Captain-General, to Virginia, in the
hope of saving the fortunes of the colony. With three ships and one
hundred and fifty persons, mostly artificers, he embarked on the 1st
of April, 1610, and reached the Chesapeake Bay on the 5th of June,
just in time to meet the forlorn company of Gates and Somers putting
out to sea.
They turned back and ascended to Jamestown, when landing on Sunday,
the 10th, after a sermon by Mr. Buck, the commission of Lord Delaware
was read, and Gates turned over his authority to the new Governor.
He swore in as Council, Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-General; Sir
George Somers, Admiral; Captain George Percy; Sir Ferdinando Wenman,
Marshal; Captain Christopher Newport, and William Strachey, Esq.,
Secretary and Recorder.
On the 19th of June the brave old sailor, Sir George Somers,
volunteered to return to the Bermudas in his pinnace to procure hogs
and other supplies for the colony. He was accompanied by Captain
Argall in the ship Discovery. After a rough voyage this noble old
knight reached the Bermudas. But his strength was not equal to the
memorable courage of his mind. At a place called Saint George he
died, and his men, confounded at the death of him who was the life of
them all, embalmed his body and set sail for England. Captain
Argall, after parting with his consort, without reaching the
Bermudas, and much beating about the coast, was compelled to return
to Jamestown.
Captain Gates was sent to England with despatches and to procure more
settlers and more supplies. Lord Delaware remained with the colony
less than a year; his health failing, he went in pursuit of it, in
March, 1611, to the West Indies. In June of that year Gates sailed
again, with six vessels, three hundred men, one hundred cows, besides
other cattle, and provisions of all sorts. With him went his wife,
who died on the passage, and his daughters. His expedition reached
the James in August. The colony now numbered seven hundred persons.
Gates seated himself at Hampton, a "delicate and necessary site for a
city."
Percy commanded at Jamestown, and Sir Thomas Dale went up the river
to lay the foundations of Henrico.
We have no occasion to follow further the fortunes of the Virginia
colony, except to relate the story of Pocahontas under her different
names of Amonate, Matoaka, Mrs. Rolfe, and Lady Rebecca.
XV
NEW ENGLAND ADVENTURES
Captain John Smith returned to England in the autumn of 1609, wounded
in body and loaded with accusations of misconduct, concocted by his
factious companions in Virginia. There is no record that these
charges were ever considered by the London Company. Indeed, we
cannot find that the company in those days ever took any action on
the charges made against any of its servants in Virginia. Men came
home in disgrace and appeared to receive neither vindication nor
condemnation. Some sunk into private life, and others more pushing
and brazen, like Ratcliffe, the enemy of Smith, got employment again
after a time. The affairs of the company seem to have been conducted
with little order or justice.
Whatever may have been the justice of the charges against Smith, he
had evidently forfeited the good opinion of the company as a
desirable man to employ. They might esteem his energy and profit by
his advice and experience, but they did not want his services. And
in time he came to be considered an enemy of the company.
Unfortunately for biographical purposes, Smith's life is pretty much
a blank from 1609 to 1614. When he ceases to write about himself he
passes out of sight. There are scarcely any contemporary allusions
to his existence at this time. We may assume, however, from our
knowledge of his restlessness, ambition, and love of adventure, that
he was not idle. We may assume that he besieged the company with his
plans for the proper conduct of the settlement of Virginia; that he
talked at large in all companies of his discoveries, his exploits,
which grew by the relating, and of the prospective greatness of the
new Britain beyond the Atlantic. That he wearied the Council by his
importunity and his acquaintances by his hobby, we can also surmise.
No doubt also he was considered a fanatic by those who failed to
comprehend the greatness of his schemes, and to realize, as he did,
the importance of securing the new empire to the English before it
was occupied by the Spanish and the French. His conceit, his
boasting, and his overbearing manner, which no doubt was one of the
causes why he was unable to act in harmony with the other adventurers
of that day, all told against him. He was that most uncomfortable
person, a man conscious of his own importance, and out of favor and
out of money.
Yet Smith had friends, and followers, and men who believed in him.
This is shown by the remarkable eulogies in verse from many pens,
which he prefixes to the various editions of his many works. They
seem to have been written after reading the manuscripts, and prepared
to accompany the printed volumes and tracts. They all allude to the
envy and detraction to which he was subject, and which must have
amounted to a storm of abuse and perhaps ridicule; and they all tax
the English vocabulary to extol Smith, his deeds, and his works. In
putting forward these tributes of admiration and affection, as well
as in his constant allusion to the ill requital of his services, we
see a man fighting for his reputation, and conscious of the necessity
of doing so. He is ever turning back, in whatever he writes, to
rehearse his exploits and to defend his motives.
The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare's
day; a city dirty, with ill-paved streets unlighted at night, no
sidewalks, foul gutters, wooden houses, gable ends to the street, set
thickly with small windows from which slops and refuse were at any
moment of the day or night liable to be emptied upon the heads of the
passers by; petty little shops in which were beginning to be
displayed the silks and luxuries of the continent; a city crowded and
growing rapidly, subject to pestilences and liable to sweeping
conflagrations. The Thames had no bridges, and hundreds of boats
plied between London side and Southwark, where were most of the
theatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting, the public gardens,
the residences of the hussies, and other amusements that Bankside,
the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished high or low.
At no time before or since was there such fantastical fashion in
dress, both in cut and gay colors, nor more sumptuousness in costume
or luxury in display among the upper classes, and such squalor in low
life. The press teemed with tracts and pamphlets, written in
language "as plain as a pikestaff," against the immoralities of the
theatres, those "seminaries of vice," and calling down the judgment
of God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both men
and women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, and
instructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as Ben
Jonson's "Pleasure reconciled to Virtue."
The town swarmed with idlers, and with gallants who wanted
advancement but were unwilling to adventure their ease to obtain it.
There was much lounging in apothecaries' shops to smoke tobacco,
gossip, and hear the news. We may be sure that Smith found many
auditors for his adventures and his complaints. There was a good
deal of interest in the New World, but mainly still as a place where
gold and other wealth might be got without much labor, and as a
possible short cut to the South Sea and Cathay. The vast number of
Londoners whose names appear in the second Virginia charter shows the
readiness of traders to seek profit in adventure. The stir for wider
freedom in religion and government increased with the activity of
exploration and colonization, and one reason why James finally
annulled the Virginia, charter was because he regarded the meetings
of the London Company as opportunities of sedition.
Smith is altogether silent about his existence at this time. We do
not hear of him till 1612, when his "Map of Virginia" with his
description of the country was published at Oxford. The map had been
published before: it was sent home with at least a portion of the
description of Virginia. In an appendix appeared (as has been said)
a series of narrations of Smith's exploits, covering the rime he was
in Virginia, written by his companions, edited by his friend Dr.
Symonds, and carefully overlooked by himself.
Failing to obtain employment by the Virginia company, Smith turned
his attention to New England, but neither did the Plymouth company
avail themselves of his service. At last in 1614 he persuaded some
London merchants to fit him out for a private trading adventure to
the coast of New England. Accordingly with two ships, at the charge
of Captain Marmaduke Roydon, Captain George Langam, Mr. John Buley,
and William Skelton, merchants, he sailed from the Downs on the 3d of
March, 1614, and in the latter part of April "chanced to arrive in
New England, a part of America at the Isle of Monahiggan in 43 1/2 of
Northerly latitude." This was within the territory appropriated to
the second (the Plymouth) colony by the patent of 1606, which gave
leave of settlement between the 38th and 44th parallels.
Smith's connection with New England is very slight, and mainly that
of an author, one who labored for many years to excite interest in it
by his writings. He named several points, and made a map of such
portion of the coast as he saw, which was changed from time to time
by other observations. He had a remarkable eye for topography, as is
especially evident by his map of Virginia. This New England coast is
roughly indicated in Venazzani's Plot Of 1524, and better on
Mercator's of a few years later, and in Ortelius's "Theatrum Orbis
Terarum" of 1570; but in Smith's map we have for the first time a
fair approach to the real contour.
Of Smith's English predecessors on this coast there is no room here
to speak. Gosnold had described Elizabeth's Isles, explorations and
settlements had been made on the coast of Maine by Popham and
Weymouth, but Smith claims the credit of not only drawing the first
fair map of the coast, but of giving the name "New England" to what
had passed under the general names of Virginia, Canada, Norumbaga,
etc.
Smith published his description of New England June 18, 1616, and it
is in that we must follow his career. It is dedicated to the "high,
hopeful Charles, Prince of Great Britain," and is prefaced by an
address to the King's Council for all the plantations, and another to
all the adventurers into New England. The addresses, as usual, call
attention to his own merits. "Little honey [he writes] hath that
hive, where there are more drones than bees; and miserable is that
land where more are idle than are well employed. If the endeavors of
these vermin be acceptable, I hope mine may be excusable: though I
confess it were more proper for me to be doing what I say than
writing what I know. Had I returned rich I could not have erred; now
having only such food as came to my net, I must be taxed. But, I
would my taxers were as ready to adventure their purses as I, purse,
life, and all I have; or as diligent to permit the charge, as I know
they are vigilant to reap the fruits of my labors." The value of the
fisheries he had demonstrated by his catch; and he says, looking, as
usual, to large results, "but because I speak so much of fishing, if
any mistake me for such a devote fisher, as I dream of nought else,
they mistake me. I know a ring of gold from a grain of barley as well
as a goldsmith; and nothing is there to be had which fishing doth
hinder, but further us to obtain."
John Smith first appears on the New England coast as a whale fisher.
The only reference to his being in America in Josselyn's
"Chronological Observations of America" is under the wrong year,
1608: "Capt. John Smith fished now for whales at Monhiggen." He
says: "Our plot there was to take whales, and made tryall of a Myne
of gold and copper;" these failing they were to get fish and furs.
Of gold there had been little expectation, and (he goes on) "we found
this whale fishing a costly conclusion; we saw many, and spent much
time in chasing them; but could not kill any; they being a kind of
Jubartes, and not the whale that yeeldes finnes and oyle as we
expected." They then turned their attention to smaller fish, but
owing to their late arrival and "long lingering about the whale"
--chasing a whale that they could not kill because it was not the right
kind--the best season for fishing was passed. Nevertheless, they
secured some 40,000 cod--the figure is naturally raised to 60,000
when Smith retells the story fifteen years afterwards.
But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with not
examining the strange coast upon which he found himself. Leaving his
sailors to catch cod, he took eight or nine men in a small boat, and
cruised along the coast, trading wherever he could for furs, of which
he obtained above a thousand beaver skins; but his chance to trade
was limited by the French settlements in the east, by the presence of
one of Popham's ships opposite Monhegan, on the main, and by a couple
of French vessels to the westward. Having examined the coast from
Penobscot to Cape Cod, and gathered a profitable harvest from the
sea, Smith returned in his vessel, reaching the Downs within six
months after his departure. This was his whole experience in New
England, which ever afterwards he regarded as particularly his
discovery, and spoke of as one of his children, Virginia being the
other.
With the other vessel Smith had trouble. He accuses its master,
Thomas Hunt, of attempting to rob him of his plots and observations,
and to leave him "alone on a desolate isle, to the fury of famine,
And all other extremities." After Smith's departure the rascally
Hunt decoyed twenty-seven unsuspecting savages on board his ship and
carried them off to Spain, where he sold them as slaves. Hunt sold
his furs at a great profit. Smith's cargo also paid well: in his
letter to Lord Bacon in 1618 he says that with forty-five men he had
cleared L 1,500 in less than three months on a cargo of dried fish
and beaver skins--a pound at that date had five times the purchasing
power of a pound now.
The explorer first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight of
which in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of the
American Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was the
victor, but directly after, with her prize, fell into the hands of an
English seventy-four.
He made certainly a most remarkable voyage in his open boat. Between
Penobscot and Cape Cod (which he called Cape James) he says he saw
forty several habitations, and sounded about twenty-five excellent
harbors. Although Smith accepted the geographical notion of his
time, and thought that Florida adjoined India, he declared that
Virginia was not an island, but part of a great continent, and he
comprehended something of the vastness of the country he was coasting
along, "dominions which stretch themselves into the main, God doth
know how many thousand miles, of which one could no more guess the
extent and products than a stranger sailing betwixt England and
France could tell what was in Spain, Italy, Germany, Bohemia,
Hungary, and the rest." And he had the prophetic vision, which he
more than once refers to, of one of the greatest empires of the world
that would one day arise here. Contrary to the opinion that
prevailed then and for years after, he declared also that New England
was not an island.
Smith describes with considerable particularity the coast, giving the
names of the Indian tribes, and cataloguing the native productions,
vegetable and animal. He bestows his favorite names liberally upon
points and islands--few of which were accepted. Cape Ann he called
from his charming Turkish benefactor, "Cape Tragabigzanda"; the three
islands in front of it, the "Three Turks' Heads"; and the Isles of
Shoals he simply describes: "Smyth's Isles are a heape together, none
neare them, against Acconimticus." Cape Cod, which appears upon all
the maps before Smith's visit as "Sandy" cape, he says "is only a
headland of high hills of sand, overgrown with shrubbie pines, hurts
[whorts, whortleberries] and such trash; but an excellent harbor for
all weathers. This Cape is made by the maine Sea on the one side,
and a great bay on the other in the form of a sickle."
A large portion of this treatise on New England is devoted to an
argument to induce the English to found a permanent colony there, of
which Smith shows that he would be the proper leader. The main
staple for the present would be fish, and he shows how Holland has
become powerful by her fisheries and the training of hardy sailors.
The fishery would support a colony until it had obtained a good
foothold, and control of these fisheries would bring more profit to
England than any other occupation. There are other reasons than gain
that should induce in England the large ambition of founding a great
state, reasons of religion and humanity, erecting towns, peopling
countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching
virtue, finding employment for the idle, and giving to the mother
country a kingdom to attend her. But he does not expect the English
to indulge in such noble ambitions unless he can show a profit in
them.
"I have not [he says] been so ill bred but I have tasted of plenty
and pleasure, as well as want and misery; nor doth a necessity yet,
nor occasion of discontent, force me to these endeavors; nor am I
ignorant that small thank I shall have for my pains; or that many
would have the world imagine them to be of great judgment, that can
but blemish these my designs, by their witty objections and
detractions; yet (I hope) my reasons and my deeds will so prevail
with some, that I shall not want employment in these affairs to make
the most blind see his own senselessness and incredulity; hoping that
gain will make them affect that which religion, charity and the
common good cannot.... For I am not so simple to think that ever any
other motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonwealth; or
draw company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New
England to effect any purpose."
But lest the toils of the new settlement should affright his readers,
our author draws an idyllic picture of the simple pleasures which
nature and liberty afford here freely, but which cost so dearly in
England. Those who seek vain pleasure in England take more pains to
enjoy it than they would spend in New England to gain wealth, and yet
have not half such sweet content. What pleasure can be more, he
exclaims, when men are tired of planting vines and fruits and
ordering gardens, orchards and building to their mind, than "to
recreate themselves before their owne doore, in their owne boates
upon the Sea, where man, woman and child, with a small hooke and
line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish at their
pleasures? And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six
pence, and twelve pence as fast as you can hale and veere a line?...
And what sport doth yield more pleasing content, and less hurt or
charge than angling with a hooke, and crossing the sweet ayre from
Isle to Isle, over the silent streams of a calme Sea? wherein the
most curious may finde pleasure, profit and content."
Smith made a most attractive picture of the fertility of the soil and
the fruitfulness of the country. Nothing was too trivial to be
mentioned. "There are certain red berries called Alkermes which is
worth ten shillings a pound, but of these hath been sold for thirty
or forty shillings the pound, may yearly be gathered a good
quantity." John Josselyn, who was much of the time in New England
from 1638 to 1671 and saw more marvels there than anybody else ever
imagined, says, "I have sought for this berry he speaks of, as a man
should for a needle in a bottle of hay, but could never light upon
it; unless that kind of Solomon's seal called by the English
treacle-berry should be it."
Towards the last of August, 1614, Smith was back at Plymouth. He had
now a project of a colony which he imparted to his friend Sir
Ferdinand Gorges. It is difficult from Smith's various accounts to
say exactly what happened to him next. It would appear that he
declined to go with an expedition of four ship which the Virginia
company despatched in 1615, and incurred their ill-will by refusing,
but he considered himself attached to the western or Plymouth
company. Still he experienced many delays from them: they promised
four ships to be ready at Plymouth; on his arrival "he found no such
matter," and at last he embarked in a private expedition, to found a
colony at the expense of Gorges, Dr. Sutliffe, Bishop o Exeter, and a
few gentlemen in London. In January 1615, he sailed from Plymouth
with a ship Of 20 tons, and another of 50. His intention was, after
the fishing was over, to remain in New England with only fifteen men
and begin a colony.
These hopes were frustrated. When only one hundred and twenty
leagues out all the masts of his vessels were carried away in a
storm, and it was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keep
his craft afloat and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th of
June he made another start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men.
But ill-luck still attended him. He had a queer adventure with
pirates. Lest the envious world should not believe his own story,
Smith had Baker, his steward, and several of his crew examined before
a magistrate at Plymouth, December 8, 1615, who support his story by
their testimony up to a certain point.
It appears that he was chased two days by one Fry, an English pirate,
in a greatly superior vessel, heavily armed and manned. By reason of
the foul weather the pirate could not board Smith, and his master,
mate, and pilot, Chambers, Minter, and Digby, importuned him to
surrender, and that he should send a boat to the pirate, as Fry had
no boat. This singular proposal Smith accepted on condition Fry
would not take anything that would cripple his voyage, or send more
men aboard (Smith furnishing the boat) than he allowed. Baker
confessed that the quartermaster and Chambers received gold of the
pirates, for what purpose it does not appear. They came on board,
but Smith would not come out of his cabin to entertain them,
"although a great many of them had been his sailors, and for his love
would have wafted us to the Isle of Flowers."
Having got rid of the pirate Fry by this singular manner of receiving
gold from him, Smith's vessel was next chased by two French pirates
at Fayal. Chambers, Minter, and Digby again desired Smith to yield,
but he threatened to blow up his ship if they did not stand to the
defense; and so they got clear of the French pirates. But more were
to come.
At "Flowers" they were chased by four French men-of-war. Again
Chambers, Minter, and Digby importuned Smith to yield, and upon the
consideration that he could speak French, and that they were
Protestants of Rochelle and had the King's commission to take
Spaniards, Portuguese, and pirates, Smith, with some of his company,
went on board one of the French ships. The next day the French
plundered Smith's vessel and distributed his crew among their ships,
and for a week employed his boat in chasing all the ships that came
in sight. At the end of this bout they surrendered her again to her
crew, with victuals but no weapons. Smith exhorted his officers to
proceed on their voyage for fish, either to New England or
Newfoundland. This the officers declined to do at first, but the
soldiers on board compelled them, and thereupon Captain Smith busied
himself in collecting from the French fleet and sending on board his
bark various commodities that belonged to her--powder, match, books,
instruments, his sword and dagger, bedding, aquavite, his commission,
apparel, and many other things. These articles Chambers and the
others divided among themselves, leaving Smith, who was still on
board the Frenchman, only his waistcoat and breeches. The next day,
the weather being foul, they ran so near the Frenchman as to endanger
their yards, and Chambers called to Captain Smith to come aboard or
he would leave him. Smith ordered him to send a boat; Chambers
replied that his boat was split, which was a lie, and told him to
come off in the Frenchman's boat. Smith said he could not command
that, and so they parted. The English bark returned to Plymouth, and
Smith was left on board the French man-of-war.
Smith himself says that Chambers had persuaded the French admiral
that if Smith was let to go on his boat he would revenge himself on
the French fisheries on the Banks.
For over two months, according to his narration, Smith was kept on
board the Frenchman, cruising about for prizes, "to manage their
fight against the Spaniards, and be in a prison when they took any
English." One of their prizes was a sugar caraval from Brazil;
another was a West Indian worth two hundred thousand crowns, which
had on board fourteen coffers of wedges of silver, eight thousand
royals of eight, and six coffers of the King of Spain's treasure,
besides the pillage and rich coffers of many rich passengers. The
French captain, breaking his promise to put Smith ashore at Fayal, at
length sent him towards France on the sugar caravel. When near the
coast, in a night of terrible storm, Smith seized a boat and escaped.
It was a tempest that wrecked all the vessels on the coast, and for
twelve hours Smith was drifting about in his open boat, in momentary
expectation of sinking, until he was cast upon the oozy isle of
"Charowne," where the fowlers picked him up half dead with water,
cold, and hunger, and he got to Rochelle, where he made complaint to
the Judge of Admiralty. Here he learned that the rich prize had been
wrecked in the storm and the captain and half the crew drowned. But
from the wreck of this great prize thirty-six thousand crowns' worth
of jewels came ashore. For his share in this Smith put in his claim
with the English ambassador at Bordeaux. The Captain was hospitably
treated by the Frenchmen. He met there his old friend Master
Crampton, and he says: "I was more beholden to the Frenchmen that
escaped drowning in the man-of-war, Madam Chanoyes of Rotchell, and
the lawyers of Burdeaux, than all the rest of my countrymen I met in
France." While he was waiting there to get justice, he saw the
"arrival of the King's great marriage brought from Spain." This is
all his reference to the arrival of Anne of Austria, eldest daughter
of Philip III., who had been betrothed to Louis XIII. in 1612, one of
the double Spanish marriages which made such a commotion in France.
Leaving his business in France unsettled (forever), Smith returned to
Plymouth, to find his reputation covered with infamy and his clothes,
books, and arms divided among the mutineers of his boat. The
chiefest of these he "laid by the heels," as usual, and the others
confessed and told the singular tale we have outlined. It needs no
comment, except that Smith had a facility for unlucky adventures
unequaled among the uneasy spirits of his age. Yet he was as buoyant
as a cork, and emerged from every disaster with more enthusiasm for
himself and for new ventures. Among the many glowing tributes to
himself in verse that Smith prints with this description is one
signed by a soldier, Edw. Robinson, which begins:
"Oft thou hast led, when I brought up the Rere,
In bloody wars where thousands have been slaine."
This common soldier, who cannot help breaking out in poetry when he
thinks of Smith, is made to say that Smith was his captain "in the
fierce wars of Transylvania," and he apostrophizes him:
"Thou that to passe the worlds foure parts dost deeme
No more, than ewere to goe to bed or drinke,
And all thou yet hast done thou dost esteeme
As nothing.
"For mee: I not commend but much admire
Thy England yet unknown to passers by-her,
For it will praise itselfe in spight of me:
Thou, it, it, thou, to all posteritie."
XVI
NEW ENGLAND'S TRIALS
Smith was not cast down by his reverses. No sooner had he laid his
latest betrayers by the heels than he set himself resolutely to
obtain money and means for establishing a colony in New England, and
to this project and the cultivation in England of interest in New
England he devoted the rest of his life.
His Map and Description of New England was published in 1616, and he
became a colporteur of this, beseeching everywhere a hearing for his
noble scheme. It might have been in 1617, while Pocahontas was about
to sail for Virginia, or perhaps after her death, that he was again
in Plymouth, provided with three good ships, but windbound for three
months, so that the season being past, his design was frustrated, and
his vessels, without him, made a fishing expedition to Newfoundland.
It must have been in the summer of this year that he was at Plymouth
with divers of his personal friends, and only a hundred pounds among
them all. He had acquainted the nobility with his projects, and was
afraid to see the Prince Royal before he had accomplished anything,
"but their great promises were nothing but air to prepare the voyage
against the next year." He spent that summer in the west of England,
visiting "Bristol, Exeter, Bastable? Bodman, Perin, Foy, Milborow,
Saltash, Dartmouth, Absom, Pattnesse, and the most of the gentry in
Cornwall and Devonshire, giving them books and maps," and inciting
them to help his enterprise.
So well did he succeed, he says, that they promised him twenty sail
of ships to go with him the next year, and to pay him for his pains
and former losses. The western commissioners, in behalf of the
company, contracted with him, under indented articles, "to be admiral
of that country during my life, and in the renewing of the
letters-patent so to be nominated"; half the profits of the enterprise
to be theirs, and half to go to Smith and his companions.
Nothing seems to have come out of this promising induction except the
title of "Admiral of New England," which Smith straightway assumed
and wore all his life, styling himself on the title-page of
everything he printed, "Sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of
New England." As the generous Captain had before this time assumed
this title, the failure of the contract could not much annoy him. He
had about as good right to take the sounding name of Admiral as
merchants of the west of England had to propose to give it to him.
The years wore away, and Smith was beseeching aid, republishing his
works, which grew into new forms with each issue, and no doubt making
himself a bore wherever he was known. The first edition of "New
England's Trials"--by which he meant the various trials and attempts
to settle New England was published in 1620. It was to some extent a
repetition of his "Description" of 1616. In it he made no reference
to Pocahontas. But in the edition of 1622, which is dedicated to
Charles, Prince of Wales, and considerably enlarged, he drops into
this remark about his experience at Jamestown: "It Is true in our
greatest extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by the
folly of them that fled tooke me prisoner; yet God made Pocahontas
the king's daughter the meanes to deliver me: and thereby taught me
to know their treacheries to preserve the rest. [This is evidently
an allusion to the warning Pocahontas gave him at Werowocomoco.] It
was also my chance in single combat to take the king of Paspahegh
prisoner, and by keeping him, forced his subjects to work in chains
till I made all the country pay contribution having little else
whereon to live."
This was written after he had heard of the horrible massacre of 1622
at Jamestown, and he cannot resist the temptation to draw a contrast
between the present and his own management. He explains that the
Indians did not kill the English because they were Christians, but to
get their weapons and commodities. How different it was when he was
in Virginia. "I kept that country with but 38, and had not to eat
but what we had from the savages. When I had ten men able to go
abroad, our commonwealth was very strong: with such a number I ranged
that unknown country 14 weeks: I had but 18 to subdue them all."
This is better than Sir John Falstaff. But he goes on: "When I first
went to those desperate designes it cost me many a forgotten pound to
hire men to go, and procrastination caused more run away than went."
"Twise in that time I was President." [It will be remembered that
about the close of his first year he gave up the command, for form's
sake, to Capt. Martin, for three hours, and then took it again.] "To
range this country of New England in like manner, I had but eight, as
is said, and amongst their bruite conditions I met many of their
silly encounters, and without any hurt, God be thanked." The valiant
Captain had come by this time to regard himself as the inventor and
discoverer of Virginia and New England, which were explored and
settled at the cost of his private pocket, and which he is not
ashamed to say cannot fare well in his absence. Smith, with all his
good opinion of himself, could not have imagined how delicious his
character would be to readers in after-times. As he goes on he warms
up: "Thus you may see plainly the yearly success from New England by
Virginia, which hath been so costly to this kingdom and so dear to
me.
"By that acquaintance I have with them I may call them my children [he
spent between two and three months on the New England coast] for they
have been my wife, my hawks, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and total
my best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to my
right.... Were there not one Englishman remaining I would yet begin
again as I did at the first; not that I have any secret encouragement
for any I protest, more than lamentable experiences; for all their
discoveries I can yet hear of are but pigs of my sowe: nor more
strange to me than to hear one tell me he hath gone from Billingate
and discovered Greenwich!"
As to the charge that he was unfortunate, which we should think might
have become current from the Captain's own narratives, he tells his
maligners that if they had spent their time as he had done, they
would rather believe in God than in their own calculations, and
peradventure might have had to give as bad an account of their
actions. It is strange they should tax him before they have tried
what he tried in Asia, Europe, and America, where he never needed to
importune for a reward, nor ever could learn to beg: "These sixteen
years I have spared neither pains nor money, according to my ability,
first to procure his majesty's letters patent, and a Company here to
be the means to raise a company to go with me to Virginia [this is
the expedition of 1606 in which he was without command] as is said:
which beginning here and there cost me near five years work, and more
than 500 pounds of my own estate, besides all the dangers, miseries
and encumbrances I endured gratis, where I stayed till I left 500
better provided than ever I was: from which blessed Virgin (ere I
returned) sprung the fortunate habitation of Somer Isles." "Ere I
returned" is in Smith's best vein. The casual reader would certainly
conclude that the Somers Isles were somehow due to the providence of
John Smith, when in fact he never even heard that Gates and Smith
were shipwrecked there till he had returned to England, sent home
from Virginia. Neill says that Smith ventured L 9 in the Virginia
company! But he does not say where he got the money.
New England, he affirms, hath been nearly as chargeable to him and
his friends: he never got a shilling but it cost him a pound. And
now, when New England is prosperous and a certainty, "what think you
I undertook when nothing was known, but that there was a vast land."
These are some of the considerations by which he urges the company to
fit out an expedition for him: "thus betwixt the spur of desire and
the bridle of reason I am near ridden to death in a ring of despair;
the reins are in your hands, therefore I entreat you to ease me."
The Admiral of New England, who since he enjoyed the title had had
neither ship, nor sailor, nor rod of land, nor cubic yard of salt
water under his command, was not successful in his several "Trials."
And in the hodge-podge compilation from himself and others, which he
had put together shortly after,--the "General Historie," he
pathetically exclaims: "Now all these proofs and this relation, I now
called New England's Trials. I caused two or three thousand of them
to be printed, one thousand with a great many maps both of Virginia
and New England, I presented to thirty of the chief companies in
London at their Halls, desiring either generally or particularly
(them that would) to imbrace it and by the use of a stock of five
thousand pounds to ease them of the superfluity of most of their
companies that had but strength and health to labor; near a year I
spent to understand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toil
and torment, than to have been in New England about my business but
with bread and water, and what I could get by my labor; but in
conclusion, seeing nothing would be effected I was contented as well
with this loss of time and change as all the rest."
In his "Advertisements" he says that at his own labor, cost, and loss
he had "divulged more than seven thousand books and maps," in order
to influence the companies, merchants and gentlemen to make a
plantation, but "all availed no more than to hew Rocks with
Oister-shels."
His suggestions about colonizing were always sensible. But we can
imagine the group of merchants in Cheapside gradually dissolving as
Smith hove in sight with his maps and demonstrations.
In 1618, Smith addressed a letter directly to Lord Bacon, to which
there seems to have been no answer. The body of it was a
condensation of what he had repeatedly written about New England, and
the advantage to England of occupying the fisheries. "This nineteen
years," he writes, "I have encountered no few dangers to learn what
here I write in these few leaves:... their fruits I am certain may
bring both wealth and honor for a crown and a kingdom to his
majesty's posterity." With 5,000, pounds he will undertake to
establish a colony, and he asks of his Majesty a pinnace to lodge his
men and defend the coast for a few months, until the colony gets
settled. Notwithstanding his disappointments and losses, he is still
patriotic, and offers his experience to his country: "Should I
present it to the Biskayners, French and Hollanders, they have made
me large offers. But nature doth bind me thus to beg at home, whom
strangers have pleased to create a commander abroad.... Though I can
promise no mines of gold, the Hollanders are an example of my
project, whose endeavors by fishing cannot be suppressed by all the
King of Spain's golden powers. Worth is more than wealth, and
industrious subjects are more to a kingdom than gold. And this is so
certain a course to get both as I think was never propounded to any
state for so small a charge, seeing I can prove it, both by example,
reason and experience."
Smith's maxims were excellent, his notions of settling New England
were sound and sensible, and if writing could have put him in command
of New England, there would have been no room for the Puritans. He
addressed letter after letter to the companies of Virginia and
Plymouth, giving them distinctly to understand that they were losing
time by not availing themselves of his services and his project.
After the Virginia massacre, he offered to undertake to drive the
savages out of their country with a hundred soldiers and thirty
sailors. He heard that most of the company liked exceedingly well
the notion, but no reply came to his overture.
He laments the imbecility in the conduct of the new plantations. At
first, he says, it was feared the Spaniards would invade the
plantations or the English Papists dissolve them: but neither the
councils of Spain nor the Papists could have desired a better course
to ruin the plantations than have been pursued; "It seems God is
angry to see Virginia in hands so strange where nothing but murder
and indiscretion contends for the victory."
In his letters to the company and to the King's commissions for the
reformation of Virginia, Smith invariably reproduces his own
exploits, until we can imagine every person in London, who could
read, was sick of the story. He reminds them of his unrequited
services: "in neither of those two countries have I one foot of land,
nor the very house I builded, nor the ground I digged with my own
hands, nor ever any content or satisfaction at all, and though I see
ordinarily those two countries shared before me by them that neither
have them nor knows them, but by my descriptions.... For the books
and maps I have made, I will thank him that will show me so much for
so little recompense, and bear with their errors till I have done
better. For the materials in them I cannot deny, but am ready to
affirm them both there and here, upon such ground as I have
propounded, which is to have but fifteen hundred men to subdue again
the Salvages, fortify the country, discover that yet unknown, and
both defend and feed their colony."
There is no record that these various petitions and letters of advice
were received by the companies, but Smith prints them in his History,
and gives also seven questions propounded to him by the
commissioners, with his replies; in which he clearly states the
cause of the disasters in the colonies, and proposes wise and
statesman-like remedies. He insists upon industry and good conduct:
"to rectify a commonwealth with debauched people is impossible, and
no wise man would throw himself into such society, that intends
honestly, and knows what he understands, for there is no country to
pillage, as the Romans found; all you expect from thence must be by
labour."
Smith was no friend to tobacco, and although he favored the
production to a certain limit as a means of profit, it is interesting
to note his true prophecy that it would ultimately be a demoralizing
product. He often proposes the restriction of its cultivation, and
speaks with contempt of "our men rooting in the ground about tobacco
like swine." The colony would have been much better off "had they
not so much doated on their tobacco, on whose furnish foundation
there is small stability."
So long as he lived, Smith kept himself informed of the progress of
adventure and settlement in the New World, reading all relations and
eagerly questioning all voyagers, and transferring their accounts to
his own History, which became a confused patchwork of other men's
exploits and his own reminiscences and reflections. He always
regards the new plantations as somehow his own, and made in the light
of his advice; and their mischances are usually due to the neglect of
his counsel. He relates in this volume the story of the Pilgrims in
1620 and the years following, and of the settlement of the Somers
Isles, making himself appear as a kind of Providence over the New
World.
Out of his various and repetitious writings might be compiled quite a
hand-book of maxims and wise saws. Yet all had in steady view one
purpose--to excite interest in his favorite projects, to shame the
laggards of England out of their idleness, and to give himself
honorable employment and authority in the building up of a new
empire. "Who can desire," he exclaims, "more content that hath small
means, or but only his merit to advance his fortunes, than to tread
and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life; if
he have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind
can be more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his
posterity, got from the rude earth by God's blessing and his own
industry without prejudice to any; if he have any grace of faith or
zeal in Religion, what can be more healthful to any or more agreeable
to God than to convert those poor salvages to know Christ and
humanity, whose labours and discretion will triply requite any charge
and pain."
"Then who would live at home idly," he exhorts his countrymen, "or
think in himself any worth to live, only to eat, drink and sleep, and
so die; or by consuming that carelessly his friends got worthily, or
by using that miserably that maintained virtue honestly, or for being
descended nobly, or pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred in
penury, or to maintain a silly show of bravery, toil out thy heart,
soul and time basely; by shifts, tricks, cards and dice, or by
relating news of other men's actions, sharke here and there for a
dinner or supper, deceive thy friends by fair promises and
dissimulations, in borrowing when thou never meanest to pay, offend
the laws, surfeit with excess, burden thy country, abuse thyself,
despair in want, and then cozen thy kindred, yea, even thy own
brother, and wish thy parent's death (I will not say damnation), to
have their estates, though thou seest what honors and rewards the
world yet hath for them that will seek them and worthily deserve
them."
"I would be sorry to offend, or that any should mistake my honest
meaning: for I wish good to all, hurt to none; but rich men for the
most part are grown to that dotage through their pride in their
wealth, as though there were no accident could end it or their life."
"And what hellish care do such take to make it their own misery and
their countrie's spoil, especially when there is such need of their
employment, drawing by all manner of inventions from the Prince and
his honest subjects, even the vital spirits of their powers and
estates; as if their bags or brags were so powerful a defense, the
malicious could not assault them, when they are the only bait to
cause us not only to be assaulted, but betrayed and smothered in our
own security ere we will prevent it."
And he adds this good advice to those who maintain their children in
wantonness till they grow to be the masters: "Let this lamentable
example [the ruin of Constantinople] remember you that are rich
(seeing there are such great thieves in the world to rob you) not
grudge to lend some proportion to breed them that have little, yet
willing to learn how to defend you, for it is too late when the deed
is done."
No motive of action did Smith omit in his importunity, for "Religion
above all things should move us, especially the clergy, if we are
religious." "Honor might move the gentry, the valiant and
industrious, and the hope and assurance of wealth all, if we were
that we would seem and be accounted; or be we so far inferior to
other nations, or our spirits so far dejected from our ancient
predecessors, or our minds so upon spoil, piracy and such villainy,
as to serve the Portugall, Spaniard, Dutch, French or Turke (as to
the cost of Europe too many do), rather than our own God, our king,
our country, and ourselves; excusing our idleness and our base
complaints by want of employment, when here is such choice of all
sorts, and for all degrees, in the planting and discovering these
North parts of America."
It was all in vain so far as Smith's fortunes were concerned. The
planting and subjection of New England went on, and Smith had no part
in it except to describe it. The Brownists, the Anabaptists, the
Papists, the Puritans, the Separatists, and "such factious
Humorists," were taking possession of the land that Smith claimed to
have "discovered," and in which he had no foothold. Failing to get
employment anywhere, he petitioned the Virginia Company for a reward
out of the treasury in London or the profits in Virginia.
At one of the hot discussions in 1623 preceding the dissolution of
the Virginia Company by the revocation of their charter, Smith was
present, and said that he hoped for his time spent in Virginia he
should receive that year a good quantity of tobacco. The charter was
revoked in 1624 after many violent scenes, and King James was glad to
be rid of what he called "a seminary for a seditious parliament."
The company had made use of lotteries to raise funds, and upon their
disuse, in 1621, Smith proposed to the company to compile for its
benefit a general history. This he did, but it does not appear that
the company took any action on his proposal. At one time he had been
named, with three others, as a fit person for secretary, on the
removal of Mr. Pory, but as only three could be balloted for, his
name was left out. He was, however, commended as entirely competent.
After the dissolution of the companies, and the granting of new
letters-patent to a company of some twenty noblemen, there seems to
have been a project for dividing up the country by lot. Smith says:
"All this they divided in twenty parts, for which they cast lots, but
no lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are a many of barren rocks,
the most overgrown with shrubs, and sharp whins, you can hardly pass
them; without either grass or wood, but three or four short shrubby
old cedars."
The plan was not carried out, and Smith never became lord of even
these barren rocks, the Isles of Shoals. That he visited them when
he sailed along the coast is probable, though he never speaks of
doing so. In the Virginia waters he had left a cluster of islands
bearing his name also.
In the Captain's "True Travels," published in 1630, is a summary of
the condition of colonization in New England from Smith's voyage
thence till the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, which makes an
appropriate close to our review of this period:
"When I first went to the North part of Virginia, where the Westerly
Colony had been planted, it had dissolved itself within a year, and
there was not one Christian in all the land. I was set forth at the
sole charge of four merchants of London; the Country being then
reputed by your westerlings a most rocky, barren, desolate desart;
but the good return I brought from thence, with the maps and
relations of the Country, which I made so manifest, some of them did
believe me, and they were well embraced, both by the Londoners, and
Westerlings, for whom I had promised to undertake it, thinking to
have joyned them all together, but that might well have been a work
for Hercules. Betwixt them long there was much contention: the
Londoners indeed went bravely forward: but in three or four years I
and my friends consumed many hundred pounds amongst the Plimothians,
who only fed me but with delays, promises, and excuses, but no
performance of anything to any purpose. In the interim, many
particular ships went thither, and finding my relations true, and
that I had not taken that I brought home from the French men, as had
been reported: yet further for my pains to discredit me, and my
calling it New England, they obscured it, and shadowed it, with the
title of Canada, till at my humble suit, it pleased our most Royal
King Charles, whom God long keep, bless and preserve, then Prince of
Wales, to confirm it with my map and book, by the title of New
England; the gain thence returning did make the fame thereof so
increase that thirty, forty or fifty sail went yearly only to trade
and fish; but nothing would be done for a plantation, till about some
hundred of your Brownists of England, Amsterdam and Leyden went to
New Plimouth, whose humorous ignorances, caused them for more than a
year, to endure a wonderful deal of misery, with an infinite
patience; saying my books and maps were much better cheap to teach
them than myself: many others have used the like good husbandry that
have payed soundly in trying their self-willed conclusions; but those
in time doing well, diverse others have in small handfulls undertaken
to go there, to be several Lords and Kings of themselves, but most
vanished to nothing."
XVII
WRITINGS-LATER YEARS
If Smith had not been an author, his exploits would have occupied a
small space in the literature of his times. But by his unwearied
narrations he impressed his image in gigantic features on our plastic
continent. If he had been silent, he would have had something less
than justice; as it is, he has been permitted to greatly exaggerate
his relations to the New World. It is only by noting the comparative
silence of his contemporaries and by winnowing his own statements
that we can appreciate his true position.
For twenty years he was a voluminous writer, working off his
superfluous energy in setting forth his adventures in new forms.
Most of his writings are repetitions and recastings of the old
material, with such reflections as occur to him from time to time.
He seldom writes a book, or a tract, without beginning it or working
into it a resume of his life. The only exception to this is his "Sea
Grammar." In 1626 he published "An Accidence or the Pathway to
Experience, necessary to all Young Seamen," and in 1627 "A Sea
Grammar, with the plain Exposition of Smith's Accidence for Young
Seamen, enlarged." This is a technical work, and strictly confined
to the building, rigging, and managing of a ship. He was also
engaged at the time of his death upon a "History of the Sea," which
never saw the light. He was evidently fond of the sea, and we may
say the title of Admiral came naturally to him, since he used it in
the title-page to his "Description of New England," published in
1616, although it was not till 1617 that the commissioners at
Plymouth agreed to bestow upon him the title of "Admiral of that
country."
In 1630 he published "The True Travels, Adventures and Observations
of Captain John Smith, in Europe, Asia, Affrica and America, from
1593 to 1629. Together with a Continuation of his General History of
Virginia, Summer Isles, New England, and their proceedings since 1624
to this present 1629: as also of the new Plantations of the great
River of the Amazons, the Isles of St. Christopher, Mevis and
Barbadoes in the West Indies." In the dedication to William, Earl of
Pembroke, and Robert, Earl of Lindsay, he says it was written at the
request of Sir Robert Cotton, the learned antiquarian, and he the
more willingly satisfies this noble desire because, as he says, "they
have acted my fatal tragedies on the stage, and racked my relations
at their pleasure. To prevent, therefore, all future misprisions, I
have compiled this true discourse. Envy hath taxed me to have writ
too much, and done too little; but that such should know how little,
I esteem them, I have writ this more for the satisfaction of my
friends, and all generous and well-disposed readers: To speak only of
myself were intolerable ingratitude: because, having had many
co-partners with me, I cannot make a Monument for myself, and leave
them unburied in the fields, whose lives begot me the title of
Soldier, for as they were companions with me in my dangers, so shall
they be partakers with me in this Tombe." In the same dedication he
spoke of his "Sea Grammar" caused to be printed by his worthy friend
Sir Samuel Saltonstall.
This volume, like all others Smith published, is accompanied by a
great number of swollen panegyrics in verse, showing that the writers
had been favored with the perusal of the volume before it was
published. Valor, piety, virtue, learning, wit, are by them ascribed
to the "great Smith," who is easily the wonder and paragon of his.
age. All of them are stuffed with the affected conceits fashionable
at the time. One of the most pedantic of these was addressed to him
by Samuel Purchas when the "General Historie" was written.
The portrait of Smith which occupies a corner in the Map of Virginia
has in the oval the date, "AEta 37, A. 1616," and round the rim the
inscription: "Portraictuer of Captaine John Smith, Admirall of New
England," and under it these lines engraved:
"These are the Lines that show thy face: but those
That show thy Grace and Glory brighter bee:
Thy Faire Discoveries and Fowle-Overthrowes
Of Salvages, much Civilized by thee
Best shew thy Spirit; and to it Glory Wyn;
So, thou art Brasse without, but Golde within,
If so, in Brasse (too soft smiths Acts to beare)
I fix thy Fame to make Brasse steele outweare.
"Thine as thou art Virtues
"JOHN DAVIES, Heref."
In this engraving Smith is clad in armor, with a high starched
collar, and full beard and mustache formally cut. His right hand
rests on his hip, and his left grasps the handle of his sword. The
face is open and pleasing and full of decision.
This "true discourse" contains the wild romance with which this
volume opens, and is pieced out with recapitulations of his former
writings and exploits, compilations from others' relations, and
general comments. We have given from it the story of his early life,
because there is absolutely no other account of that part of his
career. We may assume that up to his going to Virginia he did lead a
life of reckless adventure and hardship, often in want of a decent
suit of clothes and of "regular meals." That he took some part in
the wars in Hungary is probable, notwithstanding his romancing
narrative, and he may have been captured by the Turks. But his
account of the wars there, and of the political complications, we
suspect are cribbed from the old chronicles, probably from the
Italian, while his vague descriptions of the lands and people in
Turkey and "Tartaria" are evidently taken from the narratives of
other travelers. It seems to me that the whole of his story of his
oriental captivity lacks the note of personal experience. If it were
not for the "patent" of Sigismund (which is only produced and
certified twenty years after it is dated), the whole Transylvania
legend would appear entirely apocryphal.
The "True Travels" close with a discourse upon the bad life,
qualities, and conditions of pirates. The most ancient of these was
one Collis, "who most refreshed himself upon the coast of Wales, and
Clinton and Pursser, his companions, who grew famous till Queen
Elizabeth of blessed memory hanged them at Wapping. The misery of a
Pirate (although many are as sufficient seamen as any) yet in regard
of his superfluity, you shall find it such, that any wise man would
rather live amongst wild beasts, than them; therefore let all
unadvised persons take heed how they entertain that quality; and I
could wish merchants, gentlemen, and all setters-forth of ships not
to be sparing of a competent pay, nor true payment; for neither
soldiers nor seamen can live without means; but necessity will force
them to steal, and when they are once entered into that trade they
are hardly reclaimed."
Smith complains that the play-writers had appropriated his
adventures, but does not say that his own character had been put upon
the stage. In Ben Jonson's "Staple of News," played in 1625, there
is a reference to Pocahontas in the dialogue that occurs between
Pick-lock and Pennyboy Canter:
Pick.--A tavern's unfit too for a princess.
P. Cant.--No, I have known a Princess and a great one, Come forth
of a tavern.
Pick.--Not go in Sir, though.
A Cant.--She must go in, if she came forth. The blessed Pocahontas,
as the historian calls her, And great King's daughter of Virginia,
Hath been in womb of tavern.
The last work of our author was published in 1631, the year of his
death. Its full title very well describes the contents:
"Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, or
anywhere. Or, the Pathway to Experience to erect a Plantation. With
the yearly proceedings of this country in fishing and planting since
the year 1614 to the year 1630, and their present estate. Also, how
to prevent the greatest inconvenience by their proceedings in
Virginia, and other plantations by approved examples. With the
countries armes, a description of the coast, harbours, habitations,
landmarks, latitude and longitude: with the map allowed by our Royall
King Charles."
Smith had become a trifle cynical in regard to the newsmongers of the
day, and quaintly remarks in his address to the reader: "Apelles by
the proportion of a foot could make the whole proportion of a man:
were he now living, he might go to school, for now thousands can by
opinion proportion kingdoms, cities and lordships that never durst
adventure to see them. Malignancy I expect from these, have lived 10
or 12 years in those actions, and return as wise as they went,
claiming time and experience for their tutor that can neither shift
Sun nor moon, nor say their compass, yet will tell you of more than
all the world betwixt the Exchange, Paul's and Westminster.... and
tell as well what all England is by seeing but Mitford Haven as what
Apelles was by the picture of his great toe."
This is one of Smith's most characteristic productions. Its material
is ill-arranged, and much of it is obscurely written; it runs
backward and forward along his life, refers constantly to his former
works and repeats them, complains of the want of appreciation of his
services, and makes himself the centre of all the colonizing exploits
of the age. Yet it is interspersed with strokes of humor and
observations full of good sense.
It opens with the airy remark: "The wars in Europe, Asia and Africa,
taught me how to subdue the wild savages in Virginia and New
England." He never did subdue the wild savages in New England, and
he never was in any war in Africa, nor in Asia, unless we call his
piratical cruising in the Mediterranean "wars in Asia."
As a Church of England man, Smith is not well pleased with the
occupation of New England by the Puritans, Brownists, and such
"factious humorists" as settled at New Plymouth, although he
acknowledges the wonderful patience with which, in their ignorance
and willfulness, they have endured losses and extremities; but he
hopes better things of the gentlemen who went in 1629 to supply
Endicott at Salem, and were followed the next year by Winthrop. All
these adventurers have, he says, made use of his "aged endeavors."
It seems presumptuous in them to try to get on with his maps and
descriptions and without him. They probably had never heard, except
in the title-pages of his works, that he was "Admiral of New
England."
Even as late as this time many supposed New England to be an island,
but Smith again asserts, what he had always maintained--that it was a
part of the continent. The expedition of Winthrop was scattered by a
storm, and reached Salem with the loss of threescore dead and many
sick, to find as many of the colony dead, and all disconsolate. Of
the discouraged among them who returned to England Smith says: "Some
could not endure the name of a bishop, others not the sight of a
cross or surplice, others by no means the book of common prayer.
This absolute crew, only of the Elect, holding all (but such as
themselves) reprobates and castaways, now made more haste to return
to Babel, as they termed England, than stay to enjoy the land they
called Canaan." Somewhat they must say to excuse themselves.
Therefore, "some say they could see no timbers of ten foot diameter,
some the country is all wood; others they drained all the springs and
ponds dry, yet like to famish for want of fresh water; some of the
danger of the ratell-snake." To compel all the Indians to furnish
them corn without using them cruelly they say is impossible. Yet
this "impossible," Smith says, he accomplished in Virginia, and
offers to undertake in New England, with one hundred and fifty men,
to get corn, fortify the country, and "discover them more land than
they all yet know."
This homily ends--and it is the last published sentence of the "great
Smith"--with this good advice to the New England colonists:
"Lastly, remember as faction, pride, and security produces nothing
but confusion, misery and dissolution; so the contraries well
practised will in short time make you happy, and the most admired
people of all our plantations for your time in the world.
"John Smith writ this with his owne hand."
The extent to which Smith retouched his narrations, as they grew in
his imagination, in his many reproductions of them, has been referred
to, and illustrated by previous quotations. An amusing instance of
his care and ingenuity is furnished by the interpolation of
Pocahontas into his stories after 1623. In his "General Historie" of
1624 he adopts, for the account of his career in Virginia, the
narratives in the Oxford tract of 1612, which he had supervised. We
have seen how he interpolated the wonderful story of his rescue by
the Indian child. Some of his other insertions of her name, to bring
all the narrative up to that level, are curious. The following
passages from the "Oxford Tract" contain in italics the words
inserted when they were transferred to the "General Historie":
"So revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahuntas) as
all anxious fears were abandoned."
"Part always they brought him as presents from their king, or
Pocahuntas."
In the account of the "masques" of girls to entertain Smith at
Werowocomoco we read:
"But presently Pocahuntas came, wishing him to kill her if any hurt
were intended, and the beholders, which were women and children,
satisfied the Captain there was no such matter."
In the account of Wyffin's bringing the news of Scrivener's drowning,
when Wyffin was lodged a night with Powhatan, we read:
"He did assure himself some mischief was intended. Pocahontas hid
him for a time, and sent them who pursued him the clean contrary way
to seek him; but by her means and extraordinary bribes and much
trouble in three days' travel, at length he found us in the middest
of these turmoyles."
The affecting story of the visit and warning from Pocahontas in the
night, when she appeared with "tears running down her cheeks," is not
in the first narration in the Oxford Tract, but is inserted in the
narrative in the "General Historie." Indeed, the first account would
by its terms exclude the later one. It is all contained in these few
lines:
"But our barge being left by the ebb, caused us to staie till the
midnight tide carried us safe aboord, having spent that half night
with such mirth as though we never had suspected or intended
anything, we left the Dutchmen to build, Brinton to kill foule for
Powhatan (as by his messengers he importunately desired), and left
directions with our men to give Powhatan all the content they could,
that we might enjoy his company on our return from Pamaunke."
It should be added, however, that there is an allusion to some
warning by Pocahontas in the last chapter of the "Oxford Tract." But
the full story of the night visit and the streaming tears as we have
given it seems without doubt to have been elaborated from very slight
materials. And the subsequent insertion of the name of Pocahontas
--of which we have given examples above--into old accounts that had no
allusion to her, adds new and strong presumptions to the belief that
Smith invented what is known as the Pocahontas legend.
As a mere literary criticism on Smith's writings, it would appear
that he had a habit of transferring to his own career notable
incidents and adventures of which he had read, and this is somewhat
damaging to an estimate of his originality. His wonderful system of
telegraphy by means of torches, which he says he put in practice at
the siege of Olympack, and which he describes as if it were his own
invention, he had doubtless read in Polybius, and it seemed a good
thing to introduce into his narrative.
He was (it must also be noted) the second white man whose life was
saved by an Indian princess in America, who subsequently warned her
favorite of a plot to kill him. In 1528 Pamphilo de Narvaes landed
at Tampa Bay, Florida, and made a disastrous expedition into the
interior. Among the Spaniards who were missing as a result of this
excursion was a soldier named Juan Ortiz. When De Soto marched into
the same country in 1539 he encountered this soldier, who had been
held in captivity by the Indians and had learned their language. The
story that Ortiz told was this: He was taken prisoner by the chief
Ucita, bound hand and foot, and stretched upon a scaffold to be
roasted, when, just as the flames were seizing him, a daughter of the
chief interposed in his behalf, and upon her prayers Ucita spared the
life of the prisoner. Three years afterward, when there was danger
that Ortiz would be sacrificed to appease the devil, the princess
came to him, warned him of his danger, and led him secretly and alone
in the night to the camp of a chieftain who protected him.
This narrative was in print before Smith wrote, and as he was fond of
such adventures he may have read it. The incidents are curiously
parallel. And all the comment needed upon it is that Smith seems to
have been peculiarly subject to such coincidences.
Our author's selection of a coat of arms, the distinguishing feature
of which was "three Turks' heads," showed little more originality.
It was a common device before his day: on many coats of arms of the
Middle Ages and later appear "three Saracens' heads," or "three
Moors' heads"--probably most of them had their origin in the
Crusades. Smith's patent to use this charge, which he produced from
Sigismund, was dated 1603, but the certificate appended to it by the
Garter King at Arms, certifying that it was recorded in the register
and office of the heralds, is dated 1625. Whether Smith used it
before this latter date we are not told. We do not know why he had
not as good right to assume it as anybody.
[Burke's "Encyclopedia of Heraldry" gives it as granted to Capt.
John Smith, of the Smiths of Cruffley, Co. Lancaster, in 1629, and
describes it: "Vert, a chev. gu. betw. three Turks' heads couped
ppr. turbaned or. Crest-an Ostrich or, holding in the mouth a
horseshoe or."]
XVIII
DEATH AND CHARACTER
Hardship and disappointment made our hero prematurely old, but could
not conquer his indomitable spirit. The disastrous voyage of June,
1615, when he fell into the hands of the French, is spoken of by the
Council for New England in 1622 as "the ruin of that poor gentleman,
Captain Smith, who was detained prisoner by them, and forced to
suffer many extremities before he got free of his troubles;" but he
did not know that he was ruined, and did not for a moment relax his
efforts to promote colonization and obtain a command, nor relinquish
his superintendence of the Western Continent.
His last days were evidently passed in a struggle for existence,
which was not so bitter to him as it might have been to another man,
for he was sustained by ever-elating "great expectations." That he
was pinched for means of living, there is no doubt. In 1623 he
issued a prospectus of his "General Historie," in which he said:
"These observations are all I have for the expenses of a thousand
pounds and the loss of eighteen years' time, besides all the travels,
dangers, miseries and incumbrances for my countries good, I have
endured gratis: ....this is composed in less than eighty sheets,
besides the three maps, which will stand me near in a hundred pounds,
which sum I cannot disburse: nor shall the stationers have the copy
for nothing. I therefore, humbly entreat your Honour, either to
adventure, or give me what you please towards the impression, and I
will be both accountable and thankful."
He had come before he was fifty to regard himself as an old man, and
to speak of his "aged endeavors." Where and how he lived in his
later years, and with what surroundings and under what circumstances
he died, there is no record. That he had no settled home, and was in
mean lodgings at the last, may be reasonably inferred. There is a
manuscript note on the fly-leaf of one of the original editions of
"The Map of Virginia...." (Oxford, 1612), in ancient chirography,
but which from its reference to Fuller could not have been written
until more than thirty years after Smith's death. It says: "When he
was old he lived in London poor but kept up his spirits with the
commemoration of his former actions and bravery. He was buried in
St. Sepulcher's Church, as Fuller tells us, who has given us a line
of his Ranting Epitaph."
That seems to have been the tradition of the man, buoyantly
supporting himself in the commemoration of his own achievements. To
the end his industrious and hopeful spirit sustained him, and in the
last year of his life he was toiling on another compilation, and
promised his readers a variety of actions and memorable observations
which they shall "find with admiration in my History of the Sea, if
God be pleased I live to finish it."
He died on the 21 St of June, 1631, and the same day made his last
will, to which he appended his mark, as he seems to have been too
feeble to write his name. In this he describes himself as "Captain
John Smith of the parish of St. Sepulcher's London Esquior." He
commends his soul "into the hands of Almighty God, my maker, hoping
through the merits of Christ Jesus my Redeemer to receive full
remission of all my sins and to inherit a place in the everlasting
kingdom"; his body he commits to the earth whence it came; and "of
such worldly goods whereof it hath pleased God in his mercy to make
me an unworthy receiver," he bequeathes: first, to Thomas Packer,
Esq., one of his Majesty's clerks of the Privy Seal, "all my
houses, lands, tenantements and hereditaments whatsoever, situate
lying and being in the parishes of Louthe and Great Carleton, in the
county of Lincoln together with my coat of armes"; and charges him to
pay certain legacies not exceeding the sum of eighty pounds, out of
which he reserves to himself twenty pounds to be disposed of as he
chooses in his lifetime. The sum of twenty pounds is to be disbursed
about the funeral. To his most worthy friend, Sir Samuel Saltonstall
Knight, he gives five pounds; to Morris Treadway, five pounds; to his
sister Smith, the widow of his brother, ten pounds; to his cousin
Steven Smith, and his sister, six pounds thirteen shillings and
fourpence between them; to Thomas Packer, Joane, his wife, and
Eleanor, his daughter, ten pounds among them; to "Mr. Reynolds, the
lay Mr of the Goldsmiths Hall, the sum of forty shillings"; to
Thomas, the son of said Thomas Packer, "my trunk standing in my
chamber at Sir Samuel Saltonstall's house in St. Sepulcher's parish,
together with my best suit of apparel of a tawny color viz. hose,
doublet jirkin and cloak," "also, my trunk bound with iron bars
standing in the house of Richard Hinde in Lambeth, together--with
half the books therein"; the other half of the books to Mr. John
Tredeskin and Richard Hinde. His much honored friend, Sir Samuel
Saltonstall, and Thomas Packer, were joint executors, and the will
was acknowledged in the presence "of Willmu Keble Snr civitas,
London, William Packer, Elizabeth Sewster, Marmaduke Walker, his
mark, witness."
We have no idea that Thomas Packer got rich out of the houses, lands
and tenements in the county of Lincoln. The will is that of a poor
man, and reference to his trunks standing about in the houses of his
friends, and to his chamber in the house of Sir Samuel Saltonstall,
may be taken as proof that he had no independent and permanent
abiding-place.
It is supposed that he was buried in St. Sepulcher's Church. The
negative evidence of this is his residence in the parish at the time
of his death, and the more positive, a record in Stow's "Survey of
London," 1633, which we copy in full:
This Table is on the south side of the Quire in Saint Sepulchers,
with this Inscription:
To the living Memory of his deceased Friend, Captaine John Smith, who
departed this mortall life on the 21 day of June, 1631, with his
Armes, and this Motto,
Accordamus, vincere est vivere.
Here lies one conquer'd that hath conquer'd Kings,
Subdu'd large Territories, and done things
Which to the World impossible would seeme,
But that the truth is held in more esteeme,
Shall I report His former service done
In honour of his God and Christendome:
How that he did divide from Pagans three,
Their heads and Lives, types of his chivalry:
For which great service in that Climate done,
Brave Sigismundus (King of Hungarion)
Did give him as a Coat of Armes to weare,
Those conquer'd heads got by his Sword and Speare?
Or shall I tell of his adventures since,
Done in Firginia, that large Continence:
I-low that he subdu'd Kings unto his yoke,
And made those heathen flie, as wind doth smoke:
And made their Land, being of so large a Station,
A hab;tation for our Christian Nation:
Where God is glorifi'd, their wants suppli'd,
Which else for necessaries might have di'd?
But what avails his Conquest now he lyes
Inter'd in earth a prey for Wormes & Flies?
O may his soule in sweet Mizium sleepe,
Untill the Keeper that all soules doth keepe,
Returne to judgement and that after thence,
With Angels he may have his recompence.
Captaine John Smith, sometime Governour of Firginia, and
Admirall of New England.
This remarkable epitaph is such an autobiographical record as Smith
might have written himself. That it was engraved upon a tablet and
set up in this church rests entirely upon the authority of Stow. The
present pilgrim to the old church will find no memorial that Smith
was buried there, and will encounter besides incredulity of the
tradition that he ever rested there.
The old church of St. Sepulcher's, formerly at the confluence of Snow
Hill and the Old Bailey, now lifts its head far above the pompous
viaduct which spans the valley along which the Fleet Ditch once
flowed. All the registers of burial in the church were destroyed by
the great fire of 1666, which burnt down the edifice from floor to
roof, leaving only the walls and tower standing. Mr. Charles Deane,
whose lively interest in Smith led him recently to pay a visit to St.
Sepulcher's, speaks of it as the church "under the pavement of which
the remains of our hero were buried; but he was not able to see the
stone placed over those remains, as the floor of the church at that
time was covered with a carpet.... The epitaph to his memory,
however, it is understood, cannot now be deciphered upon the
tablet,"--which he supposes to be the one in Stow.
The existing tablet is a slab of bluish-black marble, which formerly
was in the chancel. That it in no way relates to Captain Smith a
near examination of it shows. This slab has an escutcheon which
indicates three heads, which a lively imagination may conceive to be
those of Moors, on a line in the upper left corner on the husband's
side of a shield, which is divided by a perpendicular line. As Smith
had no wife, this could not have been his cognizance. Nor are these
his arms, which were three Turks' heads borne over and beneath a
chevron. The cognizance of "Moors' heads," as we have said, was not
singular in the Middle Ages, and there existed recently in this very
church another tomb which bore a Moor's head as a family badge. The
inscription itself is in a style of lettering unlike that used in the
time of James I., and the letters are believed not to belong to an
earlier period than that of the Georges. This bluish-black stone has
been recently gazed at by many pilgrims from this side of the ocean,
with something of the feeling with which the Moslems regard the Kaaba
at Mecca. This veneration is misplaced, for upon the stone are
distinctly visible these words:
"Departed this life September....
....sixty-six ....years....
....months ...."
As John Smith died in June, 1631, in his fifty-second year, this
stone is clearly not in his honor: and if his dust rests in this
church, the fire of 1666 made it probably a labor of wasted love to
look hereabouts for any monument of him.
A few years ago some American antiquarians desired to place some
monument to the "Admiral of New England" in this church, and a
memorial window, commemorating the "Baptism of Pocahontas," was
suggested. We have been told, however, that a custom of St.
Sepulcher's requires a handsome bonus to the rector for any memorial
set up in the church which the kindly incumbent had no power to set
aside (in his own case) for a foreign gift and act of international
courtesy of this sort; and the project was abandoned.
Nearly every trace of this insatiable explorer of the earth has
disappeared from it except in his own writings. The only monument to
his memory existing is a shabby little marble shaft erected on the
southerly summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. By a
kind of irony of fortune, which Smith would have grimly appreciated,
the only stone to perpetuate his fame stands upon a little heap of
rocks in the sea; upon which it is only an inference that he ever set
foot, and we can almost hear him say again, looking round upon this
roomy earth, so much of which he possessed in his mind, "No lot for
me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most
overgrowne with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly passe them:
without either grasse or wood but three or foure short shrubby old
cedars."
Nearly all of Smith's biographers and the historians of Virginia
have, with great respect, woven his romances about his career into
their narratives, imparting to their paraphrases of his story such an
elevation as his own opinion of himself seemed to demand. Of
contemporary estimate of him there is little to quote except the
panegyrics in verse he has preserved for us, and the inference from
his own writings that he was the object of calumny and detraction.
Enemies he had in plenty, but there are no records left of their
opinion of his character. The nearest biographical notice of him in
point of time is found in the "History of the Worthies of England,"
by Thomas Fuller, D.D., London, 1662.
Old Fuller's schoolmaster was Master Arthur Smith, a kinsman of John,
who told him that John was born in Lincolnshire, and it is probable
that Fuller received from his teacher some impression about the
adventurer.
Of his "strange performances" in Hungary, Fuller says: "The scene
whereof is laid at such a distance that they are cheaper credited
than confuted."
"From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America, where
towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth [it was in the
reign of James] such his perils, preservations, dangers,
deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond
truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and the
pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to the
diminution of his deeds that he alone is the herald to publish and
proclaim them."
"Surely such reports from strangers carry the greater reputation.
However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very
instrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia, whereof he was
governor, as also Admiral of New England."
"He led his old age in London, where his having a prince's mind
imprisoned in a poor man's purse, rendered him to the contempt of
such as were not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with the
remembrance and relation of what formerly he had been, and what he
had done."
Of the "ranting epitaph," quoted above, Fuller says: "The
orthography, poetry, history and divinity in this epitaph are much
alike."
Without taking Captain John Smith at his own estimate of himself, he
was a peculiar character even for the times in which he lived. He
shared with his contemporaries the restless spirit of roving and
adventure which resulted from the invention of the mariner's compass
and the discovery of the New World; but he was neither so sordid nor
so rapacious as many of them, for his boyhood reading of romances had
evidently fired him with the conceits of the past chivalric period.
This imported into his conduct something inflated and something
elevated. And, besides, with all his enormous conceit, he had a
stratum of practical good sense, a shrewd wit, and the salt of humor.
If Shakespeare had known him, as he might have done, he would have
had a character ready to his hand that would have added one of the
most amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintly
suggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff without
vices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, but
his actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to have
had none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. His
chivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in his
adventures, must have been sufficiently amusing to his associates.
There is about his virtue a certain antique flavor which must have
seemed strange to the adventurers and court hangers-on in London.
Not improbably his assumptions were offensive to the ungodly, and his
ingenuous boastings made him the object of amusement to the skeptics.
Their ridicule would naturally appear to him to arise from envy. We
read between the lines of his own eulogies of himself, that there was
a widespread skepticism about his greatness and his achievements,
which he attributed to jealousy. Perhaps his obtrusive virtues made
him enemies, and his rectitude was a standing offense to his
associates.
It is certain he got on well with scarcely anybody with whom he was
thrown in his enterprises. He was of common origin, and always
carried with him the need of assertion in an insecure position. He
appears to us always self-conscious and ill at ease with gentlemen
born. The captains of his own station resented his assumptions of
superiority, and while he did not try to win them by an affectation
of comradeship, he probably repelled those of better breeding by a
swaggering manner. No doubt his want of advancement was partly due
to want of influence, which better birth would have given him; but
the plain truth is that he had a talent for making himself
disagreeable to his associates. Unfortunately he never engaged in
any enterprise with any one on earth who was so capable of conducting
it as himself, and this fact he always made plain to his comrades.
Skill he had in managing savages, but with his equals among whites he
lacked tact, and knew not the secret of having his own way without
seeming to have it. He was insubordinate, impatient of any authority
over him, and unwilling to submit to discipline he did not himself
impose.
Yet it must be said that he was less self-seeking than those who were
with him in Virginia, making glory his aim rather than gain always;
that he had a superior conception of what a colony should be, and how
it should establish itself, and that his judgment of what was best
was nearly always vindicated by the event. He was not the founder of
the Virginia colony, its final success was not due to him, but it was
owing almost entirely to his pluck and energy that it held on and
maintained an existence during the two years and a half that he was
with it at Jamestown. And to effect this mere holding on, with the
vagabond crew that composed most of the colony, and with the
extravagant and unintelligent expectations of the London Company, was
a feat showing decided ability. He had the qualities fitting him to
be an explorer and the leader of an expedition. He does not appear
to have had the character necessary to impress his authority on a
community. He was quarrelsome, irascible, and quick to fancy that
his full value was not admitted. He shines most upon such small
expeditions as the exploration of the Chesapeake; then his energy,
self-confidence, shrewdness, inventiveness, had free play, and his
pluck and perseverance are recognized as of the true heroic
substance.
Smith, as we have seen, estimated at their full insignificance such
flummeries as the coronation of Powhatan, and the foolishness of
taxing the energies of the colony to explore the country for gold and
chase the phantom of the South Sea. In his discernment and in his
conceptions of what is now called "political economy" he was in
advance of his age. He was an advocate of "free trade" before the
term was invented. In his advice given to the New England plantation
in his "Advertisements" he says:
"Now as his Majesty has made you custome-free for seven yeares, have
a care that all your countrymen shall come to trade with you, be not
troubled with pilotage, boyage, ancorage, wharfage, custome, or any
such tricks as hath been lately used in most of our plantations,
where they would be Kings before their folly; to the discouragement
of many, and a scorne to them of understanding, for Dutch, French,
Biskin, or any will as yet use freely the Coast without controule,
and why not English as well as they? Therefore use all commers with
that respect, courtesie, and liberty is fitting, which will in a
short time much increase your trade and shipping to fetch it from
you, for as yet it were not good to adventure any more abroad with
factors till you bee better provided; now there is nothing more
enricheth a Common-wealth than much trade, nor no meanes better to
increase than small custome, as Holland, Genua, Ligorne, as divers
other places can well tell you, and doth most beggar those places
where they take most custome, as Turkie, the Archipelegan Iles,
Cicilia, the Spanish ports, but that their officers will connive to
enrich themselves, though undo the state."
It may perhaps be admitted that he knew better than the London or the
Plymouth company what ought to be done in the New World, but it is
absurd to suppose that his success or his ability forfeited him the
confidence of both companies, and shut him out of employment. The
simple truth seems to be that his arrogance and conceit and
importunity made him unpopular, and that his proverbial ill luck was
set off against his ability.
Although he was fully charged with the piety of his age, and kept in
mind his humble dependence on divine grace when he was plundering
Venetian argosies or lying to the Indians, or fighting anywhere
simply for excitement or booty, and was always as devout as a modern
Sicilian or Greek robber; he had a humorous appreciation of the value
of the religions current in his day. He saw through the hypocrisy of
the London Company, "making religion their color, when all their aim
was nothing but present profit." There was great talk about
Christianizing the Indians; but the colonists in Virginia taught them
chiefly the corruptions of civilized life, and those who were
despatched to England soon became debauched by London vices. "Much
they blamed us [he writes] for not converting the Salvages, when
those they sent us were little better, if not worse, nor did they all
convert any of those we sent them to England for that purpose."
Captain John Smith died unmarried, nor is there any record that he
ever had wife or children. This disposes of the claim of subsequent
John Smiths to be descended from him. He was the last of that race;
the others are imitations. He was wedded to glory. That he was not
insensible to the charms of female beauty, and to the heavenly pity
in their hearts, which is their chief grace, his writings abundantly
evince; but to taste the pleasures of dangerous adventure, to learn
war and to pick up his living with his sword, and to fight wherever
piety showed recompense would follow, was the passion of his youth,
while his manhood was given to the arduous ambition of enlarging the
domains of England and enrolling his name among those heroes who make
an ineffaceable impression upon their age. There was no time in his
life when he had leisure to marry, or when it would have been
consistent with his schemes to have tied himself to a home.
As a writer he was wholly untrained, but with all his introversions
and obscurities he is the most readable chronicler of his time, the
most amusing and as untrustworthy as any. He is influenced by his
prejudices, though not so much by them as by his imagination and
vanity. He had a habit of accurate observation, as his maps show,
and this trait gives to his statements and descriptions, when his own
reputation is not concerned, a value beyond that of those of most
contemporary travelers. And there is another thing to be said about
his writings. They are uncommonly clean for his day. Only here and
there is coarseness encountered. In an age when nastiness was
written as well as spoken, and when most travelers felt called upon
to satisfy a curiosity for prurient observations, Smith preserved a
tone quite remarkable for general purity.
Captain Smith is in some respects a very good type of the restless
adventurers of his age; but he had a little more pseudo-chivalry at
one end of his life, and a little more piety at the other, than the
rest. There is a decidedly heroic element in his courage, hardihood,
and enthusiasm, softened to the modern observer's comprehension by
the humorous contrast between his achievements and his estimate of
them. Between his actual deeds as he relates them, and his noble
sentiments, there is also sometimes a contrast pleasing to the
worldly mind. He is just one of those characters who would be more
agreeable on the stage than in private life. His extraordinary
conceit would be entertaining if one did not see too much of him.
Although he was such a romancer that we can accept few of his
unsupported statements about himself, there was, nevertheless, a
certain verity in his character which showed something more than
loyalty to his own fortune; he could be faithful to an ambition for
the public good. Those who knew him best must have found in him very
likable qualities, and acknowledged the generosities of his nature,
while they were amused at his humorous spleen and his serious
contemplation of his own greatness. There is a kind of simplicity in
his self-appreciation that wins one, and it is impossible for the
candid student of his career not to feel kindly towards the "sometime
Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England."
THE STORY OF POCAHONTAS
By Charles Dudley Warner
The simple story of the life of Pocahontas is sufficiently romantic
without the embellishments which have been wrought on it either by
the vanity of Captain Smith or the natural pride of the descendants
of this dusky princess who have been ennobled by the smallest rivulet
of her red blood.
That she was a child of remarkable intelligence, and that she early
showed a tender regard for the whites and rendered them willing and
unwilling service, is the concurrent evidence of all contemporary
testimony. That as a child she was well-favored, sprightly, and
prepossessing above all her copper-colored companions, we can
believe, and that as a woman her manners were attractive. If the
portrait taken of her in London--the best engraving of which is by
Simon de Passe--in 1616, when she is said to have been twenty-one
years old, does her justice, she had marked Indian features.
The first mention of her is in "The True Relation," written by
Captain Smith in Virginia in 1608. In this narrative, as our readers
have seen, she is not referred to until after Smith's return from the
captivity in which Powhatan used him "with all the kindness he could
devise." Her name first appears, toward the close of the relation,
in the following sentence:
"Powhatan understanding we detained certain salvages, sent his
daughter, a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature,
countenance, and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his
people, but for wit and spirit the only nonpareil of his country:
this hee sent by his most trusty messenger, called Rawhunt, as much
exceeding in deformitie of person, but of a subtill wit and crafty
understanding, he with a long circumstance told mee how well Powhatan
loved and respected mee, and in that I should not doubt any way of
his kindness, he had sent his child, which he most esteemed, to see
mee, a Deere, and bread, besides for a present: desiring mee that the
Boy [Thomas Savage, the boy given by Newport to Powhatan] might come
again, which he loved exceedingly, his little Daughter he had taught
this lesson also: not taking notice at all of the Indians that had
been prisoners three daies, till that morning that she saw their
fathers and friends come quietly, and in good termes to entreate
their libertie.
"In the afternoon they [the friends of the prisoners] being gone, we
guarded them [the prisoners] as before to the church, and after
prayer, gave them to Pocahuntas the King's Daughter, in regard of her
father's kindness in sending her: after having well fed them, as all
the time of their imprisonment, we gave them their bows, arrowes, or
what else they had, and with much content, sent them packing:
Pocahuntas, also we requited with such trifles as contented her, to
tel that we had used the Paspaheyans very kindly in so releasing
them."
The next allusion to her is in the fourth chapter of the narratives
which are appended to the "Map of Virginia," etc. This was sent
home by Smith, with a description of Virginia, in the late autumn of
1608. It was published at Oxford in 1612, from two to three years
after Smith's return to England. The appendix contains the
narratives of several of Smith's companions in Virginia, edited by
Dr. Symonds and overlooked by Smith. In one of these is a brief
reference to the above-quoted incident.
This Oxford tract, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, contains no
reference to the saving of Smith's life by Pocahontas from the clubs
of Powhatan.
The next published mention of Pocahontas, in point of time, is in
Chapter X. and the last of the appendix to the "Map of Virginia,"
and is Smith's denial, already quoted, of his intention to marry
Pocahontas. In this passage he speaks of her as "at most not past 13
or 14 years of age." If she was thirteen or fourteen in 1609, when
Smith left Virginia, she must have been more than ten when he wrote
his "True Relation," composed in the winter of 1608, which in all
probability was carried to England by Captain Nelson, who left
Jamestown June 2d.
The next contemporary authority to be consulted in regard to
Pocahontas is William Strachey, who, as we have seen, went with the
expedition of Gates and Somers, was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, and
reached Jamestown May 23 or 24, 1610, and was made Secretary and
Recorder of the colony under Lord Delaware. Of the origin and life
of Strachey, who was a person of importance in Virginia, little is
known. The better impression is that he was the William Strachey of
Saffron Walden, who was married in 1588 and was living in 1620, and
that it was his grandson of the same name who was subsequently
connected with the Virginia colony. He was, judged by his writings,
a man of considerable education, a good deal of a pedant, and shared
the credulity and fondness for embellishment of the writers of his
time. His connection with Lord Delaware, and his part in framing the
code of laws in Virginia, which may be inferred from the fact that he
first published them, show that he was a trusted and capable man.
William Strachey left behind him a manuscript entitled "The Historie
of Travaile into Virginia Britanica, &c., gathered and observed as
well by those who went first thither, as collected by William
Strachey, gent., three years thither, employed as Secretaire of
State." How long he remained in Virginia is uncertain, but it could
not have been "three years," though he may have been continued
Secretary for that period, for he was in London in 1612, in which
year he published there the laws of Virginia which had been
established by Sir Thomas Gates May 24, 1610, approved by Lord
Delaware June 10, 1610, and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale June 22,
1611.
The "Travaile" was first published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849.
When and where it was written, and whether it was all composed at one
time, are matters much in dispute. The first book, descriptive of
Virginia and its people, is complete; the second book, a narration of
discoveries in America, is unfinished. Only the first book concerns
us. That Strachey made notes in Virginia may be assumed, but the
book was no doubt written after his return to England.
[This code of laws, with its penalty of whipping and death for what
are held now to be venial offenses, gives it a high place among the
Black Codes. One clause will suffice:
"Every man and woman duly twice a day upon the first towling of the
Bell shall upon the working daies repaire unto the church, to hear
divine service upon pain of losing his or her allowance for the first
omission, for the second to be whipt, and for the third to be
condemned to the Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or woman
shall dare to violate the Sabbath by any gaming, publique or private,
abroad or at home, but duly sanctifie and observe the same, both
himselfe and his familie, by preparing themselves at home with
private prayer, that they may be the better fitted for the publique,
according to the commandments of God, and the orders of our church,
as also every man and woman shall repaire in the morning to the
divine service, and sermons preached upon the Sabbath day, and in the
afternoon to divine service, and Catechism upon paine for the first
fault to lose their provision, and allowance for the whole week
following, for the second to lose the said allowance and also to be
whipt, and for the third to suffer death."]
Was it written before or after the publication of Smith's "Map and
Description" at Oxford in 1612? The question is important, because
Smith's "Description" and Strachey's "Travaile" are page after page
literally the same. One was taken from the other. Commonly at that
time manuscripts seem to have been passed around and much read before
they were published. Purchas acknowledges that he had unpublished
manuscripts of Smith when he compiled his narrative. Did Smith see
Strachey's manuscript before he published his Oxford tract, or did
Strachey enlarge his own notes from Smith's description? It has been
usually assumed that Strachey cribbed from Smith without
acknowledgment. If it were a question to be settled by the internal
evidence of the two accounts, I should incline to think that Smith
condensed his description from Strachey, but the dates incline the
balance in Smith's favor.
Strachey in his "Travaile" refers sometimes to Smith, and always with
respect. It will be noted that Smith's "Map" was engraved and
published before the "Description" in the Oxford tract. Purchas had
it, for he says, in writing of Virginia for his "Pilgrimage" (which
was published in 1613):
"Concerning-the latter [Virginia], Capt. John Smith, partly by word
of mouth, partly by his mappe thereof in print, and more fully by a
Manuscript which he courteously communicated to mee, hath acquainted
me with that whereof himselfe with great perill and paine, had been
the discoverer." Strachey in his "Travaile" alludes to it, and pays
a tribute to Smith in the following: "Their severall habitations are
more plainly described by the annexed mappe, set forth by Capt.
Smith, of whose paines taken herein I leave to the censure of the
reader to judge. Sure I am there will not return from thence in
hast, any one who hath been more industrious, or who hath had (Capt.
Geo. Percie excepted) greater experience amongst them, however
misconstruction may traduce here at home, where is not easily seen
the mixed sufferances, both of body and mynd, which is there daylie,
and with no few hazards and hearty griefes undergon."
There are two copies of the Strachey manuscript. The one used by the
Hakluyt Society is dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, with the title of
"Lord High Chancellor," and Bacon had not that title conferred on him
till after 1618. But the copy among the Ashmolean manuscripts at
Oxford is dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, with the title of "Purveyor
to His Majestie's Navie Royall"; and as Sir Allen was made
"Lieutenant of the Tower" in 1616, it is believed that the manuscript
must have been written before that date, since the author would not
have omitted the more important of the two titles in his dedication.
Strachey's prefatory letter to the Council, prefixed to his "Laws"
(1612), is dated "From my lodging in the Black Friars. At your best
pleasures, either to return unto the colony, or pray for the success
of it heere." In his letter he speaks of his experience in the
Bermudas and Virginia: "The full storie of both in due time [I] shall
consecrate unto your view.... Howbit since many impediments, as yet
must detaine such my observations in the shadow of darknesse, untill
I shall be able to deliver them perfect unto your judgments," etc.
This is not, as has been assumed, a statement that the observations
were not written then, only that they were not "perfect"; in fact,
they were detained in the "shadow of darknesse" till the year 1849.
Our own inference is, from all the circumstances, that Strachey began
his manuscript in Virginia or shortly after his return, and added to
it and corrected it from time to time up to 1616.
We are now in a position to consider Strachey's allusions to
Pocahontas. The first occurs in his description of the apparel of
Indian women:
"The better sort of women cover themselves (for the most part) all
over with skin mantells, finely drest, shagged and fringed at the
skyrt, carved and coloured with some pretty work, or the proportion
of beasts, fowle, tortayses, or other such like imagry, as shall best
please or expresse the fancy of the wearer; their younger women goe
not shadowed amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven
or twelve returnes of the leafe old (for soe they accompt and bring
about the yeare, calling the fall of the leaf tagnitock); nor are
thev much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered
Pocahontas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan's
daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven
or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett
place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their
heeles upwards, whome she would followe and wheele so herself, naked
as she was, all the fort over; but being once twelve yeares, they put
on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as do our artificers or
handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac't to be
seene bare. We have seene some use mantells made both of Turkey
feathers, and other fowle, so prettily wrought and woven with
threeds, that nothing could be discerned but the feathers, which were
exceedingly warme and very handsome."
Strachey did not see Pocahontas. She did not resort to the camp
after the departure of Smith in September, 1609, until she was
kidnapped by Governor Dale in April, 1613. He repeats what he heard
of her. The time mentioned by him of her resorting to the fort, "of
the age then of eleven or twelve yeares," must have been the time
referred to by Smith when he might have married her, namely, in
1608-9, when he calls her "not past 13 or 14 years of age." The
description of her as a "yong girle" tumbling about the fort, "naked
as she was," would seem to preclude the idea that she was married at
that time.
The use of the word "wanton" is not necessarily disparaging, for
"wanton" in that age was frequently synonymous with "playful" and
"sportive"; but it is singular that she should be spoken of as "well
featured, but wanton." Strachey, however, gives in another place
what is no doubt the real significance of the Indian name
"Pocahontas." He says:
"Both men, women, and children have their severall names; at first
according to the severall humor of their parents; and for the men
children, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them a
name, calling them by some affectionate title, or perhaps observing
their promising inclination give it accordingly; and so the great
King Powhatan called a young daughter of his, whom he loved well,
Pocahontas, which may signify a little wanton; howbeyt she was
rightly called Amonata at more ripe years."
The Indian girls married very young. The polygamous Powhatan had a
large number of wives, but of all his women, his favorites were a
dozen "for the most part very young women," the names of whom
Strachey obtained from one Kemps, an Indian a good deal about camp,
whom Smith certifies was a great villain. Strachey gives a list of
the names of twelve of them, at the head of which is Winganuske.
This list was no doubt written down by the author in Virginia, and it
is followed by a sentence, quoted below, giving also the number of
Powhatan's children. The "great darling" in this list was
Winganuske, a sister of Machumps, who, according to Smith, murdered
his comrade in the Bermudas. Strachey writes:
"He [Powhatan] was reported by the said Kemps, as also by the Indian
Machumps, who was sometyme in England, and comes to and fro amongst
us as he dares, and as Powhatan gives him leave, for it is not
otherwise safe for him, no more than it was for one Amarice, who had
his braynes knockt out for selling but a baskett of corne, and lying
in the English fort two or three days without Powhatan's leave; I say
they often reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twenty
sonnes and ten daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumps
his sister, and a great darling of the King's; and besides, younge
Pocohunta, a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes
past, nowe married to a private Captaine, called Kocoum, some two
years since."
This passage is a great puzzle. Does Strachey intend to say that
Pocahontas was married to an Iniaan named Kocoum? She might have
been during the time after Smith's departure in 1609, and her
kidnapping in 1613, when she was of marriageable age. We shall see
hereafter that Powhatan, in 1614, said he had sold another favorite
daughter of his, whom Sir Thomas Dale desired, and who was not twelve
years of age, to be wife to a great chief. The term "private
Captain" might perhaps be applied to an Indian chief. Smith, in his
"General Historie," says the Indians have "but few occasions to use
any officers more than one commander, which commonly they call
Werowance, or Caucorouse, which is Captaine." It is probably not
possible, with the best intentions, to twist Kocoum into Caucorouse,
or to suppose that Strachey intended to say that a private captain
was called in Indian a Kocoum. Werowance and Caucorouse are not
synonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse means"
talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."
Either Strachey was uninformed, or Pocahontas was married to an
Indian--a not violent presumption considering her age and the fact
that war between Powhatan and the whites for some time had cut off
intercourse between them--or Strachey referred to her marriage with
Rolfe, whom he calls by mistake Kocoum. If this is to be accepted,
then this paragraph must have been written in England in 1616, and
have referred to the marriage to Rolfe it "some two years since," in
1614.
That Pocahontas was a gentle-hearted and pleasing girl, and, through
her acquaintance with Smith, friendly to the whites, there is no
doubt; that she was not different in her habits and mode of life from
other Indian girls, before the time of her kidnapping, there is every
reason to suppose. It was the English who magnified the imperialism
of her father, and exaggerated her own station as Princess. She
certainly put on no airs of royalty when she was "cart-wheeling"
about the fort. Nor does this detract anything from the native
dignity of the mature, and converted, and partially civilized woman.
We should expect there would be the discrepancies which have been
noticed in the estimates of her age. Powhatan is not said to have
kept a private secretary to register births in his family. If
Pocahontas gave her age correctly, as it appears upon her London
portrait in 1616, aged twenty-one, she must have been eighteen years
of age when she was captured in 1613 This would make her about twelve
at the time of Smith's captivity in 1607-8. There is certainly room
for difference of opinion as to whether so precocious a woman, as her
intelligent apprehension of affairs shows her to have been, should
have remained unmarried till the age of eighteen. In marrying at
least as early as that she would have followed the custom of her
tribe. It is possible that her intercourse with the whites had
raised her above such an alliance as would be offered her at the
court of Werowocomoco.
We are without any record of the life of Pocahontas for some years.
The occasional mentions of her name in the "General Historie" are so
evidently interpolated at a late date, that they do not aid us. When
and where she took the name of Matoaka, which appears upon her London
portrait, we are not told, nor when she was called Amonata, as
Strachey says she was "at more ripe yeares." How she was occupied
from the departure of Smith to her abduction, we can only guess. To
follow her authentic history we must take up the account of Captain
Argall and of Ralph Hamor, Jr., secretary of the colony under
Governor Dale.
Captain Argall, who seems to have been as bold as he was unscrupulous
in the execution of any plan intrusted to him, arrived in Virginia in
September, 1612, and early in the spring of 1613 he was sent on an
expedition up the Patowomek to trade for corn and to effect a capture
that would bring Powhatan to terms. The Emperor, from being a
friend, had become the most implacable enemy of the English. Captain
Argall says: "I was told by certain Indians, my friends, that the
great Powhatan's daughter Pokahuntis was with the great King
Potowomek, whither I presently repaired, resolved to possess myself
of her by any stratagem that I could use, for the ransoming of so
many Englishmen as were prisoners with Powhatan, as also to get such
armes and tooles as he and other Indians had got by murther and
stealing some others of our nation, with some quantity of corn for
the colonies relief."
By the aid of Japazeus, King of Pasptancy, an old acquaintance and
friend of Argall's, and the connivance of the King of Potowomek,
Pocahontas was enticed on board Argall's ship and secured. Word was
sent to Powhatan of the capture and the terms on which his daughter
would be released; namely, the return of the white men he held in
slavery, the tools and arms he had gotten and stolen, and a great
quantity of corn. Powhatan, "much grieved," replied that if Argall
would use his daughter well, and bring the ship into his river and
release her, he would accede to all his demands. Therefore, on the
13th of April, Argall repaired to Governor Gates at Jamestown, and
delivered his prisoner, and a few days after the King sent home some
of the white captives, three pieces, one broad-axe, a long whip-saw,
and a canoe of corn. Pocahontas, however, was kept at Jamestown.
Why Pocahontas had left Werowocomoco and gone to stay with Patowomek
we can only conjecture. It is possible that Powhatan suspected her
friendliness to the whites, and was weary of her importunity, and it
may be that she wanted to escape the sight of continual fighting,
ambushes, and murders. More likely she was only making a common
friendly visit, though Hamor says she went to trade at an Indian
fair.
The story of her capture is enlarged and more minutely related by
Ralph Hamor, Jr., who was one of the colony shipwrecked on the
Bermudas in 1609, and returned to England in 1614, where he published
(London, 1615) "A True Discourse of Virginia, and the Success of the
Affairs there till the 18th of June, 1614." Hamor was the son of a
merchant tailor in London who was a member of the Virginia company.
Hamor writes:
"It chanced Powhatan's delight and darling, his daughter Pocahuntas
(whose fame has even been spread in England by the title of
Nonparella of Firginia) in her princely progresse if I may so terme
it, tooke some pleasure (in the absence of Captaine Argall) to be
among her friends at Pataomecke (as it seemeth by the relation I
had), implored thither as shopkeeper to a Fare, to exchange some of
her father's commodities for theirs, where residing some three months
or longer, it fortuned upon occasion either of promise or profit,
Captaine Argall to arrive there, whom Pocahuntas, desirous to renew
her familiaritie with the English, and delighting to see them as
unknown, fearefull perhaps to be surprised, would gladly visit as she
did, of whom no sooner had Captaine Argall intelligence, but he delt
with an old friend Iapazeus, how and by what meanes he might procure
her caption, assuring him that now or never, was the time to pleasure
him, if he intended indeede that love which he had made profession
of, that in ransome of hir he might redeeme some of our English men
and armes, now in the possession of her father, promising to use her
withall faire and gentle entreaty; Iapazeus well assured that his
brother, as he promised, would use her courteously, promised his best
endeavors and service to accomplish his desire, and thus wrought it,
making his wife an instrument (which sex have ever been most powerful
in beguiling inticements) to effect his plot which hee had thus laid,
he agreed that himself, his wife and Pocahuntas, would accompanie his
brother to the water side, whither come, his wife should faine a
great and longing desire to goe aboorde, and see the shippe, which
being there three or four times before she had never seene, and
should be earnest with her husband to permit her--he seemed angry
with her, making as he pretended so unnecessary request, especially
being without the company of women, which denial she taking unkindly,
must faine to weepe (as who knows not that women can command teares)
whereupon her husband seeming to pitty those counterfeit teares, gave
her leave to goe aboord, so that it would pleese Pocahuntas to
accompany her; now was the greatest labour to win her, guilty perhaps
of her father's wrongs, though not knowne as she supposed, to goe
with her, yet by her earnest persuasions, she assented: so forthwith
aboord they went, the best cheere that could be made was seasonably
provided, to supper they went, merry on all hands, especially
Iapazeus and his wife, who to expres their joy would ere be treading
upon Captaine Argall's foot, as who should say tis don, she is your
own. Supper ended Pocahuntas was lodged in the gunner's roome, but
Iapazeus and his wife desired to have some conference with their
brother, which was onely to acquaint him by what stratagem they had
betraied his prisoner as I have already related: after which
discourse to sleepe they went, Pocahuntas nothing mistrusting this
policy, who nevertheless being most possessed with feere, and desire
of returne, was first up, and hastened Iapazeus to be gon. Capt.
Argall having secretly well rewarded him, with a small Copper kittle,
and some other les valuable toies so highly by him esteemed, that
doubtlesse he would have betraied his own father for them, permitted
both him and his wife to returne, but told him that for divers
considerations, as for that his father had then eigh [8] of our
Englishe men, many swords, peeces, and other tooles, which he hid at
severall times by trecherous murdering our men, taken from them which
though of no use to him, he would not redeliver, he would reserve
Pocahuntas, whereat she began to be exceeding pensive, and
discontented, yet ignorant of the dealing of Japazeus who in outward
appearance was no les discontented that he should be the meanes of
her captivity, much adoe there was to pursuade her to be patient,
which with extraordinary curteous usage, by little and little was
wrought in her, and so to Jamestowne she was brought."
Smith, who condenses this account in his "General Historie,"
expresses his contempt of this Indian treachery by saying: "The old
Jew and his wife began to howle and crie as fast as Pocahuntas." It
will be noted that the account of the visit (apparently alone) of
Pocahontas and her capture is strong evidence that she was not at
this time married to "Kocoum" or anybody else.
Word was despatched to Powhatan of his daughter's duress, with a
demand made for the restitution of goods; but although this savage is
represented as dearly loving Pocahontas, his "delight and darling,"
it was, according to Hamor, three months before they heard anything
from him. His anxiety about his daughter could not have been
intense. He retained a part of his plunder, and a message was sent
to him that Pocahontas would be kept till he restored all the arms.
This answer pleased Powhatan so little that they heard nothing from
him till the following March. Then Sir Thomas Dale and Captain
Argall, with several vessels and one hundred and fifty men, went up
to Powhatan's chief seat, taking his daughter with them, offering the
Indians a chance to fight for her or to take her in peace on
surrender of the stolen goods. The Indians received this with
bravado and flights of arrows, reminding them of the fate of Captain
Ratcliffe. The whites landed, killed some Indians, burnt forty
houses, pillaged the village, and went on up the river and came to
anchor in front of Matchcot, the Emperor's chief town. Here were
assembled four hundred armed men, with bows and arrows, who dared
them to come ashore. Ashore they went, and a palaver was held. The
Indians wanted a day to consult their King, after which they would
fight, if nothing but blood would satisfy the whites.
Two of Powhatan's sons who were present expressed a desire to see
their sister, who had been taken on shore. When they had sight of
her, and saw how well she was cared for, they greatly rejoiced and
promised to persuade their father to redeem her and conclude a
lasting peace. The two brothers were taken on board ship, and Master
John Rolfe and Master Sparkes were sent to negotiate with the King.
Powhatan did not show himself, but his brother Apachamo, his
successor, promised to use his best efforts to bring about a peace,
and the expedition returned to Jamestown.
"Long before this time," Hamor relates, "a gentleman of approved
behaviour and honest carriage, Master John Rolfe, had been in love
with Pocahuntas and she with him, which thing at the instant that we
were in parlee with them, myselfe made known to Sir Thomas Dale, by a
letter from him [Rolfe] whereby he entreated his advice and
furtherance to his love, if so it seemed fit to him for the good of
the Plantation, and Pocahuntas herself acquainted her brethren
therewith." Governor Dale approved this, and consequently was
willing to retire without other conditions. "The bruite of this
pretended marriage [Hamor continues] came soon to Powhatan's
knowledge, a thing acceptable to him, as appeared by his sudden
consent thereunto, who some ten daies after sent an old uncle of
hirs, named Opachisco, to give her as his deputy in the church, and
two of his sonnes to see the mariage solemnized which was accordingly
done about the fifth of April [1614], and ever since we have had
friendly commerce and trade, not only with Powhatan himself, but also
with his subjects round about us; so as now I see no reason why the
collonie should not thrive a pace."
This marriage was justly celebrated as the means and beginning of a
firm peace which long continued, so that Pocahontas was again
entitled to the grateful remembrance of the Virginia settlers.
Already, in 1612, a plan had been mooted in Virginia of marrying the
English with the natives, and of obtaining the recognition of
Powhatan and those allied to him as members of a fifth kingdom, with
certain privileges. Cunega, the Spanish ambassador at London, on
September 22, 1612, writes: "Although some suppose the plantation to
decrease, he is credibly informed that there is a determination to
marry some of the people that go over to Virginia; forty or fifty are
already so married, and English women intermingle and are received
kindly by the natives. A zealous minister hath been wounded for
reprehending it."
Mr. John Rolfe was a man of industry, and apparently devoted to the
welfare of the colony. He probably brought with him in 1610 his
wife, who gave birth to his daughter Bermuda, born on the Somers
Islands at the time of the shipwreck. We find no notice of her
death. Hamor gives him the distinction of being the first in the
colony to try, in 1612, the planting and raising of tobacco. "No man
[he adds] hath labored to his power, by good example there and worthy
encouragement into England by his letters, than he hath done, witness
his marriage with Powhatan's daughter, one of rude education, manners
barbarous and cursed generation, meerely for the good and honor of
the plantation: and least any man should conceive that some sinister
respects allured him hereunto, I have made bold, contrary to his
knowledge, in the end of my treatise to insert the true coppie of his
letter written to Sir Thomas Dale."
The letter is a long, labored, and curious document, and comes nearer
to a theological treatise than any love-letter we have on record. It
reeks with unction. Why Rolfe did not speak to Dale, whom he saw
every day, instead of inflicting upon him this painful document, in
which the flutterings of a too susceptible widower's heart are hidden
under a great resolve of self-sacrifice, is not plain.
The letter protests in a tedious preamble that the writer is moved
entirely by the Spirit of God, and continues:
"Let therefore this my well advised protestation, which here I make
between God and my own conscience, be a sufficient witness, at the
dreadful day of judgment (when the secrets of all men's hearts shall
be opened) to condemne me herein, if my chiefest interest and purpose
be not to strive with all my power of body and mind, in the
undertaking of so weighty a matter, no way led (so far forth as man's
weakness may permit) with the unbridled desire of carnall affection;
but for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie,
for the glory of God, for my owne salvation, and for the converting
to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving
creature, namely Pokahuntas. To whom my heartie and best thoughts
are, and have a long time bin so entangled, and inthralled in so
intricate a laborinth, that I was even awearied to unwinde myself
thereout."
Master Rolfe goes on to describe the mighty war in his meditations on
this subject, in which he had set before his eyes the frailty of
mankind and his proneness to evil and wicked thoughts. He is aware
of God's displeasure against the sons of Levi and Israel for marrying
strange wives, and this has caused him to look about warily and with
good circumspection "into the grounds and principall agitations which
should thus provoke me to be in love with one, whose education hath
bin rude, her manners barbarous, her generation accursed, and so
discrepant in all nurtriture from myselfe, that oftentimes with feare
and trembling, I have ended my private controversie with this: surely
these are wicked instigations, fetched by him who seeketh and
delighteth in man's distruction; and so with fervent prayers to be
ever preserved from such diabolical assaults (as I looke those to be)
I have taken some rest."
The good man was desperately in love and wanted to marry the Indian,
and consequently he got no peace; and still being tormented with her
image, whether she was absent or present, he set out to produce an
ingenious reason (to show the world) for marrying her. He continues:
"Thus when I thought I had obtained my peace and quietnesse, beholde
another, but more gracious tentation hath made breaches into my
holiest and strongest meditations; with which I have been put to a
new triall, in a straighter manner than the former; for besides the
weary passions and sufferings which I have dailey, hourely, yea and
in my sleepe indured, even awaking me to astonishment, taxing me with
remissnesse, and carelessnesse, refusing and neglecting to perform
the duteie of a good Christian, pulling me by the eare, and crying:
Why dost thou not indeavor to make her a Christian? And these have
happened to my greater wonder, even when she hath been furthest
seperated from me, which in common reason (were it not an undoubted
work of God) might breede forgetfulnesse of a far more worthie
creature."
He accurately describes the symptoms and appears to understand the
remedy, but he is after a large-sized motive:
"Besides, I say the holy Spirit of God hath often demanded of me, why
I was created? If not for transitory pleasures and worldly vanities,
but to labour in the Lord's vineyard, there to sow and plant, to
nourish and increase the fruites thereof, daily adding with the good
husband in the gospell, somewhat to the tallent, that in the ends the
fruites may be reaped, to the comfort of the labourer in this life,
and his salvation in the world to come.... Likewise, adding hereunto
her great appearance of love to me, her desire to be taught and
instructed in the knowledge of God, her capablenesse of
understanding, her aptness and willingness to receive anie good
impression, and also the spirituall, besides her owne incitements
stirring me up hereunto."
The "incitements" gave him courage, so that he exclaims: "Shall I be
of so untoward a disposition, as to refuse to lead the blind into the
right way? Shall I be so unnatural, as not to give bread to the
hungrie, or uncharitable, as not to cover the naked?"
It wasn't to be thought of, such wickedness; and so Master Rolfe
screwed up his courage to marry the glorious Princess, from whom
thousands of people were afterwards so anxious to be descended. But
he made the sacrifice for the glory of the country, the benefit of
the plantation, and the conversion of the unregenerate, and other and
lower motive he vigorously repels: "Now, if the vulgar sort, who
square all men's actions by the base rule of their own filthinesse,
shall tax or taunt mee in this my godly labour: let them know it is
not hungry appetite, to gorge myselfe with incontinency; sure (if I
would and were so sensually inclined) I might satisfy such desire,
though not without a seared conscience, yet with Christians more
pleasing to the eie, and less fearefull in the offense unlawfully
committed. Nor am I in so desperate an estate, that I regard not
what becometh of me; nor am I out of hope but one day to see my
country, nor so void of friends, nor mean in birth, but there to
obtain a mach to my great con'tent.... But shall it please God thus
to dispose of me (which I earnestly desire to fulfill my ends before
set down) I will heartily accept of it as a godly taxe appointed me,
and I will never cease (God assisting me) untill I have accomplished,
and brought to perfection so holy a worke, in which I will daily pray
God to bless me, to mine and her eternal happiness."
It is to be hoped that if sanctimonious John wrote any love-letters
to Amonata they had less cant in them than this. But it was pleasing
to Sir Thomas Dale, who was a man to appreciate the high motives of
Mr. Rolfe. In a letter which he despatched from Jamestown, June 18,
1614, to a reverend friend in London, he describes the expedition
when Pocahontas was carried up the river, and adds the information
that when she went on shore, "she would not talk to any of them,
scarcely to them of the best sort, and to them only, that if her
father had loved her, he would not value her less than old swords,
pieces, or axes; wherefore she would still dwell with the Englishmen
who loved her."
"Powhatan's daughter [the letter continues] I caused to be carefully
instructed in Christian Religion, who after she had made some good
progress therein, renounced publically her countrey idolatry, openly
confessed her Christian faith, was, as she desired, baptized, and is
since married to an English Gentleman of good understanding (as by
his letter unto me, containing the reasons for his marriage of her
you may perceive), an other knot to bind this peace the stronger.
Her father and friends gave approbation to it, and her uncle gave her
to him in the church; she lives civilly and lovingly with him, and I
trust will increase in goodness, as the knowledge of God increaseth
in her. She will goe into England with me, and were it but the
gayning of this one soule, I will think my time, toile, and present
stay well spent."
Hamor also appends to his narration a short letter, of the same date
with the above, from the minister Alexander Whittaker, the
genuineness of which is questioned. In speaking of the good deeds of
Sir Thomas Dale it says: "But that which is best, one Pocahuntas or
Matoa, the daughter of Powhatan, is married to an honest and discreet
English Gentleman--Master Rolfe, and that after she had openly
renounced her countrey Idolatry, and confessed the faith of Jesus
Christ, and was baptized, which thing Sir Thomas Dale had laboured a
long time to ground her in." If, as this proclaims, she was married
after her conversion, then Rolfe's tender conscience must have given
him another twist for wedding her, when the reason for marrying her
(her conversion) had ceased with her baptism. His marriage,
according to this, was a pure work of supererogation. It took place
about the 5th of April, 1614. It is not known who performed the
ceremony.
How Pocahontas passed her time in Jamestown during the period of her
detention, we are not told. Conjectures are made that she was an
inmate of the house of Sir Thomas Dale, or of that of the Rev. Mr.
Whittaker, both of whom labored zealously to enlighten her mind on
religious subjects. She must also have been learning English and
civilized ways, for it is sure that she spoke our language very well
when she went to London. Mr. John Rolfe was also laboring for her
conversion, and we may suppose that with all these ministrations,
mingled with her love of Mr. Rolfe, which that ingenious widower had
discovered, and her desire to convert him into a husband, she was not
an unwilling captive. Whatever may have been her barbarous
instincts, we have the testimony of Governor Dale that she lived
"civilly and lovingly" with her husband.
XVI
STORY OF POCAHONTAS, CONTINUED
Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet
Governor the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt
the change in the charter of 1609. By the first charter everything
had been held in common by the company, and there had been no
division of property or allotment of land among the colonists. Under
the new regime land was held in severalty, and the spur of individual
interest began at once to improve the condition of the settlement.
The character of the colonists was also gradually improving. They
had not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest desire of the London
promoter's to spread vital piety in the New World. A zealous defense
of Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous imputation," entitled
"Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by Mr. John Hammond,
London, 1656, considers the charges that Virginia "is an unhealthy
place, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolut and rookery
persons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and
admits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, it
deserved most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but
truths.... There were jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women
drilled in, the provision all brought out of England, and that
embezzled by the Trustees."
Governor Dale was a soldier; entering the army in the Netherlands as
a private he had risen to high position, and received knighthood in
1606. Shortly after he was with Sir Thomas Gates in South Holland.
The States General in 1611 granted him three years' term of absence
in Virginia. Upon his arrival he began to put in force that system
of industry and frugality he had observed in Holland. He had all the
imperiousness of a soldier, and in an altercation with Captain
Newport, occasioned by some injurious remarks the latter made about
Sir Thomas Smith, the treasurer, he pulled his beard and threatened
to hang him. Active operations for settling new plantations were at
once begun, and Dale wrote to Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, for 2,000
good colonists to be sent out, for the three hundred that came were
"so profane, so riotous, so full of mutiny, that not many are
Christians but in name, their bodies so diseased and crazed that not
sixty of them may be employed." He served afterwards with credit in
Holland, was made commander of the East Indian fleet in 1618, had a
naval engagement with the Dutch near Bantam in 1619, and died in 1620
from the effects of the climate. He was twice married, and his
second wife, Lady Fanny, the cousin of his first wife, survived him
and received a patent for a Virginia plantation.
Governor Dale kept steadily in view the conversion of the Indians to
Christianity, and the success of John Rolfe with Matoaka inspired him
with a desire to convert another daughter of Powhatan, of whose
exquisite perfections he had heard. He therefore despatched Ralph
Hamor, with the English boy, Thomas Savage, as interpreter, on a
mission to the court of Powhatan, "upon a message unto him, which was
to deale with him, if by any means I might procure a daughter of his,
who (Pocahuntas being already in our possession) is generally
reported to be his delight and darling, and surely he esteemed her as
his owne Soule, for surer pledge of peace." This visit Hamor relates
with great naivete.
At his town of Matchcot, near the head of York River, Powhatan
himself received his visitors when they landed, with great
cordiality, expressing much pleasure at seeing again the boy who had
been presented to him by Captain Newport, and whom he had not seen
since he gave him leave to go and see his friends at Jamestown four
years before; he also inquired anxiously after Namontack, whom he had
sent to King James's land to see him and his country and report
thereon, and then led the way to his house, where he sat down on his
bedstead side. "On each hand of him was placed a comely and
personable young woman, which they called his Queenes, the howse
within round about beset with them, the outside guarded with a
hundred bowmen."
The first thing offered was a pipe of tobacco, which Powhatan "first
drank," and then passed to Hamor, who "drank" what he pleased and
then returned it. The Emperor then inquired how his brother Sir
Thomas Dale fared, "and after that of his daughter's welfare, her
marriage, his unknown son, and how they liked, lived and loved
together." Hamor replied "that his brother was very well, and his
daughter so well content that she would not change her life to return
and live with him, whereat he laughed heartily, and said he was very
glad of it."
Powhatan then desired to know the cause of his unexpected coming, and
Mr. Hamor said his message was private, to be delivered to him
without the presence of any except one of his councilors, and one of
the guides, who already knew it.
Therefore the house was cleared of all except the two Queens, who may
never sequester themselves, and Mr. Hamor began his palaver. First
there was a message of love and inviolable peace, the production of
presents of coffee, beads, combs, fish-hooks, and knives, and the
promise of a grindstone when it pleased the Emperor to send for it.
Hamor then proceeded:
"The bruite of the exquesite perfection of your youngest daughter,
being famous through all your territories, hath come to the hearing
of your brother, Sir Thomas Dale, who for this purpose hath addressed
me hither, to intreate you by that brotherly friendship you make
profession of, to permit her (with me) to returne unto him, partly
for the desire which himselfe hath, and partly for the desire her
sister hath to see her of whom, if fame hath not been prodigall, as
like enough it hath not, your brother (by your favour) would gladly
make his nearest companion, wife and bed fellow [many times he would
have interrupted my speech, which I entreated him to heare out, and
then if he pleased to returne me answer], and the reason hereof is,
because being now friendly and firmly united together, and made one
people [as he supposeth and believes] in the bond of love, he would
make a natural union between us, principally because himself hath
taken resolution to dwel in your country so long as he liveth, and
would not only therefore have the firmest assurance hee may, of
perpetuall friendship from you, but also hereby binde himselfe
thereunto."
Powhatan replied with dignity that he gladly accepted the salute of
love and peace, which he and his subjects would exactly maintain.
But as to the other matter he said: "My daughter, whom my brother
desireth, I sold within these three days to be wife to a great
Weroance for two bushels of Roanoke [a small kind of beads made of
oyster shells], and it is true she is already gone with him, three
days' journey from me."
Hamor persisted that this marriage need not stand in the way; "that
if he pleased herein to gratify his Brother he might, restoring the
Roanoke without the imputation of injustice, take home his daughter
again, the rather because she was not full twelve years old, and
therefore not marriageable; assuring him besides the bond of peace,
so much the firmer, he should have treble the price of his daughter
in beads, copper, hatchets, and many other things more useful for
him."
The reply of the noble old savage to this infamous demand ought to
have brought a blush to the cheeks of those who made it. He said he
loved his daughter as dearly as his life; he had many children, but
he delighted in none so much as in her; he could not live if he did
not see her often, as he would not if she were living with the
whites, and he was determined not to put himself in their hands. He
desired no other assurance of friendship than his brother had given
him, who had already one of his daughters as a pledge, which was
sufficient while she lived; "when she dieth he shall have another
child of mine." And then he broke forth in pathetic eloquence: "I
hold it not a brotherly part of your King, to desire to bereave me of
two of my children at once; further give him to understand, that if
he had no pledge at all, he should not need to distrust any injury
from me, or any under my subjection; there have been too many of his
and my men killed, and by my occasion there shall never be more; I
which have power to perform it have said it; no not though I should
have just occasion offered, for I am now old and would gladly end my
days in peace; so as if the English offer me any injury, my country
is large enough, I will remove myself farther from you."
The old man hospitably entertained his guests for a day or two,
loaded them with presents, among which were two dressed buckskins,
white as snow, for his son and daughter, and, requesting some
articles sent him in return, bade them farewell with this message to
Governor Dale: "I hope this will give him good satisfaction, if it do
not I will go three days' journey farther from him, and never see
Englishmen more." It speaks well for the temperate habits of this
savage that after he had feasted his guests, "he caused to be fetched
a great glass of sack, some three quarts or better, which Captain
Newport had given him six or seven years since, carefully preserved
by him, not much above a pint in all this time spent, and gave each
of us in a great oyster shell some three spoonfuls."
We trust that Sir Thomas Dale gave a faithful account of all this to
his wife in England.
Sir Thomas Gates left Virginia in the spring of 1614 and never
returned. After his departure scarcity and severity developed a
mutiny, and six of the settlers were executed. Rolfe was planting
tobacco (he has the credit of being the first white planter of it),
and his wife was getting an inside view of Christian civilization.
In 1616 Sir Thomas Dale returned to England with his company and John
Rolfe and Pocahontas, and several other Indians. They reached
Plymouth early in June, and on the 20th Lord Carew made this note:
"Sir Thomas Dale returned from Virginia; he hath brought divers men
and women of thatt countrye to be educated here, and one Rolfe who
married a daughter of Pohetan (the barbarous prince) called
Pocahuntas, hath brought his wife with him into England." On the 22d
Sir John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carlton that there were "ten
or twelve, old and young, of that country."
The Indian girls who came with Pocahontas appear to have been a great
care to the London company. In May, 1620, is a record that the
company had to pay for physic and cordials for one of them who had
been living as a servant in Cheapside, and was very weak of a
consumption. The same year two other of the maids were shipped off
to the Bermudas, after being long a charge to the company, in the
hope that they might there get husbands, "that after they were
converted and had children, they might be sent to their country and
kindred to civilize them." One of them was there married. The
attempt to educate them in England was not very successful, and a
proposal to bring over Indian boys obtained this comment from Sir
Edwin Sandys:
"Now to send for them into England, and to have them educated here,
he found upon experience of those brought by Sir Thomas Dale, might
be far from the Christian work intended." One Nanamack, a lad
brought over by Lord Delaware, lived some years in houses where "he
heard not much of religion but sins, had many times examples of
drinking, swearing and like evils, ran as he was a mere Pagan," till
he fell in with a devout family and changed his life, but died before
he was baptized. Accompanying Pocahontas was a councilor of
Powhatan, one Tomocomo, the husband of one of her sisters, of whom
Purchas says in his "Pilgrimes": "With this savage I have often
conversed with my good friend Master Doctor Goldstone where he was a
frequent geust, and where I have seen him sing and dance his
diabolical measures, and heard him discourse of his country and
religion.... Master Rolfe lent me a discourse which I have in my
Pilgrimage delivered. And his wife did not only accustom herself to
civility, but still carried herself as the daughter of a king, and
was accordingly respected, not only by the Company which allowed
provision for herself and her son, but of divers particular persons
of honor, in their hopeful zeal by her to advance Christianity. I
was present when my honorable and reverend patron, the Lord Bishop of
London, Doctor King, entertained her with festival state and pomp
beyond what I had seen in his great hospitality offered to other
ladies. At her return towards Virginia she came at Gravesend to her
end and grave, having given great demonstration of her Christian
sincerity, as the first fruits of Virginia conversion, leaving here a
goodly memory, and the hopes of her resurrection, her soul aspiring
to see and enjoy permanently in heaven what here she had joyed to
hear and believe of her blessed Saviour. Not such was Tomocomo, but
a blasphemer of what he knew not and preferring his God to ours
because he taught them (by his own so appearing) to wear their
Devil-lock at the left ear; he acquainted me with the manner of that
his appearance, and believed that their Okee or Devil had taught them
their husbandry."
Upon news of her arrival, Captain Smith, either to increase his own
importance or because Pocahontas was neglected, addressed a letter or
"little booke" to Queen Anne, the consort of King James. This letter
is found in Smith's "General Historie" ( 1624), where it is
introduced as having been sent to Queen Anne in 1616. Probably he
sent her such a letter. We find no mention of its receipt or of any
acknowledgment of it. Whether the "abstract" in the "General
Historie" is exactly like the original we have no means of knowing.
We have no more confidence in Smith's memory than we have in his
dates. The letter is as follows:
"To the most high and vertuous Princesse Queene Anne of Great
Brittaine.
"Most ADMIRED QUEENE.
"The love I beare my God, my King and Countrie hath so oft emboldened
me in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honestie doth constraine
mee presume thus farre beyond my selfe, to present your Majestie this
short discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honest
vertues, I must be guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanes
to bee thankful. So it is.
"That some ten yeeres agoe being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by
the power of Powhaten, their chiefe King, I received from this great
Salvage exceeding great courtesie, especially from his sonne
Nantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever saw
in a Salvage and his sister Pocahontas, the Kings most deare and
well-beloved daughter, being but a childe of twelve or thirteen yeeres
of age, whose compassionate pitifull heart, of desperate estate, gave
me much cause to respect her: I being the first Christian this proud
King and his grim attendants ever saw, and thus enthralled in their
barbarous power, I cannot say I felt the least occasion of want that
was in the power of those my mortall foes to prevent notwithstanding
al their threats. After some six weeks fatting amongst those Salvage
Courtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out
of her owne braines to save mine, and not onely that, but so prevailed
with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestowne, where I
found about eight and thirty miserable poore and sicke creatures, to
keepe possession of all those large territories of Virginia, such was
the weaknesse of this poore Commonwealth, as had the Salvages not fed
us, we directly had starved.
"And this reliefe, most gracious Queene, was commonly brought us by
this Lady Pocahontas, notwithstanding all these passages when
inconstant Fortune turned our Peace to warre, this tender Virgin
would still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jarres have
been oft appeased, and our wants still supplyed; were it the policie
of her father thus to imploy her, or the ordinance of God thus to
make her his instrument, or her extraordinarie affection to our
Nation, I know not: but of this I am sure: when her father with the
utmost of his policie and power, sought to surprize mee, having but
eighteene with mee, the dark night could not affright her from
comming through the irksome woods, and with watered eies gave me
intilligence, with her best advice to escape his furie: which had hee
known hee had surely slaine her. Jamestowne with her wild traine she
as freely frequented, as her father's habitation: and during the time
of two or three yeares, she next under God, was still the instrument
to preserve this Colonie from death, famine and utter confusion,
which if in those times had once beene dissolved, Virginia might have
laine as it was at our first arrivall to this day. Since then, this
buisinesse having been turned and varied by many accidents from that
I left it at: it is most certaine, after a long and troublesome warre
after my departure, betwixt her father and our Colonie, all which
time shee was not heard of, about two yeeres longer, the Colonie by
that meanes was releived, peace concluded, and at last rejecting her
barbarous condition, was maried to an English Gentleman, with whom at
this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of that
Nation, the first Virginian ever spake English, or had a childe in
mariage by an Englishman, a matter surely, if my meaning bee truly
considered and well understood, worthy a Princes understanding.
"Thus most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majestic, what at
your best leasure our approved Histories will account you at large,
and done in the time of your Majesties life, and however this might
bee presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more
honest heart, as yet I never begged anything of the State, or any,
and it is my want of abilitie and her exceeding desert, your birth,
meanes, and authoritie, her birth, vertue, want and simplicitie, doth
make mee thus bold, humbly to beseech your Majestic: to take this
knowledge of her though it be from one so unworthy to be the
reporter, as myselfe, her husband's estate not being able to make her
fit to attend your Majestic: the most and least I can doe, is to tell
you this, because none so oft hath tried it as myselfe: and the
rather being of so great a spirit, however her station: if she should
not be well received, seeing this Kingdome may rightly have a
Kingdome by her meanes: her present love to us and Christianitie,
might turne to such scorne and furie, as to divert all this good to
the worst of evill, when finding so great a Queene should doe her
some honour more than she can imagine, for being so kinde to your
servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endeare
her dearest bloud to effect that, your Majestic and all the Kings
honest subjects most earnestly desire: and so I humbly kisse your
gracious hands."
The passage in this letter, "She hazarded the beating out of her owne
braines to save mine," is inconsistent with the preceding portion of
the paragraph which speaks of "the exceeding great courtesie" of
Powhatan; and Smith was quite capable of inserting it afterwards when
he made up his
"General Historie."
Smith represents himself at this time--the last half of 1616 and the
first three months of 1617--as preparing to attempt a third voyage to
New England (which he did not make), and too busy to do Pocahontas
the service she desired. She was staying at Branford, either from
neglect of the company or because the London smoke disagreed with
her, and there Smith went to see her. His account of his intercourse
with her, the only one we have, must be given for what it is worth.
According to this she had supposed Smith dead, and took umbrage at
his neglect of her. He writes:
"After a modest salutation, without any word, she turned about,
obscured her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour,
her husband with divers others, we all left her two or three hours
repenting myself to have writ she could speak English. But not long
after she began to talke, remembering me well what courtesies she had
done: saying, 'You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his,
and he the like to you; you called him father, being in his land a
stranger, and by the same reason so must I do you:' which though I
would have excused, I durst not allow of that title, because she was
a king's daughter. With a well set countenance she said: 'Were you
not afraid to come into my father's country and cause fear in him and
all his people (but me), and fear you have I should call you father;
I tell you then I will, and you shall call me childe, and so I will
be forever and ever, your contrieman. They did tell me alwaies you
were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth, yet Powhatan
did command Uttamatomakkin to seek you, and know the truth, because
your countriemen will lie much."'
This savage was the Tomocomo spoken of above, who had been sent by
Powhatan to take a census of the people of England, and report what
they and their state were. At Plymouth he got a long stick and began
to make notches in it for the people he saw. But he was quickly
weary of that task. He told Smith that Powhatan bade him seek him
out, and get him to show him his God, and the King, Queen, and
Prince, of whom Smith had told so much. Smith put him off about
showing his God, but said he had heard that he had seen the King.
This the Indian denied, James probably not coming up to his idea of a
king, till by circumstances he was convinced he had seen him. Then
he replied very sadly: "You gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan
fed as himself, but your king gave me nothing, and I am better than
your white dog."
Smith adds that he took several courtiers to see Pocahontas, and
"they did think God had a great hand in her conversion, and they have
seen many English ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and
behavioured;" and he heard that it had pleased the King and Queen
greatly to esteem her, as also Lord and Lady Delaware, and other
persons of good quality, both at the masques and otherwise.
Much has been said about the reception of Pocahontas in London, but
the contemporary notices of her are scant. The Indians were objects
of curiosity for a time in London, as odd Americans have often been
since, and the rank of Pocahontas procured her special attention.
She was presented at court. She was entertained by Dr. King, Bishop
of London. At the playing of Ben Jonson's "Christmas his Mask" at
court, January 6, 1616-17, Pocahontas and Tomocomo were both present,
and Chamberlain writes to Carleton: "The Virginian woman Pocahuntas
with her father counsellor have been with the King and graciously
used, and both she and her assistant were pleased at the Masque. She
is upon her return though sore against her will, if the wind would
about to send her away."
Mr. Neill says that "after the first weeks of her residence in
England she does not appear to be spoken of as the wife of Rolfe by
the letter writers," and the Rev. Peter Fontaine says that "when they
heard that Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in
council whether he had not committed high treason by so doing, that
is marrying an Indian princesse."
It was like James to think so. His interest in the colony was never
the most intelligent, and apt to be in things trivial. Lord
Southampton (Dec. 15, 1609) writes to Lord Salisbury that he had told
the King of the Virginia squirrels brought into England, which are
said to fly. The King very earnestly asked if none were provided for
him, and said he was sure Salisbury would get him one. Would not
have troubled him, "but that you know so well how he is affected to
these toys."
There has been recently found in the British Museum a print of a
portrait of Pocahontas, with a legend round it in Latin, which is
translated: "Matoaka, alias Rebecka, Daughter of Prince Powhatan,
Emperor of Virginia; converted to Christianity, married Mr. Rolff;
died on shipboard at Gravesend 1617." This is doubtless the portrait
engraved by Simon De Passe in 1616, and now inserted in the extant
copies of the London edition of the "General Historie," 1624. It is
not probable that the portrait was originally published with the
"General Historie." The portrait inserted in the edition of 1624 has
this inscription:
Round the portrait:
"Matoaka als Rebecca Filia Potentiss Princ: Pohatani Imp: Virginim."
In the oval, under the portrait:
"Aetatis suae 21 A.
1616"
Below:
"Matoaks als Rebecka daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan
Emprour of Attanoughkomouck als virginia converted and baptized in
the Christian faith, and wife to the worth Mr. job Rolff.
i: Pass: sculp. Compton Holland excud."
Camden in his "History of Gravesend" says that everybody paid this
young lady all imaginable respect, and it was believed she would have
sufficiently acknowledged those favors, had she lived to return to
her own country, by bringing the Indians to a kinder disposition
toward the English; and that she died, "giving testimony all the
time she lay sick, of her being a very good Christian."
The Lady Rebecka, as she was called in London, died on shipboard at
Gravesend after a brief illness, said to be of only three days,
probably on the 21st of March, 1617. I have seen somewhere a
statement, which I cannot confirm, that her disease was smallpox.
St. George's Church, where she was buried, was destroyed by fire in
1727. The register of that church has this record:
"1616, May 21 Rebecca Wrothe
Wyff of Thomas Wroth gent
A Virginia lady borne, here was buried
in ye chaunncle."
Yet there is no doubt, according to a record in the Calendar of State
Papers, dated "1617, 29 March, London," that her death occurred March
21, 1617.
John Rolfe was made Secretary of Virginia when Captain Argall became
Governor, and seems to have been associated in the schemes of that
unscrupulous person and to have forfeited the good opinion of the
company. August 23, 1618, the company wrote to Argall: "We cannot
imagine why you should give us warning that Opechankano and the
natives have given the country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that they
reserve it from all others till he comes of years except as we
suppose as some do here report it be a device of your own, to some
special purpose for yourself." It appears also by the minutes of the
company in 1621 that Lady Delaware had trouble to recover goods of
hers left in Rolfe's hands in Virginia, and desired a commission
directed to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Mr. George Sandys to examine what
goods of the late "Lord Deleware had come into Rolfe's possession and
get satisfaction of him." This George Sandys is the famous traveler
who made a journey through the Turkish Empire in 1610, and who wrote,
while living in Virginia, the first book written in the New World,
the completion of his translation of Ovid's "Metamorphosis."
John Rolfe died in Virginia in 1622, leaving a wife and children.
This is supposed to be his third wife, though there is no note of his
marriage to her nor of the death of his first. October 7, 1622, his
brother Henry Rolfe petitioned that the estate of John should be
converted to the support of his relict wife and children and to his
own indemnity for having brought up John's child by Powhatan's
daughter.
This child, named Thomas Rolfe, was given after the death of
Pocahontas to the keeping of Sir Lewis Stukely of Plymouth, who fell
into evil practices, and the boy was transferred to the guardianship
of his uncle Henry Rolfe, and educated in London. When he was grown
up he returned to Virginia, and was probably there married. There is
on record his application to the Virginia authorities in 1641 for
leave to go into the Indian country and visit Cleopatra, his mother's
sister. He left an only daughter who was married, says Stith (1753),
"to Col. John Bolling; by whom she left an only son, the late Major
John Bolling, who was father to the present Col. John Bolling, and
several daughters, married to Col. Richard Randolph, Col. John
Fleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray."
Campbell in his "History of Virginia" says that the first Randolph
that came to the James River was an esteemed and industrious
mechanic, and that one of his sons, Richard, grandfather of the
celebrated John Randolph, married Jane Bolling, the great
granddaughter of Pocahontas.
In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with
fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and
titles; his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes
Mamauatonick, and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk. He ruled,
by inheritance and conquest, with many chiefs under him, over a large
territory with not defined borders, lying on the James, the York, the
Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the Pawtuxet Rivers. He had several
seats, at which he alternately lived with his many wives and guard of
bowmen, the chief of which at the arrival of the English was
Werowomocomo, on the Pamunkey (York) River. His state has been
sufficiently described. He is said to have had a hundred wives, and
generally a dozen--the youngest--personally attending him. When he
had a mind to add to his harem he seems to have had the ancient
oriental custom of sending into all his dominions for the fairest
maidens to be brought from whom to select. And he gave the wives of
whom he was tired to his favorites.
Strachey makes a striking description of him as he appeared about
1610: "He is a goodly old man not yet shrincking, though well beaten
with cold and stormeye winters, in which he hath been patient of many
necessityes and attempts of his fortune to make his name and famely
great. He is supposed to be little lesse than eighty yeares old, I
dare not saye how much more; others saye he is of a tall stature and
cleane lymbes, of a sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graie
haires, but plaine and thin, hanging upon his broad showlders; some
few haires upon his chin, and so on his upper lippe: he hath been a
strong and able salvadge, synowye, vigilant, ambitious, subtile to
enlarge his dominions:.... cruell he hath been, and quarellous as
well with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and that to strike a
terrour and awe into them of his power and condicion, as also with
his neighbors in his younger days, though now delighted in security
and pleasure, and therefore stands upon reasonable conditions of
peace with all the great and absolute werowances about him, and is
likewise more quietly settled amongst his own."
It was at this advanced age that he had the twelve favorite young
wives whom Strachey names. All his people obeyed him with fear and
adoration, presenting anything he ordered at his feet, and trembling
if he frowned. His punishments were cruel; offenders were beaten to
death before him, or tied to trees and dismembered joint by joint, or
broiled to death on burning coals. Strachey wondered how such a
barbarous prince should put on such ostentation of majesty, yet he
accounted for it as belonging to the necessary divinity that doth
hedge in a king: "Such is (I believe) the impression of the divine
nature, and however these (as other heathens forsaken by the true
light) have not that porcion of the knowing blessed Christian
spiritt, yet I am perswaded there is an infused kind of divinities
and extraordinary (appointed that it shall be so by the King of
kings) to such as are his ymedyate instruments on earth."
Here is perhaps as good a place as any to say a word or two about the
appearance and habits of Powhatan's subjects, as they were observed
by Strachey and Smith. A sort of religion they had, with priests or
conjurors, and houses set apart as temples, wherein images were kept
and conjurations performed, but the ceremonies seem not worship, but
propitiations against evil, and there seems to have been no
conception of an overruling power or of an immortal life. Smith
describes a ceremony of sacrifice of children to their deity; but
this is doubtful, although Parson Whittaker, who calls the Indians
"naked slaves of the devil," also says they sacrificed sometimes
themselves and sometimes their own children. An image of their god
which he sent to England "was painted upon one side of a toadstool,
much like unto a deformed monster." And he adds: "Their priests,
whom they call Quockosoughs, are no other but such as our English
witches are." This notion I believe also pertained among the New
England colonists. There was a belief that the Indian conjurors had
some power over the elements, but not a well-regulated power, and in
time the Indians came to a belief in the better effect of the
invocations of the whites. In "Winslow's Relation," quoted by
Alexander Young in his "Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers," under
date of July, 1623, we read that on account of a great drought a fast
day was appointed. When the assembly met the sky was clear. The
exercise lasted eight or nine hours. Before they broke up, owing to
prayers the weather was overcast. Next day began a long gentle rain.
This the Indians seeing, admired the goodness of our God: "showing
the difference between their conjuration and our invocation in the
name of God for rain; theirs being mixed with such storms and
tempests, as sometimes, instead of doing them good, it layeth the
corn flat on the ground; but ours in so gentle and seasonable a
manner, as they never observed the like."
It was a common opinion of the early settlers in Virginia, as it was
of those in New England, that the Indians were born white, but that
they got a brown or tawny color by the use of red ointments, made of
earth and the juice of roots, with which they besmear themselves
either according to the custom of the country or as a defense against
the stinging of mosquitoes. The women are of the same hue as the
men, says Strachey; "howbeit, it is supposed neither of them
naturally borne so discolored; for Captain Smith (lyving sometymes
amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white,
but as the men, so doe the women," "dye and disguise themselves into
this tawny cowler, esteeming it the best beauty to be nearest such a
kind of murrey as a sodden quince is of," as the Greek women colored
their faces and the ancient Britain women dyed themselves with red;
"howbeit [Strachey slyly adds] he or she that hath obtained the
perfected art in the tempering of this collour with any better kind
of earth, yearb or root preserves it not yet so secrett and precious
unto herself as doe our great ladyes their oyle of talchum, or other
painting white and red, but they frindly communicate the secret and
teach it one another."
Thomas Lechford in his "Plain Dealing; or Newes from New England,"
London, 1642, says: "They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their
children are borne white, but they bedawbe them with oyle and colors
presently."
The men are described as tall, straight, and of comely proportions;
no beards; hair black, coarse, and thick; noses broad, flat, and full
at the end; with big lips and wide mouths', yet nothing so unsightly
as the Moors; and the women as having "handsome limbs, slender arms,
pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their
voices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women
acting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side,
with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine--"New England's
Plantation, 1630"--says of the Indians about him, "their hair is
generally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock
longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I
think came from hence into England."
Their love of ornaments is sufficiently illustrated by an extract
from Strachey, which is in substance what Smith writes:
"Their eares they boare with wyde holes, commonly two or three, and
in the same they doe hang chaines of stayned pearle braceletts, of
white bone or shreeds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and wounde
up hollowe, and with a grate pride, certaine fowles' legges, eagles,
hawkes, turkeys, etc., with beasts clawes, bears, arrahacounes,
squirrells, etc. The clawes thrust through they let hang upon the
cheeke to the full view, and some of their men there be who will
weare in these holes a small greene and yellow-couloured live snake,
neere half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping himself about
his neck oftentymes familiarly, he suffreeth to kisse his lippes.
Others weare a dead ratt tyed by the tayle, and such like
conundrums."
This is the earliest use I find of our word "conundrum," and the
sense it bears here may aid in discovering its origin.
Powhatan is a very large figure in early Virginia history, and
deserves his prominence. He was an able and crafty savage, and made
a good fight against the encroachments of the whites, but he was no
match for the crafty Smith, nor the double-dealing of the Christians.
There is something pathetic about the close of his life, his sorrow
for the death of his daughter in a strange land, when he saw his
territories overrun by the invaders, from whom he only asked peace,
and the poor privilege of moving further away from them into the
wilderness if they denied him peace.
In the midst of this savagery Pocahontas blooms like a sweet, wild
rose. She was, like the Douglas, "tender and true." Wanting
apparently the cruel nature of her race generally, her heroic
qualities were all of the heart. No one of all the contemporary
writers has anything but gentle words for her. Barbarous and
untaught she was like her comrades, but of a gentle nature. Stripped
of all the fictions which Captain Smith has woven into her story, and
all the romantic suggestions which later writers have indulged in,
she appears, in the light of the few facts that industry is able to
gather concerning her, as a pleasing and unrestrained Indian girl,
probablv not different from her savage sisters in her habits, but
bright and gentle; struck with admiration at the appearance of the
white men, and easily moved to pity them, and so inclined to a
growing and lasting friendship for them; tractable and apt to learn
refinements; accepting the new religion through love for those who
taught it, and finally becoming in her maturity a well-balanced,
sensible, dignified Christian woman.
According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did something
more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a
stranger and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those
who opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes
and in civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by
the sight of a prisoner, and risked life to save him--the impulse was
as natural to a Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas went
further than efforts to make peace between the superior race and her
own. When the whites forced the Indians to contribute from their
scanty stores to the support of the invaders, and burned their
dwellings and shot them on sight if they refused, the Indian maid
sympathized with the exposed whites and warned them of stratagems
against them; captured herself by a base violation of the laws of
hospitality, she was easily reconciled to her situation, adopted the
habits of the foreigners, married one of her captors, and in peace
and in war cast in her lot with the strangers. History has not
preserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.
It was no doubt fortunate for her, though perhaps not for the colony,
that her romantic career ended by an early death, so that she always
remains in history in the bloom of youth. She did not live to be
pained by the contrast, to which her eyes were opened, between her
own and her adopted people, nor to learn what things could be done in
the Christian name she loved, nor to see her husband in a less
honorable light than she left him, nor to be involved in any way in
the frightful massacre of 1622. If she had remained in England after
the novelty was over, she might have been subject to slights and
mortifying neglect. The struggles of the fighting colony could have
brought her little but pain. Dying when she did, she rounded out one
of the prettiest romances of all history, and secured for her name
the affection of a great nation, whose empire has spared little that
belonged to her childhood and race, except the remembrance of her
friendship for those who destroyed her people.
SAUNTERINGS
By Charles Dudley Warner
MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED
I should not like to ask an indulgent and idle public to saunter
about with me under a misapprehension. It would be more agreeable to
invite it to go nowhere than somewhere; for almost every one has been
somewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I can
suggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything about
it. The instinct of the public against any thing like information in
a volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader will
perhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book in
schools, or for the use of competitive candidates in the
civil-service examinations.
Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and spend weeks
in filling journals with their monotonous emotions. That is all
changed now, and there is a misapprehension that the Atlantic has
been practically subdued; but no one ever gets beyond the "rolling
forties" without having this impression corrected.
I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the roughest and
windiest of oceans. If you look at it on the map, it does n't appear
to be much, and, indeed, it is spoken of as a ferry. What with the
eight and nine days' passages over it, and the laying of the cable,
which annihilates distance, I had the impression that its tedious
three thousand and odd miles had been, somehow, partly done away
with; but they are all there. When one has sailed a thousand miles
due east and finds that he is then nowhere in particular, but is
still out, pitching about on an uneasy sea, under an inconstant sky,
and that a thousand miles more will not make any perceptible change,
he begins to have some conception of the unconquerable ocean.
Columbus rises in my estimation.
I was feeling uncomfortable that nothing had been done for the
memory of Christopher Columbus, when I heard some months ago that
thirty-seven guns had been fired off for him in Boston. It is to be
hoped that they were some satisfaction to him. They were discharged by
countrymen of his, who are justly proud that he should have been
able, after a search of only a few weeks, to find a land where the
hand-organ had never been heard. The Italians, as a people, have not
profited much by this discovery; not so much, indeed, as the
Spaniards, who got a reputation by it which even now gilds their
decay. That Columbus was born in Genoa entitles the Italians to
celebrate the great achievement of his life; though why they should
discharge exactly thirty-seven guns I do not know. Columbus did not
discover the United States: that we partly found ourselves, and
partly bought, and gouged the Mexicans out of. He did not even
appear to know that there was a continent here. He discovered the
West Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten guns would be
enough for them. It is probable that he did open the way to the
discovery of the New World. If he had waited, however, somebody else
would have discovered it,--perhaps some Englishman; and then we might
have been spared all the old French and Spanish wars. Columbus let
the Spaniards into the New World; and their civilization has
uniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians, who
neither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much inclination
to come, we should have had the opera, and made it a paying
institution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who liked
to sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.
Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thing
in first coming over here, one that we ought to celebrate with
salutes and dinners. The Indians never thanked him, for one party.
The Africans had small ground to be gratified for the market he
opened for them. Here are two continents that had no use for him.
He led Spain into a dance of great expectations, which ended in her
gorgeous ruin. He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid the
foundation for more tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans had
in a thousand years. He introduced the potato into Ireland
indirectly; and that caused such a rapid increase of population, that
the great famine was the result, and an enormous emigration to New
York--hence Tweed and the constituency of the Ring. Columbus is
really responsible for New York. He is responsible for our whole
tremendous experiment of democracy, open to all comers, the best
three in five to win. We cannot yet tell how it is coming out, what
with the foreigners and the communists and the women. On our great
stage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy and comedy, with what
denouement we cannot yet say. If it comes out well, we ought to
erect a monument to Christopher as high as the one at Washington
expects to be; and we presume it is well to fire a salute
occasionally to keep the ancient mariner in mind while we are trying
our great experiment. And this reminds me that he ought to have had
a naval salute.
There is something almost heroic in the idea of firing off guns for a
man who has been stone-dead for about four centuries. It must have
had a lively and festive sound in Boston, when the meaning of the
salute was explained. No one could hear those great guns without a
quicker beating of the heart in gratitude to the great discoverer who
had made Boston possible. We are trying to "realize" to ourselves
the importance of the 12th of October as an anniversary of our
potential existence. If any one wants to see how vivid is the
gratitude to Columbus, let him start out among our business-houses
with a subscription-paper to raise money for powder to be exploded in
his honor. And yet Columbus was a well-meaning man; and if he did
not discover a perfect continent, he found the only one that was
left.
Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is responsible
for much of the delusion concerning it. Its great practical use in
this fast age is to give one an idea of distance and of monotony.
I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to very
rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the
tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the
ocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb,
let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who goes to sea and
sings 'em. A square yard of solid ground is worth miles of the
pitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability to stand still for one
second is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the sun shines, and
swing up and down, while the waves run hither and thither and toss
their white caps, is all well enough to lie in your narrow berth and
roll from side to side all night long; to walk uphill to your
state-room door, and, when you get there, find you have got to the
bottom of the hill, and opening the door is like lifting up a
trap-door in the floor; to deliberately start for some object, and,
before you know it, to be flung against it like a bag of sand; to
attempt to sit down on your sofa, and find you are sitting up; to
slip and slide and grasp at everything within reach, and to meet
everybody leaning and walking on a slant, as if a heavy wind were
blowing, and the laws of gravitation were reversed; to lie in your
berth, and hear all the dishes on the cabin-table go sousing off
against the wall in a general smash; to sit at table holding your
soup-plate with one hand, and watching for a chance to put your spoon
in when it comes high tide on your side of the dish; to vigilantly
watch, the lurch of the heavy dishes while holding your glass and
your plate and your knife and fork, and not to notice it when Brown,
who sits next you, gets the whole swash of the gravy from the
roast-beef dish on his light-colored pantaloons, and see the look of
dismay that only Brown can assume on such an occasion; to see Mrs.
Brown advance to the table, suddenly stop and hesitate, two waiters
rush at her, with whom she struggles wildly, only to go down in a
heap with them in the opposite corner; to see her partially recover,
but only to shoot back again through her state-room door, and be seen
no more;--all this is quite pleasant and refreshing if you are tired
of land, but you get quite enough of it in a couple of weeks. You
become, in time, even a little tired of the Jew who goes about
wishing "he vas a veek older;" and the eccentric man, who looks at no
one, and streaks about the cabin and on deck, without any purpose,
and plays shuffle-board alone, always beating himself, and goes on
the deck occasionally through the sky-light instead of by the cabin
door, washes himself at the salt-water pump, and won't sleep in his
state-room, saying he is n't used to sleeping in a bed,--as if the
hard narrow, uneasy shelf of a berth was anything like a bed!--and
you have heard at last pretty nearly all about the officers, and
their twenty and thirty years of sea-life, and every ocean and port
on the habitable globe where they have been. There comes a day when
you are quite ready for land, and the scream of the "gull" is a
welcome sound.
Even the sailors lose the vivacity of the first of the voyage. The
first two or three days we had their quaint and half-doleful singing
in chorus as they pulled at the ropes: now they are satisfied with
short ha-ho's, and uncadenced grunts. It used to be that the leader
sang, in ever-varying lines of nonsense, and the chorus struck in
with fine effect, like this:
"I wish I was in Liverpool town.
Handy-pan, handy O!
O captain! where 'd you ship your crew
Handy-pan, handy O!
Oh! pull away, my bully crew,
Handy-pan, handy O!"
There are verses enough of this sort to reach across the Atlantic;
and they are not the worst thing about it either, or the most
tedious. One learns to respect this ocean, but not to love it; and
he leaves it with mingled feelings about Columbus.
And now, having crossed it,--a fact that cannot be concealed,--let us
not be under the misapprehension that we are set to any task other
than that of sauntering where it pleases us.
PARIS AND LONDON
SURFACE CONTRASTS OF PARIS AND LONDON
I wonder if it is the Channel? Almost everything is laid to the
Channel: it has no friends. The sailors call it the nastiest bit of
water in the world. All travelers anathematize it. I have now
crossed it three times in different places, by long routes and short
ones, and have always found it as comfortable as any sailing
anywhere, sailing being one of the most tedious and disagreeable
inventions of a fallen race. But such is not the usual experience:
most people would make great sacrifices to avoid the hour and three
quarters in one of those loathsome little Channel boats,--they always
call them loathsome, though I did n't see but they are as good as any
boats. I have never found any boat that hasn't a detestable habit of
bobbing round. The Channel is hated: and no one who has much to do
with it is surprised at the projects for bridging it and for boring a
hole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an Englishman who
wants either done,--he does not desire any more facile communication
with the French than now exists. The traditional hatred may not be
so strong as it was, but it is hard to say on which side is the most
ignorance and contempt of the other.
It must be the Channel: that is enough to produce a physical
disagreement even between the two coasts; and there cannot be a
greater contrast in the cultivated world than between the two lands
lying so close to each other; and the contrast of their capitals is
even more decided,--I was about to say rival capitals, but they have
not enough in common to make them rivals. I have lately been over to
London for a week, going by the Dieppe and New Haven route at night,
and returning by another; and the contrasts I speak of were impressed
upon me anew. Everything here in and about Paris was in the green
and bloom of spring, and seemed to me very lovely; but my first
glance at an English landscape made it all seem pale and flat. We
went up from New Haven to London in the morning, and feasted our eyes
all the way. The French foliage is thin, spindling, sparse; the
grass is thin and light in color--in contrast. The English trees are
massive, solid in substance and color; the grass is thick, and green
as emerald; the turf is like the heaviest Wilton carpet. The whole
effect is that of vegetable luxuriance and solidity, as it were a
tropical luxuriance, condensed and hardened by northern influences.
If my eyes remember well, the French landscapes are more like our
own, in spring tone, at least; but the English are a revelation to us
strangers of what green really is, and what grass and trees can be.
I had been told that we did well to see England before going to the
Continent, for it would seem small and only pretty afterwards. Well,
leaving out Switzerland, I have seen nothing in that beauty which
satisfies the eye and wins the heart to compare with England in
spring. When we annex it to our sprawling country which lies
out-doors in so many climates, it will make a charming little retreat
for us in May and June, a sort of garden of delight, whence we shall
draw our May butter and our June roses. It will only be necessary to
put it under glass to make it pleasant the year round.
When we passed within the hanging smoke of London town, threading our
way amid numberless railway tracks, sometimes over a road and
sometimes under one, now burrowing into the ground, and now running
along among the chimney-pots,--when we came into the pale light and
the thickening industry of a London day, we could but at once
contrast Paris. Unpleasant weather usually reduces places to an
equality of disagreeableness. But Paris, with its wide streets,
light, handsome houses, gay windows and smiling little parks and
fountains, keeps up a tolerably pleasant aspect, let the weather do
its worst. But London, with its low, dark, smutty brick houses and
insignificant streets, settles down hopelessly into the dumps when
the weather is bad. Even with the sun doing its best on the eternal
cloud of smoke, it is dingy and gloomy enough, and so dirty, after
spick-span, shining Paris. And there is a contrast in the matter of
order and system; the lack of both in London is apparent. You detect
it in public places, in crowds, in the streets. The "social evil" is
bad enough in its demonstrations in Paris: it is twice as offensive
in London. I have never seen a drunken woman in Paris: I saw many of
them in the daytime in London. I saw men and women fight in the
streets,--a man kick and pound a woman; and nobody interfered. There
is a brutal streak in the Anglo-Saxon, I fear,--a downright animal
coarseness, that does not exhibit itself the other side of the
Channel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at
hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do
service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville!
The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white
gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,--always with the manner of a
jesuit turned soldier,--you learn to trust very much, if not respect;
and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and give you
your rights in any corner of Paris. It does look as if he might slip
that slender rapier through your body in a second, and pull it out
and wipe it, and not move a muscle; but I don't think he would do it
unless he were directly ordered to. He would not be likely to knock
you down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy who was
assaulting you.
A great contrast between the habits of the people of London and Paris
is shown by their eating and drinking. Paris is brilliant with
cafes: all the world frequents them to sip coffee (and too often
absinthe), read the papers, and gossip over the news; take them away,
as all travelers know, and Paris would not know itself. There is not
a cafe in London: instead of cafes, there are gin-mills; instead of
light wine, there is heavy beer. The restaurants and restaurant life
are as different as can be. You can get anything you wish in Paris:
you can live very cheaply or very dearly, as you like. The range is
more limited in London. I do not fancy the usual run of Paris
restaurants. You get a great deal for your money, in variety and
quantity; but you don't exactly know what it is: and in time you tire
of odds and ends, which destroy your hunger without exactly
satisfying you. For myself, after a pretty good run of French
cookery (and it beats the world for making the most out of little),
when I sat down again to what the eminently respectable waiter in
white and black calls "a dinner off the Joint, sir," with what
belongs to it, and ended up with an attack on a section of a cheese
as big as a bass-drum, not to forget a pewter mug of amber liquid, I
felt as if I had touched bottom again,--got something substantial,
had what you call a square meal. The English give you the
substantials, and better, I believe, than any other people.
Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good dinner now and
then. I have tried his favorite restaurant here, the cuisine of
which is famous far beyond the banks of the Seine; but I think if he,
hearty trencher-man that he was, had lived in Paris, he would have
gone to London for a dinner oftener than he came here.
And as for a lunch,--this eating is a fascinating theme,--commend me
to a quiet inn of England. We happened to be out at Kew Gardens the
other afternoon. You ought to go to Kew, even if the Duchess of
Cambridge is not at home. There is not such a park out of England,
considering how beautiful the Thames is there. What splendid trees
it has! the horse-chestnut, now a mass of pink-and-white blossoms,
from its broad base, which rests on the ground, to its high rounded
dome; the hawthorns, white and red, in full flower; the sweeps and
glades of living green,--turf on which you walk with a grateful sense
of drawing life directly from the yielding, bountiful earth,--a green
set out and heightened by flowers in masses of color (a great variety
of rhododendrons, for one thing), to say nothing of magnificent
greenhouses and outlying flower-gardens. Just beyond are Richmond
Hill and Hampton Court, and five or six centuries of tradition and
history and romance. Before you enter the garden, you pass the
green. On one side of it are cottages, and on the other the old
village church and its quiet churchyard. Some boys were playing
cricket on the sward, and children were getting as intimate with the
turf and the sweet earth as their nurses would let them. We turned
into a little cottage, which gave notice of hospitality for a
consideration; and were shown, by a pretty maid in calico, into an
upper room,--a neat, cheerful, common room, with bright flowers in
the open windows, and white muslin curtains for contrast. We looked
out on the green and over to the beautiful churchyard, where one of
England's greatest painters, Gainsborough, lies in rural repose. It
is nothing to you, who always dine off the best at home, and never
encounter dirty restaurants and snuffy inns, or run the gauntlet of
Continental hotels, every meal being an experiment of great interest,
if not of danger, to say that this brisk little waitress spread a
snowy cloth, and set thereon meat and bread and butter and a salad:
that conveys no idea to your mind. Because you cannot see that the
loaf of wheaten bread was white and delicate, and full of the
goodness of the grain; or that the butter, yellow as a guinea, tasted
of grass and cows, and all the rich juices of the verdant year, and
was not mere flavorless grease; or that the cuts of roast beef, fat
and lean, had qualities that indicate to me some moral elevation in
the cattle,--high-toned, rich meat; or that the salad was crisp and
delicious, and rather seemed to enjoy being eaten, at least, did n't
disconsolately wilt down at the prospect, as most salad does. I do
not wonder that Walter Scott dwells so much on eating, or lets his
heroes pull at the pewter mugs so often. Perhaps one might find a
better lunch in Paris, but he surely couldn't find this one.
PARIS IN MAY--FRENCH GIRLS--THE EMPEROR AT LONGCHAMPS
It was the first of May when we came up from Italy. The spring grew
on us as we advanced north; vegetation seemed further along than it
was south of the Alps. Paris was bathed in sunshine, wrapped in
delicious weather, adorned with all the delicate colors of blushing
spring. Now the horse-chestnuts are all in bloom and so is the
hawthorn; and in parks and gardens there are rows and alleys of
trees, with blossoms of pink and of white; patches of flowers set in
the light green grass; solid masses of gorgeous color, which fill all
the air with perfume; fountains that dance in the sunlight as if just
released from prison; and everywhere the soft suffusion of May.
Young maidens who make their first communion go into the churches in
processions of hundreds, all in white, from the flowing veil to the
satin slipper; and I see them everywhere for a week after the
ceremony, in their robes of innocence, often with bouquets of
flowers, and attended by their friends; all concerned making it a
joyful holiday, as it ought to be. I hear, of course, with what
false ideas of life these girls are educated; how they are watched
before marriage; how the marriage is only one of arrangement, and
what liberty they eagerly seek afterwards. I met a charming Paris
lady last winter in Italy, recently married, who said she had never
been in the Louvre in her life; never had seen any of the magnificent
pictures or world-famous statuary there, because girls were not
allowed to go there, lest they should see something that they ought
not to see. I suppose they look with wonder at the young American
girls who march up to anything that ever was created, with undismayed
front.
Another Frenchwoman, a lady of talent and the best breeding, recently
said to a friend, in entire unconsciousness that she was saying
anything remarkable, that, when she was seventeen, her great desire
was to marry one of her uncles (a thing not very unusual with the
papal dispensation), in order to keep all the money in the family!
That was the ambition of a girl of seventeen.
I like, on these sunny days, to look into the Luxembourg Garden:
nowhere else is the eye more delighted with life and color. In the
afternoon, especially, it is a baby-show worth going far to see. The
avenues are full of children, whose animated play, light laughter,
and happy chatter, and pretty, picturesque dress, make a sort of
fairy grove of the garden; and all the nurses of that quarter bring
their charges there, and sit in the shade, sewing, gossiping, and
comparing the merits of the little dears. One baby differs from
another in glory, I suppose; but I think on such days that they are
all lovely, taken in the mass, and all in sweet harmony with the
delicious atmosphere, the tender green, and the other flowers of
spring. A baby can't do better than to spend its spring days in the
Luxembourg Garden.
There are several ways of seeing Paris besides roaming up and down
before the blazing shop-windows, and lounging by daylight or gaslight
along the crowded and gay boulevards; and one of the best is to go to
the Bois de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are in
progress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to one who
has seen the English parks, or who remembers the noble trees and
glades and avenues of that at Munich. To be sure, there is a lovely
little lake and a pretty artificial cascade, and the roads and walks
are good; but the trees are all saplings, and nearly all the "wood"
is a thicket of small stuff. Yet there is green grass that one can
roll on, and there is a grove of small pines that one can sit under.
It is a pleasant place to drive toward evening; but its great
attraction is the crowd there. All the principal avenues are lined
with chairs, and there people sit to watch the streams of carriages.
I went out to the Bois the other day, when there were races going on;
not that I went to the races, for I know nothing about them, per se,
and care less. All running races are pretty much alike. You see a
lean horse, neck and tail, flash by you, with a jockey in colors on
his back; and that is the whole of it. Unless you have some money on
it, in the pool or otherwise, it is impossible to raise any
excitement. The day I went out, the Champs Elysees, on both sides,
its whole length, was crowded with people, rows and ranks of them
sitting in chairs and on benches. The Avenue de l'Imperatrice, from
the Arc de l'Etoile to the entrance of the Bois, was full of
promenaders; and the main avenues of the Bois, from the chief
entrance to the race-course, were lined with people, who stood or
sat, simply to see the passing show. There could not have been less
than ten miles of spectators, in double or triple rows, who had taken
places that afternoon to watch the turnouts of fashion and rank.
These great avenues were at all times, from three till seven, filled
with vehicles; and at certain points, and late in the day, there was,
or would have been anywhere else except in Paris, a jam. I saw a
great many splendid horses, but not so many fine liveries as one will
see on a swell-day in London. There was one that I liked. A
handsome carriage, with one seat, was drawn by four large and elegant
black horses, the two near horses ridden by postilions in blue and
silver,--blue roundabouts, white breeches and topboots, a
round-topped silver cap, and the hair, or wig, powdered, and showing
just a little behind. A footman mounted behind, seated, wore the same
colors; and the whole establishment was exceedingly tonnish.
The race-track (Longchamps, as it is called), broad and beautiful
springy turf, is not different from some others, except that the
inclosed oblong space is not flat, but undulating just enough for
beauty, and so framed in by graceful woods, and looked on by chateaux
and upland forests, that I thought I had never seen a sweeter bit of
greensward. St. Cloud overlooks it, and villas also regard it from
other heights. The day I saw it, the horse-chestnuts were in bloom;
and there was, on the edges, a cloud of pink and white blossoms, that
gave a soft and charming appearance to the entire landscape. The
crowd in the grounds, in front of the stands for judges, royalty, and
people who are privileged or will pay for places, was, I suppose,
much as usual,--an excited throng of young and jockey-looking men,
with a few women-gamblers in their midst, making up the pool; a pack
of carriages along the circuit of the track, with all sorts of
people, except the very good; and conspicuous the elegantly habited
daughters of sin and satin, with servants in livery, as if they had
been born to it; gentlemen and ladies strolling about, or reclining
on the sward, and a refreshment-stand in lively operation.
When the bell rang, we all cleared out from the track, and I happened
to get a position by the railing. I was looking over to the
Pavilion, where I supposed the Emperor to be, when the man next to me
cried, "Voila!" and, looking up, two horses brushed right by my face,
of which I saw about two tails and one neck, and they were gone.
Pretty soon they came round again, and one was ahead, as is apt to be
the case; and somebody cried, "Bully for Therise!" or French to that
effect, and it was all over. Then we rushed across to the Emperor's
Pavilion, except that I walked with all the dignity consistent with
rapidity, and there, in the midst of his suite, sat the Man of
December, a stout, broad, and heavy-faced man as you know, but a man
who impresses one with a sense of force and purpose,--sat, as I say,
and looked at us through his narrow, half-shut eyes, till he was
satisfied that I had got his features through my glass, when he
deliberately arose and went in.
All Paris was out that day,--it is always out, by the way, when the
sun shines, and in whatever part of the city you happen to be; and it
seemed to me there was a special throng clear down to the gate of the
Tuileries, to see the Emperor and the rest of us come home. He went
round by the Rue Rivoli, but I walked through the gardens. The
soldiers from Africa sat by the gilded portals, as usual,--aliens,
and yet always with the port of conquerors here in Paris. Their
nonchalant indifference and soldierly bearing always remind me of the
sort of force the Emperor has at hand to secure his throne. I think
the blouses must look askance at these satraps of the desert. The
single jet fountain in the basin was springing its highest,--a
quivering pillar of water to match the stone shaft of Egypt which
stands close by. The sun illuminated it, and threw a rainbow from it
a hundred feet long, upon the white and green dome of chestnut-trees
near. When I was farther down the avenue, I had the dancing column
of water, the obelisk, and the Arch of Triumph all in line, and the
rosy sunset beyond.
AN IMPERIAL REVIEW
The Prince and Princess of Wales came up to Paris in the beginning of
May, from Italy, Egypt, and alongshore, stayed at a hotel on the
Place Vendome, where they can get beef that is not horse, and is
rare, and beer brewed in the royal dominions, and have been
entertained with cordiality by the Emperor. Among the spectacles
which he has shown them is one calculated to give them an idea of his
peaceful intentions,-a grand review of cavalry and artillery at the
Bois de Boulogne. It always seems to me a curious comment upon the
state of our modern civilization, when one prince visits another here
in Europe, the first thing that the visited does, by way of hospitality
is to get out his troops, and show his rival how easily he could "lick"
him, if it came to that.
It is a little puerile. At any rate, it is an advance upon the old
fashion of getting up a joust at arms, and inviting the guest to come
out and have his head cracked in a friendly way.
The review, which had been a good deal talked about, came off in the
afternoon; and all the world went to it. The avenues of the Bois
were crowded with carriages, and the walks with footpads. Such a
constellation of royal personages met on one field must be seen; for,
besides the imperial family and Albert Edward and his Danish beauty,
there was to be the Archduke of Austria and no end of titled
personages besides. At three o'clock the royal company, in the
Emperor's carriages, drove upon the training-ground of the Bois,
where the troops awaited them. All the party, except the Princess of
Wales, then mounted horses, and rode along the lines, and afterwards
retired to a wood-covered knoll at one end to witness the evolutions.
The training-ground is a noble, slightly undulating piece of
greensward, perhaps three quarters of a mile long and half that in
breadth, hedged about with graceful trees, and bounded on one side by
the Seine. Its borders were rimmed that day with thousands of people
on foot and in carriages,--a gay sight, in itself, of color and
fashion. A more brilliant spectacle than the field presented cannot
well be imagined. Attention was divided between the gentle eminence
where the imperial party stood,--a throng of noble persons backed by
the gay and glittering Guard of the Emperor, as brave a show as
chivalry ever made,--and the field of green, with its long lines in
martial array; every variety of splendid uniforms, the colors and
combinations that most dazzle and attract, with shining brass and
gleaming steel, and magnificent horses of war, regiments of black,
gray, and bay.
The evolutions were such as to stir the blood of the most sluggish.
A regiment, full front, would charge down upon a dead run from the
far field, men shouting, sabers flashing, horses thundering along, so
that the ground shook, towards the imperial party, and, when near,
stop suddenly, wheel to right and left, and gallop back. Others
would succeed them rapidly, coming up the center while their
predecessors filed down the sides; so that the whole field was a
moving mass of splendid color and glancing steel. Now and then a
rider was unhorsed in the furious rush, and went scrambling out of
harm, while the steed galloped off with free rein. This display was
followed by that of the flying artillery, battalion after battalion,
which came clattering and roaring along, in double lines stretching
half across the field, stopped and rapidly discharged its pieces,
waking up all the region with echoes, filling the plain with the
smoke of gunpowder, and starting into rearing activity all the
carriage-horses in the Bois. How long this continued I do not know,
nor how many men participated in the review, but they seemed to pour
up from the far end in unending columns. I think the regiments must
have charged over and over again. It gave some people the impression
that there were a hundred thousand troops on the ground. I set it at
fifteen to twenty thousand. Gallignani next morning said there were
only six thousand! After the charging was over, the reviewing party
rode to the center of the field, and the troops galloped round them;
and the Emperor distributed decorations. We could recognize the
Emperor and Empress; Prince Albert in huzzar uniform, with a green
plume in his cap; and the Prince Imperial, in cap and the uniform of
a lieutenant, on horseback in front; while the Princess occupied a
carriage behind them.
There was a crush of people at the entrance to see the royals make
their exit. Gendarmes were busy, and mounted guards went smashing
through the crowd to clear a space. Everybody was on the tiptoe of
expectation. There is a portion of the Emperor's guard; there is an
officer of the household; there is an emblazoned carriage; and,
quick, there! with a rush they come, driving as if there was no
crowd, with imperial haste, postilions and outriders and the imperial
carriage. There is a sensation, a cordial and not loud greeting, but
no Yankee-like cheers. That heavy gentleman in citizen's dress, who
looks neither to right nor left, is Napoleon III.; that handsome
woman, grown full in the face of late, but yet with the bloom of
beauty and the sweet grace of command, in hat and dark riding-habit,
bowing constantly to right and left, and smiling, is the Empress
Eugenie. And they are gone. As we look for something more, there is
a rout in the side avenue; something is coming, unexpected, from
another quarter: dragoons dash through the dense mass, shouting and
gesticulating, and a dozen horses go by, turning the corner like a
small whirlwind, urged on by whip and spur, a handsome boy riding in
the midst,--a boy in cap and simple uniform, riding gracefully and
easily and jauntily, and out of sight in a minute. It is the boy
Prince Imperial and his guard. It was like him to dash in
unexpectedly, as he has broken into the line of European princes. He
rides gallantly, and Fortune smiles on him to-day; but he rides into
a troubled future. There was one more show,--a carriage of the
Emperor, with officers, in English colors and side-whiskers, riding
in advance and behind: in it the future King of England, the heavy,
selfish-faced young man, and beside him his princess, popular
wherever she shows her winning face,--a fair, sweet woman, in light
and flowing silken stuffs of spring, a vision of lovely youth and
rank, also gone in a minute.
These English visitors are enjoying the pleasures of the French
capital. On Sunday, as I passed the Hotel Bristol, a crowd,
principally English, was waiting in front of it to see the Prince and
Princess come out, and enter one of the Emperor's carriages in
waiting. I heard an Englishwoman, who was looking on with admiration
"sticking out" all over, remark to a friend in a very loud whisper,
"I tell you, the Prince lives every day of his life." The princely
pair came out at length, and drove away, going to visit Versailles.
I don't know what the Queen would think of this way of spending
Sunday; but if Albert Edward never does anything worse, he does n't
need half the praying for that he gets every Sunday in all the
English churches and chapels.
THE LOW COUNTRIES AND RHINELAND
AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES
They have not yet found out the secret in France of banishing dust
from railway-carriages. Paris, late in June, was hot, but not dusty:
the country was both. There is an uninteresting glare and hardness
in a French landscape on a sunny day. The soil is thin, the trees
are slender, and one sees not much luxury or comfort. Still, one
does not usually see much of either on a flying train. We spent a
night at Amiens, and had several hours for the old cathedral, the
sunset light on its noble front and towers and spire and flying
buttresses, and the morning rays bathing its rich stone. As one
stands near it in front, it seems to tower away into heaven, a mass
of carving and sculpture,--figures of saints and martyrs who have
stood in the sun and storm for ages, as they stood in their lifetime,
with a patient waiting. It was like a great company, a Christian
host, in attitudes of praise and worship. There they were, ranks on
ranks, silent in stone, when the last of the long twilight illumined
them; and there in the same impressive patience they waited the
golden day. It required little fancy to feel that they had lived,
and now in long procession came down the ages. The central portal is
lofty, wide, and crowded with figures. The side is only less rich
than the front. Here the old Gothic builders let their fancy riot in
grotesque gargoyles,--figures of animals, and imps of sin, which
stretch out their long necks for waterspouts above. From the ground
to the top of the unfinished towers is one mass of rich stone-work,
the creation of genius that hundreds of years ago knew no other way
to write its poems than with the chisel. The interior is very
magnificent also, and has some splendid stained glass. At eight
o'clock, the priests were chanting vespers to a larger congregation
than many churches have on Sunday: their voices were rich and
musical, and, joined with the organ notes, floated sweetly and
impressively through the dim and vast interior. We sat near the
great portal, and, looking down the long, arched nave and choir to
the cluster of candles burning on the high altar, before which the
priests chanted, one could not but remember how many centuries the
same act of worship had been almost uninterrupted within, while the
apostles and martyrs stood without, keeping watch of the unchanging
heavens.
When I stepped in, early in the morning, the first mass was in
progress. The church was nearly empty. Looking within the choir, I
saw two stout young priests lustily singing the prayers in deep, rich
voices. One of them leaned back in his seat, and sang away, as if he
had taken a contract to do it, using, from time to time, an enormous
red handkerchief, with which and his nose he produced a trumpet
obligato. As I stood there, a poor dwarf bobbled in and knelt on the
bare stones, and was the only worshiper, until, at length, a
half-dozen priests swept in from the sacristy, and two processions of
young school-girls entered from either side. They have the skull of
John the Baptist in this cathedral. I did not see it, although I
suppose I could have done so for a franc to the beadle: but I saw a
very good stone imitation of it; and his image and story fill the
church. It is something to have seen the place that contains his
skull.
The country becomes more interesting as one gets into Belgium.
Windmills are frequent: in and near Lille are some six hundred of
them; and they are a great help to a landscape that wants fine trees.
At Courtrai, we looked into Notre Dame, a thirteenth century
cathedral, which has a Vandyke ("The Raising of the Cross"), and the
chapel of the Counts of Flanders, where workmen were uncovering some
frescoes that were whitewashed over in the war-times. The town hall
has two fine old chimney-pieces carved in wood, with quaint figures,
--work that one must go to the Netherlands to see. Toward evening we
came into the ancient town of Bruges. The country all day has been
mostly flat, but thoroughly cultivated. Windmills appear to do all
the labor of the people,--raising the water, grinding the grain,
sawing the lumber; and they everywhere lift their long arms up to the
sky. Things look more and more what we call "foreign." Harvest is
going on, of hay and grain; and men and women work together in the
fields. The gentle sex has its rights here. We saw several women
acting as switch-tenders. Perhaps the use of the switch comes
natural to them. Justice, however, is still in the hands of the men.
We saw a Dutch court in session in a little room in the town hall at
Courtrai. The justice wore a little red cap, and sat informally
behind a cheap table. I noticed that the witnesses were treated with
unusual consideration, being allowed to sit down at the table
opposite the little justice, who interrogated them in a loud voice.
At the stations to-day we see more friars in coarse, woolen dresses,
and sandals, and the peasants with wooden sabots.
As the sun goes to the horizon, we have an effect sometimes produced
by the best Dutch artists,--a wonderful transparent light, in which
the landscape looks like a picture, with its church-spires of stone,
its windmills, its slender trees, and red-roofed houses. It is a
good light and a good hour in which to enter Bruges, that city of the
past. Once the city was greater than Antwerp; and up the Rege came
the commerce of the East, merchants from the Levant, traders in
jewels and silks. Now the tall houses wait for tenants, and the
streets have a deserted air. After nightfall, as we walked in the
middle of the roughly paved streets, meeting few people, and hearing
only the echoing clatter of the wooden sabots of the few who were
abroad, the old spirit of the place came over us. We sat on a bench
in the market-place, a treeless square, hemmed in by quaint, gabled
houses, late in the evening, to listen to the chimes from the belfry.
The tower is less than four hundred feet high, and not so high by
some seventy feet as the one on Notre Dame near by; but it is very
picturesque, in spite of the fact that it springs out of a
rummagy-looking edifice, one half of which is devoted to soldiers'
barracks, and the other to markets. The chimes are called the finest
in Europe. It is well to hear the finest at once, and so have done
with the tedious things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes as the
Dutch are of stagnant water. We heard them everywhere in Belgium; and
in some towns they are incessant, jangling every seven and a half
minutes. The chimes at Bruges ring every quarter hour for a minute,
and at the full hour attempt a tune. The revolving machinery grinds
out the tune, which is changed at least once a year; and on Sundays a
musician, chosen by the town, plays the chimes. In so many bells
(there are forty-eight), the least of which weighs twelve pounds, and
the largest over eleven thousand, there must be soft notes and
sonorous tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered down: but we
liked better than the confused chiming the solemn notes of the great
bell striking the hour. There is something very poetical about this
chime of bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum and traffic
of the city its oft-repeated benediction of peace; but anybody but a
Lowlander would get very weary of it. These chimes, to be sure, are
better than those in London, which became a nuisance; but there is in
all of them a tinkling attempt at a tune, which always fails, that is
very annoying.
Bruges has altogether an odd flavor. Piles of wooden sabots are for
sale in front of the shops; and this ugly shoe, which is mysteriously
kept on the foot, is worn by all the common sort. We see long,
slender carts in the street, with one horse hitched far ahead with
rope traces, and no thills or pole.
The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks of black cloth
with a silk hood thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for its
beautiful women, who are enticingly described as always walking the
streets with covered faces, and peeping out from their mantles. They
are not so handsome now they show their faces, I can testify.
Indeed, if there is in Bruges another besides the beautiful girl who
showed us the old council-chamber in the Palace of justice, she must
have had her hood pulled over her face.
Next morning was market-day. The square was lively with carts,
donkeys, and country people, and that and all the streets leading to
it were filled with the women in black cloaks, who flitted about as
numerous as the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, moving in a
winged way, their cloaks outspread as they walked, and distended with
the market-basket underneath. Though the streets were full, the town
did not seem any less deserted; and the early marketers had only come
to life for a day, revisiting the places that once they thronged. In
the shade of the tall houses in the narrow streets sat red-cheeked
girls and women making lace, the bobbins jumping under their nimble
fingers. At the church doors hideous beggars crouched and whined,
--specimens of the fifteen thousand paupers of Bruges. In the
fishmarket we saw odd old women, with Rembrandt colors in faces and
costume; and while we strayed about in the strange city, all the time
from the lofty tower the chimes fell down. What history crowds upon
us! Here in the old cathedral, with its monstrous tower of brick, a
portion of it as old as the tenth century, Philip the Good
established, in 1429, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the last
chapter of which was held by Philip the Bad in 1559, in the rich old
Cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Here, on the square, is the site
of the house where the Emperor Maximilian was imprisoned by his
rebellious Flemings; and next it, with a carved lion, that in which
Charles II. of England lived after the martyrdom of that patient and
virtuous ruler, whom the English Prayerbook calls that "blessed
martyr, Charles the First." In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charles
the Bold and Mary his daughter.
We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. Here died Jan
van Eyck, the father of oil painting; and here, in the hospital of
St. John, are the most celebrated pictures of Hans Memling. The most
exquisite in color and finish is the series painted on the casket
made to contain the arm of St. Ursula, and representing the story of
her martyrdom. You know she went on a pilgrimage to Rome, with her
lover, Conan, and eleven thousand virgins; and, on their return to
Cologne, they were all massacred by the Huns. One would scarcely
believe the story, if he did not see all their bones at Cologne.
GHENT AND ANTWERP
What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memory
recall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, though
one thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its
merchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry-tower is the gilt
dragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumph
from Bruges. It was originally fetched from a Greek church in
Constantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall to
us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East traded
up the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of India
and Persia. The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers
together on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. What
fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuries
ago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square of
old-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen
hundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds
of fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires
of the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery,
used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,--a hammered-iron hooped
affair, eighteen feet long. But why mention this, or the magnificent
town hall, or St. Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to put
you back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclasts
sacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?
Up to Antwerp toward evening. All the country flat as the flattest
part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals,
picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in
rows. It has been all day hot and dusty. The country everywhere
seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a
storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take
rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is
sharply defined against the red western sky.
Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, very
strongly. It is still the home of wealth. It has stately buildings,
splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charms
more than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.
It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which
the broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of the
unstable state of Europe. While Berlin is only a vast camp of
soldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call its
muster-roll. From the tower here one looks upon the cockpit of
Europe. And yet Antwerp ought to have rest: she has had tumult
enough in her time. Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old,
comparative splendor can never come back. In the sixteenth century
there was no richer city in Europe.
We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in the
richest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into an
exquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.
What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when two
thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, and
the commerce of Europe found here its best mart. Along the stream
now is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is lined
with beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childish
amusements. There is an odd liking for the simple among these
people. In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instruments
played in bewildering discord. Actors in paint and tights stood
without to attract the crowd within. On one low balcony, a
copper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress
of the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black man
stood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl,
making an earnest speech to the crowd. In another place, where a
crazy band made furious music, was an enormous "go-round" of wooden
ponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, instead of
children, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemed
delighted with the sport. In the general Babel, everybody was
good-natured and jolly. Little things suffice to amuse the lower
classes, who do not have to bother their heads with elections and
mass meetings.
In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of
iron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of
whose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the
finest pictures of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens,
the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto
Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his
wife,--a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws one
to it with almost a passion of admiration. We had already seen "The
Descent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in
the cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, I
cannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted what
he saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in the
broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to his
house, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five years
ago. From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leads
into a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with a
summer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the very
stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet place, and fit
for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived the
life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.
AMSTERDAM
The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile.
After a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land to
live in I never saw. One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings
and Dutchmen to keep all this vast tract above water when there is so
much good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied. At Moerdjik we changed
from the cars to a little steamer on the Maas, which flows between
high banks. The water is higher than the adjoining land, and from
the deck we look down upon houses and farms. At Dort, the Rhine
comes in with little promise of the noble stream it is in the
highlands. Everywhere canals and ditches dividing the small fields
instead of fences; trees planted in straight lines, and occasionally
trained on a trellis in front of the houses, with the trunk painted
white or green; so that every likeness of nature shall be taken away.
From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same. The Dutchman spends
half his life, apparently, in fighting the water. He has to watch
the huge dikes which keep the ocean from overwhelming him, and the
river-banks, which may break, and let the floods of the Rhine swallow
him up. The danger from within is not less than from without. Yet
so fond is he of his one enemy, that, when he can afford it, he
builds him a fantastic summer-house over a stagnant pool or a slimy
canal, in one corner of his garden, and there sits to enjoy the
aquatic beauties of nature; that is, nature as he has made it. The
river-banks are woven with osiers to keep them from washing; and at
intervals on the banks are piles of the long withes to be used in
emergencies when the swollen streams threaten to break through.
And so we come to Amsterdam, the oddest city of all,--a city wholly
built on piles, with as many canals as streets, and an architecture
so quaint as to even impress one who has come from Belgium. The
whole town has a wharf-y look; and it is difficult to say why the
tall brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, and each
one leaning forward or backward or sideways, and none perpendicular,
and no two on a line, are so interesting. But certainly it is a most
entertaining place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowded
Jews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, its narrow streets,
and high houses hung with clothes, as if every day were washing-day;
or strolls through the equally narrow streets of rich shops; or
lounges upon the bridges, and looks at the queer boats with clumsy
rounded bows, great helms' painted in gay colors, with flowers in the
cabin windows,--boats where families live; or walks down the
Plantage, with the zoological gardens on the one hand and rows of
beer-gardens on the other; or round the great docks; or saunters at
sunset by the banks of the Y, and looks upon flat North Holland and
the Zuyder Zee.
The palace on the Dam (square) is a square, stately edifice, and the
only building that the stranger will care to see. Its interior is
richer and more fit to live in than any palace we have seen. There
is nothing usually so dreary as your fine Palace. There are some
good frescoes, rooms richly decorated in marble, and a magnificent
hall, or ball-room, one hundred feet in height, without pillars.
Back of it is, of course, a canal, which does not smell fragrantly in
the summer; and I do not wonder that William III. and his queen
prefer to stop away. From the top is a splendid view of Amsterdam
and all the flat region. I speak of it with entire impartiality, for
I did not go up to see it. But better than palaces are the
picture-galleries, three of which are open to the sightseer. Here
the ancient and modern Dutch painters are seen at their best, and I
know of no richer feast of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seen
in his glory; here Van der Helst, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw, Teniers the
younger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and other names as
familiar. These men also painted what they saw, the people, the
landscapes, with which they were familiar. It was a strange pleasure
to meet again and again in the streets of the town the faces, or
types of them, that we had just seen on canvas so old.
In the Low Countries, the porters have the grand title of
commissionaires. They carry trunks and bundles, black boots, and act
as valets de place. As guides, they are quite as intolerable in
Amsterdam as their brethren in other cities. Many of them are Jews;
and they have a keen eye for a stranger. The moment he sallies from
his hotel, there is a guide. Let him hesitate for an instant in his
walk, either to look at something or to consult his map, or let him
ask the way, and he will have a half dozen of the persistent guild
upon him; and they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon we
arrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's Oude Doelan,
when a gray-headed commissionaire knocked at our door, and offered
his services to show us the city. We deferred the pleasure of his
valuable society. Shortly, when we came down to the street, a
smartly dressed Israelite took off his hat to us, and offered to show
us the city. We declined with impressive politeness, and walked on.
The Jew accompanied us, and attempted conversation, in which we did
not join. He would show us everything for a guilder an hour,--for
half a guilder. Having plainly told the Jew that we did not desire
his attendance, he crossed to the other side of the street, and kept
us in sight, biding his opportunity. At the end of the street, we
hesitated a moment whether to cross the bridge or turn up by the
broad canal. The Jew was at our side in a moment, having divined
that we were on the way to the Dam and the palace. He obligingly
pointed the way, and began to walk with us, entering into
conversation. We told him pointedly, that we did not desire his
services, and requested him to leave us. He still walked in our
direction, with the air of one much injured, but forgiving, and was
more than once beside us with a piece of information. When we
finally turned upon him with great fierceness, and told him to
begone, he regarded us with a mournful and pitying expression; and as
the last act of one who returned good for evil, before he turned
away, pointed out to us the next turn we were to make. I saw him
several times afterward; and I once had occasion to say to him, that
I had already told him I would not employ him; and he always lifted
his hat, and looked at me with a forgiving smile. I felt that I had
deeply wronged him. As we stood by the statue, looking up at the
eastern pediment of the palace, another of the tribe (they all speak
a little English) asked me if I wished to see the palace. I told him
I was looking at it, and could see it quite distinctly. Half a dozen
more crowded round, and proffered their aid. Would I like to go into
the palace? They knew, and I knew, that they could do nothing more
than go to the open door, through which they would not be admitted,
and that I could walk across the open square to that, and enter
alone. I asked the first speaker if he wished to go into the palace.
Oh, yes! he would like to go. I told him he had better go at once,
--they had all better go in together and see the palace,--it was an
excellent opportunity. They seemed to see the point, and slunk away
to the other side to wait for another stranger.
I find that this plan works very well with guides: when I see one
approaching, I at once offer to guide him. It is an idea from which
he does not rally in time to annoy us. The other day I offered to
show a persistent fellow through an old ruin for fifty kreuzers: as
his price for showing me was forty-eight, we did not come to terms.
One of the most remarkable guides, by the way, we encountered at
Stratford-on-Avon. As we walked down from the Red Horse Inn to the
church, a full-grown boy came bearing down upon us in the most
wonderful fashion. Early rickets, I think, had been succeeded by the
St. Vitus' dance. He came down upon us sideways, his legs all in a
tangle, and his right arm, bent and twisted, going round and round,
as if in vain efforts to get into his pocket, his fingers spread out
in impotent desire to clutch something. There was great danger that
he would run into us, as he was like a steamer with only one
side-wheel and no rudder. He came up puffing and blowing, and
offered to show us Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to be
accompanied to thy resting-place by such an object! But he fastened
himself on us, and jerked and hitched along in his side-wheel
fashion. We declined his help. He paddled on, twisting himself into
knots, and grinning in the most friendly manner. We told him to
begone. "I am," said he, wrenching himself into a new contortion, "I
am what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." This information he
repeated again and again, as if we could not resist him after we had
comprehended that. We shook him off; but when we returned at sundown
across the fields, from a visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage, we met
the sidewheeler cheerfully towing along a large party, upon whom he
had fastened.
The people of Amsterdam are only less queer than their houses. The
men dress in a solid, old-fashioned way. Every one wears the
straight, high-crowned silk hat that went out with us years ago, and
the cut of clothing of even the most buckish young fellows is behind
the times. I stepped into the Exchange, an immense interior, that
will hold five thousand people, where the stock-gamblers meet twice a
day. It was very different from the terrible excitement and noise of
the Paris Bourse. There were three or four thousand brokers there,
yet there was very little noise and no confusion. No stocks were
called, and there was no central ring for bidding, as at the Bourse
and the New York Gold Room; but they quietly bought and sold. Some
of the leading firms had desks or tables at the side, and there
awaited orders. Everything was phlegmatically and decorously done.
In the streets one still sees peasant women in native costume. There
was a group to-day that I saw by the river, evidently just crossed
over from North Holland. They wore short dresses, with the upper
skirt looped up, and had broad hips and big waists. On the head was
a cap with a fall of lace behind; across the back of the head a broad
band of silver (or tin) three inches broad, which terminated in front
and just above the ears in bright pieces of metal about two inches
square, like a horse's blinders, Only flaring more from the head;
across the forehead and just above the eyes a gilt band, embossed; on
the temples two plaits of hair in circular coils; and on top of all a
straw hat, like an old-fashioned bonnet stuck on hindside before.
Spiral coils of brass wire, coming to a point in front, are also worn
on each side of the head by many. Whether they are for ornament or
defense, I could not determine.
Water is brought into the city now from Haarlem, and introduced into
the best houses; but it is still sold in the streets by old men and
women, who sit at the faucets. I saw one dried-up old grandmother,
who sat in her little caboose, fighting away the crowd of dirty
children who tried to steal a drink when her back was turned, keeping
count of the pails of water carried away with a piece of chalk on the
iron pipe, and trying to darn her stocking at the same time. Odd
things strike you at every turn. There is a sledge drawn by one poor
horse, and on the front of it is a cask of water pierced with holes,
so that the water squirts out and wets the stones, making it easier
sliding for the runners. It is an ingenious people!
After all, we drove out five miles to Broek, the clean village;
across the Y, up the canal, over flatness flattened. Broek is a
humbug, as almost all show places are. A wooden little village on a
stagnant canal, into which carriages do not drive, and where the
front doors of the houses are never open; a dead, uninteresting
place, neat but not specially pretty, where you are shown into one
house got up for the purpose, which looks inside like a crockery
shop, and has a stiff little garden with box trained in shapes of
animals and furniture. A roomy-breeched young Dutchman, whose
trousers went up to his neck, and his hat to a peak, walked before us
in slow and cow-like fashion, and showed us the place; especially
some horrid pleasure-grounds, with an image of an old man reading in
a summer-house, and an old couple in a cottage who sat at a table and
worked, or ate, I forget which, by clock-work; while a dog barked by
the same means. In a pond was a wooden swan sitting on a stick, the
water having receded, and left it high and dry. Yet the trip is
worth while for the view of the country and the people on the way:
men and women towing boats on the canals; the red-tiled houses
painted green, and in the distance the villages, with their spires
and pleasing mixture of brown, green, and red tints, are very
picturesque. The best thing that I saw, however, was a traditional
Dutchman walking on the high bank of a canal, with soft hat, short
pipe, and breeches that came to the armpits above, and a little below
the knees, and were broad enough about the seat and thighs to carry
his no doubt numerous family. He made a fine figure against the sky.
COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA
It is a relief to get out of Holland and into a country nearer to
hills. The people also seem more obliging. In Cologne, a
brown-cheeked girl pointed us out the way without waiting for a
kreuzer. Perhaps the women have more to busy themselves about in the
cities, and are not so curious about passers-by. We rarely see a
reflector to exhibit us to the occupants of the second-story windows.
In all the cities of Belgium and Holland the ladies have small
mirrors, with reflectors, fastened to their windows; so that they can
see everybody who passes, without putting their heads out. I trust
we are not inverted or thrown out of shape when we are thus caught up
and cast into my lady's chamber. Cologne has a cheerful look, for
the Rhine here is wide and promising; and as for the "smells," they
are certainly not so many nor so vile as those at Mainz.
Our windows at the hotel looked out on the finest front of the
cathedral. If the Devil really built it, he is to be credited with
one good thing, and it is now likely to be finished, in spite of him.
Large as it is, it is on the exterior not so impressive as that at
Amiens; but within it has a magnificence born of a vast design and
the most harmonious proportions, and the grand effect is not broken
by any subdivision but that of the choir. Behind the altar and in
front of the chapel, where lie the remains of the Wise Men of the
East who came to worship the Child, or, as they are called, the Three
Kings of Cologne, we walked over a stone in the pavement under which
is the heart of Mary de Medicis: the remainder of her body is in St.
Denis near Paris. The beadle in red clothes, who stalks about the
cathedral like a converted flamingo, offered to open for us the
chapel; but we declined a sight of the very bones of the Wise Men.
It was difficult enough to believe they were there, without seeing
them. One ought not to subject his faith to too great a strain at
first in Europe. The bones of the Three Kings, by the way, made the
fortune of the cathedral. They were the greatest religious card of
the Middle Ages, and their fortunate possession brought a flood of
wealth to this old Domkirche. The old feudal lords would swear by
the Almighty Father, or the Son, or Holy Ghost, or by everything
sacred on earth, and break their oaths as they would break a wisp of
straw: but if you could get one of them to swear by the Three Kings
of Cologne, he was fast; for that oath he dare not disregard.
The prosperity of the cathedral on these valuable bones set all the
other churches in the neighborhood on the same track; and one can
study right here in this city the growth of relic worship. But the
most successful achievement was the collection of the bones of St.
Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and their preservation in the
church on the very spot where they suffered martyrdom. There is
probably not so large a collection of the bones of virgins elsewhere
in the world; and I am sorry to read that Professor Owen has thought
proper to see and say that many of them are the bones of lower orders
of animals. They are built into the walls of the church, arranged
about the choir, interred in stone coffins, laid under the pavements;
and their skulls grin at you everywhere. In the chapel the bones are
tastefully built into the wall and overhead, like rustic wood-work;
and the skulls stand in rows, some with silver masks, like the jars
on the shelves of an apothecary's shop. It is a cheerful place. On
the little altar is the very skull of the saint herself, and that of
Conan, her lover, who made the holy pilgrimage to Rome with her and
her virgins, and also was slain by the Huns at Cologne. There is a
picture of the eleven thousand disembarking from one boat on the
Rhine, which is as wonderful as the trooping of hundreds of spirits
out of a conjurer's bottle. The right arm of St. Ursula is preserved
here: the left is at Bruges. I am gradually getting the hang of this
excellent but somewhat scattered woman, and bringing her together in
my mind. Her body, I believe, lies behind the altar in this same
church. She must have been a lovely character, if Hans Memling's
portrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here one of the
jars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We can identify it by a piece
which is broken out; and the piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It has
been in this church five hundred years. The sacristan, a very
intelligent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut straight
across his forehead, who showed us the church, gave us much useful
information about bones, teeth, and the remains of the garments that
the virgins wore; and I could not tell from his face how much he
expected us to believe. I asked the little fussy old guide of an
English party who had joined us, how much he believed of the story.
He was a Protestant, and replied, still anxious to keep up the credit
of his city, "Tousands is too many; some hundreds maybe; tousands is
too many."
A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE
You have seen the Rhine in pictures; you have read its legends. You
know, in imagination at least, how it winds among craggy hills of
splendid form, turning so abruptly as to leave you often shut in with
no visible outlet from the wall of rock and forest; how the castles,
some in ruins so as to be as unsightly as any old pile of rubbish,
others with feudal towers and battlements, still perfect, hang on the
crags, or stand sharp against the sky, or nestle by the stream or on
some lonely island. You know that the Rhine has been to Germans what
the Nile was to the Egyptians,--a delight, and the theme of song and
story. Here the Roman eagles were planted; here were the camps of
Drusus; here Caesar bridged and crossed the Rhine; here, at every
turn, a feudal baron, from his high castle, levied toll on the
passers; and here the French found a momentary halt to their invasion
of Germany at different times. You can imagine how, in a misty
morning, as you leave Bonn, the Seven Mountains rise up in their
veiled might, and how the Drachenfels stands in new and changing
beauty as you pass it and sail away. You have been told that the
Hudson is like the Rhine. Believe me, there is no resemblance; nor
would there be if the Hudson were lined with castles, and Julius
Caesar had crossed it every half mile. The Rhine satisfies you, and
you do not recall any other river. It only disappoints you as to its
"vine-clad hills." You miss trees and a covering vegetation, and are
not enamoured of the patches of green vines on wall-supported
terraces, looking from the river like hills of beans or potatoes.
And, if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will wholly lose
your faith in the vintage. We decided that the wine on our boat was
manufactured in the boiler.
There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and steamers on the
Rhine, a watering-place, show sort of feeling, that detracts very
much from one's enjoyment. The old habit of the robber barons of
levying toll on all who sail up and down has not been lost. It is not
that one actually pays so much for sightseeing, but the charm of
anything vanishes when it is made merchandise. One is almost as
reluctant to buy his "views" as he is to sell his opinions. But one
ought to be weeks on the Rhine before attempting to say anything
about it.
One morning, at Bingen,--I assure you it was not six o'clock,--we
took a big little rowboat, and dropped down the stream, past the
Mouse Tower, where the cruel Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, under
the shattered Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the little
village of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown the
famous red wine of that name. On the bank walked in line a dozen
peasants, men and women, in picturesque dress, towing, by a line
passed from shoulder to shoulder, a boat filled with marketing for
Rudesheim. We were bound up the Niederwald, the mountain opposite
Bingen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the landing,
donkeys awaited us; and we began the ascent, a stout, good-natured
German girl acting as guide and driver. Behind us, on the opposite
shore, set round about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle of
Rheinstein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and situation
than any other. Our way was through the little town which is jammed
into the gorge; and as we clattered up the pavement, past the church,
its heavy bell began to ring loudly for matins, the sound
reverberating in the narrow way, and following us with its
benediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the fresh,
inspiring morning air. The top of the Niederwald is a splendid
forest of trees, which no impious Frenchman has been allowed to trim,
and cut into allees of arches, taking one in thought across the water
to the free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under the welcome
shade, approaching the brow of the hill now and then, where some
tower or hermitage is erected, for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe,
the villages below, and the hills around; and then crossed the
mountain, down through cherry orchards, and vine yards, walled up,
with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the walls, down
through a hot road where wild flowers grew in great variety, to the
quaint village of Rudesheim, with its queer streets and ancient
ruins. Is it possible that we can have too many ruins? "Oh dear!"
exclaimed the jung-frau as we sailed along the last day, "if there
is n't another castle!"
HEIDELBERG
If you come to Heidelberg, you will never want to go away. To arrive
here is to come into a peaceful state of rest and content. The great
hills out of which the Neckar flows, infold the town in a sweet
security; and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view is
always wide open to the great plains where the Neckar goes to join
the Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for many a league through a rich
and smiling land. One could settle down here to study, without a
desire to go farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby old
buildings of the university for anything newer and smarter. What the
students can find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; but
fight they do, as many a scarred cheek attests. The students give
life to the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, and
blue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on the
forehead that they require an elastic, like that worn by ladies,
under the back hair, to keep them on; and they are also distinguished
by colored ribbons across the breast. The majority of them are
well-behaved young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to keep
near the fashions, like students at home. Some like to swagger about
in their little skull-caps, and now and then one is attended by a
bull-dog.
I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. Below it is a
garden, below that foliage, and farther down the town with its old
speckled roofs, spires, and queer little squares. Beyond is the
Neckar, with the bridge, and white statues on it, and an old city
gate at this end, with pointed towers. Beyond that is a white road
with a wall on one side, along which I see peasant women walking with
large baskets balanced on their heads. The road runs down the river
to Neuenheim. Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards; and a
winding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along for
a mile or more, giving delightful views of the castle and the
glorious woods and hills back of it. Above it is the mountain of
Heiligenberg, from the other side of which one looks off toward
Darmstadt and the famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look down the
stream, I see the narrow town, and the Neckar flowing out of it into
the vast level plain, rich with grain and trees and grass, with many
spires and villages; Mannheim to the northward, shining when the sun
is low; the Rhine gleaming here and there near the horizon; and the
Vosges Mountains, purple in the last distance: on my right, and so
near that I could throw a stone into them, the ruined tower and
battlements of the northwest corner of the castle, half hidden in
foliage, with statues framed in ivy, and the garden terrace, built
for Elizabeth Stuart when she came here the bride of the Elector
Frederick, where giant trees grow. Under the walls a steep path goes
down into the town, along which little houses cling to the hillside.
High above the castle rises the noble Konigstuhl, whence the whole of
this part of Germany is visible, and, in a clear day, Strasburg
Minster, ninety miles away.
I have only to go a few steps up a narrow, steep street, lined with
the queerest houses, where is an ever-running pipe of good water, to
which all the neighborhood resorts, and I am within the grounds of
the castle. I scarcely know where to take you; for I never know
where to go myself, and seldom do go where I intend when I set forth.
We have been here several days; and I have not yet seen the Great
Tun, nor the inside of the show-rooms, nor scarcely anything that is
set down as a "sight." I do not know whether to wander on through the
extensive grounds, with splendid trees, bits of old ruin, overgrown,
cozy nooks, and seats where, through the foliage, distant prospects
open into quiet retreats that lead to winding walks up the terraced
hill, round to the open terrace overlooking the Neckar, and giving
the best general view of the great mass of ruins. If we do, we shall
be likely to sit in some delicious place, listening to the band
playing in the "Restauration," and to the nightingales, till the moon
comes up. Or shall we turn into the garden through the lovely Arch
of the Princess Elizabeth, with its stone columns cut to resemble
tree-trunks twined with ivy? Or go rather through the great archway,
and under the teeth of the portcullis, into the irregular quadrangle,
whose buildings mark the changing style and fortune of successive
centuries, from 1300 down to the seventeenth century? There is
probably no richer quadrangle in Europe: there is certainly no other
ruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented with carving, except the
Alhambra. And from here we pass out upon the broad terrace of
masonry, with a splendid flanking octagon tower, its base hidden in
trees, a rich facade for a background, and below the town the river,
and beyond the plain and floods of golden sunlight. What shall we
do? Sit and dream in the Rent Tower under the lindens that grow in
its top? The day passes while one is deciding how to spend it, and
the sun over Heiligenberg goes down on his purpose.
ALPINE NOTES
ENTERING SWITZERLAND BERNE ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS
If you come to Bale, you should take rooms on the river, or stand on
the bridge at evening, and have a sunset of gold and crimson
streaming down upon the wide and strong Rhine, where it rushes
between the houses built plumb up to it, or you will not care much
for the city. And yet it is pleasant on the high ground, where are
some stately buildings, and where new gardens are laid out, and where
the American consul on the Fourth of July flies our flag over the
balcony of a little cottage smothered in vines and gay with flowers.
I had the honor of saluting it that day, though I did not know at the
time that gold had risen two or three per cent. under its blessed
folds at home. Not being a shipwrecked sailor, or a versatile and
accomplished but impoverished naturalized citizen, desirous of quick
transit to the land of the free, I did not call upon the consul, but
left him under the no doubt correct impression that he was doing a
good thing by unfolding the flag on the Fourth.
You have not journeyed far from Bale before you are aware that you
are in Switzerland. It was showery the day we went down; but the
ride filled us with the most exciting expectations. The country
recalled New England, or what New England might be, if it were
cultivated and adorned, and had good roads and no fences. Here at
last, after the dusty German valleys, we entered among real hills,
round which and through which, by enormous tunnels, our train slowly
went: rocks looking out of foliage; sweet little valleys, green as in
early spring; the dark evergreens in contrast; snug cottages nestled
in the hillsides, showing little else than enormous brown roofs that
come nearly to the ground, giving the cottages the appearance of huge
toadstools; fine harvests of grain; thrifty apple-trees, and
cherry-trees purple with luscious fruit. And this shifting panorama
continues until, towards evening, behold, on a hill, Berne, shining
through showers, the old feudal round tower and buildings overhanging
the Aar, and the tower of the cathedral over all. From the balcony
of our rooms at the Bellevue, the long range of the Bernese Oberland
shows its white summits for a moment in the slant sunshine, and then
the clouds shut down, not to lift again for two days. Yet it looks
warmer on the snow-peaks than in Berne, for summer sets in in
Switzerland with a New England chill and rigor.
The traveler finds no city with more flavor of the picturesque and
quaint than Berne; and I think it must have preserved the Swiss
characteristics better than any other of the large towns in Helvetia.
It stands upon a peninsula, round which the Aar, a hundred feet
below, rapidly flows; and one has on nearly every side very pretty
views of the green basin of hills which rise beyond the river. It is
a most comfortable town on a rainy day; for all the principal streets
have their houses built on arcades, and one walks under the low
arches, with the shops on one side and the huge stone pillars on the
other. These pillars so stand out toward the street as to give the
house-fronts a curved look. Above are balconies, in which, upon red
cushions, sit the daughters of Berne, reading and sewing, and
watching their neighbors; and in nearly every window are quantities
of flowers of the most brilliant colors. The gray stone of the
houses, which are piled up from the streets, harmonizes well with the
colors in the windows and balconies, and the scene is quite Oriental
as one looks down, especially if it be upon a market morning, when
the streets are as thronged as the Strand. Several terraces, with
great trees, overlook the river, and command prospects of the Alps.
These are public places; for the city government has a queer notion
that trees are not hideous, and that a part of the use of living is
the enjoyment of the beautiful. I saw an elegant bank building, with
carved figures on the front, and at each side of the entrance door a
large stand of flowers,--oleanders, geraniums, and fuchsias; while
the windows and balconies above bloomed with a like warmth of floral
color. Would you put an American bank president in the Retreat who
should so decorate his banking-house? We all admire the tasteful
display of flowers in foreign towns: we go home, and carry nothing
with us but a recollection. But Berne has also fountains everywhere;
some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours his own children,
but all a refreshment and delight. And it has also its clock-tower,
with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which the sober
people of this region take pleasure. At the hour, a procession of
little bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock
flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth to
announce the flight of the hours. It is more grotesque, but less
elaborate, than the equally childish toy in the cathedral at
Strasburg.
We went Sunday morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman who
guards the portal--where in ancient stone the Last Judgment is
enacted, and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand over
against the foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitential
attitude of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three
hundred years--refused at first to admit us to the German Lutheran
service, which was just beginning. It seems that doors are locked,
and no one is allowed to issue forth until after service. There
seems to be an impression that strangers go only to hear the organ,
which is a sort of rival of that at Freiburg, and do not care much
for the well-prepared and protracted discourse in Swiss-German. We
agreed to the terms of admission; but it did not speak well for
former travelers that the woman should think it necessary to say,
"You must sit still, and not talk." It is a barn-like interior. The
women all sit on hard, high-backed benches in the center of the
church, and the men on hard, higher-backed benches about the sides,
inclosing and facing the women, who are more directly under the
droppings of the little pulpit, hung on one of the pillars,--a very
solemn and devout congregation, who sang very well, and paid strict
attention to the sermon.
I noticed that the names of the owners, and sometimes their
coats-of-arms, were carved or painted on the backs of the seats, as if
the pews were not put up at yearly auction. One would not call it a
dressy congregation, though the homely women looked neat in black
waists and white puffed sleeves and broadbrimmed hats.
The only concession I have anywhere seen to women in Switzerland, as
the more delicate sex, was in this church: they sat during most of
the service, but the men stood all the time, except during the
delivery of the sermon. The service began at nine o'clock, as it
ought to with us in summer. The costume of the peasant women in and
about Berne comes nearer to being picturesque than in most other
parts of Switzerland, where it is simply ugly. You know the sort of
thing in pictures,--the broad hat, short skirt, black, pointed
stomacher, with white puffed sleeves, and from each breast a large
silver chain hanging, which passes under the arm and fastens on the
shoulder behind,--a very favorite ornament. This costume would not
be unbecoming to a pretty face and figure: whether there are any
such native to Switzerland, I trust I may not be put upon the
witness-stand to declare. Some of the peasant young men went
without coats, and with the shirt sleeves fluted; and others wore
butternut-colored suits, the coats of which I can recommend to those
who like the swallow-tailed variety. I suppose one would take a man
into the opera in London, where he cannot go in anything but that
sort. The buttons on the backs of these came high up between the
shoulders, and the tails did not reach below the waistband. There is a
kind of rooster of similar appearance. I saw some of these young men
from the country, with their sweethearts, leaning over the stone
parapet, and looking into the pit of the bear-garden, where the city
bears walk round, or sit on their hind legs for bits of bread thrown
to them, or douse themselves in the tanks, or climb the dead trees set
up for their gambols. Years ago they ate up a British officer who fell
in; and they walk round now ceaselessly, as if looking for another.
But one cannot expect good taste in a bear.
If you would see how charming a farming country can be, drive out on
the highway towards Thun. For miles it is well shaded with giant
trees of enormous trunks, and a clean sidewalk runs by the fine road.
On either side, at little distances from the road, are picturesque
cottages and rambling old farmhouses peeping from the trees and vines
and flowers. Everywhere flowers, before the house, in the windows,
at the railway stations. But one cannot stay forever even in
delightful Berne, with its fountains and terraces, and girls on red
cushions in the windows, and noble trees and flowers, and its stately
federal Capitol, and its bears carved everywhere in stone and wood,
and its sunrises, when all the Bernese Alps lie like molten silver in
the early light, and the clouds drift over them, now hiding, now
disclosing, the enchanting heights.
HEARING THE FREIBURG ORGAN--FIRST SIGHT OF LAKE LEMAN
Freiburg, with its aerial suspension-bridges, is also on a peninsula,
formed by the Sarine; with its old walls, old watch-towers, its
piled-up old houses, and streets that go upstairs, and its delicious
cherries, which you can eat while you sit in the square by the famous
linden-tree, and wait for the time when the organ will be played in
the cathedral. For all the world stops at Freiburg to hear and enjoy
the great organ,--all except the self-satisfied English clergyman,
who says he does n't care much for it, and would rather go about town
and see the old walls; and the young and boorish French couple, whose
refined amusement in the railway-carriage consisted in the young
man's catching his wife's foot in the window-strap, and hauling it up
to the level of the window, and who cross themselves and go out after
the first tune; and the two bread-and-butter English young ladies,
one of whom asks the other in the midst of the performance, if she
has thought yet to count the pipes,--a thoughtful verification of
Murray, which is very commendable in a young woman traveling for the
improvement of her little mind.
One has heard so much of this organ, that he expects impossibilities,
and is at first almost disappointed, although it is not long in
discovering its vast compass, and its wonderful imitations, now of a
full orchestra, and again of a single instrument. One has not to
wait long before he is mastered by its spell. The vox humana stop
did not strike me as so perfect as that of the organ in the Rev.
Mr. Hale's church in Boston, though the imitation of choir-voices
responding to the organ was very effective. But it is not in tricks
of imitation that this organ is so wonderful: it is its power of
revealing, by all its compass, the inmost part of any musical
composition.
The last piece we heard was something like this: the sound of a bell,
tolling at regular intervals, like the throbbing of a life begun;
about it an accompaniment of hopes, inducements, fears, the flute,
the violin, the violoncello, promising, urging, entreating,
inspiring; the life beset with trials, lured with pleasures,
hesitating, doubting, questioning; its purpose at length grows more
certain and fixed, the bell tolling becomes a prolonged undertone,
the flow of a definite life; the music goes on, twining round it, now
one sweet instrument and now many, in strife or accord, all the
influences of earth and heaven and the base underworld meeting and
warring over the aspiring soul; the struggle becomes more earnest,
the undertone is louder and clearer; the accompaniment indicates
striving, contesting passion, an agony of endeavor and resistance,
until at length the steep and rocky way is passed, the world and self
are conquered, and, in a burst of triumph from a full orchestra, the
soul attains the serene summit. But the rest is only for a moment.
Even in the highest places are temptations. The sunshine fails,
clouds roll up, growling of low, pedal thunder is heard, while sharp
lightning-flashes soon break in clashing peals about the peaks. This
is the last Alpine storm and trial. After it the sun bursts out
again, the wide, sunny valleys are disclosed, and a sweet evening
hymn floats through all the peaceful air. We go out from the cool
church into the busy streets of the white, gray town awed and
comforted.
And such a ride afterwards! It was as if the organ music still
continued. All the world knows the exquisite views southward from
Freiburg; but such an atmosphere as we had does not overhang them
many times in a season. First the Moleross, and a range of mountains
bathed in misty blue light,--rugged peaks, scarred sides, white and
tawny at once, rising into the clouds which hung large and soft in
the blue; soon Mont Blanc, dim and aerial, in the south; the lovely
valley of the River Sense; peasants walking with burdens on the white
highway; the quiet and soft-tinted mountains beyond; towns perched on
hills, with old castles and towers; the land rich with grass, grain,
fruit, flowers; at Palezieux a magnificent view of the silver,
purple, and blue mountains, with their chalky seams and gashed sides,
near at hand; and at length, coming through a long tunnel, as if we
had been shot out into the air above a country more surprising than
any in dreams, the most wonderful sight burst upon us,--the
low-lying, deep-blue Lake Leman, and the gigantic mountains rising
from its shores, and a sort of mist, translucent, suffused with
sunlight, like the liquid of the golden wine the Steinberger poured
into the vast basin. We came upon it out of total darkness, without
warning; and we seemed, from our great height, to be about to leap
into the splendid gulf of tremulous light and color.
This Lake of Geneva is said to combine the robust mountain grandeur
of Luzerne with all the softness of atmosphere of Lake Maggiore.
Surely, nothing could exceed the loveliness as we wound down the
hillside, through the vineyards, to Lausanne, and farther on, near
the foot of the lake, to Montreux, backed by precipitous but
tree-clad hills, fronted by the lovely water, and the great mountains
which run away south into Savoy, where Velan lifts up its snows.
Below us, round the curving bay, lies white Chillon; and at sunset we
row down to it over the bewitched water, and wait under its grim
walls till the failing light brings back the romance of castle and
prisoner. Our garcon had never heard of the prisoner; but he knew
about the gendarmes who now occupy the castle.
OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS
Not the least of the traveler's pleasure in Switzerland is derived
from the English people who overrun it: they seem to regard it as a
kind of private park or preserve belonging to England; and they
establish themselves at hotels, or on steamboats and diligences, with
a certain air of ownership that is very pleasant. I am not very
fresh in my geology; but it is my impression that Switzerland was
created especially for the English, about the year of the Magna
Charta, or a little later. The Germans who come here, and who don't
care very much what they eat, or how they sleep, provided they do not
have any fresh air in diningroom or bedroom, and provided, also, that
the bread is a little sour, growl a good deal about the English, and
declare that they have spoiled Switzerland. The natives, too, who
live off the English, seem to thoroughly hate them; so that one is
often compelled, in self-defense, to proclaim his nationality, which
is like running from Scylla upon Charybdis; for, while the American
is more popular, it is believed that there is no bottom to his
pocket.
There was a sprig of the Church of England on the steamboat on Lake
Leman, who spread himself upon a center bench, and discoursed very
instructively to his friends,--a stout, fat-faced young man in a
white cravat, whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom
our manly Oxford student set down as a man who had just rubbed
through the university, and got into a scanty living.
"I met an American on the boat yesterday," the oracle was saying to
his friends, "who was really quite a pleasant fellow. He--ah really
was, you know, quite a sensible man. I asked him if they had
anything like this in America; and he was obliged to say that they
had n't anything like it in his country; they really had n't. He was
really quite a sensible fellow; said he was over here to do the
European tour, as he called it."
Small, sympathetic laugh from the attentive, wiry, red-faced woman on
the oracle's left, and also a chuckle, at the expense of the
American, from the thin Englishman on his right, who wore a large
white waistcoat, a blue veil on his hat, and a face as red as a live
coal.
"Quite an admission, was n't it, from an American? But I think they
have changed since the wah, you know."
At the next landing, the smooth and beaming churchman was left by his
friends; and he soon retired to the cabin, where I saw him
self-sacrificingly denying himself the views on deck, and consoling
himself with a substantial lunch and a bottle of English ale.
There is one thing to be said about the English abroad: the variety
is almost infinite. The best acquaintances one makes will be
English,--people with no nonsense and strong individuality; and one
gets no end of entertainment from the other sort. Very different
from the clergyman on the boat was the old lady at table-d'hote in
one of the hotels on the lake. One would not like to call her a
delightfully wicked old woman, like the Baroness Bernstein; but she
had her own witty and satirical way of regarding the world. She had
lived twenty-five years at Geneva, where people, years ago, coming
over the dusty and hot roads of France, used to faint away when they
first caught sight of the Alps. Believe they don't do it now. She
never did; was past the susceptible age when she first came; was
tired of the people. Honest? Why, yes, honest, but very fond of
money. Fine Swiss wood-carving? Yes. You'll get very sick of it.
It's very nice, but I 'm tired of it. Years ago, I sent some of it
home to the folks in England. They thought everything of it; and it
was not very nice, either,--a cheap sort. Moral ideas? I don't care
for moral ideas: people make such a fuss about them lately (this in
reply to her next neighbor, an eccentric, thin man, with bushy
hair, shaggy eyebrows, and a high, falsetto voice, who rallied
the witty old lady all dinner-time about her lack of moral
ideas, and accurately described the thin wine on the table as
"water-bewitched"). Why did n't the baroness go back to England, if
she was so tired of Switzerland? Well, she was too infirm now; and,
besides, she did n't like to trust herself on the railroads. And there
were so many new inventions nowadays, of which she read. What was this
nitroglycerine, that exploded so dreadfully? No: she thought she
should stay where she was.
There is little risk of mistaking the Englishman, with or without his
family, who has set out to do Switzerland. He wears a brandy-flask,
a field-glass, and a haversack. Whether he has a silk or soft hat,
he is certain to wear a veil tied round it. This precaution is
adopted when he makes up his mind to come to Switzerland, I think,
because he has read that a veil is necessary to protect the eyes from
the snow-glare. There is probably not one traveler in a hundred who
gets among the ice and snow-fields where he needs a veil or green
glasses: but it is well to have it on the hat; it looks adventurous.
The veil and the spiked alpenstock are the signs of peril.
Everybody--almost everybody--has an alpenstock. It is usually a
round pine stick, with an iron spike in one end. That, also, is a
sign of peril. We saw a noble young Briton on the steamer the other
day, who was got up in the best Alpine manner. He wore a short
sack,--in fact, an entire suit of light gray flannel, which closely
fitted his lithe form. His shoes were of undressed leather, with
large spikes in the soles; and on his white hat he wore a large
quantity of gauze, which fell in folds down his neck. I am sorry to
say that he had a red face, a shaven chin, and long side-whiskers.
He carried a formidable alpenstock; and at the little landing where
we first saw him, and afterward on the boat, he leaned on it in a
series of the most graceful and daring attitudes that I ever saw the
human form assume. Our Oxford student knew the variety, and guessed
rightly that he was an army man. He had his face burned at Malta.
Had he been over the Gemmi? Or up this or that mountain? asked
another English officer. "No, I have not." And it turned out that
he had n't been anywhere, and did n't seem likely to do anything but
show himself at the frequented valley places. And yet I never saw
one whose gallant bearing I so much admired. We saw him afterward at
Interlaken, enduring all the hardships of that fashionable place.
There was also there another of the same country, got up for the most
dangerous Alpine climbing, conspicuous in red woolen stockings that
came above his knees. I could not learn that he ever went up
anything higher than the top of a diligence.
THE DILIGENCE TO CHAMOUNY
The greatest diligence we have seen, one of the few of the
old-fashioned sort, is the one from Geneva to Chamouny. It leaves
early in the morning; and there is always a crowd about it to see the
mount and start. The great ark stands before the diligence-office,
and, for half an hour before the hour of starting, the porters are
busy stowing away the baggage, and getting the passengers on board.
On top, in the banquette, are seats for eight, besides the postilion
and guard; in the coupe, under the postilion's seat and looking upon
the horses, seats for three; in the interior, for three; and on top,
behind, for six or eight. The baggage is stowed in the capacious
bowels of the vehicle. At seven, the six horses are brought out and
hitched on, three abreast. We climb up a ladder to the banquette:
there is an irascible Frenchman, who gets into the wrong seat; and
before he gets right there is a terrible war of words between him and
the guard and the porters and the hostlers, everybody joining in with
great vivacity; in front of us are three quiet Americans, and a slim
Frenchman with a tall hat and one eye-glass. The postilion gets up
to his place. Crack, crack, crack, goes the whip; and, amid
"sensation" from the crowd, we are off at a rattling pace, the whip
cracking all the time like Chinese fireworks. The great passion of
the drivers is noise; and they keep the whip going all day. No
sooner does a fresh one mount the box than he gives a half-dozen
preliminary snaps; to which the horses pay no heed, as they know it
is only for the driver's amusement. We go at a good gait, changing
horses every six miles, till we reach the Baths of St. Gervais, where
we dine, from near which we get our first glimpse of Mont Blanc
through clouds,--a section of a dazzlingly white glacier, a very
exciting thing to the imagination. Thence we go on in small
carriages, over a still excellent but more hilly road, and begin to
enter the real mountain wonders; until, at length, real glaciers
pouring down out of the clouds nearly to the road meet us, and we
enter the narrow Valley of Chamouny, through which we drive to the
village in a rain.
Everybody goes to Chamouny, and up the Flegere, and to Montanvert,
and over the Mer de Glace; and nearly everybody down the Mauvais Pas
to the Chapeau, and so back to the village. It is all easy to do;
and yet we saw some French people at the Chapeau who seemed to think
they had accomplished the most hazardous thing in the world in coming
down the rocks of the Mauvais Pas. There is, as might be expected, a
great deal of humbug about the difficulty of getting about in the
Alps, and the necessity of guides. Most of the dangers vanish on
near approach. The Mer de Glace is inferior to many other glaciers,
and is not nearly so fine as the Glacier des Bossons: but it has a
reputation, and is easy of access; so people are content to walk over
the dirty ice. One sees it to better effect from below, or he must
ascend it to the Jardin to know that it has deep crevasses, and is as
treacherous as it is grand. And yet no one will be disappointed at
the view from Montanvert, of the upper glacier, and the needles of
rock and snow which rise beyond.
We met at the Chapeau two jolly young fellows from Charleston, S. C.
who had been in the war, on the wrong side. They knew no language
but American, and were unable to order a cutlet and an omelet for
breakfast. They said they believed they were going over the Tete
Noire. They supposed they had four mules waiting for them somewhere,
and a guide; but they couldn't understand a word he said, and he
couldn't understand them. The day before, they had nearly perished
of thirst, because they could n't make their guide comprehend that
they wanted water. One of them had slung over his shoulder an Alpine
horn, which he blew occasionally, and seemed much to enjoy. All this
while we sit on a rock at the foot of the Mauvais Pas, looking out
upon the green glacier, which here piles itself up finely, and above
to the Aiguilles de Charmoz and the innumerable ice-pinnacles that
run up to the clouds, while our muleteer is getting his breakfast.
This is his third breakfast this morning.
The day after we reached Chamouny, Monseigneur the bishop arrived
there on one of his rare pilgrimages into these wild valleys. Nearly
all the way down from Geneva, we had seen signs of his coming, in
preparations as for the celebration of a great victory. I did not
know at first but the Atlantic cable had been laid; or rather that
the decorations were on account of the news of it reaching this
region. It was a holiday for all classes; and everybody lent a hand
to the preparations. First, the little church where the
confirmations were to take place was trimmed within and without; and
an arch of green spanned the gateway. At Les Pres, the women were
sweeping the road, and the men were setting small evergreen-trees on
each side. The peasants were in their best clothes; and in front of
their wretched hovels were tables set out with flowers. So cheerful
and eager were they about the bishop, that they forgot to beg as we
passed: the whole valley was in a fever of expectation. At one
hamlet on the mulepath over the Tete Noire, where the bishop was that
day expected, and the women were sweeping away all dust and litter
from the road, I removed my hat, and gravely thanked them for their
thoughtful preparation for our coming. But they only stared a
little, as if we were not worthy to be even forerunners of
Monseigneur.
I do not care to write here how serious a drawback to the pleasures
of this region are its inhabitants. You get the impression that half
of them are beggars. The other half are watching for a chance to
prey upon you in other ways. I heard of a woman in the Zermatt
Valley who refused pay for a glass of milk; but I did not have time
to verify the report. Besides the beggars, who may or may not be
horrid-looking creatures, there are the grinning Cretins, the old
women with skins of parchment and the goitre, and even young children
with the loathsome appendage, the most wretched and filthy hovels,
and the dirtiest, ugliest people in them. The poor women are the
beasts of burden. They often lead, mowing in the hayfield; they
carry heavy baskets on their backs; they balance on their heads and
carry large washtubs full of water. The more appropriate load of one
was a cradle with a baby in it, which seemed not at all to fear
falling. When one sees how the women are treated, he does not wonder
that there are so many deformed, hideous children. I think the
pretty girl has yet to be born in Switzerland.
This is not much about the Alps? Ah, well, the Alps are there. Go
read your guide-book, and find out what your emotions are. As I
said, everybody goes to Chamouny. Is it not enough to sit at your
window, and watch the clouds when they lift from the Mont Blanc
range, disclosing splendor after splendor, from the Aiguille de Goute
to the Aiguille Verte,--white needles which pierce the air for twelve
thousand feet, until, jubilate! the round summit of the monarch
himself is visible, and the vast expanse of white snow-fields, the
whiteness of which is rather of heaven than of earth, dazzles the
eyes, even at so great a distance? Everybody who is patient and
waits in the cold and inhospitable-looking valley of the Chamouny
long enough, sees Mont Blanc; but every one does not see a sunset of
the royal order. The clouds breaking up and clearing, after days of
bad weather, showed us height after height, and peak after peak, now
wreathing the summits, now settling below or hanging in patches on
the sides, and again soaring above, until we had the whole range
lying, far and brilliant, in the evening light. The clouds took on
gorgeous colors, at length, and soon the snow caught the hue, and
whole fields were rosy pink, while uplifted peaks glowed red, as with
internal fire. Only Mont Blanc, afar off, remained purely white, in
a kind of regal inaccessibility. And, afterward, one star came out
over it, and a bright light shone from the hut on the Grand Mulets, a
rock in the waste of snow, where a Frenchman was passing the night on
his way to the summit.
Shall I describe the passage of the Tete Noire? My friend, it is
twenty-four miles, a road somewhat hilly, with splendid views of Mont
Blanc in the morning, and of the Bernese Oberland range in the
afternoon, when you descend into Martigny,--a hot place in the dusty
Rhone Valley, which has a comfortable hotel, with a pleasant garden,
in which you sit after dinner and let the mosquitoes eat you.
THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH
It was eleven o'clock at night when we reached Sion, a dirty little
town at the end of the Rhone Valley Railway, and got into the omnibus
for the hotel; and it was also dark and rainy. They speak German in
this part of Switzerland, or what is called German. There were two
very pleasant Americans, who spoke American, going on in the
diligence at half-past five in the morning, on their way over the
Simplex. One of them was accustomed to speak good, broad English
very distinctly to all races; and he seemed to expect that he must be
understood if he repeated his observations in a louder tone, as he
always did. I think he would force all this country to speak English
in two months. We all desired to secure places in the diligence,
which was likely to be full, as is usually the case when a railway
discharges itself into a postroad.
We were scarcely in the omnibus, when the gentleman said to the
conductor:
"I want two places in the coupe of the diligence in the morning. Can
I have them?"
"Yah" replied the good-natured German, who did n't understand a word.
"Two places, diligence, coupe, morning. Is it full?"
"Yah," replied the accommodating fellow. "Hotel man spik English."
I suggested the banquette as desirable, if it could be obtained, and
the German was equally willing to give it to us. Descending from the
omnibus at the hotel, in a drizzling rain, and amidst a crowd of
porters and postilions and runners, the "man who spoke English"
immediately presented himself; and upon him the American pounced with
a torrent of questions. He was a willing, lively little waiter, with
his moony face on the top of his head; and he jumped round in the
rain like a parching pea, rolling his head about in the funniest
manner.
The American steadied the little man by the collar, and began,
"I want to secure two seats in the coupe of the diligence in the.
morning."
"Yaas," jumping round, and looking from one to another. "Diligence,
coupe, morning."
"I--want--two seats--in--coupe. If I can't get them, two--in
--banquette."
"Yaas banquette, coupe,--yaas, diligence."
"Do you understand? Two seats, diligence, Simplon, morning. Will
you get them?"
"Oh, yaas! morning, diligence. Yaas, sirr."
"Hang the fellow! Where is the office?" And the gentleman left the
spry little waiter bobbing about in the middle of the street,
speaking English, but probably comprehending nothing that was said to
him. I inquired the way to the office of the conductor: it was
closed, but would soon be open, and I waited; and at length the
official, a stout Frenchman, appeared, and I secured places in the
interior, the only ones to be had to Visp. I had seen a diligence at
the door with three places in the coupe, and one perched behind; no
banquette. The office is brightly lighted; people are waiting to
secure places; there is the usual crowd of loafers, men and women,
and the Frenchman sits at his desk. Enter the American.
"I want two places in coupe, in the morning. Or banquette. Two
places, diligence." The official waves him off, and says something.
"What does he say?"
"He tells you to sit down on that bench till he is ready."
Soon the Frenchman has run over his big waybills, and turns to us.
"I want two places in the diligence, coupe," etc, etc, says the
American.
This remark being lost on the official, I explain to him as well as I
can what is wanted, at first,--two places in the coupe.
"One is taken," is his reply.
"The gentleman will take two," I said, having in mind the diligence
in the yard, with three places in the coupe.
"One is taken," he repeats.
"Then the gentleman will take the other two."
"One is taken!" he cries, jumping up and smiting the table,--"one
is taken, I tell you!"
"How many are there in the coupe?"
"TWO."
"Oh! then the gentleman will take the one remaining in the coupe and
the one on top."
So it is arranged. When I come back to the hotel, the Americans are
explaining to the lively waiter "who speaks English" that they are to
go in the diligence at half-past five, and that they are to be called
at half-past four and have breakfast. He knows all about it,
--"Diligence, half-past four breakfast, Oh, yaas!" While I have been
at the diligence-office, my companions have secured room and gone to
them; and I ask the waiter to show m to my room. First, however, I
tell him that we three two ladies and myself, who came together, are
going in the diligence at half-past five, and want to be called and
have breakfast. Did he comprehend?
"Yaas," rolling his face about on the top of his head violently.
"You three gentleman want breakfast. What you have?"
I had told him before what we would I have, an now I gave up all hope
of keeping our parties separate in his mind; so I said,
"Five persons want breakfast at five o'clock. Five persons, five
hours. Call all of them at half-past four." And I repeated it, and
made him repeat it in English and French. He then insisted on
putting me into the room of one of the American gentlemen
and then he knocked at the door of a lady, who cried out in
indignation at being disturbed; and, finally, I found my room. At
the door I reiterated the instructions for the morning; and he
cheerfully bade me good-night. But he almost immediately came back,
and poked in his head with,--
"Is you go by de diligence?"
"Yes, you stupid."
In the morning one of our party was called at halfpast three, and
saved the rest of us from a like fate; and we were not aroused at
all, but woke early enough to get down and find the diligence nearly
ready, and no breakfast, but "the man who spoke English" as lively
as ever. And we had a breakfast brought out, so filthy in all
respects that nobody could eat it. Fortunately, there was not time
to seriously try; but we paid for it, and departed. The two American
gentlemen sat in front of the house, waiting. The lively waiter had
called them at half-past three, for the railway train, instead of the
diligence; and they had their wretched breakfast early. They will
remember the funny adventure with "the man who speaks English," and,
no doubt, unite with us in warmly commending the Hotel Lion d'Or at
Sion as the nastiest inn in Switzerland.
A WALK TO THE GORNER GRAT
When one leaves the dusty Rhone Valley, and turns southward from
Visp, he plunges into the wildest and most savage part of
Switzerland, and penetrates the heart of the Alps. The valley is
scarcely more than a narrow gorge, with high precipices on either
side, through which the turbid and rapid Visp tears along at a
furious rate, boiling and leaping in foam over its rocky bed, and
nearly as large as the Rhone at the junction. From Visp to St.
Nicolaus, twelve miles, there is only a mule-path, but a very good
one, winding along on the slope, sometimes high up, and again
descending to cross the stream, at first by vineyards and high stone
walls, and then on the edges of precipices, but always romantic and
wild. It is noon when we set out from Visp, in true pilgrim fashion,
and the sun is at first hot; but as we slowly rise up the easy
ascent, we get a breeze, and forget the heat in the varied charms of
the walk.
Everything for the use of the upper valley and Zermatt, now a place
of considerable resort, must be carried by porters, or on horseback;
and we pass or meet men and women, sometimes a dozen of them
together, laboring along under the long, heavy baskets, broad at the
top and coming nearly to a point below, which are universally used
here for carrying everything. The tubs for transporting water are of
the same sort. There is no level ground, but every foot is
cultivated. High up on the sides of the precipices, where it seems
impossible for a goat to climb, are vineyards and houses, and even
villages, hung on slopes, nearly up to the clouds, and with no
visible way of communication with the rest of the world.
In two hours' time we are at Stalden, a village perched upon a rocky
promontory, at the junction of the valleys of the Saas and the Visp,
with a church and white tower conspicuous from afar. We climb
up to the terrace in front of it, on our way into the town. A
seedy-looking priest is pacing up and down, taking the fresh breeze,
his broad-brimmed, shabby hat held down upon the wall by a big stone.
His clothes are worn threadbare; and he looks as thin and poor as a
Methodist minister in a stony town at home, on three hundred a year.
He politely returns our salutation, and we walk on. Nearly all the
priests in this region look wretchedly poor,--as poor as the people.
Through crooked, narrow streets, with houses overhanging and thrusting
out corners and gables, houses with stables below, and quaint carvings
and odd little windows above, the panes of glass hexagons, so that the
windows looked like sections of honey-comb,--we found our way to the
inn, a many-storied chalet, with stairs on the outside, stone floors
in the upper passages, and no end of queer rooms; built right in the
midst of other houses as odd, decorated with German-text carving, from
the windows of which the occupants could look in upon us, if they had
cared to do so; but they did not. They seem little interested in
anything; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. Below is a
wine-shop, with a little side booth, in which some German travelers
sit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The
inn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; but
away above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope,
with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles.
Stalden is high, but the hill on which it stands is rich in grass. The
secret of the fertile meadows is the most thorough irrigation. Water
is carried along the banks from the river, and distributed by numerous
sluiceways below; and above, the little mountain streams are brought
where they are needed by artificial channels. Old men and women in the
fields were constantly changing the direction of the currents. All the
inhabitants appeared to be porters: women were transporting on their
backs baskets full of soil; hay was being backed to the stables;
burden-bearers were coming and going upon the road: we were told that
there are only three horses in the place. There is a pleasant girl who
brings us luncheon at the inn; but the inhabitants for the most part
are as hideous as those we see all day: some have hardly the shape of
human beings, and they all live in the most filthy manner in the
dirtiest habitations. A chalet is a sweet thing when you buy a little
model of it at home.
After we leave Stalden, the walk becomes more picturesque, the
precipices are higher, the gorges deeper. It required some
engineering to carry the footpath round the mountain buttresses and
over the ravines. Soon the village of Emd appears on the right,--a
very considerable collection of brown houses, and a shining white
church-spire, above woods and precipices and apparently unscalable
heights, on a green spot which seems painted on the precipices; with
nothing visible to keep the whole from sliding down, down, into the
gorge of the Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population to
the square mile as some countries; but she has a population to some
of her square miles that would astonish some parts of the earth's
surface elsewhere. Farther on we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, that
we conjectured led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All day
we had been solicited for charity by squalid little children, who
kiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask for centimes. The
children of Emd, however, did not trouble us. It must be a serious
affair if they ever roll out of bed.
Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, and
clouds snatched away from our sight the snow-peaks at the end of the
valley; and at length the rain fell on those who had just arrived and
on the unjust. We took refuge from the hardest of it in a lonely
chalet high up on the hillside, where a roughly dressed, frowzy
Swiss, who spoke bad German, and said he was a schoolmaster, gave us
a bench in the shed of his schoolroom. He had only two pupils in
attendance, and I did not get a very favorable impression of this
high school. Its master quite overcame us with thanks when we gave
him a few centimes on leaving. It still rained, and we arrived in
St. Nicolaus quite damp.
There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, over which go
wagons without springs. The scenery is constantly grander as we
ascend. The day is not wholly clear; but high on our right are the
vast snow-fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near it
seems to pour the Bies Glacier. In front are the splendid Briethorn,
with its white, round summit; the black Riffelhorn; the sharp peak of
the little Matterhorn; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself rising
before us, the most finished and impressive single mountain in
Switzerland. Not so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand feet, it
appears immense in its isolated position and its slender aspiration.
It is a huge pillar of rock, with sharply cut edges, rising to a
defined point, dusted with snow, so that the rock is only here and
there revealed. To ascend it seems as impossible as to go up the
Column of Luxor; and one can believe that the gentlemen who first
attempted it in 1864, and lost their lives, did fall four thousand
feet before their bodies rested on the glacier below.
We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the hotel on the top of
the Riffelberg,--a very stiff and tiresome climb of about three
hours, an unending pull up a stony footpath. Within an hour of the
top, and when the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on the
breast of the precipice, we reach a green and widespread Alp where
hundreds of cows are feeding, watched by two forlorn women,--the
"milkmaids all forlorn" of poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, and
get draughts of rich, sweet cream. As we wind up the slope, the
tinkling of multitudinous bells from the herd comes to us, which is
also in the domain of poetry. All the way up we have found wild
flowers in the greatest profusion; and the higher we ascend, the more
exquisite is their color and the more perfect their form. There are
pansies; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was before;
forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them; violets, the Alpine rose
and the Alpine violet; delicate pink flowers of moss; harebells; and
quantities for which we know no names, more exquisite in shape and
color than the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes are
covered with them,--a brilliant show to the eye, and most pleasantly
beguiling the way of its tediousness. As high as I ascended, I still
found some of these delicate flowers, the pink moss growing in
profusion amongst the rocks of the GornerGrat, and close to the
snowdrifts.
The inn on the Riffelberg is nearly eight thousand feet high, almost
two thousand feet above the hut on Mount Washington; yet it is not so
cold and desolate as the latter. Grass grows and flowers bloom on
its smooth upland, and behind it and in front of it are the
snow-peaks. That evening we essayed the Gorner-Grat, a rocky ledge
nearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea; but after a
climb of an hour and a half, and a good view of Monte Rosa and the
glaciers and peaks of that range, we were prevented from reaching the
summit, and driven back by a sharp storm of hail and rain. The next
morning I started for the GornerGrat again, at four o'clock. The
Matterhorn lifted its huge bulk sharply against the sky, except where
fleecy clouds lightly draped it and fantastically blew about it. As
I ascended, and turned to look at it, its beautifully cut peak had
caught the first ray of the sun, and burned with a rosy glow. Some
great clouds drifted high in the air: the summits of the Breithorn,
the Lyscamm, and their companions, lay cold and white; but the snow
down their sides had a tinge of pink. When I stood upon the summit
of the Gorner-Grat, the two prominent silver peaks of Monte Rosa were
just touched with the sun, and its great snow-fields were visible to
the glacier at its base. The Gorner-Grat is a rounded ridge of rock,
entirely encirled by glaciers and snow-peaks. The panorama from it
is unexcelled in Switzerland.
Returning down the rocky steep, I descried, solitary in that great
waste of rock and snow, the form of a lady whom I supposed I had left
sleeping at the inn, overcome with the fatigue of yesterday's tramp.
Lured on by the apparently short distance to the backbone of the
ridge, she had climbed the rocks a mile or more above the hotel, and
come to meet me. She also had seen the great peaks lift themselves
out of the gray dawn, and Monte Rosa catch the first rays. We stood
awhile together to see how jocund day ran hither and thither along
the mountain-tops, until the light was all abroad, and then silently
turned downward, as one goes from a mount of devotion.
THE BATHS OF LEUK
In order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary to go through
the Baths of Leuk. The ascent from the Rhone bridge at Susten is
full of interest, affording fine views of the valley, which is better
to look at than to travel through, and bringing you almost
immediately to the old town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place,
perched on a precipice, with the oddest inn, and a notice posted up
to the effect, that any one who drives through its steep streets
faster than a walk will be fined five francs. I paid nothing extra
for a fast walk. The road, which is one of the best in the country,
is a wonderful piece of engineering, spanning streams, cut in rock,
rounding precipices, following the wild valley of the Dala by many a
winding and zigzag.
The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leukerbad, is a little
village at the very head of the valley, over four thousand feet above
the sea, and overhung by the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi, which
rise on all sides, except the south, on an average of two thousand
feet above it. There is a nest of brown houses, clustered together
like bee-hives, into which the few inhabitants creep to hibernate in
the long winters, and several shops, grand hotels, and bathing-houses
open for the season. Innumerable springs issue out of this green,
sloping meadow among the mountains, some of them icy cold, but over
twenty of them hot, and seasoned with a great many disagreeable
sulphates, carbonates, and oxides, and varying in temperature from
ninety-five to one hundred and twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit.
Italians, French, and Swiss resort here in great numbers to take the
baths, which are supposed to be very efficacious for rheumatism and
cutaneous affections. Doubtless many of them do up their bathing for
the year while here; and they may need no more after scalding and
soaking in this water for a couple of months.
Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of the
bath-houses. We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, close
hall, which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which low
partitions, with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments.
When we entered, we were assailed with yells in many languages, and
howls in the common tongue, as if all the fiends of the pit had
broken loose. We took off our hats in obedience to the demand; but
the clamor did not wholly subside, and was mingled with singing and
horrible laughter. Floating about in each vat, we at first saw
twenty or thirty human heads. The women could be distinguished from
the men by the manner of dressing the hair. Each wore a loose woolen
gown. Each had a little table floating before him or her, which he
or she pushed about at pleasure. One wore a hideous mask; another
kept diving in the opaque pool and coming up to blow, like the
hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens; some were taking a lunch from
their tables, others playing chess; some sitting on the benches round
the edges, with only heads out of water, as doleful as owls, while
others roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with their
comrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their voices. The
people in this bath were said to be second class; but they looked as
well and behaved better than those of the first class, whom we saw in
the establishment at our hotel afterward.
It may be a valuable scientific fact, that the water in these vats,
in which people of all sexes, all diseases, and all nations spend so
many hours of the twenty-four, is changed once a day. The
temperature at which the bath is given is ninety-eight. The water is
let in at night, and allowed to cool. At five in the morning, the
bathers enter it, and remain until ten o'clock,--five hours, having
breakfast served to them on the floating tables, "as they sail, as
they sail." They then have a respite till two, and go in till five.
Eight hours in hot water! Nothing can be more disgusting than the
sight of these baths. Gustave Dore must have learned here how to
make those ghostly pictures of the lost floating about in the Stygian
pools, in his illustrations of the Inferno; and the rocks and
cavernous precipices may have enabled him to complete the picture.
On what principle cures are effected in these filthy vats, I could
not learn. I have a theory, that, where so many diseases meet and
mingle in one swashing fluid, they neutralize each other. It may be
that the action is that happily explained by one of the Hibernian
bathmen in an American water-cure establishment. "You see, sir,"
said he, "that the shock of the water unites with the electricity of
the system, and explodes the disease." I should think that the shock
to one's feeling of decency and cleanliness, at these baths, would
explode any disease in Europe. But, whatever the result may be, I am
not sorry to see so many French and Italians soak themselves once a
year.
Out of the bath these people seem to enjoy life. There is a long
promenade, shaded and picturesque, which they take at evening,
sometimes as far as the Ladders, eight of which are fastened, in a
shackling manner, to the perpendicular rocks,--a high and somewhat
dangerous ascent to the village of Albinen, but undertaken constantly
by peasants with baskets on their backs. It is in winter the only
mode Leukerbad has of communicating with the world; and in summer it
is the only way of reaching Albinen, except by a long journey down
the Dala and up another valley and height. The bathers were
certainly very lively and social at table-d'hote, where we had the
pleasure of meeting some hundred of them, dressed. It was presumed
that the baths were the subject of the entertaining conversation; for
I read in a charming little work which sets forth the delights of
Leuk, that La poussee forms the staple of most of the talk. La
poussee, or, as this book poetically calls it, "that daughter of the
waters of Loeche," "that eruption of which we have already spoken,
and which proves the action of the baths upon the skin,"--becomes the
object, and often the end, of all conversation. And it gives
specimens of this pleasant converse, as:
"Comment va votre poussee?"
"Avez-vous la poussee?"
"Je suis en pleine poussee"
"Ma poussee s'est fort bien passee!"
Indeed says this entertaining tract, sans poussee, one would not be
able to hold, at table or in the salon, with a neighbor of either
sex, the least conversation. Further, it is by grace a la poussee
that one arrives at those intimacies which are the characteristics of
the baths. Blessed, then, be La poussee, which renders possible such
a high society and such select and entertaining conversation! Long
may the bathers of Leuk live to soak and converse! In the morning,
when we departed for the ascent of the Gemmi, we passed one of the
bathing-houses. I fancied that a hot steam issued out of the
crevices; from within came a discord of singing and caterwauling;
and, as a door swung open, I saw that the heads floating about on the
turbid tide were eating breakfast from the swimming tables.
OVER THE GEMMI
I spent some time, the evening before, studying the face of the cliff
we were to ascend, to discover the path; but I could only trace its
zigzag beginning. When we came to the base of the rock, we found a
way cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the rock,
winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one
rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe
enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to
ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried
down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance:
she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers,
which made it still more jolly for her. When we started, a cloud of
mist hung over the edge of the rocks. As we rose, it descended to
meet us, and sunk below, hiding the valley and its houses, which had
looked like Swiss toys from our height. When we reached the summit,
the mist came boiling up after us, rising like a thick wall to the
sky, and hiding all that great mountain range, the Vallais Alps, from
which we had come, and which we hoped to see from this point.
Fortunately, there were no clouds on the other side, and we looked
down into a magnificent rocky basin, encircled by broken and
overtopping crags and snow-fields, at the bottom of which was a green
lake. It is one of the wildest of scenes.
An hour from the summit, we came to a green Alp, where a herd of cows
were feeding; and in the midst of it were three or four dirty
chalets, where pigs, chickens, cattle, and animals constructed very
much like human beings, lived; yet I have nothing to say against
these chalets, for we had excellent cream there. We had, on the way
down, fine views of the snowy Altels, the Rinderhorn, the
Finster-Aarhorn, a deep valley which enormous precipices guard, but
which avalanches nevertheless invade, and, farther on, of the
Blumlisalp, with its summit of crystalline whiteness. The descent to
Kandersteg is very rapid, and in a rain slippery. This village is a
resort for artists for its splendid views of the range we had crossed:
it stands at the gate of the mountains. From there to the Lake of Thun
is a delightful drive,--a rich country, with handsome cottages and a
charming landscape, even if the pyramidal Niesen did not lift up its
seven thousand feet on the edge of the lake. So, through a smiling
land, and in the sunshine after the rain, we come to Spiez, and find
ourselves at a little hotel on the slope, overlooking town and lake
and mountains.
Spiez is not large: indeed, its few houses are nearly all
picturesquely grouped upon a narrow rib of land which is thrust into
the lake on purpose to make the loveliest picture in the world.
There is the old castle, with its many slim spires and its
square-peaked roofed tower; the slender-steepled church; a fringe of
old houses below on the lake, one overhanging towards the point; and
the promontory, finished by a willo drooping to the water. Beyond, in
hazy light, over the lucid green of the lake, are mountains whose
masses of rock seem soft and sculptured. To the right, at the foot of
the lake, tower the great snowy mountains, the cone of the
Schreckhorn, the square top of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, just showing
over the hills, and the Blumlisalp rising into heaven clear and
silvery.
What can one do in such a spot, but swim in the lake, lie on the
shore, and watch the passing steamers and the changing light on the
mountains? Down at the wharf, when the small boats put off for the
steamer, one can well entertain himself. The small boat is an
enormous thing, after all, and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps,
one of which is pulled, and the other pushed. The laboring oar is,
of course, pulled by a woman; while her husband stands up in the
stern of the boat, and gently dips the other in a gallant fashion.
There is a boy there, whom I cannot make out,--a short, square boy,
with tasseled skull-cap, and a face that never changes its
expression, and never has any expression to change; he may be older
than these hills; he looks old enough to be his own father: and there
is a girl, his counterpart, who might be, judging her age by her
face, the mother of both of them. These solemn old-young people are
quite busy doing nothing about the wharf, and appear to be afflicted
with an undue sense of the responsibility of life. There is a
beer-garden here, where several sober couples sit seriously drinking
their beer. There are some horrid old women, with the parchment skin
and the disagreeable necks. Alone, in a window of the castle, sits a
lady at her work, who might be the countess; only, I am sorry, there
is no countess, nothing but a frau, in that old feudal dwelling. And
there is a foreigner, thinking how queer it all is. And while he
sits there, the melodious bell in the church-tower rings its evening
song.
BAVARIA.
AMERICAN IMPATIENCE
We left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain,--a kind of double
baptism that may have been necessary, and was certainly not too heavy
a price to pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The wind
blew freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of the little
steamboat, on board of which we stepped from the shabby little pier
and town of Romanshorn. After the other Swiss lakes, Constance is
tame, except at the southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzell
range and the wooded peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through the dash
of rain, and under the promise of a magnificent rainbow,--rainbows
don't mean anything in Switzerland, and have no office as
weather-prophets, except to assure you, that, as it rains to-day, so
it will rain tomorrow,--we skirted the lower bend of the lake,--and
at twilight sailed into the little harbor of Lindau, through the
narrow entrance between the piers, on one of which is a small
lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic stone lion,
--a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a comical,
wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if he might
bark right out at any minute, and become a dog. Yet in the
moonlight, shortly afterward, the lion looked very grand and stately,
as he sat regarding the softly plashing waves, and the high, drifting
clouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge which connects the
Island of Lindau with the mainland, and thinking perhaps, if stone
lions ever do think, of the time when Roman galleys sailed on Lake
Constance, and when Lindau was an imperial town with a thriving
trade.
On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by two
ladies, and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who was
very anxious to get on faster than he was able to do,--though why any
one should desire to go fast in Europe I do not know. One easily
falls into the habit of the country, to take things easily, to go
when the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's self
beforehand about times and connections. But the American was in a
fever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night. I
knew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in
the cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myself
that Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I happened, on
the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord "blow up" his
glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stiffer
bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.
"Didn't you know they were Americans?" asks the irate father. "I
knew it at once."
"No," replies young hopeful: "they didn't say GUESS once."
And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, with
his butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and the
intensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will. The
English are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than the
Swiss, and twice as obsequious. But to return to our American. He
had all the railway timetables that he could procure; and he was
busily studying them, with the design of "getting on." I heard him
say to his companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a
mass of hotel-bills and timetables. He confided to me afterward,
that his wife and her friend had got it into their heads that they
must go both to Vienna and Berlin. Was Berlin much out of the way in
going from Vienna to Paris? He said they told him it was n't. At
any rate, he must get round at such a date: he had no time to spare.
Then, besides the slowness of getting on, there were the trunks. He
lost a trunk in Switzerland, and consumed a whole day in looking it
up. While the steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stout
porters came on board, and shouldered his baggage to take it ashore.
To his remonstrances in English they paid no heed; and it was some
time before they could be made to understand that the trunks were to
go on to Lindau. "There," said he, "I should have lost my trunks.
Nobody understands what I tell them: I can't get any information."
Especially was he unable to get any information as to how to "get
on." I confess that the restless American almost put me into a
fidget, and revived the American desire to "get on," to take the fast
trains, make all the connections,--in short, in the handsome language
of the great West, to "put her through." When I last saw our
traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, still
undecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But I
forgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at the
table-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars,
some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as if
there were plenty of leisure for everything in this world.
A CITY OF COLOR
After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is
called an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our
view the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant
country, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with
vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of
flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the
switches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a
military salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose
Confession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be. Portions
of the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers; and there are
archways, picturesquely opening from street to street, under several
of which we drive on our way to the Three Moors, a stately hostelry
and one of the oldest in Germany.
It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown,
unchanged since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertained
Charles V. The chambers are nearly all immense. That in which we
are lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to
say that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious.
One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a
lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture,
and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the
wall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and
stand at the bedside,--those narrow, canopied beds there in the
distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral. It must be a
fearful thing to be a royal person, and dwell in a palace, with
resounding rooms and naked, waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moors
one sees a visitors' book, begun in 1800, which contains the names of
many noble and great people, as well as poets and doctors and titled
ladies, and much sentimental writing in French. It is my impression,
from an inspection of the book, that we are the first untitled
visitors.
The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses,
colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. Remains of its former
brilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings,
some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced.
Those on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very brave
pictures. These frescoes give great animation and life to the
appearance of a street, and I am glad to see a taste for them
reviving. Augsburg must have been very gay with them two and three
hundred years ago, when, also, it was the home of beautiful women of
the middle class, who married princes. We went to see the house in
which lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, who
married Duke Albert III. of Bavaria. The house was nought, as old
Samuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block of
such; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a
pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have no
doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by in
clanking armor.
But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, which
was begun before the Christian era could express its age with four
figures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors
of very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is
literally given,--a representation of great theological, if of small
artistic value. And there is the old clock and watch tower, which
for eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time
of day and to look out over the plain for the approach of an enemy.
The city is full of fine bronze fountains some of them of very
elaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty to the town
which American cities wholly want. In one quarter of the town is the
Fuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, the
gates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little
houses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as
1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families,
according to the intention of its founder. In the windows were
lovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those mysterious,
short, old women,--so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any
legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancing
years.
It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when we
left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were
uninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding
on the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living
fences of this country. I no longer wonder at the number of
feather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected to
sleep even in the warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulation
crooks also were watching herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster
of red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in all
directions rose tapering spires. Especially we marked the steeple of
Blenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificent
country-seat, early in the eighteenth century. All this plain where
the silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armies
time and again. We effect the passage of, the Danube without
difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses,
inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon the
summit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towers
and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated
over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, to
give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take in
supplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.
A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST
Nuremberg, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, about the beginning of
time. At least, in an old black-letter history of the city which I
have seen, illustrated with powerful wood-cuts, the first
representation is that of the creation of the world, which is
immediately followed by another of Nuremberg. No one who visits it
is likely to dispute its antiquity. "Nobody ever goes to Nuremberg
but Americans," said a cynical British officer at Chamouny; "but they
always go there. I never saw an American who had n't been or was not
going to Nuremberg." Well, I suppose they wish to see the
oldest-looking, and, next to a true Briton on his travels, the oddest
thing on the Continent. The city lives in the past still, and on its
memories, keeping its old walls and moat entire, and nearly fourscore
wall-towers, in stern array. But grass grows in the moat, fruit
trees thrive there, and vines clamber on the walls. One wanders
about in the queer streets with the feeling of being transported back
to the Middle Ages; but it is difficult to reproduce the impression
on paper. Who can describe the narrow and intricate ways; the odd
houses with many little gables; great roofs breaking out from eaves
to ridgepole, with dozens of dormer-windows; hanging balconies of
stone, carved and figure-beset, ornamented and frescoed fronts; the
archways, leading into queer courts and alleys, and out again into
broad streets; the towers and fantastic steeples; and the many old
bridges, with obelisks and memorials of triumphal entries of
conquerors and princes?
The city, as I said, lives upon the memory of what it has been, and
trades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have been
without Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter
Vischer the bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and
Hans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say.
Their statues are set up in the streets; their works still live in
the churches and city buildings,--pictures, and groups in stone and
wood; and their statues, in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big
and little, in all the shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, the
city is full of the memory of them; and the business of the city,
aside from its manufactory of endless, curious toys, seems to consist
in reproducing them and their immortal works to sell to strangers.
Other cities project new things, and grow with a modern impetus:
Nuremberg lives in the past, and traffics on its ancient reputation.
Of course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived,
and the works of art they have left behind them,--things seen and
described by everybody. The stone carving about the church portals
and on side buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and naive. The
subjects are sacred; and with the sacred is mingled the comic, here
as at Augsburg, where over one portal of the cathedral, with saints
and angels, monkeys climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that of
our Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, who could not
watch one hour, are sleeping in various attitudes of stony
comicality. All the stone-cutters seem to have tried their chisels
on this group, and there are dozens of them. The wise and foolish
virgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,--the
one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with a
penitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment. Over the
great portal of St. Lawrence--a magnificent structure, with lofty
twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved "The Last Judgment."
Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins; above
sits the Judge, with the attending angels. On the right hand go away
the stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms and harps,
up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St. Peter opens for
them; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and
distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devil
is dragging them by their stony hair.
The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other I
remember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising and
foliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stained
glass, glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirely
round the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, too,
is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the most
exquisite thing I ever saw in stone. The color is light gray; and it
rises beside one of the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet,
growing to a point, which then strikes the arch of the roof, and
there curls up like a vine to avoid it. The base is supported by the
kneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored on
it for four years. Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing little
children, and other beautiful tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire
grows up and around these, now and then throwing out graceful
tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant than
inanimate stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for
it; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strike
the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion.
So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of letting
it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.
He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full
haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is
so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the
stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember
that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We
left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in the
morning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock in the afternoon: the
distance cannot be more than a hundred miles. That is quicker than
by diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogs
along. There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion;
nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station. But
there are express trains.
We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run
twenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifth
higher than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and the
officials, who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and
obliging than officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms.
So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital
of Bavaria.
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH
I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead
leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the
summer weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather
for a week now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn
feeling in the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must
have shivering listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do,
play within doors. The line of droschke drivers, in front of the
post-office colonnade, hide the red facings of their coats under long
overcoats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketed
horses, which must need twice the quantity of black-bread in this
chilly air; for the horses here eat bread, like people. I see the
drivers every day slicing up the black loaves, and feeding them,
taking now and then a mouthful themselves, wetting it down with a
pull from the mug of beer that stands within reach. And lastly (I am
still speaking of the weather), the gay military officers come abroad
in long cloaks, to some extent concealing their manly forms and smart
uniforms, which I am sure they would not do, except under the
pressure of necessity.
Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is only a rough
visit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences. We
came up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting to
find Munich a furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said.
So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till the
expected rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heat
overpowering. But the first week of August in Munich it was
delicious weather,--clear, sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in
it and no languor in it, just as you would say it ought to be on a
high, gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea. Then
came a week of what the Muncheners call hot weather, with the
thermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the white wide
streets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since then, weather
of the most uncertain sort.
Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better spare it than
grimy London; for its prevailing color is light gray, and its
many-tinted and frescoed fronts go far to relieve the most cheerless
day. Yet Munich attempts to be an architectural reproduction of
classic times; and, in order to achieve any success in this
direction, it is necessary to have the blue heavens and golden
sunshine of Greece. The old portion of the city has some remains of
the Gothic, and abounds in archways and rambling alleys, that
suddenly become broad streets and then again contract to the width of
an alderman, and portions of the old wall and city gates; old feudal
towers stand in the market-place, and faded frescoes on old
clock-faces and over archways speak of other days of splendor.
But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order,--raised in a day by
the command of one man. It was the old King Ludwig I., whose
flower-wreathed bust stands in these days in the vestibule of the
Glyptothek, in token of his recent death, who gave the impulse for
all this, though some of the best buildings and streets in the city
have been completed by his successors. The new city is laid out on a
magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open
squares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the
art buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a
stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask every
passer what it was put there for. Then, again, some of the new
adornments lack fitness of location or purpose. At the end of the
broad, monotonous Ludwig Strasse, and yet not at the end, for the
road runs straight on into the flat country between rows of slender
trees, stands the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation of the
Constantine arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a splendid group in
bronze, by Schwanthaler, Bavaria in her war-chariot, drawn by four
lions; and it is in itself, both in its proportions and its numerous
sculptural figures and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor
"of the Bavarian army," to whom it is erected. Yet it is so dwarfed
by its situation, that it seems to have been placed in the middle of
the street as an obstruction. A walk runs on each side of it. The
Propylaeum, another magnificent gateway, thrown across the handsome
Brienner Strasse, beyond the Glyptothek, is an imitation of that on
the Acropolis at Athens. It has fine Doric columns on the outside,
and Ionic within, and the pediment groups are bas-reliefs, by
Schwanthaler, representing scenes in modern Greek history. The
passageways for carriages are through the side arches; and thus the
"sidewalk" runs into the center of the street, and foot-passers must
twice cross the carriage-drive in going through the gate. Such
things as these give one the feeling that art has been forced beyond
use in Munich; and it is increased when one wanders through the new
churches, palaces, galleries, and finds frescoes so prodigally
crowded out of the way, and only occasionally opened rooms so
overloaded with them, and not always of the best, as to sacrifice all
effect, and leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest has
driven painters and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adorn
the city at a stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it
with marbles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet
growth and blossoming of time.
You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open,
light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and
modern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer,
said by antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in
Odin's halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich has
so much, that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised.
The long, wide Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,--a street built
up by the old king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all
the buildings are in the Romanesque style,--a repetition of one
another to a monotonous degree: only at the lower end are there any
shops or shop-windows, and a more dreary promenade need not be
imagined. It has neither shade nor fountains; and on a hot day you
can see how the sun would pour into it, and blind the passers. But
few ever walk there at any time. A street that leads nowhere, and
has no gay windows, does not attract. Toward the lower end, in the
Odeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig, a royally commanding
figure, with a page on either side. The street is closed (so that it
flows off on either side into streets of handsome shops) by the
Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the beautiful
Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two statues,
which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry, comes
a military band to play for half an hour; and there are always plenty
of idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves is
domesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheeling
round the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and
perching on the heads of the statues on the facade.
The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, that
I think nobody can describe or understand, built at different times
and in imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a
grassless square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for
shops, and partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes and
historical subjects, is "a building of festive halls," a facade eight
hundred feet long, in the revived Italian style, and with a fine
Ionic porch. The color is the royal, dirty yellow.
On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, a
seated figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of
the palace, the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried out, of
the Pitti Palace, at Florence. Between these is the old Residenz,
adorned with fountain groups and statues in bronze. On another side
are the church and theater of the Residenz. The interior of this
court chapel is dazzling in appearance: the pillars are, I think,
imitation of variegated marble; the sides are imitation of the same;
the vaulting is covered with rich frescoes on gold ground. The whole
effect is rich, but it is not at all sacred. Indeed, there is no
church in Munich, except the old cathedral, the Frauenkirche, with
its high Gothic arches, stained windows, and dusty old carvings, that
gives one at all the sort of feeling that it is supposed a church
should give. The court chapel interior is boastingly said to
resemble St. Mark's, in Venice.
You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is carried here
in Munich; so, as I said, the buildings need the southern sunlight.
Fortunately, they get the right quality much of the time. The
Glyptothek, a Grecian structure of one story, erected to hold the
treasures of classic sculpture that King Ludwig collected, has a
beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are niches filled
with statues. In the pure sunshine and under a deep blue sky, its
white marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty. Opposite stands
another successful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture,--a
building with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. These, with
the Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out wonderfully against a blue
sky. A few squares distant is the Pinakothek, with its treasures of
old pictures, and beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works of
modern artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescoes, from
designs by Kaulbach: these certainly appear best in a sparkling
light; though I am bound to say that no light can make very much of
them.
Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian,
built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modern
style of architecture, not an imitation, though it may remind some of
the new portions of Paris. It runs for three quarters of a mile,
beginning with the postoffice and its colonnades, with frescoes on
one side, and the Hof Theater, with its pediment frescoes, the
largest opera-house in Germany, I believe; with stately buildings
adorned with statues, and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowing
Isar, which is spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by two
bridges, for the Isar is partly turned from its bed above, and made
to turn wheels, and drive machinery. At the lower end the street
expands into a handsome platz, with young shade trees, plats of
grass, and gay beds of flowers. I look out on it as I write; and I
see across the Isar the college building begun by Maximilian for the
education of government officers; and I see that it is still
unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with unsightly
scaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete it; but
the young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only a
mason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exterior
frescoes. At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and
decay before this is built. On either side of it, on the elevated
bank of the river, stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, fine
trees, and well-kept walks.
Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspects
of the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originally
by the munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, I
suppose, because it is not in the artificial Continental style.
Paris has nothing to compare with it for natural beauty,--Paris,
which cannot let a tree grow, but must clip it down to suit French
taste. It is a noble park four miles in length, and perhaps a
quarter of that in width,--a park of splendid old trees, grand,
sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing grass, with delicious,
shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water. For the Isar is
trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under bridges and
over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting even a
lake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite in
the classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the many
spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play every
Saturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, and
the promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; and
while the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, and
the fashionably attired young men walk round and round the, circle,
and the smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, and
stride about with clanking swords.
We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when we
came to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only just
begun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first
the military bands: there is continually a parade somewhere, and the
streets are full of military music, and finely executed too. Then of
beer-gardens there is literally no end, and there are nightly
concerts in them. There are two brothers Hunn, each with his band,
who, like the ancient Huns, have taken the city; and its gardens are
given over to their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera medleys.
Then there is the church music on Sundays and holidays, which is
largely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums and
trumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of our
stay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor.
I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the
great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself
up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands;
and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or
fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting and
blowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging,
since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circus
band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long,
and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; at least, the
bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indistinctly. You
know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort of caravan tune.
That was it.
The English Cafe was not far off, and there the Hunns and others also
made night melodious. The whole air was one throb and thrump. The
only refuge from it was to go into one of the gardens, and give
yourself over to one band. And so it was possible to have delightful
music, and see the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly
fellowship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early and
late. We expected quiet in our present quarters. The first morning,
at six o'clock, we were startled by the resonant notes of a military
band, that set the echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment
of cavalry went clanking down the street. But that is a not
unwelcome morning serenade and reveille. Not so agreeable is the
young man next door, who gives hilarious concerts to his friends, and
sings and bangs his piano all day Sunday; nor the screaming young
woman opposite. Yet it is something to be in an atmosphere of music.
THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH
This morning I was awakened early by the strains of a military band.
It was a clear, sparkling morning, the air full of life, and yet the
sun showing its warm, southern side. As the mounted musicians went
by, the square was quite filled with the clang of drum and trumpet,
which became fainter and fainter, and at length was lost on the ear
beyond the Isar, but preserved the perfection of time and the
precision of execution for which the military bands of the city are
remarkable. After the band came a brave array of officers in bright
uniform, upon horses that pranced and curveted in the sunshine; and
the regiment of cavalry followed, rank on rank of splendidly mounted
men, who ride as if born to the saddle. The clatter of hoofs on the
pavement, the jangle of bit and saber, the occasional word of
command, the onward sweep of the well-trained cavalcade, continued
for a long time, as if the lovely morning had brought all the cavalry
in the city out of barracks. But this is an almost daily sight in
Munich. One regiment after another goes over the river to the
drill-ground. In the hot mornings I used quite to pity the troopers
who rode away in the glare in scorching brazen helmets and
breastplates. But only a portion of the regiments dress in that
absurd manner. The most wear a simple uniform, and look very
soldierly. The horses are almost invariably fine animals, and I have
not seen such riders in Europe. Indeed, everybody in Munich who
rides at all rides well. Either most of the horsemen have served in
the cavalry, or horsemanship, that noble art "to witch the world," is
in high repute here.
Speaking of soldiers, Munich is full of them. There are huge caserns
in every part of the city, crowded with troops. This little kingdom
of Bavaria has a hundred and twenty thousand troops of the line.
Every man is obliged to serve in the army continuously three years;
and every man between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five must go
with his regiment into camp or barrack several weeks in each year, no
matter if the harvest rots in the field, or the customers desert the
uncared-for shop. The service takes three of the best years of a
young man's life. Most of the soldiers in Munich are young one meets
hundreds of mere boys in the uniform of officers. I think every
seventh man you meet is a soldier. There must be between fifteen and
twenty thousand troops quartered in the city now. The young officers
are everywhere, lounging in the cafes, smoking and sipping coffee, on
all the public promenades, in the gardens, the theaters, the
churches. And most of them are fine-looking fellows, good figures in
elegantly fitting and tasteful uniforms; but they do like to show
their handsome forms and hear their sword-scabbards rattle on the
pavement as they stride by. The beer-gardens are full of the common
soldiers, who empty no end of quart mugs in alternate pulls from the
same earthen jug, with the utmost jollity and good fellowship. On
the street, salutes between officers and men are perpetual,
punctiliously given and returned,--the hand raised to the temple, and
held there for a second. A young gallant, lounging down the
Theatiner or the Maximilian Strasse, in his shining and snug uniform,
white kids, and polished boots, with jangling spurs and the long
sword clanking on the walk, raising his hand ever and anon in
condescending salute to a lower in rank, or with affable grace to an
equal, is a sight worth beholding, and for which one cannot be too
grateful. We have not all been created with the natural shape for
soldiers, but we have eyes given us that we may behold them.
Bavaria fought, you know, on the wrong side at Sadowa; but the result
of the war left her in confederation with Prussia. The company is
getting to be very distasteful, for Austria is at present more
liberal than Prussia. Under Prussia one must either be a soldier or
a slave, the democrats of Munich say. Bavaria has the most liberal
constitution in Germany, except that of Wurtemberg, and the people
are jealous of any curtailment of liberty. It seems odd that anybody
should look to the house of Hapsburg for liberality. The attitude of
Prussia compels all the little states to keep up armies, which eat up
their substance, and burden the people with taxes. This is the more
to be regretted now, when Bavaria is undergoing a peaceful
revolution, and throwing off the trammels of galling customs in other
respects.
THE EMANCIPATION OF MUNICH
The 1st of September saw go into complete effect the laws enacted in
1867, which have inaugurated the greatest changes in business and
social life, and mark an era in the progress of the people worthy of
fetes and commemorative bronzes. We heard the other night at the
opera-house "William Tell" unmutilated. For many years this
liberty-breathing opera was not permitted to be given in Bavaria,
except with all the life of it cut out. It was first presented entire
by order of young King Ludwig, who, they say, was induced to command
its unmutilated reproduction at the solicitation of Richard Wagner,
who used to be, and very likely is now, a "Red," and was banished from
Saxony in 1848 for fighting on the people's side of a barricade in
Dresden. It is the fashion to say of the young king, that he pays no
heed to the business of the kingdom. You hear that the handsome boy
cares only for music and horseback exercise: he plays much on the
violin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom, and
is gone for days together. He has composed an opera, which has not yet
been put on the stage. People, when they speak of him, tap their
foreheads with one finger. But I don't believe it. The same liberality
that induced him, years ago, to restore "William Tell" to the stage
has characterized the government under him ever since.
Formerly no one could engage in any trade or business in Bavaria
without previous examination before, and permission from, a
magistrate. If a boy wished to be a baker, for instance, he had
first to serve four years of apprenticeship. If then he wished to
set up business for himself, he must get permission, after passing an
examination. This permission could rarely be obtained; for the
magistrate usually decided that there were already as many bakers as
the town needed. His only other resource was to buy out an existing
business, and this usually costs a good deal. When he petitioned for
the privilege of starting a bakery, all the bakers protested. And he
could not even buy out a stand, and carry it on, without strict
examination as to qualifications. This was the case in every trade.
And to make matters worse, a master workman could not employ a
journeyman out of his shop; so that, if a journeyman could not get a
regular situation, he had no work. Then there were endless
restrictions upon the manufacture and sale of articles: one person
could make only one article, or one portion of an article; one might
manufacture shoes for women, but not for men; he might make an
article in the shop and sell it, but could not sell it if any one
else made it outside, or vice versa.
Nearly all this mass of useless restriction on trades and business,
which palsied all effort in Bavaria, is removed. Persons are free to
enter into any business they like. The system of apprenticeship
continues, but so modified as not to be oppressive; and all trades
are left to regulate themselves by natural competition. Already
Munich has felt the benefit of the removal of these restrictions,
which for nearly a year has been anticipated, in a growth of
population and increased business.
But the social change is still more important. The restrictions upon
marriage were a serious injury to the state. If Hans wished to
marry, and felt himself adequate to the burdens and responsibilities
of the double state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing to
undertake its trials and risks with him, it was not at all enough
that in the moonlighted beergarden, while the band played, and they
peeled the stinging radish, and ate the Switzer cheese, and drank
from one mug, she allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist.
All this love and fitness went for nothing in the eyes of the
magistrate, who referred the application for permission to marry to
his associate advisers, and they inquired into the applicant's
circumstances; and if, in their opinion, he was not worth enough
money to support a wife properly, permission was refused for him to
try. The consequence was late marriages, and fewer than there ought
to be, and other ill results. Now the matrimonial gates are lifted
high, and the young man has not to ask permission of any snuffy old
magistrate to marry. I do not hear that the consent of the maidens
is more difficult to obtain than formerly.
No city of its size is more prolific of pictures than Munich. I do
not know how all its artists manage to live, but many of them count
upon the American public. I hear everywhere that the Americans like
this, and do not like that; and I am sorry to say that some artists,
who have done better things, paint professedly to suit Americans, and
not to express their own conceptions of beauty. There is one who is
now quite devoted to dashing off rather lamp-blacky moonlights,
because, he says, the Americans fancy that sort of thing. I see one
of his smirchy pictures hanging in a shop window, awaiting the advent
of the citizen of the United States. I trust that no word of mine
will injure the sale of the moonlights. There are some excellent
figure-painters here, and one can still buy good modern pictures for
reasonable prices.
FASHION IN THE STREETS
Was there ever elsewhere such a blue, transparent sky as this here in
Munich? At noon, looking up to it from the street, above the gray
houses, the color and depth are marvelous. It makes a background for
the Grecian art buildings and gateways, that would cheat a risen
Athenian who should see it into the belief that he was restored to
his beautiful city. The color holds, too, toward sundown, and seems
to be poured, like something solid, into the streets of the city.
You should see then the Maximilian Strasse, when the light floods the
platz where Maximilian in bronze sits in his chair, illuminates the
frescoes on the pediments of the Hof Theater, brightens the Pompeian
red under the colonnade of the post-office, and streams down the gay
thoroughfare to the trees and statues in front of the National
Museum, and into the gold-dusted atmosphere beyond the Isar. The
street is filled with promenaders: strangers who saunter along with
the red book in one hand,--a man and his wife, the woman dragged
reluctantly past the windows of fancy articles, which are "so cheap,"
the man breaking his neck to look up at the buildings, especially at
the comical heads and figures in stone that stretch out from the
little oriel-windows in the highest story of the Four Seasons Hotel,
and look down upon the moving throng; Munich bucks in coats of
velvet, swinging light canes, and smoking cigars through long and
elaborately carved meerschaum holders; Munich ladies in dresses of
that inconvenient length that neither sweeps the pavement nor clears
it; peasants from the Tyrol, the men in black, tight breeches, that
button from the knee to the ankle, short jackets and vests set
thickly with round silver buttons, and conical hats with feathers,
and the women in short quilted and quilled petticoats, of barrel-like
roundness from the broad hips down, short waists ornamented with
chains and barbarous brooches of white metal, with the oddest
head-gear of gold and silver heirlooms; students with little red or
green embroidered brimless caps, with the ribbon across the breast, a
folded shawl thrown over one shoulder, and the inevitable
switch-cane; porters in red caps, with a coil of twine about the
waist; young fellows from Bohemia, with green coats, or coats trimmed
with green, and green felt hats with a stiff feather stuck in the
side; and soldiers by the hundreds, of all ranks and organizations;
common fellows in blue, staring in at the shop windows, officers in
resplendent uniforms, clanking their swords as they swagger past. Now
and then, an elegant equipage dashes by,--perhaps the four horses of
the handsome young king, with mounted postilions and outriders, or a
liveried carriage of somebody born with a von before his name. As
the twilight comes on, the shutters of the shop windows are put up.
It is time to go to the opera, for the curtain rises at half-past
six, or to the beer-gardens, where delicious music marks, but does
not interrupt, the flow of excellent beer.
Or you may if you choose, and I advise you to do it, walk at the same
hour in the English Garden, which is but a step from the arcades of
the Hof Garden,--but a step to the entrance, whence you may wander
for miles and miles in the most enchanting scenery. Art has not been
allowed here to spoil nature. The trees, which are of magnificent
size, are left to grow naturally;--the Isar, which is turned into it,
flows in more than one stream with its mountain impetuosity; the lake
is gracefully indented and overhung with trees, and presents
ever-changing aspects of loveliness as you walk along its banks; there
are open, sunny meadows, in which single giant trees or splendid
groups of them stand, and walks without end winding under leafy Gothic
arches. You know already that Munich owes this fine park to the
foresight and liberality of an American Tory, Benjamin Thompson (Count
Rumford), born in Rumford, Vt., who also relieved Munich of beggars.
I have spoken of the number of soldiers in Munich. For six weeks the
Landwehr, or militia, has been in camp in various parts of Bavaria.
There was a grand review of them the other day on the Field of Mars,
by the king, and many of them have now gone home. They strike an
unmilitary man as a very efficient body of troops. So far as I could
see, they were armed with breech-loading rifles. There is a treaty
by which Bavaria agreed to assimilate her military organization to
that of Prussia. It is thus that Bismarck is continually getting
ready. But if the Landwehr is gone, there are yet remaining troops
enough of the line. Their chief use, so far as it concerns me, is to
make pageants in the streets, and to send their bands to play at noon
in the public squares. Every day, when the sun shines down upon the
mounted statue of Ludwig I., in front of the Odeon, a band plays in
an open Loggia, and there is always a crowd of idlers in the square
to hear it. Everybody has leisure for that sort of thing here in
Europe; and one can easily learn how to be idle and let the world
wag. They have found out here what is disbelieved in America,--that
the world will continue to turn over once in about twenty-four hours
(they are not accurate as to the time) without their aid. To return
to our soldiers. The cavalry most impresses me; the men are so
finely mounted, and they ride royally. In these sparkling mornings,
when the regiments clatter past, with swelling music and shining
armor, riding away to I know not what adventure and glory, I confess
that I long to follow them. I have long had this desire; and the
other morning, determining to satisfy it, I seized my hat and went
after the prancing procession. I am sorry I did. For, after
trudging after it through street after street, the fine horsemen all
rode through an arched gateway, and disappeared in barracks, to my
great disgust; and the troopers dismounted, and led their steeds into
stables.
And yet one never loses a walk here in Munich. I found myself that
morning by the Isar Thor, a restored medieval city gate. The gate is
double, with flanking octagonal towers, inclosing a quadrangle. Upon
the inner wall is a fresco of "The Crucifixion." Over the outer front
is a representation, in fresco painting, of the triumphal entry into
the city of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria after the battle of Ampfing.
On one side of the gate is a portrait of the Virgin, on gold ground,
and on the other a very passable one of the late Dr. Hawes of
Hartford, with a Pope's hat on. Walking on, I came to another arched
gateway and clock-tower; near it an old church, with a high wall
adjoining, whereon is a fresco of cattle led to slaughter, showing
that I am in the vicinity of the Victual Market; and I enter it
through a narrow, crooked alley. There is nothing there but an
assemblage of shabby booths and fruit-stands, and an ancient stone
tower in ruins and overgrown with ivy.
Leaving this, I came out to the Marian Platz, where stands the
column, with the statue of the Virgin and Child, set up by Maximilian
I. in 1638 to celebrate the victory in the battle which established
the Catholic supremacy in Bavaria. It is a favorite praying-place
for the lower classes. Yesterday was a fete day, and the base of the
column and half its height are lost in a mass of flowers and
evergreens. In front is erected an altar with a broad, carpeted
platform; and a strip of the platz before it is inclosed with a
railing, within which are praying-benches. The sun shines down hot;
but there are several poor women kneeling there, with their baskets
beside them. I happen along there at sundown; and there are a score
of women kneeling on the hard stones, outside the railing saying
their prayers in loud voices. The mass of flowers is still sweet and
gay and fresh; a fountain with fantastic figures is flashing near by;
the crowd, going home to supper and beer, gives no heed to the
praying; the stolid droschke-drivers stand listlessly by. At the
head of the square is an artillery station, and a row of cannon
frowns on it. On one side is a house with a tablet in the wall,
recording the fact that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden once lived in it.
When we came to Munich, the great annual fair was in progress; and
the large Maximilian Platz (not to be confounded with the street of
that name) was filled with booths of cheap merchandise, puppet-shows,
lottery shanties, and all sorts of popular amusements. It was a fine
time to study peasant costumes. The city was crowded with them on
Sunday; and let us not forget that the first visit of the peasants
was to the churches; they invariably attended early mass before they
set out upon the day's pleasure. Most of the churches have services
at all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and military
music. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of the
simple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy
edifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then went
away. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high,
round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there was
anything amiss in bringing their big baskets into church with them.
At least, their simple, unconscious manner was better than that of
many of the city people, some of whom stare about a good deal, while
going through the service, and stop in the midst of crossings and
genuflections to take snuff and pass it to their neighbors. But
there are always present simple and homelike sort of people, who
neither follow the fashions nor look round on them; respectable, neat
old ladies, in the faded and carefully preserved silk gowns, such as
the New England women wear to "meeting."
No one can help admiring the simplicity, kindliness, and honesty of
the Germans. The universal courtesy and friendliness of manner have
a very different seeming from the politeness of the French. At the
hotels in the country, the landlord and his wife and the servant join
in hoping you will sleep well when you go to bed. The little maid at
Heidelberg who served our meals always went to the extent of wishing
us a good appetite when she had brought in the dinner. Here in
Munich the people we have occasion to address in the street are
uniformly courteous. The shop-keepers are obliging, and rarely
servile, like the English. You are thanked, and punctiliously wished
the good-day, whether you purchase anything or not. In shops tended
by women, gentlemen invariably remove their hats. If you buy only a
kreuzer's worth of fruit of an old woman, she says words that would
be, literally translated, "I thank you beautifully." With all this,
one looks kindly on the childish love the Germans have for titles.
It is, I believe, difficult for the German mind to comprehend that we
can be in good standing at home, unless we have some title prefixed
to our names, or some descriptive phrase added. Our good landlord,
who waits at the table and answers our bell, one of whose tenants is
a living baron, having no title to put on his doorplate under that of
the baron, must needs dub himself "privatier;" and he insists upon
prefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the ennobling von;
and at the least he insists, in common with the tradespeople, that I
am a "Herr Doctor." The bills of purchases by madame come made out
to "Frau----, well-born." At a hotel in Heidelberg, where I had
registered my name with that distinctness of penmanship for which
newspaper men are justly conspicuous, and had added to my own name
"& wife," I was not a little flattered to appear in the reckoning as
"Herr Doctor Mamesweise."
THE GOTTESACKER AND BAVARIAN FUNERALS
To change the subject from gay to grave. The Gottesacker of Munich
is called the finest cemetery in Germany; at least, it surpasses them
in the artistic taste of its monuments. Natural beauty it has none:
it is simply a long, narrow strip of ground inclosed in walls, with
straight, parallel walks running the whole length, and narrow
cross-walks; and yet it is a lovely burial-ground. There are but few
trees; but the whole inclosure is a conservatory of beautiful
flowers. Every grave is covered with them, every monument is
surrounded with them. The monuments are unpretending in size, but
there are many fine designs, and many finely executed busts and
statues and allegorical figures, in both marble and bronze. The
place is full of sunlight and color. I noticed that it was much
frequented. In front of every place of sepulcher stands a small urn
for water, with a brush hanging by, with which to sprinkle the
flowers. I saw, also, many women and children coming and going with
watering-pots, so that the flowers never droop for want of care. At
the lower end of the old ground is an open arcade, wherein are some
effigies and busts, and many ancient tablets set into the wall.
Beyond this is the new cemetery, an inclosure surrounded by a high
wall of brick, and on the inside by an arcade. The space within is
planted with flowers, and laid out for the burial of the people; the
arcades are devoted to the occupation of those who can afford costly
tombs. Only a small number of them are yet occupied; there are some
good busts and monuments, and some frescoes on the panels rather more
striking for size and color than for beauty.
Between the two cemeteries is the house for the dead. When I walked
down the long central alle of the old ground, I saw at the farther
end, beyond a fountain, twinkling lights. Coming nearer, I found
that they proceeded from the large windows of a building, which was a
part of the arcade. People were looking in at the windows, going and
coming to and from them continually; and I was prompted by curiosity
to look within. A most unexpected sight met my eye. In a long room,
upon elevated biers, lay people dead: they were so disposed that the
faces could be seen; and there they rested in a solemn repose.
Officers in uniform, citizens in plain dress, matrons and maids in
the habits that they wore when living, or in the white robes of the
grave. About most of them were lighted candles. About all of them
were flowers: some were almost covered with bouquets. There were
rows of children, little ones scarce a span long,--in the white caps
and garments of innocence, as if asleep in beds of flowers. How
naturally they all were lying, as if only waiting to be called!
Upon the thumb of every adult was a ring in which a string was tied
that went through a pulley above and communicated with a bell in the
attendant's room. How frightened he would be if the bell should ever
sound, and he should go into that hall of the dead to see who rang!
And yet it is a most wise and humane provision; and many years ago,
there is a tradition, an entombment alive was prevented by it. There
are three rooms in all; and all those who die in Munich must be
brought and laid in one of them, to be seen of all who care to look
therein. I suppose that wealth and rank have some privileges; but it
is the law that the person having been pronounced dead by the
physician shall be the same day brought to the dead-house, and lie
there three whole days before interment.
There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Munich, especially in
the Catholic portion of the population. Shortly after the death,
there is a short service in the courtyard of the house, which, with
the entrance, is hung in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich.
The body is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended by
the priests, the male members of the family, and a procession of
torch-bearers, if that can be afforded. Three days after, the burial
takes place from the dead-house, only males attending. The women
never go to the funeral; but some days after, of which public notice
is given by advertisement, a public service is held in church, at
which all the family are present, and to which the friends are
publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly here as in
America; but everything is here regulated and fixed by custom. There
are as many as five or six classes of funerals recognized. Those of
the first class, as to rank and expense, cost about a thousand
guldens. The second class is divided into six subclasses. The third
is divided into two. The cost of the first of the third class is
about four hundred guldens. The lowest class of those able to have a
funeral costs twenty-five guldens. A gulden is about two francs.
There are no carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only at
those of Protestants and Jews.
I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A considerable
portion of the daily newspapers is devoted to these announcements,
which are printed in display type, like the advertisements of
dry-goods sellers with you. I will roughly translate one which I
happen to see just now. It reads, "Death advertisement. It has
pleased God the Almighty, in his inscrutable providence, to take away
our innermost loved, best husband, father, grandfather, uncle,
brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr---, dyer of cloth and silk,
yesterday night, at eleven o'clock, after three weeks of severe
suffering, having partaken of the holy sacrament, in his sixty-sixth
year, out of this earthly abode of calamity into the better Beyond.
Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as well as his
patience in suffering, will know how justly to estimate our grief."
This is signed by the "deep-grieving survivors,"--the widow, son,
daughter, and daughter-in-law, in the name of the absent relatives.
After the name of the son is written, "Dyer in cloth and silk." The
notice closes with an announcement of the funeral at the cemetery,
and a service at the church the day after. The advertisement I have
given is not uncommon either for quaintness or simplicity. It is
common to engrave upon the monument the business as well as the title
of the departed.
THE OCTOBER FEST THE PEASANTS AND THE KING
On the 11th of October the sun came out, after a retirement of nearly
two weeks. The cause of the appearance was the close of the October
Fest. This great popular carnival has the same effect upon the
weather in Bavaria that the Yearly Meeting of Friends is known to
produce in Philadelphia, and the Great National Horse Fair in New
England. It always rains during the October Fest. Having found this
out, I do not know why they do not change the time of it; but I
presume they are wise enough to feel that it would be useless. A
similar attempt on the part of the Pennsylvania Quakers merely
disturbed the operations of nature, but did not save the drab bonnets
from the annual wetting. There is a subtle connection between such
gatherings and the gathering of what are called the elements,--a
sympathetic connection, which we shall, no doubt, one day understand,
when we have collected facts enough on the subject to make a
comprehensive generalization, after Mr. Buckle's method.
This fair, which is just concluded, is a true Folks-Fest, a season
especially for the Bavarian people, an agricultural fair and cattle
show, but a time of general jollity and amusement as well. Indeed,
the main object of a German fair seems to be to have a good time and
in this it is in marked contrast with American fairs. The October
Fest was instituted for the people by the old Ludwig I. on the
occasion of his marriage; and it has ever since retained its position
as the great festival of the Bavarian people, and particularly of the
peasants. It offers a rare opportunity to the stranger to study the
costumes of the peasants, and to see how they amuse themselves. One
can judge a good deal of the progress of a people by the sort of
amusements that satisfy them. I am not about to draw any
philosophical inferences,--I am a mere looker-on in Munich; but I
have never anywhere else seen puppet-shows afford so much delight,
nor have I ever seen anybody get more satisfaction out of a sausage
and a mug of beer, with the tum-tum of a band near, by, than a
Bavarian peasant.
The Fest was held on the Theresien Wiese, a vast meadow on the
outskirts of the city. The ground rises on one side of this by an
abrupt step, some thirty or forty feet high, like the "bench" of a
Western river. This bank is terraced for seats the whole length, or
as far down as the statue of Bavaria; so that there are turf seats, I
should judge, for three quarters of a mile, for a great many
thousands of people, who can look down upon the race-course, the
tents, houses, and booths of the fair-ground, and upon the roof and
spires of the city beyond. The statue is, as you know, the famous
bronze Bavaria of Schwanthaler, a colossal female figure fifty feet
high, and with its pedestal a hundred feet high, which stands in
front of the Hall of Fame, a Doric edifice, in the open colonnades of
which are displayed the busts of the most celebrated Bavarians,
together with those of a few poets and scholars who were so
unfortunate as not to be born here. The Bavaria stands with the
right hand upon the sheathed sword, and the left raised in the act of
bestowing a wreath of victory; and the lion of the kingdom is beside
her. This representative being is, of course, hollow. There is room
for eight people in her head, which I can testify is a warm place on
a sunny day; and one can peep out through loopholes and get a good
view of the Alps of the Tyrol. To say that this statue is graceful
or altogether successful would be an error; but it is rather
impressive, from its size, if for no other reason. In the cast of
the hand exhibited at the bronze foundry, the forefinger measures
over three feet long.
Although the Fest did not officially begin until Friday, October 12,
yet the essential part of it, the amusements, was well under way on
the Sunday before. The town began to be filled with country people,
and the holiday might be said to have commenced; for the city gives
itself up to the occasion. The new art galleries are closed for some
days; but the collections and museums of various sorts are daily
open, gratis; the theaters redouble their efforts; the concert-halls
are in full blast; there are dances nightly, and masked balls in the
Folks' Theater; country relatives are entertained; the peasants go
about the streets in droves, in a simple and happy frame of mind,
wholly unconscious that they are the oddest-looking guys that have
come down from the Middle Ages; there is music in all the gardens,
singing in the cafes, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell of
cheese, that goes up to heaven. If the eating of cheese were a
religious act, and its odor an incense, I could not say enough of the
devoutness of the Bavarians.
Of the picturesqueness and oddity of the Bavarian peasants' costumes,
nothing but a picture can give you any idea. You can imagine the men
in tight breeches, buttoned below the knee, jackets of the jockey
cut, and both jacket and waistcoat covered with big metal buttons,
sometimes coins, as thickly as can be sewed on: but the women defy
the pen; a Bavarian peasant woman, in holiday dress, is the most
fearfully and wonderfully made object in the universe. She displays
a good length of striped stockings, and wears thin slippers, or
sandals; her skirts are like a hogshead in size and shape, and reach
so near her shoulders as to make her appear hump-backed; the sleeves
are hugely swelled out at the shoulder, and taper to the wrist; the
bodice is a stiff and most elaborately ornamented piece of armor; and
there is a kind of breastplate, or center-piece, of gold, silver, and
precious stones, or what passes for them; and the head is adorned
with some monstrous heirloom, of finely worked gold or silver, or a
tower, gilded and shining with long streamers, or bound in a simple
black turban, with flowing ends. Little old girls, dressed like
their mothers, have the air of creations of the fancy, who have
walked out of a fairy-book. There is an endless variety in these old
costumes; and one sees, every moment, one more preposterous than the
preceding. The girls from the Tyrol, with their bright neckerchiefs
and pointed black felt hats, with gold cord and tassels, are some of
them very pretty: but one looks a long time for a bright face among
the other class; and, when it is discovered, the owner appears like a
maiden who was enchanted a hundred years ago, and has not been
released from the spell, but is still doomed to wear the garments and
the ornaments that should long ago have mouldered away with her
ancestors.
The Theresien Wiese was a city of Vanity Fair for two weeks, every
day crowded with a motley throng. Booths, and even structures of
some solidity, rose on it as if by magic. The lottery-houses were
set up early, and, to the last, attracted crowds, who could not
resist the tempting display of goods and trinkets, which might be won
by investing six kreuzers in a bit of paper, which might, when
unrolled, contain a number. These lotteries are all authorized: some
of them were for the benefit of the agricultural society; some were
for the poor, and others on individual account: and they always
thrive; for the German, above all others, loves to try his luck.
There were streets of shanties, where various things were offered for
sale besides cheese and sausages. There was a long line of booths,
where images could be shot at with bird-guns; and when the shots were
successful, the images went through astonishing revolutions. There
was a circus, in front of which some of the spangled performers
always stood beating drums and posturing, in order to entice in
spectators. There were the puppet-booths, before which all day stood
gaping, delighted crowds, who roared with laughter whenever the
little frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and set him to
tend the baby, who continued to wail, notwithstanding the man
knocked its head against the doorpost. There were the great
beer-restaurants, with temporary benches and tables' planted about with
evergreens, always thronged with a noisy, jolly crowd. There were
the fires, over which fresh fish were broiling on sticks; and, if you
lingered, you saw the fish taken alive from tubs of water standing
by, dressed and spitted and broiling before the wiggle was out of
their tails. There were the old women, who mixed the flour and fried
the brown cakes before your eyes, or cooked the fragrant sausage, and
offered it piping hot.
And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,--a full
array of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorry
quartette, the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himself
out through the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and
the robust and thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music; the
air was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that there
was nothing wanting to the most complete enjoyment. The crowd surged
round, jammed together, in the best possible humor. Those who could
not sit at tables sat on the ground, with a link of an eatable I have
already named in one hand, and a mug of beer beside them. Toward
evening, the ground was strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gave
as perfect evidence of the battle of the day as the cannon-balls on
the sand before Fort Fisher did of the contest there. Besides this,
for the amusement of the crowd, there is, every day, a wheelbarrow
race, a sack race, a blindfold contest, or something of the sort,
which turns out to be a very flat performance. But all the time the
eating and the drinking go on, and the clatter and clink of it fill
the air; so that the great object of the fair is not lost sight of.
Meantime, where is the agricultural fair and cattle-show? You must
know that we do these things differently in Bavaria. On the
fair-ground, there is very little to be seen of the fair. There is
an inclosure where steam-engines are smoking and puffing, and
threshing-machines are making a clamor; where some big church-bells
hang, and where there are a few stalls for horses and cattle. But
the competing horses and cattle are led before the judges elsewhere;
the horses, for instance, by the royal stables in the city. I saw no
such general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at your
fairs. The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a very
serviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and admirable in
the cavalry service. The bulls and cows seemed also native and to
the manor born, and were worthy of little remark. The mechanical,
vegetable, and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in the
city, and was very creditable in the fruit department, in the show of
grapes and pears especially. The products of the dairy were less,
though I saw one that I do not recollect ever to have seen in
America, a landscape in butter. Inclosed in a case, it looked very
much like a wood-carving. There was a Swiss cottage, a milkmaid,
with cows in the foreground; there were trees, and in the rear rose
rocky precipices, with chamois in the act of skipping thereon. I
should think something might be done in our country in this line of
the fine arts; certainly, some of the butter that is always being
sold so cheap at St. Albans, when it is high everywhere else, must be
strong enough to warrant the attempt. As to the other departments of
the fine arts in the glass palace, I cannot give you a better idea of
them than by saying that they were as well filled as the like ones in
the American county fairs. There were machines for threshing, for
straw-cutting, for apple-paring, and generally such a display of
implements as would give one a favorable idea of Bavarian
agriculture. There was an interesting exhibition of live fish, great
and small, of nearly every sort, I should think, in Bavarian waters.
The show in the fire-department was so antiquated, that I was
convinced that the people of Munich never intend to have any fires.
The great day of the fete was Sunday, October 5 for on that day the
king went out to the fair-ground, and distributed the prizes to the
owners of the best horses, and, as they appeared to me, of the most
ugly-colored bulls. The city was literally crowded with peasants and
country people; the churches were full all the morning with devout
masses, which poured into the waiting beer-houses afterward with
equal zeal. By twelve o'clock, the city began to empty itself upon
the Theresien meadow; and long before the time for the king to arrive
--two o'clock--there were acres of people waiting for the performance
to begin. The terraced bank, of which I have spoken, was taken
possession of early, and held by a solid mass of people; while the
fair-ground proper was packed with a swaying concourse, densest near
the royal pavilion, which was erected immediately on the race-course,
and opposite the bank.
At one o'clock the grand stand opposite to the royal one is taken
possession of by a regiment band and by invited guests. All the
space, except the race-course, is, by this time, packed with people,
who watch the red and white gate at the head of the course with
growing impatience. It opens to let in a regiment of infantry, which
marches in and takes position. It swings, every now and then, for a
solitary horseman, who gallops down the line in all the pride of
mounted civic dignity, to the disgust of the crowd; or to let in a
carriage, with some overdressed officer or splendid minister, who is
entitled to a place in the royal pavilion. It is a people' fete, and
the civic officers enjoy one day of conspicuous glory. Now a
majestic person in gold lace is set down; and now one in a scarlet
coat, as beautiful as a flamingo. These driblets of splendor only
feed the popular impatience. Music is heard in the distance, and a
procession with colored banners is seen approaching from the city.
That, like everything else that is to come, stops beyond the closed
gate; and there it halts, ready to stream down before our eyes in a
variegated pageant. The time goes on; the crowd gets denser, for
there have been steady rivers of people pouring into the grounds for
more than an hour.
The military bands play in the long interval; the peasants jabber in
unintelligible dialects; the high functionaries on the royal stand
are good enough to move around, and let us see how brave and majestic
they are.
At last the firing of cannon announces the coming of royalty. There
is a commotion in the vast crowd yonder, the eagerly watched gates
swing wide, and a well-mounted company of cavalry dashes down the
turf, in uniforms of light blue and gold. It is a citizens' company
of butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, which would do no
discredit to the regular army. Driving close after is a four-horse
carriage with two of the king's ministers; and then, at a rapid pace,
six coal-black horses in silver harness, with mounted postilions,
drawing a long, slender, open carriage with one seat, in which ride
the king and his brother, Prince Otto, come down the way, and are
pulled up in front of the pavilion; while the cannon roars, the big
bells ring, all the flags of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria, on
innumerable poles, are blowing straight out, the band plays "God save
the King," the people break into enthusiastic shouting, and the young
king, throwing off his cloak, rises and stands in his carriage for a
moment, bowing right and left before he descends. He wears to-day
the simple uniform of the citizens' company which has escorted him,
and is consequently more plainly and neatly dressed than any one else
on the platform,--a tall (say six feet), slender, gallant-looking
young fellow of three and twenty, with an open face and a graceful
manner.
But, when he has arrived, things again come to a stand; and we wait
for an hour, and watch the thickening of the clouds, while the king
goes from this to that delighted dignitary on the stand and
converses. At the end of this time, there is a movement. A white
dog has got into the course, and runs up and down between the walls
of people in terror, headed off by soldiers at either side of the
grand stand, and finally, becoming desperate, he makes a dive for the
royal pavilion. The consternation is extreme. The people cheer the
dog and laugh: a white-handed official, in gold lace, and without his
hat, rushes out to "shoo" the dog away, but is unsuccessful; for the
animal dashes between his legs, and approaches the royal and carpeted
steps. More men of rank run at him, and he is finally captured and
borne away; and we all breathe freer that the danger to royalty is
averted. At one o'clock six youths in white jackets, with clubs and
coils of rope, had stationed themselves by the pavilion, but they did
not go into action at this juncture; and I thought they rather
enjoyed the activity of the great men who kept off the dog.
At length there was another stir; and the king descended from the
rear of his pavilion, attended by his ministers, and moved about
among the people, who made way for him, and uncovered at his
approach. He spoke with one and another, and strolled about as his
fancy took him. I suppose this is called mingling with the common
people. After he had mingled about fifteen minutes, he returned, and
took his place on the steps in front of the pavilion; and the
distribution of prizes began. First the horses were led out; and
their owners, approaching the king, received from his hands the
diplomas, and a flag from an attendant. Most of them were peasants;
and they exhibited no servility in receiving their marks of
distinction, but bowed to the king as they would to any other man,
and his majesty touched his cocked hat in return. Then came the
prize-cattle, many of them led by women, who are as interested as
their husbands in all farm matters. Everything goes off smoothly,
except there is a momentary panic over a fractious bull, who plunges
into the crowd; but the six white jackets are about him in an
instant, and entangle him with their ropes.
This over, the gates again open, and the gay cavalcade that has been
so long in sight approaches. First a band of musicians in costumes
of the Middle Ages; and then a band of pages in the gayest apparel,
bearing pictured banners and flags of all colors, whose silken luster
would have been gorgeous in sunshine; these were followed by mounted
heralds with trumpets, and after them were led the running horses
entered for the race. The banners go up on the royal stand, and
group themselves picturesquely; the heralds disappear at the other
end of the list; and almost immediately the horses, ridden by young
jockeys in stunning colors, come flying past in a general scramble.
There are a dozen or more horses; but, after the first round, the
race lies between two. The course is considerably over an English
mile, and they make four circuits; so that the race is fully
six-miles,--a very hard one. It was a run in a rain, however, which
began when it did, and soon forced up the umbrellas. The vast crowd
disappeared under a shed of umbrellas, of all colors,--black, green,
red, blue; and the effect was very singular, especially when it moved
from the field: there was then a Niagara of umbrellas. The race was
soon over: it is only a peasants' race, after all; the aristocratic
races of the best horses take place in May. It was over. The king's
carriage was brought round, the people again shouted, the cannon
roared, the six black horses reared and plunged, and away he went.
After all, says the artist, "the King of Bavaria has not much power."
"You can see," returns a gentleman who speaks English, "just how much
he has: it is a six-horse power."
On other days there was horse-trotting, music production, and for
several days prize-shooting. The latter was admirably conducted: the
targets were placed at the foot of the bank; and opposite, I should
think not more than two hundred yards off, were shooting-houses, each
with a room for the register of the shots, and on each side of him
closets where the shooters stand. Signal-wires run from these houses
to the targets, where there are attendants who telegraph the effect
of every shot. Each competitor has a little book; and he shoots at
any booth he pleases, or at all, and has his shots registered. There
was a continual fusillade for a couple of days; but what it all came
to, I cannot tell. I can only say, that, if they shoot as steadily
as they drink beer, there is no other corps of shooters that can
stand before them.
INDIAN SUMMER
We are all quiet along the Isar since the October Fest; since the
young king has come back from his summer castle on the Starnberg See
to live in his dingy palace; since the opera has got into good
working order, and the regular indoor concerts at the cafes have
begun. There is no lack of amusements, with balls, theaters, and the
cheap concerts, vocal and instrumental. I stepped into the West Ende
Halle the other night, having first surrendered twelve kreuzers to
the money-changer at the entrance,--double the usual fee, by the way.
It was large and well lighted, with a gallery all round it and an
orchestral platform at one end. The floor and gallery were filled
with people of the most respectable class, who sat about little round
tables, and drank beer. Every man was smoking a cigar; and the
atmosphere was of that degree of haziness that we associate with
Indian summer at home; so that through it the people in the gallery
appeared like glorified objects in a heathen Pantheon, and the
orchestra like men playing in a dream. Yet nobody seemed to mind it;
and there was, indeed, a general air of social enjoyment and good
feeling. Whether this good feeling was in process of being produced
by the twelve or twenty glasses of beer which it is not unusual for a
German to drink of an evening, I do not know. "I do not drink much
beer now," said a German acquaintance,--"not more than four or five
glasses in an evening." This is indeed moderation, when we remember
that sixteen glasses of beer is only two gallons. The orchestra
playing that night was Gungl's; and it performed, among other things,
the whole of the celebrated Third (or Scotch) Symphony of Mendelssohn
in a manner that would be greatly to the credit of orchestras that
play without the aid of either smoke or beer. Concerts of this sort,
generally with more popular music and a considerable dash of Wagner,
in whom the Munichers believe, take place every night in several
cafes; while comic singing, some of it exceedingly well done, can be
heard in others. Such amusements--and nothing can be more harmless
--are very cheap.
Speaking of Indian summer, the only approach to it I have seen was in
the hazy atmosphere at the West Ende Halle. October outdoors has
been an almost totally disagreeable month, with the exception of some
days, or rather parts of days, when we have seen the sun, and
experienced a mild atmosphere. At such times, I have liked to sit
down on one of the empty benches in the Hof Garden, where the leaves
already half cover the ground, and the dropping horse-chestnuts keep
up a pattering on them. Soon the fat woman who has a fruit-stand at
the gate is sure to come waddling along, her beaming face making a
sort of illumination in the autumn scenery, and sit down near me. As
soon as she comes, the little brown birds and the doves all fly that
way, and look up expectant at her. They all know her, and expect the
usual supply of bread-crumbs. Indeed, I have seen her on a still
Sunday morning, when I have been sitting there waiting for the
English ceremony of praying for Queen Victoria and Albert Edward to
begin in the Odeon, sit for an hour, and cut up bread for her little
brown flock. She sits now knitting a red stocking, the picture of
content; one after another her old gossips pass that way, and stop a
moment to exchange the chat of the day; or the policeman has his joke
with her, and when there is nobody else to converse with, she talks
to the birds. A benevolent old soul, I am sure, who in a New England
village would be universally called "Aunty," and would lay all the
rising generation under obligation to her for doughnuts and
sweet-cake. As she rises to go away, she scrapes together a
half-dozen shining chestnuts with her feet; and as she cannot
possibly stoop to pick them up, she motions to a boy playing near,
and smiles so happily as the urchin gathers them and runs away
without even a "thank ye."
A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM
If that of which every German dreams, and so few are ready to take
any practical steps to attain,--German unity,--ever comes, it must
ride roughshod over the Romish clergy, for one thing. Of course
there are other obstacles. So long as beer is cheap, and songs of
the Fatherland are set to lilting strains, will these excellent
people "Ho, ho, my brothers," and "Hi, hi, my brothers," and wait for
fate, in the shape of some compelling Bismarck, to drive them into
anything more than the brotherhood of brown mugs of beer and Wagner's
mysterious music of the future. I am not sure, by the way, that the
music of Richard Wagner is not highly typical of the present (1868)
state of German unity,--an undefined longing which nobody exactly
understands. There are those who think they can discern in his music
the same revolutionary tendency which placed the composer on the
right side of a Dresden barricade in 1848, and who go so far as to
believe that the liberalism of the young King of Bavaria is not a
little due to his passion for the disorganizing operas of this
transcendental writer. Indeed, I am not sure that any other people
than Germans would not find in the repetition of the five hours of
the "Meister-Singer von Nurnberg," which was given the other night at
the Hof Theater, sufficient reason for revolution.
Well, what I set out to say was, that most Germans would like unity
if they could be the unit. Each State would like to be the center of
the consolidated system, and thus it happens that every practical
step toward political unity meets a host of opponents at once. When
Austria, or rather the house of Hapsburg, had a preponderance in the
Diet, and it seemed, under it, possible to revive the past reality,
or to realize the dream of a great German empire, it was clearly seen
that Austria was a tyranny that would crush out all liberties. And
now that Prussia, with its vital Protestantism and free schools,
proposes to undertake the reconstruction of Germany, and make a
nation where there are now only the fragmentary possibilities of a
great power, why, Prussia is a military despot, whose subjects must
be either soldiers or slaves, and the young emperor at Vienna is
indeed another Joseph, filled with the most tender solicitude for the
welfare of the chosen German people.
But to return to the clergy. While the monasteries and nunneries are
going to the ground in superstition-saturated Spain; while eager
workmen are demolishing the last hiding-places of monkery, and
letting the daylight into places that have well kept the frightful
secrets of three hundred years, and turning the ancient cloister
demesne into public parks and pleasure-grounds,--the Romish
priesthood here, in free Bavaria, seem to imagine that they cannot
only resist the progress of events, but that they can actually bring
back the owlish twilight of the Middle Ages. The reactionary party
in Bavaria has, in some of the provinces, a strong majority; and its
supporters and newspapers are belligerent and aggressive. A few
words about the politics of Bavaria will give you a clew to the
general politics of the country.
The reader of the little newspapers here in Munich finds evidence of
at least three parties. There is first the radical. Its members
sincerely desire a united Germany, and, of course, are friendly to
Prussia, hate Napoleon, have little confidence in the Hapsburgs, like
to read of uneasiness in Paris, and hail any movement that overthrows
tradition and the prescriptive right of classes. If its members are
Catholic, they are very mildly so; if they are Protestant, they are
not enough so to harm them; and, in short, if their religious
opinions are not as deep as a well, they are certainly broader than a
church door. They are the party of free inquiry, liberal thought,
and progress. Akin to them are what may be called the conservative
liberals, the majority of whom may be Catholics in profession, but
are most likely rationalists in fact; and with this party the king
naturally affiliates, taking his music devoutly every Sunday morning
in the Allerheiligenkirche, attached to the Residenz, and getting his
religion out of Wagner; for, progressive as the youthful king is, he
cannot be supposed to long for a unity which would wheel his throne
off into the limbo of phantoms. The conservative liberals,
therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms, look with
little delight on the increasing strength of Prussia, and sympathize
with the present liberal tendencies of Austria. Opposed to both
these parties is the ultramontane, the head of which is the Romish
hierarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of ignorant
peasantry, over whom the influence of the clergy seems little shaken
by any of the modern moral earthquakes. Indeed I doubt if any new
ideas will ever penetrate a class of peasants who still adhere to
styles of costume that must have been ancient when the Turks
threatened Vienna, which would be highly picturesque if they were not
painfully ugly, and arrayed in which their possessors walk about in
the broad light of these latter days, with entire unconsciousness
that they do not belong to this age, and that their appearance is as
much of an anachronism as if the figures should step out of Holbein's
pictures (which Heaven forbid), or the stone images come down from
the portals of the cathedral and walk about. The ultramontane party,
which, so far as it is an intelligent force in modern affairs, is the
Romish clergy, and nothing more, hears with aversion any hint of
German unity, listens with dread to the needle-guns at Sadowa, hates
Prussia in proportion as it fears her, and just now does not draw
either with the Austrian Government, whose liberal tendencies are
exceedingly distasteful. It relies upon that great unenlightened
mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and in Austria proper,
one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism. The practical fight
now in Bavaria is on the question of education; the priests being
resolved to keep the schools of the people in their own control, and
the liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities and admit
laymen to a share in the management of institutions of learning. Now
the school visitors must all be ecclesiastics; and although their
power is not to be dreaded in the cities, where teachers, like other
citizens, are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power in the
rural districts. The election of the Lower House of the Bavarian
parliament, whose members have a six years' tenure of office, which
takes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leading
issue will be that of education. The little local newspapers--and
every city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the
absence of news and an abundance of advertisements--have broken out
into a style of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makes
me, an American, feel quite at home. Both parties are very much in
earnest, and both speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a very
hopeful sign.
The pretensions of the ultramontane clergy are, indeed, remarkable
enough to attract the attention of others besides the liberals of
Bavaria. They assume an influence and an importance in the
ecclesiastical profession, or rather an authority, equal to that ever
asserted by the Church in its strongest days. Perhaps you will get
an idea of the height of this pretension if I translate a passage
which the liberal journal here takes from a sermon preached in the
parish church of Ebersburg, in Ober-Dorfen, by a priest, Herr
Kooperator Anton Hiring, no longer ago than August 16, 1868. It
reads: "With the power of absolution, Christ has endued the
priesthood with a might which is terrible to hell, and against which
Lucifer himself cannot stand,-a might which, indeed, reaches over
into eternity, where all other earthly powers find their limit and
end,--a might, I say, which is able to break the fetters which, for
an eternity, were forged through the commission of heavy sin. Yes,
further, this Power of the forgiveness of sins makes the priest, in a
certain measure, a second God; for God alone naturally can forgive
sins. And yet this is not the highest reach of the priestly might:
his power reaches still higher; he compels God himself to serve him.
How so? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to bring
there the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, lifts himself up
Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, upon his
throne, in order to be ready for the beck of his priests upon earth.
And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, than
there Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, come
down from heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, and
changes, upon the words of the priest, the bread and wine into his
holy flesh and blood, and permits himself then to be taken up and to
lie in the hands of the priest, even though the priest is the most
sinful and the most unworthy. Further, his power surpasses that of
the highest archangels, and of the Queen of Heaven. Right did the
holy Franciscus say, 'If I should meet a priest and an angel at the
same time, I should salute the priest first, and then the angel;
because the priest is possessed of far higher might and holiness than
the angel.'"
The radical journal calls this "ultramontane blasphemy," and, the day
after quoting it, adds a charge that must be still more annoying to
the Herr Kooperator Hiring than that of blasphemy: it accuses him of
plagiarism; and, to substantiate the charge, quotes almost the very
same language from a sermon preached in 1785--In this it is boldly
claimed that "in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, there is
nothing mightier than a priest, except God; and, to be exact, God
himself must obey the priest in the mass." And then, in words which
I do not care to translate, the priest is made greater than the
Virgin Mary, because Christ was only born of the Virgin once, while
the priest "with five words, as often and wherever he will," can
"bring forth the Saviour of the world." So to-day keeps firm hold of
the traditions of a hundred years ago, and ultramontanism wisely
defends the last citadel where the Middle Age superstition makes a
stand,--the popular veneration for the clergy.
And the clergy take good care to keep up the pomps and shows even
here in skeptical Munich. It was my inestimable privilege the other
morning--it was All-Saints' Day--to see the archbishop in the old
Frauenkirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered banners that
were captured from the Turks three centuries ago,--to see him seated
in the choir, overlooked by saints and apostles carved in wood by
some forgotten artist of the fifteenth century. I supposed he was at
least an archbishop, from the retinue of priests who attended and
served him, and also from his great size. When he sat down, it
required a dignitary of considerable rank to put on his hat; and when
he arose to speak a few precious words, the effect was visible a good
many yards from where he stood. At the close of the service he went
in great state down the center aisle, preceded by the gorgeous
beadle--a character that is always awe-inspiring to me in these
churches, being a cross between a magnificent drum-major and a verger
and two persons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidly
attired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of purple silk.
The whole cortege was resplendent in embroidery and ermine; and as
the great man swept out of my sight, and was carried on a priestly
wave into his shining carriage, and the noble footman jumped up
behind, and he rolled away to his dinner, I stood leaning against a
pillar, and reflected if it could be possible that that religion
could be anything but genuine which had so much genuine ermine. And
the organ-notes, rolling down the arches, seemed to me to have a very
ultramontane sound.
CHANGING QUARTERS
Perhaps it may not interest you to know how we moved, that is,
changed our apartments. I did not see it mentioned in the cable
dispatches, and it may not be generally known, even in Germany; but
then, the cable is so occupied with relating how his Serenity this,
and his Highness that, and her Loftiness the other one, went outdoors
and came in again, owing to a slight superfluity of the liquid
element in the atmosphere, that it has no time to notice the real
movements of the people. And yet, so dry are some of these little
German newspapers of news, that it is refreshing to read, now and
then, that the king, on Sunday, walked out with the Duke of Hesse
after dinner (one would like to know if they also had sauerkraut and
sausage), and that his prospective mother-in-law, the Empress of
Russia, who was here the other day, on her way home from Como, where
she was nearly drowned out by the inundation, sat for an hour on
Sunday night, after the opera, in the winter garden of the palace,
enjoying the most easy family intercourse.
But about moving. Let me tell you that to change quarters in the
face of a Munich winter, which arrives here the 1st of November, is
like changing front to the enemy just before a battle; and if we had
perished in the attempt, it might have been put upon our monuments,
as it is upon the out-of-cannon-cast obelisk in the Karolina Platz,
erected to the memory of the thirty thousand Bavarian soldiers who
fell in the disastrous Russian winter campaign of Napoleon, fighting
against all the interests of Germany,--"they, too, died for their
Fatherland." Bavaria happened also to fight on the wrong side at
Sadowa and I suppose that those who fell there also died for
Fatherland: it is a way the Germans have of doing, and they mean
nothing serious by it. But, as I was saying, to change quarters here
as late as November is a little difficult, for the wise ones seek to
get housed for the winter by October: they select the sunny
apartments, get on the double windows, and store up wood. The plants
are tied up in the gardens, the fountains are covered over, and the
inhabitants go about in furs and the heaviest winter clothing long
before we should think of doing so at home. And they are wise: the
snow comes early, and, besides, a cruel fog, cold as the grave and
penetrating as remorse, comes down out of the near Tyrol. One
morning early in November, I looked out of the window to find snow
falling, and the ground covered with it. There was dampness and
frost enough in the air to make it cling to all the tree-twigs, and
to take fantastic shapes on all the queer roofs and the slenderest
pinnacles and most delicate architectural ornamentations. The city
spires had a mysterious appearance in the gray haze; and above all,
the round-topped towers of the old Frauenkirche, frosted with a
little snow, loomed up more grandly than ever. When I went around to
the Hof Garden, where I late had sat in the sun, and heard the brown
horse-chestnuts drop on the leaves, the benches were now full of
snow, and the fat and friendly fruit-woman at the gate had retired
behind glass windows into a little shop, which she might well warm by
her own person, if she radiated heat as readily as she used to absorb
it on the warm autumn days, when I have marked her knitting in the
sunshine.
But we are not moving. The first step we took was to advertise our
wants in the "Neueste Nachrichten" ("Latest News ") newspaper. We
desired, if possible, admission into some respectable German family,
where we should be forced to speak German, and in which our society,
if I may so express it, would be some compensation for our bad
grammar. We wished also to live in the central part of the city,--in
short, in the immediate neighborhood of all the objects of interest
(which are here very much scattered), and to have pleasant rooms. In
Dresden, where the people are not so rich as in Munich, and where
different customs prevail, it is customary for the best people, I
mean the families of university professors, for instance, to take in
foreigners, and give them tolerable food and a liberal education.
Here it is otherwise. Nearly all families occupy one floor of a
building, renting just rooms enough for the family, so that their
apartments are not elastic enough to take in strangers, even if they
desire to do so. And generally they do not. Munich society is
perhaps chargeable with being a little stiff and exclusive. Well, we
advertised in the "Neueste Nachrichten." This is the liberal paper
of Munich. It is a poorly printed, black-looking daily sheet, folded
in octavo size, and containing anywhere from sixteen to thirty-four
pages, more or less, as it happens to have advertisements. It
sometimes will not have more than two or three pages of reading
matter. There will be a scrap or two of local news, the brief
telegrams taken from the official paper of the day before, a bit or
two of other news, and perhaps a short and slashing editorial on the
ultramontane party. The advantage of printing and folding it in such
small leaves is, that the size can be varied according to the demands
of advertisements or news (if the German papers ever find out what
that is); so that the publisher is always giving, every day, just
what it pays to give that day; and the reader has his regular
quantity of reading matter, and does not have to pay for advertising
space, which in journals of unchangeable form cannot always be used
profitably. This little journal was started something like twenty
years ago. It probably spends little for news, has only one or, at
most, two editors, is crowded with advertisements, which are inserted
cheap, and costs, delivered, a little over six francs a year. It
circulates in the city some thirty-five thousand. There is another
little paper here of the same size, but not so many leaves, called
"The Daily Advertiser," with nothing but advertisements, principally
of theaters, concerts, and the daily sights, and one page devoted to
some prodigious yarn, generally concerning America, of which country
its readers must get the most extraordinary and frightful impression.
The "Nachrichten" made the fortune of its first owner, who built
himself a fine house out of it, and retired to enjoy his wealth. It
was recently sold for one hundred thousand guldens; and I can see
that it is piling up another fortune for its present owner. The
Germans, who herein show their good sense and the high state of
civilization to which they have reached, are very free advertisers,
going to the newspapers with all their wants, and finding in them
that aid which all interests and all sorts of people, from kaiser to
kerl, are compelled, in these days, to seek in the daily journal.
Every German town of any size has three or four of these little
journals of flying leaves, which are excellent papers in every
respect, except that they look like badly printed handbills, and have
very little news and no editorials worth speaking of. An exception
to these in Bavaria is the "Allgerneine Zeitung" of Augsburg, which
is old and immensely respectable, and is perhaps, for extent of
correspondence and splendidly written editorials on a great variety
of topics, excelled by no journal in Europe except the London
"Times." It gives out two editions daily, the evening one about the
size of the New York "Nation;" and it has all the telegraphic news.
It is absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pretended
conservatism and impartiality. Yet it circulates over forty thousand
copies, and goes all over Germany.
But were we not saying something about moving? The truth is, that
the best German families did not respond to our appeal with that
alacrity which we had no right to expect, and did not exhibit that
anxiety for our society which would have been such a pleasant
evidence of their appreciation of the honor done to the royal city of
Munich by the selection of it as a residence during the most
disagreeable months of the year by the advertising undersigned. Even
the young king, whose approaching marriage to the Russian princess,
one would think, might soften his heart, did nothing to win our
regard, or to show that he appreciated our residence "near" his
court, and, so far as I know, never read with any sort of attention
our advertisement, which was composed with as much care as Goethe's
"Faust," and probably with the use of more dictionaries. And this,
when he has an extraordinary large Residenz, to say nothing about
other outlying palaces and comfortable places to live in, in which I
know there are scores of elegantly furnished apartments, which stand
idle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative
strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on
the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the
court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the
head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini,
where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it would
seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plants
rejoice in perennial summer, and blossom and bear fruit, while a
northern winter rages without. Yet the king did not see it "by those
lamps;" and I looked in vain on the gates of the Residenz for the
notice so frequently seen on other houses, of apartments to let. And
yet we had responses. The day after the announcement appeared, our
bell ran perpetually; and we had as many letters as if we had
advertised for wives innumerable. The German notes poured in upon us
in a flood; each one of them containing an offer tempting enough to
beguile an angel out of paradise, at least, according to our
translation: they proffered us chambers that were positively
overheated by the flaming sun (which, I can take my oath, only
ventures a few feet above the horizon at this season), which were
friendly in appearance, splendidly furnished and near to every
desirable thing, and in which, usually, some American family had long
resided, and experienced a content and happiness not to be felt out
of Germany.
I spent some days in calling upon the worthy frauen who made these
alluring offers. The visits were full of profit to the student of
human nature, but profitless otherwise. I was ushered into low, dark
chambers, small and dreary, looking towards the sunless north, which
I was assured were delightful and even elegant. I was taken up to
the top of tall houses, through a smell of cabbage that was
appalling, to find empty and dreary rooms, from which I fled in
fright. We were visited by so many people who had chambers to rent,
that we were impressed with the idea that all Munich was to let; and
yet, when we visited the places offered, we found they were only to
be let alone. One of the frauen who did us the honor to call, also
wrote a note, and inclosed a letter that she had just received from
an American gentleman (I make no secret of it that he came from
Hartford), in which were many kindly expressions for her welfare, and
thanks for the aid he had received in his study of German; and yet I
think her chambers are the most uninviting in the entire city. There
were people who were willing to teach us German, without rooms or
board; or to lodge us without giving us German or food; or to feed
us, and let us starve intellectually, and lodge where we could.
But all things have an end, and so did our hunt for lodgings. I
chanced one day in my walk to find, with no help from the
advertisement, very nearly what we desired,--cheerful rooms in a
pleasant neighborhood, where the sun comes when it comes out at all,
and opposite the Glass Palace, through which the sun streams in the
afternoon with a certain splendor, and almost next door to the
residence and laboratory of the famous chemist, Professor Liebig; so
that we can have our feelings analyzed whenever it is desirable.
When we had set up our household gods, and a fire was kindled in the
tall white porcelain family monument, which is called here a stove,
--and which, by the way, is much more agreeable than your hideous black
and air-scorching cast-iron stoves,--and seen that the feather-beds
under which we were expected to lie were thick enough to roast the
half of the body, and short enough to let the other half freeze, we
determined to try for a season the regular German cookery, our table
heretofore having been served with food cooked in the English style
with only a slight German flavor. A week of the experiment was quite
enough. I do not mean to say that the viands served us were not
good, only that we could not make up our minds to eat them. The
Germans eat a great deal of meat; and we were obliged to take meat
when we preferred vegetables. Now, when a deep dish is set before
you wherein are chunks of pork reposing on stewed potatoes, and
another wherein a fathomless depth of sauerkraut supports coils of
boiled sausage, which, considering that you are a mortal and
responsible being, and have a stomach, will you choose? Herein
Munich, nearly all the bread is filled with anise or caraway seed; it
is possible to get, however, the best wheat bread we have eaten in
Europe, and we usually have it; but one must maintain a constant
vigilance against the inroads of the fragrant seeds. Imagine, then,
our despair, when one day the potato, the one vegetable we had always
eaten with perfect confidence, appeared stewed with caraway seeds.
This was too much for American human nature, constituted as it is.
Yet the dish that finally sent us back to our ordinary and excellent
way of living is one for which I have no name. It may have been
compounded at different times, have been the result of many tastes or
distastes: but there was, after all, a unity in it that marked it as
the composition of one master artist; there was an unspeakable
harmony in all its flavors and apparently ununitable substances. It
looked like a terrapin soup, but it was not. Every dive of the spoon
into its dark liquid brought up a different object,--a junk of
unmistakable pork, meat of the color of roast hare, what seemed to be
the neck of a goose, something in strings that resembled the rags of
a silk dress, shreds of cabbage, and what I am quite willing to take
my oath was a bit of Astrachan fur. If Professor Liebig wishes to
add to his reputation, he could do so by analyzing this dish, and
publishing the result to the world.
And, while we are speaking of eating, it may be inferred that the
Germans are good eaters; and although they do not begin early, seldom
taking much more than a cup of coffee before noon, they make it up by
very substantial dinners and suppers. To say nothing of the
extraordinary dishes of meats which the restaurants serve at night,
the black bread and odorous cheese and beer which the men take on
board in the course of an evening would soon wear out a cast-iron
stomach in America; and yet I ought to remember the deadly pie and
the corroding whisky of my native land. The restaurant life of the
people is, of course, different from their home life, and perhaps an
evening entertainment here is no more formidable than one in America,
but it is different. Let me give you the outlines of a supper to
which we were invited the other night: it certainly cannot hurt you
to read about it. We sat down at eight. There were first courses of
three sorts of cold meat, accompanied with two sorts of salad; the
one, a composite, with a potato basis, of all imaginable things that
are eaten. Beer and bread were unlimited. There was then roast
hare, with some supporting dish, followed by jellies of various
sorts, and ornamented plates of something that seemed unable to
decide whether it would be jelly or cream; and then came assorted
cake and the white wine of the Rhine and the red of Hungary. We were
then surprised with a dish of fried eels, with a sauce. Then came
cheese; and, to crown all, enormous, triumphal-looking loaves of
cake, works of art in appearance, and delicious to the taste. We sat
at the table till twelve o'clock; but you must not imagine that
everybody sat still all the time, or that, appearances to the
contrary notwithstanding, the principal object of the entertainment
was eating. The songs that were sung in Hungarian as well as German,
the poems that were recited, the burlesques of actors and acting, the
imitations that were inimitable, the take-off of table-tipping and of
prominent musicians, the wit and constant flow of fun, as constant as
the good-humor and free hospitality, the unconstrained ease of the
whole evening, these things made the real supper which one remembers
when the grosser meal has vanished, as all substantial things do
vanish.
CHRISTMAS TIME-MUSIC
For a month Munich has been preparing for Christmas. The shop
windows have had a holiday look all December. I see one every day in
which are displayed all the varieties of fruits, vegetables, and
confectionery possible to be desired for a feast, done in wax,--a
most dismal exhibition, and calculated to make the adjoining window,
which has a little fountain and some green plants waving amidst
enormous pendent sausages and pigs' heads and various disagreeable
hashes of pressed meat, positively enticing. And yet there are some
vegetables here that I should prefer to have in wax,--for instance,
sauerkraut. The toy windows are worthy of study, and next to them
the bakers'. A favorite toy of the season is a little crib, with the
Holy Child, in sugar or wax, lying in it in the most uncomfortable
attitude. Babies here are strapped upon pillows, or between pillows,
and so tied up and wound up that they cannot move a muscle, except,
perhaps, the tongue; and so, exactly like little mummies, they are
carried about the street by the nurses,--poor little things, packed
away so, even in the heat of summer, their little faces looking out
of the down in a most pitiful fashion. The popular toy is a
representation, in sugar or wax, of this period of life. Generally
the toy represents twins, so swathed and bound; and, not
infrequently, the bold conception of the artist carries the point of
the humor so far as to introduce triplets, thus sporting with the
most dreadful possibilities of life.
The German bakers are very ingenious; and if they could be convinced
of this great error, that because things are good separately, they
must be good in combination, the produce of their ovens would be much
more eatable. As it is, they make delicious cake, and of endless
variety; but they also offer us conglomerate formations that may have
a scientific value, but are utterly useless to a stomach not trained
in Germany. Of this sort, for the most part, is the famous
Lebkuchen, a sort of gingerbread manufactured in Nurnberg, and sent
all over Germany: "age does not [seem to] impair, nor custom stale
its infinite variety." It is very different from our simple cake of
that name, although it is usually baked in flat cards. It may
contain nuts or fruit, and is spoiled by a flavor of conflicting
spices. I should think it might be sold by the cord, it is piled up
in such quantities; and as it grows old and is much handled, it
acquires that brown, not to say dirty, familiar look, which may, for
aught I know, be one of its chief recommendations. The cake,
however, which prevails at this season of the year comes from the
Tyrol; and as the holidays approach, it is literally piled up on the
fruit-stands. It is called Klatzenbrod, and is not a bread at all,
but and amalgamation of fruits and spices. It is made up into small
round or oblong forms; and the top is ornamented in various patterns,
with split almond meats. The color is a faded black, as if it had
been left for some time in a country store; and the weight is just
about that of pig-iron. I had formed a strong desire, mingled with
dread, to taste it, which I was not likely to gratify,--one gets so
tired of such experiments after a time--when a friend sent us a ball
of it. There was no occasion to call in Professor Liebig to analyze
the substance: it is a plain case. The black mass contains, cut up
and pressed together, figs, citron, oranges, raisins, dates, various
kinds of nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and I know not what other
spices, together with the inevitable anise and caraway seeds. It
would make an excellent cannon-ball, and would be specially fatal if
it hit an enemy in the stomach. These seeds invade all dishes. The
cooks seem possessed of one of the rules of whist,--in case of doubt,
play a trump: in case of doubt, they always put in anise seed. It is
sprinkled profusely in the blackest rye bread, it gets into all the
vegetables, and even into the holiday cakes.
The extensive Maximilian Platz has suddenly grown up into booths and
shanties, and looks very much like a temporary Western village.
There are shops for the sale of Christmas articles, toys, cakes, and
gimcracks; and there are, besides, places of amusement, if one of the
sorry menageries of sick beasts with their hair half worn off can be
so classed. One portion of the platz is now a lively and picturesque
forest of evergreens, an extensive thicket of large and small trees,
many of them trimmed with colored and gilt strips of paper. I meet
in every street persons lugging home their little trees; for it must
be a very poor household that cannot have its Christmas tree, on
which are hung the scanty store of candy, nuts, and fruit, and the
simple toys that the needy people will pinch themselves otherwise to
obtain.
At this season, usually, the churches get up some representations for
the children, the stable at Bethlehem, with the figures of the Virgin
and Child, the wise men, and the oxen standing by. At least, the
churches must be put in spick-and-span order. I confess that I like
to stray into these edifices, some of them gaudy enough when they
are, so to speak, off duty, when the choir is deserted, and there is
only here and there a solitary worshiper at his prayers; unless,
indeed, as it sometimes happens, when I fancy myself quite alone, I
come by chance upon a hundred people, in some remote corner before a
side chapel, where mass is going on, but so quietly that the sense of
solitude in the church is not disturbed. Sometimes, when the place
is left entirely to myself, and the servants who are putting it to
rights and, as it were, shifting the scenes, I get a glimpse of the
reality of all the pomp and parade of the services. At first I may
be a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images and
statues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different from
the stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the
altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave and
aisles. Then everything is sanctified and inviolate. Now, as I
loiter here, the old woman sweeps and dusts about as if she were in
an ordinary crockery store: the sacred things are handled without
gloves. And, lo! an unclerical servant, in his shirt-sleeves,
climbs up to the altar, and, taking down the silver-gilded cherubs,
holds them, head down, by one fat foot, while he wipes them off with
a damp cloth. To think of submitting a holy cherub to the indignity
of a damp cloth!
One could never say too much about the music here. I do not mean
that of the regimental bands, or the orchestras in every hall and
beer-garden, or that in the churches on Sundays, both orchestral and
vocal. Nearly every day, at half-past eleven, there is a parade by
the Residenz, and another on the Marian Platz; and at each the bands
play for half an hour. In the Loggie by the palace the music-stands
can always be set out, and they are used in the platz when it does
not storm; and the bands play choice overtures and selections from
the operas in fine style. The bands are always preceded and followed
by a great crowd as they march through the streets, people who seem
to live only for this half hour in the day, and whom no mud or snow
can deter from keeping up with the music. It is a little gleam of
comfort in the day for the most wearied portion of the community: I
mean those who have nothing to do.
But the music of which I speak is that of the conservatoire and
opera. The Hof Theater, opera, and conservatoire are all under one
royal direction. The latter has been recently reorganized with a new
director, in accordance with the Wagner notions somewhat. The young
king is cracked about Wagner, and appears to care little for other
music: he brings out his operas at great expense, and it is the
fashion here to like Wagner whether he is understood or not. The
opera of the "Meister-Singer von Nurnberg," which was brought out
last summer, occupied over five hours in the representation, which is
unbearable to the Germans, who go to the opera at six o'clock or
half-past, and expect to be at home before ten. His latest opera,
which has not yet been produced, is founded on the Niebelungen Lied,
and will take three evenings in the representation, which is almost
as bad as a Chinese play. The present director of the conservatoire
and opera, a Prussian, Herr von Bulow, is a friend of Wagner. There
are formed here in town two parties: the Wagner and the conservative,
the new and the old, the modern and classical; only the Wagnerites do
not admit that their admiration of Beethoven and the older composers
is less than that of the others, and so for this reason Bulow has
given us more music of Beethoven than of any other composer. One
thing is certain, that the royal orchestra is trained to a high state
of perfection: its rendition of the grand operas and its weekly
concerts in the Odeon cannot easily be surpassed. The singers are
not equal to the orchestra, for Berlin and Vienna offer greater
inducements; but there are people here who regard this orchestra as
superlative. They say that the best orchestras in the world are in
Germany; that the best in Germany is in Munich; and, therefore, you
can see the inevitable deduction. We have another parallel
syllogism. The greatest pianist in the world is Liszt; but then Herr
Bulow is actually a better performer than Liszt; therefore you see
again to what you must come. At any rate, we are quite satisfied in
this provincial capital; and, if there is anywhere better music, we
don't know it. Bulow's orchestra is not very large,--there are less
than eighty pieces, but it is so handled and drilled, that when we
hear it give one of the symphonies of Beethoven or Mendelssohn, there
is little left to be desired. Bulow is a wonderful conductor, a
little man, all nerve and fire, and he seems to inspire every
instrument. It is worth something to see him lead an orchestra: his
baton is magical; head, arms, and the whole body are in motion; he
knows every note of the compositions; and the precision with which he
evokes a solitary note out of a distant instrument with a jerk of his
rod, or brings a wail from the concurring violins, like the moaning
of a pine forest in winter, with a sweep of his arm, is most
masterly. About the platform of the Odeon are the marble busts of
the great composers; and while the orchestra is giving some of
Beethoven's masterpieces, I like to fix my eyes on his serious and
genius-full face, which seems cognizant of all that is passing, and
believe that he has a posthumous satisfaction in the interpretation
of his great thoughts.
The managers of the conservatoire also give vocal concerts, and there
are, besides, quartette soiries; so that there are few evenings
without some attraction. The opera alternates with the theater two
or three times a week. The singers are, perhaps, not known in Paris
and London, but some of them are not unworthy to be. There is the
baritone, Herr Kindermann, who now, at the age of sixty-five, has a
superb voice and manner, and has had few superiors in his time on the
German stage. There is Frau Dietz, at forty-five, the best of
actresses, and with a still fresh and lovely voice. There is Herr
Nachbar, a tenor, who has a future; Fraulein Stehle, a soprano, young
and with an uncommon voice, who enjoys a large salary, and was the
favorite until another soprano, the Malinger, came and turned the
heads of king and opera habitues. The resources of the Academy are,
however, tolerably large; and the practice of pensioning for life the
singers enables them to keep always a tolerable company. This habit
of pensioning officials, as well as musicians and poets, is very
agreeable to the Germans. A gentleman the other day, who expressed
great surprise at the smallness of the salary of our President, said,
that, of course, Andrew Johnson would receive a pension when he
retired from office. I could not explain to him how comical the idea
was to me; but when I think of the American people pensioning Andrew
Johnson,--well, like the fictitious Yankee in "Mugby Junction,"
"I laff, I du."
There is some fashion, in a fudgy, quaint way, here in Munich; but it
is not exhibited in dress for the opera. People go--and it is
presumed the music is the attraction in ordinary apparel. They save
all their dress parade for the concerts; and the hall of the Odeon is
as brilliant as provincial taste can make it in toilet. The ladies
also go to operas and concerts unattended by gentlemen, and are
brought, and fetched away, by their servants. There is a freedom and
simplicity about this which I quite like; and, besides, it leaves
their husbands and brothers at liberty to spend a congenial evening
in the cafes, beer-gardens, and clubs. But there is always a heavy
fringe of young officers and gallants both at opera and concert,
standing in the outside passages. It is cheaper to stand, and one
can hear quite as well, and see more.
LOOKING FOR WARM WEATHER
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES
At all events, saith the best authority, "pray that your flight be
not in winter;" and it might have added, don't go south if you desire
warm weather. In January, 1869, I had a little experience of hunting
after genial skies; and I will give you the benefit of it in some
free running notes on my journey from Munich to Naples.
It was the middle of January, at eleven o'clock at night, that we
left Munich, on a mixed railway train, choosing that time, and the
slowest of slow trains, that we might make the famous Brenner Pass by
daylight. It was no easy matter, at last, to pull up from the dear
old city in which we had become so firmly planted, and to leave the
German friends who made the place like home to us. One gets to love
Germany and the Germans as he does no other country and people in
Europe. There has been something so simple, honest, genuine, in our
Munich life, that we look back to it with longing eyes from this land
of fancy, of hand-organ music, and squalid splendor. I presume the
streets are yet half the day hid in a mountain fog; but I know the
superb military bands are still playing at noon in the old Marian
Platz and in the Loggie by the Residenz; that at half-past six in the
evening our friends are quietly stepping in to hear the opera at the
Hof Theater, where everybody goes to hear the music, and nobody for
display, and that they will be at home before half-past nine, and
have dispatched the servant for the mugs of foaming beer; I know that
they still hear every week the choice conservatoire orchestral
concerts in the Odeon; and, alas that experience should force me to
think of it! I have no doubt that they sip, every morning, coffee
which is as much superior to that of Paris as that of Paris is to
that of London; and that they eat the delicious rolls, in comparison
with which those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder, in this land of
wine,--and yet it must be so,--if the beer-gardens are still filled
nightly; and if it could be that I should sit at a little table
there, a comely lass would, before I could ask for what everybody is
presumed to want, place before me a tall glass full of amber liquid,
crowned with creamy foam. Are the handsome officers still sipping
their coffee in the Cafe Maximilian; and, on sunny days, is the crowd
of fashion still streaming down to the Isar, and the high, sightly
walks and gardens beyond?
As I said, it was eleven o'clock of a clear and not very severe
night; for Munich had had no snow on the ground since November. A
deputation of our friends were at the station to see us off, and the
farewells between the gentlemen were in the hearty fashion of the
country. I know there is a prejudice with us against kissing between
men; but it is only a question of taste: and the experience of
anybody will tell him that the theory that this sort of salutation
must necessarily be desirable between opposite sexes is a delusion.
But I suppose it cannot be denied that kissing between men was
invented in Germany before they wore full beards. Well, our goodbyes
said, we climbed into our bare cars. There is no way of heating the
German cars, except by tubes filled with hot water, which are placed
under the feet, and are called foot-warmers. As we slowly moved out
over the plain, we found it was cold; in an hour the foot-warmers,
not hot to start with, were stone cold. You are going to sunny
Italy, our friends had said: as soon as you pass the Brenner you will
have sunshine and delightful weather. This thought consoled us, but
did not warm our feet. The Germans, when they travel by rail, wrap
themselves in furs and carry foot-sacks.
We creaked along, with many stoppings. At two o'clock we were at
Rosenheim. Rosenheim is a windy place, with clear starlight, with a
multitude of cars on a multiplicity of tracks, and a large, lighted
refreshment-room, which has a glowing, jolly stove. We stay there an
hour, toasting by the fire and drinking excellent coffee. Groups of
Germans are seated at tables playing cards, smoking, and taking
coffee. Other trains arrive; and huge men stalk in, from Vienna or
Russia, you would say, enveloped in enormous fur overcoats, reaching
to the heels, and with big fur boots coming above the knees, in which
they move like elephants. Another start, and a cold ride with
cooling foot-warmers, droning on to Kurfstein. It is five o'clock
when we reach Kurfstein, which is also a restaurant, with a hot
stove, and more Germans going on as if it were daytime; but by this
time in the morning the coffee had got to be wretched.
After an hour's waiting, we dream on again, and, before we know it,
come out of our cold doze into the cold dawn. Through the thick
frost on the windows we see the faint outlines of mountains.
Scraping away the incrustation, we find that we are in the Tyrol,
high hills on all sides, no snow in the valley, a bright morning, and
the snow-peaks are soon rosy in the sunrise. It is just as we
expected,--little villages under the hills, and slender church spires
with brick-red tops. At nine o'clock we are in Innsbruck, at the
foot of the Brenner. No snow yet. It must be charming here in the
summer.
During the night we have got out of Bavaria. The waiter at the
restaurant wants us to pay him ninety kreuzers for our coffee, which
is only six kreuzers a cup in Munich. Remembering that it takes one
hundred kreuzers to make a gulden in Austria, I launch out a Bavarian
gulden, and expect ten kreuzers in change. I have heard that sixty
Bavarian kreuzers are equal to one hundred Austrian; but this waiter
explains to me that my gulden is only good for ninety kreuzers. I,
in my turn, explain to the waiter that it is better than the coffee;
but we come to no understanding, and I give up, before I begin,
trying to understand the Austrian currency. During the day I get my
pockets full of coppers, which are very convenient to take in change,
but appear to have a very slight purchasing, power in Austria even,
and none at all elsewhere, and the only use for which I have found is
to give to Italian beggars. One of these pieces satisfies a beggar
when it drops into his hat; and then it detains him long enough in
the examination of it, so that your carriage has time to get so far
away that his renewed pursuit is usually unavailing.
The Brenner Pass repaid us for the pains we had taken to see it,
especially as the sun shone and took the frost from our windows, and
we encountered no snow on the track; and, indeed, the fall was not
deep, except on the high peaks about us. Even if the engineering of
the road were not so interesting, it was something to be again amidst
mountains that can boast a height of ten thousand feet. After we
passed the summit, and began the zigzag descent, we were on a sharp
lookout for sunny Italy. I expected to lay aside my heavy overcoat,
and sun myself at the first station among the vineyards. Instead of
that, we bade good-by to bright sky, and plunged into a snowstorm,
and, so greeted, drove down into the narrow gorges, whose steep
slopes we could see were terraced to the top, and planted with vines.
We could distinguish enough to know that, with the old Roman ruins,
the churches and convent towers perched on the crags, and all, the
scenery in summer must be finer than that of the Rhine, especially as
the vineyards here are picturesque,--the vines being trained so as to
hide and clothe the ground with verdure.
It was four o'clock when we reached Trent, and colder than on top of
the Brenner. As the Council, owing to the dead state of its members
for now three centuries, was not in session, we made no long tarry.
We went into the magnificent large refreshment-room to get warm; but
it was as cold as a New England barn. I asked the proprietor if we
could not get at a fire; but he insisted that the room was warm, that
it was heated with a furnace, and that he burned good stove-coal, and
pointed to a register high up in the wall. Seeing that I looked
incredulous, he insisted that I should test it. Accordingly, I
climbed upon a table, and reached up my hand. A faint warmth came
out; and I gave it up, and congratulated the landlord on his furnace.
But the register had no effect on the great hall. You might as well
try to heat the dome of St. Peter's with a lucifer-match. At dark,
Allah be praised! we reached Ala, where we went through the humbug
of an Italian custom-house, and had our first glimpse of Italy in the
picturesque-looking idlers in red-tasseled caps, and the jabber of a
strange tongue. The snow turned into a cold rain: the foot-warmers,
we having reached the sunny lands, could no longer be afforded; and
we shivered along till nine o'clock, dark and rainy, brought us to
Verona. We emerged from the station to find a crowd of omnibuses,
carriages, drivers, runners, and people anxious to help us, all
vociferating in the highest key. Amidst the usual Italian clamor
about nothing, we gained our hotel omnibus, and sat there for ten
minutes watching the dispute over our luggage, and serenely listening
to the angry vituperations of policemen and drivers. It sounded like
a revolution, but it was only the ordinary Italian way of doing
things; and we were at last rattling away over the broad pavements.
Of course, we stopped at a palace turned hotel, drove into a court
with double flights of high stone and marble stairways, and were
hurried up to the marble-mosaic landing by an active boy, and, almost
before we could ask for rooms, were shown into a suite of magnificent
apartments. I had a glimpse of a garden in the rear,--flowers and
plants, and a balcony up which I suppose Romeo climbed to hold that
immortal love-prattle with the lovesick Juliet. Boy began to light
the candles. Asked in English the price of such fine rooms. Reply
in Italian. Asked in German. Reply in Italian. Asked in French,
with the same result. Other servants appeared, each with a piece of
baggage. Other candles were lighted. Everybody talked in chorus.
The landlady--a woman of elegant manners and great command of her
native tongue--appeared with a candle, and joined in the melodious
confusion. What is the price of these rooms? More jabber, more
servants bearing lights. We seemed suddenly to have come into an
illumination and a private lunatic asylum. The landlady and her
troop grew more and more voluble and excited. Ah, then, if these
rooms do not suit the signor and signoras, there are others; and we
were whisked off to apartments yet grander, great suites with high,
canopied beds, mirrors, and furniture that was luxurious a hundred
years ago. The price? Again a torrent of Italian; servants pouring
in, lights flashing, our baggage arriving, until, in the tumult,
hopeless of any response to our inquiry for a servant who could speak
anything but Italian, and when we had decided, in despair, to hire
the entire establishment, a waiter appeared who was accomplished in
all languages, the row subsided, and we were left alone in our glory,
and soon in welcome sleep forgot our desperate search for a warm
climate.
The next day it was rainy and not warm; but the sun came out
occasionally, and we drove about to see some of the sights. The
first Italian town which the stranger sees he is sure to remember,
the outdoor life of the people is so different from that at the
North. It is the fiction in Italy that it is always summer; and the
people sit in the open market-place, shiver in the open doorways,
crowd into corners where the sun comes, and try to keep up the
beautiful pretense. The picturesque groups of idlers and traffickers
were more interesting to us than the palaces with sculptured fronts
and old Roman busts, or tombs of the Scaligers, and old gates.
Perhaps I ought to except the wonderful and perfect Roman
amphitheater, over every foot of which a handsome boy in rags
followed us, looking over every wall that we looked over, peering
into every hole that we peered into, thus showing his fellowship with
us, and at every pause planting himself before us, and throwing a
somerset, and then extending his greasy cap for coppers, as if he
knew that the modern mind ought not to dwell too exclusively on hoary
antiquity without some relief.
Anxious, as I have said, to find the sunny South, we left Verona that
afternoon for Florence, by way of Padua and Bologna. The ride to
Padua was through a plain, at this season dreary enough, were it not,
here and there, for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, which
were always in sight, and towards sundown and between showers
transcendently lovely in a purple and rosy light. But nothing now
could be more desolate than the rows of unending mulberry-trees,
pruned down to the stumps, through which we rode all the afternoon.
I suppose they look better when the branches grow out with the tender
leaves for the silk-worms, and when they are clothed with grapevines.
Padua was only to us a name. There we turned south, lost mountains
and the near hills, and had nothing but the mulberry flats and
ditches of water, and chilly rain and mist. It grew unpleasant as we
went south. At dark we were riding slowly, very slowly, for miles
through a country overflowed with water, out of which trees and
houses loomed up in a ghastly show. At all the stations soldiers
were getting on board, shouting and singing discordantly choruses
from the operas; for there was a rising at Padua, and one feared at
Bologna the populace getting up insurrections against the enforcement
of the grist-tax,--a tax which has made the government very
unpopular, as it falls principally upon the poor.
Creeping along at such a slow rate, we reached Bologna too late for
the Florence train, It was eight o'clock, and still raining. The
next train went at two o'clock in the morning, and was the best one
for us to take. We had supper in an inn near by, and a fair attempt
at a fire in our parlor. I sat before it, and kept it as lively as
possible, as the hours wore away, and tried to make believe that I
was ruminating on the ancient greatness of Bologna and its famous
university, some of whose chairs had been occupied by women, and upon
the fact that it was on a little island in the Reno, just below here,
that Octavius and Lepidus and Mark Antony formed the second
Triumvirate, which put an end to what little liberty Rome had left;
but in reality I was thinking of the draught on my back, and the
comforts of a sunny clime. But the time came at length for starting;
and in luxurious cars we finished the night very comfortably, and
rode into Florence at eight in the morning to find, as we had hoped,
on the other side of the Apennines, a sunny sky and balmy air.
As this is strictly a chapter of travel and weather, I may not stop
to say how impressive and beautiful Florence seemed to us; how
bewildering in art treasures, which one sees at a glance in the
streets; or scarcely to hint how lovely were the Boboli Gardens
behind the Pitti Palace, the roses, geraniums etc, in bloom, the
birds singing, and all in a soft, dreamy air. The next day was not
so genial; and we sped on, following our original intention of
seeking the summer in winter. In order to avoid trouble with baggage
and passports in Rome, we determined to book through for Naples,
making the trip in about twenty hours. We started at nine o'clock in
the evening, and I do not recall a more thoroughly uncomfortable
journey. It grew colder as the night wore on, and we went farther
south. Late in the morning we were landed at the station outside of
Rome. There was a general appearance of ruin and desolation. The
wind blew fiercely from the hills, and the snowflakes from the flying
clouds added to the general chilliness. There was no chance to get
even a cup of coffee, and we waited an hour in the cold car. If I
had not been so half frozen, the consciousness that I was actually on
the outskirts of the Eternal City, that I saw the Campagna and the
aqueducts, that yonder were the Alban Hills, and that every foot of
soil on which I looked was saturated with history, would have excited
me. The sun came out here and there as we went south, and we caught
some exquisite lights on the near and snowy hills; and there was
something almost homelike in the miles and miles of olive orchards,
that recalled the apple-trees, but for their shining silvered leaves.
And yet nothing could be more desolate than the brown marshy ground,
the brown hillocks, with now and then a shabby stone hut or a bit of
ruin, and the flocks of sheep shivering near their corrals, and their
shepherd, clad in sheepskin, as his ancestor was in the time of
Romulus, leaning on his staff, with his back to the wind. Now and
then a white town perched on a hillside, its houses piled above each
other, relieved the eye; and I could imagine that it might be all the
poets have sung of it, in the spring, though the Latin poets, I am
convinced, have wonderfully imposed upon us.
To make my long story short, it happened to be colder next morning at
Naples than it was in Germany. The sun shone; but the northeast
wind, which the natives poetically call the Tramontane, was blowing,
and the white smoke of Vesuvius rolled towards the sea. It would
only last three days, it was very unusual, and all that. The next
day it was colder, and the next colder yet. Snow fell, and blew
about unmelted: I saw it in the streets of Pompeii.
The fountains were frozen, icicles hung from the locks of the marble
statues in the Chiaia. And yet the oranges glowed like gold among
their green leaves; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums, bloomed
in all the gardens. It is the most contradictory climate. We
lunched one day, sitting in our open carriage in a lemon grove, and
near at hand the Lucrine Lake was half frozen over. We feasted our
eyes on the brilliant light and color on the sea, and the lovely
outlined mountains round the shore, and waited for a change of wind.
The Neapolitans declare that they have not had such weather in twenty
years. It is scarcely one's ideal of balmy Italy.
Before the weather changed, I began to feel in this great Naples,
with its roaring population of over half a million, very much like
the sailor I saw at the American consul's, who applied for help to be
sent home, claiming to be an American. He was an oratorical bummer,
and told his story with all the dignity and elevated language of an
old Roman. He had been cast away in London. How cast away? Oh! it
was all along of a boarding-house. And then he found himself shipped
on an English vessel, and he had lost his discharge-papers; and
"Listen, your honor," said he, calmly extending his right hand, "here
I am cast away on this desolate island with nothing before me but
wind and weather."
RAVENNA
A DEAD CITY
Ravenna is so remote from the route of general travel in Italy, that
I am certain you can have no late news from there, nor can I bring
you anything much later than the sixth century. Yet, if you were to
see Ravenna, you would say that that is late enough. I am surprised
that a city which contains the most interesting early Christian
churches and mosaics, is the richest in undisturbed specimens of
early Christian art, and contains the only monuments of Roman
emperors still in their original positions, should be so seldom
visited. Ravenna has been dead for some centuries; and because
nobody has cared to bury it, its ancient monuments are yet above
ground. Grass grows in its wide streets, and its houses stand in a
sleepy, vacant contemplation of each other: the wind must like to
mourn about its silent squares. The waves of the Adriatic once
brought the commerce of the East to its wharves; but the deposits of
the Po and the tides have, in process of time, made it an inland
town, and the sea is four miles away.
In the time of Augustus, Ravenna was a favorite Roman port and harbor
for fleets of war and merchandise. There Theodoric, the great king
of the Goths, set up his palace, and there is his enormous mausoleum.
As early as A. D. 44 it became an episcopal see, with St.
Apollinaris, a disciple of St. Peter, for its bishop. There some of
the later Roman emperors fixed their residences, and there they
repose. In and about it revolved the adventurous life of Galla
Placidia, a woman of considerable talent and no principle, the
daughter of Theodosius (the great Theodosius, who subdued the Arian
heresy, the first emperor baptized in the true faith of the Trinity,
the last who had a spark of genius), the sister of one emperor, and
the mother of another,--twice a slave, once a queen, and once an
empress; and she, too, rests there in the great mausoleum builded for
her. There, also, lies Dante, in his tomb "by the upbraiding shore;"
rejected once of ungrateful Florence, and forever after passionately
longed for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches in
existence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and
Theodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised to the dignity and
luxury of an empress on his throne in Constantinople. There is the
famous forest of pines, stretching--unbroken twenty miles down the
coast to Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades Dante and Boccaccio
walked and meditated, which Dryden has commemorated, and Byron has
invested with the fascination of his genius; and under the whispering
boughs of which moved the glittering cavalcade which fetched the
bride to Rimini,--the fair Francesca, whose sinful confession Dante
heard in hell.
We went down to Ravenna from Bologna one afternoon, through a country
level and rich, riding along toward hazy evening, the land getting
flatter as we proceeded (you know, there is a difference between
level and flat), through interminable mulberry-trees and vines, and
fields with the tender green of spring, with church spires in the
rosy horizon; on till the meadows became marshes, in which millions
of frogs sang the overture of the opening year. Our arrival, I have
reason to believe, was an event in the old town. We had a crowd of
moldy loafers to witness it at the station, not one of whom had
ambition enough to work to earn a sou by lifting our traveling-bags.
We had our hotel to ourselves, and wished that anybody else had it.
The rival house was quite aware of our advent, and watched us with
jealous eyes; and we, in turn, looked wistfully at it, for our own
food was so scarce that, as an old traveler says, we feared that we
shouldn't have enough, until we saw it on the table, when its quality
made it appear too much. The next morning, when I sallied out to hire
a conveyance, I was an object of interest to the entire population,
who seemed to think it very odd that any one should walk about and
explore the quiet streets. If I were to describe Ravenna, I should
say that it is as flat as Holland and as lively as New London. There
are broad streets, with high houses, that once were handsome, palaces
that were once the abode of luxury, gardens that still bloom, and
churches by the score. It is an open gate through which one walks
unchallenged into the past, with little to break the association with
the early Christian ages, their monuments undimmed by time, untouched
by restoration and innovation, the whole struck with ecclesiastical
death. With all that we saw that day,--churches, basilicas, mosaics,
statues, mausoleums,--I will not burden these pages; but I will set
down is enough to give you the local color, and to recall some
of the most interesting passages in Christian history in this
out-of-the-way city on the Adriatic.
Our first pilgrimage was to the Church of St. Apollinare Nuova; but
why it is called new I do not know, as Theodoric built it for an
Arian cathedral in about the year 500. It is a noble interior,
having twenty-four marble columns of gray Cippolino, brought from
Constantinople, with composite capitals, on each of which is an
impost with Latin crosses sculptured on it. These columns support
round arches, which divide the nave from the aisles, and on the whole
length of the wall of the nave so supported are superb mosaics,
full-length figures, in colors as fresh as if done yesterday, though
they were executed thirteen hundred years ago. The mosaic on the
left side--which is, perhaps, the finest one of the period in
existence--is interesting on another account. It represents the city
of Classis, with sea and ships, and a long procession of twenty-two
virgins presenting offerings to the Virgin and Child, seated on a
throne. The Virgin is surrounded by angels, and has a glory round
her head, which shows that homage is being paid to her. It has been
supposed, from the early monuments of Christian art, that the worship
of the Virgin is of comparatively recent origin; but this mosaic
would go to show that Mariolatry was established before the end of
the sixth century. Near this church is part of the front of the
palace of Theodoric, in which the Exarchs and Lombard kings
subsequently resided. Its treasures and marbles Charlemagne carried
off to Germany.
DOWN TO THE PINETA
We drove three miles beyond the city, to the Church of St. Apollinare
in Classe, a lonely edifice in a waste of marsh, a grand old
basilica, a purer specimen of Christian art than Rome or any other
Italian town can boast. Just outside the city gate stands a Greek
cross on a small fluted column, which marks the site of the once
magnificent Basilica of St. Laurentius, which was demolished in the
sixteenth century, its stone built into a new church in town, and its
rich marbles carried to all-absorbing Rome. It was the last relic of
the old port of Caesarea, famous since the time of Augustus. A
marble column on a green meadow is all that remains of a once
prosperous city. Our road lay through the marshy plain, across an
elevated bridge over the sluggish united stream of the Ronco and
Montone, from which there is a wide view, including the Pineta (or
Pine Forest), the Church of St. Apollinare in the midst of
rice-fields and marshes, and on a clear day the Alps and Apennines.
I can imagine nothing more desolate than this solitary church, or the
approach to it. Laborers were busy spading up the heavy, wet ground,
or digging trenches, which instantly filled with water, for the whole
country was afloat. The frogs greeted us with clamorous chorus out
of their slimy pools, and the mosquitoes attacked us as we rode
along. I noticed about on the bogs, wherever they could find
standing-room, half-naked wretches, with long spears, having several
prongs like tridents, which they thrust into the grass and shallow
water. Calling one of them to us, we found that his business was
fishing, and that he forked out very fat and edible-looking fish with
his trident. Shaggy, undersized horses were wading in the water,
nipping off the thin spears of grass. Close to the church is a
rickety farmhouse. If I lived there, I would as lief be a fish as a
horse.
The interior of this primitive old basilica is lofty and imposing,
with twenty-four handsome columns of the gray Cippolino marble, and
an elevated high altar and tribune, decorated with splendid mosaics
of the sixth century,--biblical subjects, in all the stiff
faithfulness of the holy old times. The marble floor is green and
damp and slippery. Under the tribune is the crypt, where the body of
St. Apollinaris used to lie (it is now under the high altar above);
and as I desired to see where he used to rest, I walked in. I also
walked into about six inches of water, in the dim, irreligious light;
and so made a cold-water Baptist devotee of myself. In the side
aisles are wonderful old sarcophagi, containing the ashes of
archbishops of Ravenna, so old that the owners' names are forgotten
of two of them, which shows that a man may build a tomb more enduring
than his memory. The sculptured bas-reliefs are very interesting,
being early Christian emblems and curious devices,--symbols of sheep,
palms, peacocks, crosses, and the four rivers of Paradise flowing
down in stony streams from stony sources, and monograms, and pious
rebuses. At the entrance of the crypt is an open stone book, called
the Breviary of Gregory the Great. Detached from the church is the
Bell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort peculiar to Ravenna, which
adds to the picturesqueness of the pile, and suggests the notion that
it is a mast unshipped from its vessel, the church, which
consequently stands there water-logged, with no power to catch any
wind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say that the
basilica was launched in the year 534.
A little weary with the good but damp old Christians, we ordered our
driver to continue across the marsh to the Pineta, whose dark fringe
bounded all our horizon toward the Adriatic. It is the largest
unbroken forest in Italy, and by all odds the most poetic in itself
and its associations. It is twenty-five miles long, and from one to
three in breadth, a free growth of stately pines, whose boughs are
full of music and sweet odors,--a succession of lovely glades and
avenues, with miles and miles of drives over the springy turf. At
the point where we entered is a farmhouse. Laborers had been
gathering the cones, which were heaped up in immense windrows,
hundreds of feet in length. Boys and men were busy pounding out the
seeds from the cones. The latter are used for fuel, and the former
are pressed for their oil. They are also eaten: we have often had
them served at hotel tables, and found them rather tasteless, but not
unpleasant. The turf, as we drove into the recesses of the forest,
was thickly covered with wild flowers, of many colors and delicate
forms; but we liked best the violets, for they reminded us of home,
though the driver seemed to think them less valuable than the seeds
of the pine-cones. A lovely day and history and romance united to
fascinate us with the place. We were driving over the spot where,
eighteen centuries ago, the Roman fleet used to ride at anchor.
Here, it is certain, the gloomy spirit of Dante found congenial place
for meditation, and the gay Boccaccio material for fiction. Here for
hours, day after day, Byron used to gallop his horse, giving vent to
that restless impatience which could not all escape from his fiery
pen, hearing those voices of a past and dead Italy which he, more
truthfully and pathetically than any other poet, has put into living
verse. The driver pointed out what is called Byron's Path, where he
was wont to ride. Everybody here, indeed, knows of Byron; and I
think his memory is more secure than any saint of them all in their
stone boxes, partly because his poetry has celebrated the region,
perhaps rather from the perpetuated tradition of his generosity. No
foreigner was ever so popular as he while he lived at Ravenna. At
least, the people say so now, since they find it so profitable to
keep his memory alive and to point out his haunts. The Italians, to
be sure, know how to make capital out of poets and heroes, and are
quick to learn the curiosity of foreigners, and to gratify it for a
compensation. But the evident esteem in which Byron's memory is held
in the Armenian monastery of St. Lazzaro, at Venice, must be
otherwise accounted for. The monks keep his library-room and table
as they were when he wrote there, and like to show his portrait, and
tell of his quick mastery of the difficult Armenian tongue. We have
a notable example of a Person who became a monk when he was sick; but
Byron accomplished too much work during the few months he was on the
Island of St. Lazzaro, both in original composition and in
translating English into Armenian, for one physically ruined and
broken.
DANTE AND BYRON
The pilgrim to Ravenna, who has any idea of what is due to the genius
of Dante, will be disappointed when he approaches his tomb. Its
situation is in a not very conspicuous corner, at the foot of a
narrow street, bearing the poet's name, and beside the Church of San
Francisco, which is interesting as containing the tombs of the
Polenta family, whose hospitality to the wandering exile has rescued
their names from oblivion. Opposite the tomb is the shabby old brick
house of the Polentas, where Dante passed many years of his life. It
is tenanted now by all sorts of people, and a dirty carriage-shop in
the courtyard kills the poetry of it. Dante died in 1321, and was at
first buried in the neighboring church; but this tomb, since twice
renewed, was erected, and his body removed here, in 1482. It is a
square stuccoed structure, stained light green, and covered by a
dome,--a tasteless monument, embellished with stucco medallions,
inside, of the poet, of Virgil, of Brunetto Latini, the poet's
master, and of his patron, Guido da Polenta. On the sarcophagus is
the epitaph, composed in Latin by Dante himself, who seems to have
thought, with Shakespeare, that for a poet to make his own epitaph
was the safest thing to do. Notwithstanding the mean appearance of
this sepulcher, there is none in all the soil of Italy that the
traveler from America will visit with deeper interest. Near by is
the house where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records.
The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron; and, I should
judge, hold his memory in something like affection. The Palace
Guiccioli, in which he subsequently resided, is in another part of
the town. He spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferred
it to any place in Italy. Why I cannot see, unless it was remote
from the route of travel, and the desolation of it was congenial to
him. Doubtless he loved these wide, marshy expanses on the Adriatic,
and especially the great forest of pines on its shore; but Byron was
apt to be governed in his choice of a residence by the woman with
whom he was intimate. The palace was certainly pleasanter than his
gloomy house in the Strada di Porta Sisi, and the society of the
Countess Guiccioli was rather a stimulus than otherwise to his
literary activity. At her suggestion he wrote the "Prophecy of
Dante;" and the translation of "Francesca da Rimini" was "executed at
Ravenna, where, five centuries before, and in the very house in which
the unfortunate lady was born, Dante's poem had been composed." Some
of his finest poems were also produced here, poems for which Venice
is as grateful as Ravenna. Here he wrote "Marino Faliero," "The Two
Foscari," "Morganti Maggiore," "Sardanapalus," "The Blues," "The
fifth canto of Don Juan," "Cain," "Heaven and Earth," and "The
Vision of Judgment." I looked in at the court of the palace,--a
pleasant, quiet place,--where he used to work, and tried to guess
which were the windows of his apartments. The sun was shining
brightly, and a bird was singing in the court; but there was no other
sign of life, nor anything to remind one of the profligate genius who
was so long a guest here.
RESTING-PLACE OF CAESARS--PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC
Very different from the tomb of Dante, and different in the
associations it awakes, is the Rotunda or Mausoleum of Theodoric the
Goth, outside the Porta Serrata, whose daughter, Amalasuntha, as it
is supposed, about the year 530, erected this imposing structure as a
certain place "to keep his memory whole and mummy hid" for ever. But
the Goth had not lain in it long before Arianism went out of fashion
quite, and the zealous Roman Catholics despoiled his costly
sleeping-place, and scattered his ashes abroad. I do not know that
any dead person has lived in it since. The tomb is still a very
solid affair,--a rotunda built of solid blocks of limestone, and
resting on a ten-sided base, each side having a recess surmounted by
an arch. The upper story is also decagonal, and is reached by a
flight of modern stone steps. The roof is composed of a single block
of Istrian limestone, scooped out like a shallow bowl inside; and,
being the biggest roof-stone I ever saw, I will give you the
dimensions. It is thirty-six feet in diameter, hollowed out to the
depth of ten feet, four feet thick at the center, and two feet nine
inches at the edges, and is estimated to weigh two hundred tons.
Amalasuntha must have had help in getting it up there. The lower
story is partly under water. The green grass of the inclosure in
which it stands is damp enough for frogs. An old woman opened the
iron gate to let us in. Whether she was any relation of the ancient
proprietor, I did not inquire; but she had so much trouble in,
turning the key in the rusty lock, and letting us in, that I presume
we were the only visitors she has had for some centuries.
Old women abound in Ravenna; at least, she was not young who showed
us the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Placidia was also prudent and
foreseeing, and built this once magnificent sepulcher for her own
occupation. It is in the form of a Latin cross, forty-six feet in
length by about forty in width. The floor is paved with rich
marbles; the cupola is covered with mosaics of the time of the
empress; and in the arch over the door is a fine representation of
the Good Shepherd. Behind the altar is the massive sarcophagus of
marble (its cover of silver plates was long ago torn off) in which
are literally the ashes of the empress. She was immured in it as a
mummy, in a sitting position, clothed in imperial robes; and there
the ghastly corpse sat in a cypress-wood chair, to be looked at by
anybody who chose to peep through the aperture, for more than eleven
hundred years, till one day, in 1577, some children introduced a
lighted candle, perhaps out of compassion for her who sat so long in
darkness, when her clothes caught fire, and she was burned up,--a
warning to all children not to play with a dead and dry empress. In
this resting-place are also the tombs of Honorius II., her brother,
of Constantius III., her second husband, and of Honoria, her
daughter.
There are no other undisturbed tombs of the Caesars in existence.
Hers is almost the last, and the very small last, of a great
succession. What thoughts of a great empire in ruins do not force
themselves on one in the confined walls of this little chamber!
What a woman was she whose ashes lie there! She saw and aided the
ruin of the empire; but it may be said of her, that her vices were
greater than her misfortunes. And what a story is her life! Born to
the purple, educated in the palace at Constantinople, accomplished
but not handsome, at the age of twenty she was in Rome when Alaric
besieged it. Carried off captive by the Goths, she became the not
unwilling object of the passion of King Adolphus, who at length
married her at Narbonne. At the nuptials the king, in a Roman habit,
occupied a seat lower than hers, while she sat on a throne habited as
a Roman empress, and received homage. Fifty handsome youths bore to
her in each hand a dish of gold, one filled with coin, and the other
with precious stones,--a small part only, these hundred vessels of
treasure, of the spoils the Goths brought from her country. When
Adolphus, who never abated his fondness for his Roman bride, was
assassinated at Barcelona, she was treated like a slave by his
assassins, and driven twelve miles on foot before the horse of his
murderer. Ransomed at length for six hundred thousand measures of
wheat by her brother Honorius, who handed her over struggling to
Constantius, one of his generals. But, once married, her reluctance
ceased; and she set herself to advance the interests of herself and
husband, ruling him as she had done the first one. Her purpose was
accomplished when he was declared joint emperor with Honorius. He
died shortly after; and scandalous stories of her intimacy with her
brother caused her removal to Constantinople; but she came back
again, and reigned long as the regent of her son, Valentinian III.,
--a feeble youth, who never grew to have either passions or talents,
and was very likely, as was said, enervated by his mother in
dissolute indulgence, so that she might be supreme. But she died at
Rome in 450, much praised for her orthodoxy and her devotion to the
Trinity. And there was her daughter, Honoria, who ran off with a
chamberlain, and afterward offered to throw herself into the arms of
Attila who wouldn't take her as a gift at first, but afterward
demanded her, and fought to win her and her supposed inheritance.
But they were a bad lot altogether; and it is no credit to a
Christian of the nineteenth century to stay in this tomb so long.
Near this mausoleum is the magnificent Basilica of St. Vitale, built
in the reign of Justinian, and consecrated in 547, I was interested
to see it because it was erected in confessed imitation of St. Sophia
at Constantinople, is in the octagonal form, and has all the
accessories of Eastern splendor, according to the architectural
authorities. Its effect is really rich and splendid; and it rather
dazzled us with its maze of pillars, its upper and lower columns, its
galleries, complicated capitals, arches on arches, and Byzantine
intricacies. To the student of the very early ecclesiastical art, it
must be an object of more interest than even of wonder. But what I
cared most to see were the mosaics in the choir, executed in the time
of Justinian, and as fresh and beautiful as on the day they were
made. The mosaics and the exquisite arabesques on the roof of the
choir, taken together, are certainly unequaled by any other early
church decoration I have seen; and they are as interesting as they
are beautiful. Any description of them is impossible; but mention
may be made of two characteristic groups, remarkable for execution,
and having yet a deeper interest.
In one compartment of the tribune is the figure of the Emperor
Justinian, holding a vase with consecrated offerings, and surrounded
by courtiers and soldiers. Opposite is the figure of the Empress
Theodora, holding a similar vase, and attended by ladies of her
court. There is a refinement and an elegance about the empress, a
grace and sweet dignity, that is fascinating. This is royalty,
--stately and cold perhaps: even the mouth may be a little cruel, I
begin to perceive, as I think of her; but she wears the purple by
divine right. I have not seen on any walls any figure walking out of
history so captivating as this lady, who would seem to have been
worthy of apotheosis in a Christian edifice. Can there be any doubt
that this lovely woman was orthodox? She, also, has a story, which
you doubtless have been recalling as you read. Is it worth while to
repeat even its outlines? This charming regal woman was the daughter
of the keeper of the bears in the circus at Constantinople; and she
early went upon the stage as a pantomimist and buffoon. She was
beautiful, with regular features, a little pale, but with a tinge of
natural color, vivacious eyes, and an easy motion that displayed to
advantage the graces of her small but elegant figure. I can see all
that in the mosaic. But she sold her charms to whoever cared to buy
them in Constantinople; she led a life of dissipation that cannot be
even hinted at in these days; she went off to Egypt as the concubine
of a general; was deserted, and destitute even to misery in Cairo;
wandered about a vagabond in many Eastern cities, and won the
reputation everywhere of the most beautiful courtesan of her time;
reappeared in Constantinople; and, having, it is said, a vision of
her future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing;
contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions as
she did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into first
an alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to an
equal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped as
empress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And on
the throne she was a wise woman, courageous and chaste; and had her
palaces on the Bosphorus; and took good care of her beauty, and
indulged in the pleasures of a good table; had ministers who kissed
her feet; a crowd of women and eunuchs in her secret chambers, whose
passions she indulged; was avaricious and sometimes cruel; and
founded a convent for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex, some of
whom liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the sea in
despair; and when she died was an irreparable loss to her emperor.
So that it seems to me it is a pity that the historian should say
that she was devout, but a little heretic.
A HIGH DAY IN ROME
PALM SUNDAY IN ST. PETER'S
The splendid and tiresome ceremonies of Holy Week set in; also the
rain, which held up for two days. Rome without the sun, and with
rain and the bone-penetrating damp cold of the season, is a wretched
place. Squalor and ruins and cheap splendor need the sun; the
galleries need it; the black old masters in the dark corners of the
gaudy churches need it; I think scarcely anything of a cardinal's
big, blazing footman, unless the sun shines on him, and radiates from
his broad back and his splendid calves; the models, who get up in
theatrical costumes, and get put into pictures, and pass the world
over for Roman peasants (and beautiful many of them are), can't sit
on the Spanish Stairs in indolent pose when it rains; the streets are
slimy and horrible; the carriages try to run over you, and stand a
very good chance of succeeding, where there are no sidewalks, and you
are limping along on the slippery round cobble-stones; you can't get
into the country, which is the best part of Rome: but when the sun
shines all this is changed; the dear old dirty town exercises, its
fascinations on you then, and you speedily forget your recent misery.
Holy Week is a vexation to most people. All the world crowds here to
see its exhibitions and theatrical shows, and works hard to catch a
glimpse of them, and is tired out, if not disgusted, at the end. The
things to see and hear are Palm Sunday in St. Peter's; singing of the
Miserere by the pope's choir on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in
the Sistine Chapel; washing of the pilgrims' feet in a chapel of St.
Peter's, and serving the apostles at table by the pope on Thursday,
with a papal benediction from the balcony afterwards; Easter Sunday,
with the illumination of St. Peter's in the evening; and fireworks
(this year in front of St. Peter's in Montorio) Monday evening.
Raised seats are built up about the high altar under the dome in St.
Peter's, which will accommodate a thousand, and perhaps more, ladies;
and for these tickets are issued without numbers, and for twice as
many as they will seat. Gentlemen who are in evening dress are
admitted to stand in the reserved places inside the lines of
soldiers. For the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are also
issued. As there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and a
thousand and more tickets are given out, you may imagine the
scramble. Ladies go for hours before the singing begins, and make a
grand rush when the doors are open. I do not know any sight so
unseemly and cruel as a crowd of women intent on getting in to such a
ceremony: they are perfectly rude and unmerciful to each other. They
push and trample one another under foot; veils and dresses are torn;
ladies faint away in the scrimmage, and only the strongest and most
unscrupulous get in. I have heard some say, who have been in the
pellmell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and pounding,
some women even stick pins into those who are in the way. I hope
this latter is not true; but it is certain that the conduct of most
of the women is brutal. A weak or modest or timid woman stands no
more chance than she would in a herd of infuriated Campagna cattle.
The same scenes are enacted in the efforts to see the pope wash feet,
and serve at the table. For the possession of the seats under the
dome on Palm Sunday and Easter there is a like crush. The ceremonies
do not begin until half-past nine; but ladies go between five and six
o'clock in the morning, and when the passages are open they make a
grand rush. The seats, except those saved for the nobility, are soon
all taken, and the ladies who come after seven are lucky if they can
get within the charmed circle, and find a spot to sit down on a
campstool. They can then see only a part of the proceedings, and
have a weary, exhausting time of it for hours. This year Rome is
more crowded than ever before. There are American ladies enough to
fill all the reserved places; and I fear they are energetic enough to
get their share of them.
It rained Sunday; but there was a steady stream of people and
carriages all the morning pouring over the Bridge of St. Angelo, and
discharging into the piazza of St. Peter's. It was after nine when I
arrived on the ground. There was a crowd of carriages under the
colonnades, and a heavy fringe in front of them; but the hundreds of
people moving over the piazza, and up the steps to the entrances,
made only the impression of dozens in the vast space. I do not know
if there are people enough in Rome to fill St. Peter's; certainly
there was no appearance of a crowd as we entered, although they had
been pouring in all the morning, and still thronged the doors. I
heard a traveler say that he followed ten thousand soldiers into the
church, and then lost them from sight: they disappeared in the side
chapels. He did not make his affidavit as to the number of soldiers.
The interior area of the building is not much greater than the square
of St. Mark in Venice. To go into the great edifice is almost like
going outdoors. Lines of soldiers kept a wide passage clear from the
front door away down to the high altar; and there was a good mass of
spectators on the outside. The tribunes for the ladies, built up
under the dome, were of course, filled with masses of ladies in
solemn black; and there was more or less of a press of people surging
about in that vicinity. Thousands of people were also roaming about
in the great spaces of the edifice; but there was nowhere else
anything like a crowd. It had very much the appearance of a large
fair-ground, with little crowds about favorite booths. Gentlemen in
dress-coats were admitted to the circle under the dome. The pope's
choir was stationed in a gallery there opposite the high altar. Back
of the altar was a wide space for the dignitaries; seats were there,
also, for ambassadors and those born to the purple; and the pope's
seat was on a raised dais at the end. Outsiders could see nothing of
what went on within there; and the ladies under the dome could only
partially see, in the seats they had fought so gallantly to obtain.
St. Peter's is a good place for grand processions and ceremonies; but
it is a poor one for viewing them. A procession which moves down the
nave is hidden by the soldiers who stand on either side, or is
visible only by sections as it passes: there is no good place to get
the grand effect of the masses of color, and the total of the
gorgeous pageantry. I should like to see the display upon a grand
stage, and enjoy it in a coup d'oeil. It is a fine study of color
and effect, and the groupings are admirable; but the whole affair is
nearly lost to the mass of spectators. It must be a sublime feeling
to one in the procession to walk about in such monstrous fine
clothes; but what would his emotions be if more people could see him!
The grand altar stuck up under the dome not only breaks the effect of
what would be the fine sweep of the nave back to the apse, but it
cuts off all view of the celebration of the mass behind it, and, in
effect, reduces what should be the great point of display in the
church to a mere chapel. And when you add to that the temporary
tribunes erected under the dome for seating the ladies, the entire
nave is shut off from a view of the gorgeous ceremony of high mass.
The effect would be incomparable if one could stand in the door, or
anywhere in the nave, and, as in other churches, look down to the end
upon a great platform, with the high altar and all the sublime
spectacle in full view, with the blaze of candles and the clouds of
incense rising in the distance.
At half-past nine the great doors opened, and the procession began,
in slow and stately moving fashion, to enter. One saw a throng of
ecclesiastics in robes and ermine; the white plumes of the Guard
Noble; the pages and chamberlains in scarlet; other pages, or what
not, in black short-clothes, short swords, gold chains, cloak hanging
from the shoulder, and stiff white ruffs; thirty-six cardinals in
violet robes, with high miter-shaped white silk hats, that looked not
unlike the pasteboard "trainer-caps" that boys wear when they play
soldier; crucifixes, and a blazoned banner here and there; and, at
last, the pope, in his red chair, borne on the shoulders of red
lackeys, heaving along in a sea-sicky motion, clad in scarlet and
gold, with a silver miter on his head, feebly making the papal
benediction with two upraised fingers, and moving his lips in
blessing. As the pope came in, a supplementary choir of men and
soprano hybrids, stationed near the door, set up a high, welcoming
song, or chant, which echoed rather finely through the building. All
the music of the day is vocal.
The procession having reached its destination, and disappeared behind
the altar of the dome, the pope dismounted, and took his seat on his
throne. The blessing of the palms began, the cardinals first
approaching, and afterwards the members of the diplomatic corps, the
archbishops and bishops, the heads of the religious orders, and such
private persons as have had permission to do so. I had previously
seen the palms carried in by servants in great baskets. It is,
perhaps, not necessary to say that they are not the poetical green
waving palms, but stiff sort of wands, woven out of dry, yellow,
split palm-leaves, sometimes four or five feet in length, braided
into the semblance of a crown on top,--a kind of rough basket-work.
The palms having been blessed, a procession was again formed down the
nave and out the door, all in it "carrying palms in their hands," the
yellow color of which added a new element of picturesqueness to the
splendid pageant. The pope was carried as before, and bore in his
hand a short braided palm, with gold woven in, flowers added, and the
monogram "I. H. S." worked in the top. It is the pope's custom to
give this away when the ceremony is over. Last year he presented it
to an American lady, whose devotion attracted him; this year I saw it
go away in a gilded coach in the hands of an ecclesiastic. The
procession disappeared through the great portal into the vestibule,
and the door closed. In a moment somebody knocked three times on the
door: it opened, and the procession returned, and moved again to the
rear of the altar, the singers marching with it and chanting. The
cardinals then changed their violet for scarlet robes; and high mass,
for an hour, was celebrated by a cardinal priest: and I was told that
it was the pope's voice that we heard, high and clear, singing the
passion. The choir made the responses, and performed at intervals.
The singing was not without a certain power; indeed, it was marvelous
how some of the voices really filled the vast spaces of the edifice,
and the choruses rolled in solemn waves of sound through the arches.
The singing, with the male sopranos, is not to my taste; but it
cannot be denied that it had a wild and strange effect.
While this was going on behind the altar, the people outside were
wandering about, looking at each other, and on the watch not to miss
any of the shows of the day. People were talking, chattering, and
greeting each other as they might do in the street. Here and there
somebody was kneeling on the pavement, unheeding the passing throng.
At several of the chapels, services were being conducted; and there
was a large congregation, an ordinary church full, about each of
them. But the most of those present seemed to regard it as a
spectacle only; and as a display of dress, costumes, and
nationalities it was almost unsurpassed. There are few more
wonderful sights in this world than an Englishwoman in what she
considers full dress. An English dandy is also a pleasing object.
For my part, as I have hinted, I like almost as well as anything the
big footmen,--those in scarlet breeches and blue gold-embroidered
coats. I stood in front of one of the fine creations for some time,
and contemplated him as one does the Farnese Hercules. One likes to
see to what a splendor his species can come, even if the brains have
all run down into the calves of the legs. There were also the pages,
the officers of the pope's household, in costumes of the Middle Ages;
the pope's Swiss guard in the showy harlequin uniform designed by
Michael Angelo; the foot-soldiers in white short-clothes, which
threatened to burst, and let them fly into pieces; there were fine
ladies and gentlemen, loafers and loungers, from every civilized
country, jabbering in all the languages; there were beggars in rags,
and boors in coats so patched that there was probably none of the
original material left; there were groups of peasants from the
Campagna, the men in short jackets and sheepskin breeches with the
wool side out, the women with gay-colored folded cloths on their
heads, and coarse woolen gowns; a squad of wild-looking Spanish
gypsies, burning-eyed, olive-skinned, hair long, black, crinkled, and
greasy, as wild in raiment as in face; priests and friars, Zouaves in
jaunty light gray and scarlet; rags and velvets, silks and serge
cloths,--a cosmopolitan gathering poured into the world's great place
of meeting,--a fine religious Vanity Fair on Sunday.
There came an impressive moment in all this confusion, a point of
august solemnity. Up to that instant, what with chanting and singing
the many services, and the noise of talking and walking, there was a
wild babel. But at the stroke of the bell and the elevation of the
Host, down went the muskets of the guard with one clang on the
marble; the soldiers kneeled; the multitude in the nave, in the
aisles, at all the chapels, kneeled; and for a minute in that vast
edifice there was perfect stillness: if the whole great concourse had
been swept from the earth, the spot where it lately was could not
have been more silent. And then the military order went down the
line, the soldiers rose, the crowd rose, and the mass and the hum
went on.
It was all over before one; and the pope was borne out again, and the
vast crowd began to discharge itself. But it was a long time before
the carriages were all filled and rolled off. I stood for a half
hour watching the stream go by,--the pompous soldiers, the peasants
and citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted women in
black, who had sat or stood half a day under the dome, and could get
no carriage; and the great state coaches of the cardinals, swinging
high in the air, painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hanging
on behind each, and a cardinal's broad face in the window.
VESUVIUS
CLIMBING A VOLCANO
Everybody who comes to Naples,--that is, everybody except the lady
who fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her
shoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,--everybody, I say, goes
up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptions
of the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is an
undertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions.
How unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times in
Naples before I had been there a day. Why, there was a lady thrown
from her horse and nearly killed, only a week ago; and she still lay
ill at the next hotel, a witness of the truth of the story. I
imagined her plunged down a precipice of lava, or pitched over the
lip of the crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallant
guide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay him twenty
francs instantly. This story, which will live and grow for years in
this region, a waxing and never-waning peril of the volcano, I found,
subsequently, had the foundation I have mentioned above. The lady
did go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, mounted a
horse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewomanly, and hurt
herself; but her injury had no more to do with Vesuvius than it had
with the entrance of Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place a
couple of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion to
write descriptions of Vesuvius; and you might as well have mine,
which I shall give to you in rough outline.
There came a day when the Tramontane ceased to blow down on us the
cold air of the snowy Apennines, and the white cap of Vesuvius, which
is, by the way, worn generally like the caps of the Neapolitans,
drifted inland instead of toward the sea. Warmer weather had come to
make the bright sunshine no longer a mockery. For some days I had
been getting the gauge of the mountain. With its white plume it is a
constant quantity in the landscape: one sees it from every point of
view; and we had been scarcely anywhere that volcanic remains, or
signs of such action,--a thin crust shaking under our feet, as at
Solfatara, where blasts of sulphurous steam drove in our faces,--did
not remind us that the whole ground is uncertain, and undermined by
the subterranean fires that have Vesuvius for a chimney. All the
coast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in different spots
at different times, has risen and sunk and risen again, in simple
obedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. It
puffs up or sinks, like the crust of a baking apple-pie. This region
is evidently not done; and I think it not unlikely it may have to be
turned over again before it is. We had seen where Herculaneum lies
under the lava and under the town of Resina; we had walked those
clean and narrow streets of Pompeii, and seen the workmen picking
away at the imbedded gravel, sand, and ashes which still cover nearly
two thirds of the nice little, tight little Roman city; we had looked
at the black gashes on the mountain-sides, where the lava streams had
gushed and rolled and twisted over vineyards and villas and villages;
and we decided to take a nearer look at the immediate cause of all
this abnormal state of things.
In the morning when I awoke the sun was just rising behind Vesuvius;
and there was a mighty display of gold and crimson in that quarter,
as if the curtain was about to be lifted on a grand performance, say
a ballet at San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans think
worth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the mountain, rose
a white pillar, spreading out at the top like a palm-tree, or, to
compare it to something I have seen, to the Italian pines, that come
so picturesquely into all these Naples pictures. If you will believe
me, that pillar of steam was like a column of fire, from the sun
shining on and through it, and perhaps from the reflection of the
background of crimson clouds and blue and gold sky, spread out there
and hung there in royal and extravagant profusion, to make a highway
and a regal gateway, through which I could just then see coming the
horses and the chariot of a southern perfect day. They said that the
tree-shaped cloud was the sign of an eruption; but the hotel-keepers
here are always predicting that. The eruption is usually about two
or three weeks distant; and the hotel proprietors get this
information from experienced guides, who observe the action of the
water in the wells; so that there can be no mistake about it.
We took carriages at nine o'clock to Resina, a drive of four miles,
and one of exceeding interest, if you wish to see Naples life. The
way is round the curving bay by the sea; but so continuously built up
is it, and so inclosed with high walls of villas, through the open
gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leave
the city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous,
dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. The
tall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight
stories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the open
windows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out;
up every narrow, gloomy, ascending street are crowds of struggling
human shapes; and you see how like herrings in a box are packed the
over half a million people of Naples. In front of the houses are the
markets in the open air,--fish, vegetables, carts of oranges; in the
sun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; and
rows of children who were never washed and never clothed but once,
and whose garments have nearly wasted away; beggars, fishermen in red
caps, sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians,
carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles,--the whole tangled
in one wild roar and rush and babel,--a shifting, varied panorama of
color, rags,--a pandemonium such as the world cannot show elsewhere,
that is what one sees on the road to Resina. The drivers all drive
in the streets here as if they held a commission from the devil,
cracking their whips, shouting to their horses, and dashing into the
thickest tangle with entire recklessness. They have one cry, used
alike for getting more speed out of their horses or for checking
them, or in warning to the endangered crowds on foot. It is an
exclamatory grunt, which may be partially expressed by the letters
"a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," or
cattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it to
disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in the
streets I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive little
donkeys, with enormous panniers that almost hide them. One would
have a woman seated on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages
in the other; another, with an immense stock of market-greens on his
back, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and a
man seated behind, adhering, by some unknown law of adhesion, to the
sloping tail. Then there was the cart drawn by one diminutive
donkey, or by an ox, or by an ox and a donkey, or by a donkey and
horse abreast, never by any possibility a matched team. And,
funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caleche, with one seat,
and top thrown back, with long thills and poor horse. Upon this
vehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the thills,
and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as many
as eighteen people, men, women, and children,--all in flaunting rags,
with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay petticoat, or a scarlet
cap,--perhaps a priest, with broad black hat, in the center,--driving
along like a comet, the poor horse in a gallop, the bells on his
ornamented saddle merrily jingling, and the whole load in a roar of
merriment.
But we shall never get to Vesuvius at this rate. I will not even
stop to examine the macaroni manufactories on the road. The long
strips of it were hung out on poles to dry in the streets, and to get
a rich color from the dirt and dust, to say nothing of its contact
with the filthy people who were making it. I am very fond of
macaroni. At Resina we take horses for the ascent. We had sent
ahead for a guide and horses for our party of ten; but we found
besides, I should think, pretty nearly the entire population of the
locality awaiting us, not to count the importunate beggars, the hags,
male and female, and the ordinary loafers of the place. We were
besieged to take this and that horse or mule, to buy walking-sticks
for the climb, to purchase lava cut into charms, and veritable
ancient coins, and dug-up cameos, all manufactured for the demand.
One wanted to hold the horse, or to lead it, to carry a shawl, or to
show the way. In the midst of infinite clamor and noise, we at last
got mounted, and, turning into a narrow lane between high walls,
began the ascent, our cavalcade attended by a procession of rags and
wretchedness up through the village. Some of them fell off as we
rose among the vineyards, and they found us proof against begging;
but several accompanied us all day, hoping that, in some unguarded
moment, they could do us some slight service, and so establish a
claim on us. Among these I noticed some stout fellows with short
ropes, with which they intended to assist us up the steeps. If I
looked away an instant, some urchin would seize my horse's bridle;
and when I carelessly let my stick fall on his hand, in token for him
to let go, he would fall back with an injured look, and grasp the
tail, from which I could only loosen him by swinging my staff and
preparing to break his head.
The ascent is easy at first between walls and the vineyards which
produce the celebrated Lachryma Christi. After a half hour we
reached and began to cross the lava of 1858, and the wild desolation
and gloom of the mountain began to strike us. One is here conscious
of the titanic forces at work. Sometimes it is as if a giant had
ploughed the ground, and left the furrows without harrowing them to
harden into black and brown stone. We could see again how the broad
stream, flowing down, squeezed and squashed like mud, had taken all
fantastic shapes,--now like gnarled tree roots; now like serpents in
a coil; here the human form, or a part of it,--a torso or a limb,--in
agony; now in other nameless convolutions and contortions, as if
heaved up and twisted in fiery pain and suffering,--for there was
almost a human feeling in it; and again not unlike stone billows. We
could see how the cooling crust had been lifted and split and turned
over by the hot stream underneath, which, continually oozing from the
rent of the eruption, bore it down and pressed it upward. Even so
low as the point where we crossed the lava of 1858 were fissures
whence came hot air.
An hour brought us to the resting-place called the Hermitage, an
osteria and observatory established by the government. Standing upon
the end of a spur, it seems to be safe from the lava, whose course
has always been on either side; but it must be an uncomfortable place
in a shower of stones and ashes. We rode half an hour longer on
horseback, on a nearly level path, to the foot of the steep ascent,
the base of the great crater. This ride gave us completely the wide
and ghastly desolation of the mountain, the ruin that the lava has
wrought upon slopes that were once green with vine and olive, and
busy with the hum of life. This black, contorted desert waste is
more sterile and hopeless than any mountain of stone, because the
idea of relentless destruction is involved here. This great
hummocked, sloping plain, ridged and seamed, was all about us,
without cheer or relaxation of grim solitude. Before us rose, as
black and bare, what the guides call the mountain, and which used to
be the crater. Up one side is worked in the lava a zigzag path,
steep, but not very fatiguing, if you take it slowly. Two thirds of
the way up, I saw specks of people climbing. Beyond it rose the cone
of ashes, out of which the great cloud of sulphurous smoke rises and
rolls night and day now. On the very edge of that, on the lip of it,
where the smoke rose, I also saw human shapes; and it seemed as if
they stood on the brink of Tartarus and in momently imminent peril.
We left our horses in a wild spot, where scorched boulders had fallen
upon the lava bed; and guides and boys gathered about us like
cormorants: but, declining their offers to pull us up, we began the
ascent, which took about three quarters of an hour. We were then on
the summit, which is, after all, not a summit at all, but an uneven
waste, sloping away from the Cone in the center. This sloping lava
waste was full of little cracks,--not fissures with hot lava in them,
or anything of the sort,--out of which white steam issued, not unlike
the smoke from a great patch of burned timber; and the wind blew it
along the ground towards us. It was cool, for the sun was hidden by
light clouds, but not cold. The ground under foot was slightly warm.
I had expected to feel some dread, or shrinking, or at least some
sense of insecurity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards;
and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no more sense of
danger on the edge of the crater than I had in the streets of Naples.
We next addressed ourselves to the Cone, which is a loose hill of
ashes and sand,--a natural slope, I should say, of about one and a
half to one, offering no foothold. The climb is very fatiguing,
because you sink in to the ankles, and slide back at every step; but
it is short,--we were up in six to eight minutes,--though the ladies,
who had been helped a little by the guides, were nearly exhausted,
and sank down on the very edge of the crater, with their backs to the
smoke. What did we see? What would you see if you looked into a
steam boiler? We stood on the ashy edge of the crater, the sharp
edge sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into the
bowels, whence the thick, stifling smoke rose. We rolled stones
down, and heard them rumbling for half a minute. The diameter of the
crater on the brink of which we stood was said to be an eighth of a
mile; but the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge where
we stood was quite warm.
We ate some rolls we had brought in our pockets, and some of the
party tried a bottle of the wine that one of the cormorants had
brought up, but found it anything but the Lachryma Christi it was
named. We looked with longing eyes down into the vapor-boiling
caldron; we looked at the wide and lovely view of land and sea; we
tried to realize our awful situation, munched our dry bread, and
laughed at the monstrous demands of the vagabonds about us for money,
and then turned and went down quicker than we came up.
We had chosen to ascend to the old crater rather than to the new one
of the recent eruption on the side of the mountain, where there is
nothing to be seen. When we reached the bottom of the Cone, our
guide led us to the north side, and into a region that did begin to
look like business. The wind drove all the smoke round there, and we
were half stifled with sulphur fumes to begin with. Then the whole
ground was discolored red and yellow, and with many more gay and
sulphur-suggesting colors. And it actually had deep fissures in it,
over which we stepped and among which we went, out of which came
blasts of hot, horrid vapor, with a roaring as if we were in the
midst of furnaces. And if we came near the cracks the heat was
powerful in our faces, and if we thrust our sticks down them they
were instantly burned; and the guides cooked eggs; and the crust was
thin, and very hot to our boots; and half the time we couldn't see
anything; and we would rush away where the vapor was not so thick,
and, with handkerchiefs to our mouths, rush in again to get the full
effect. After we came out again into better air, it was as if we had
been through the burning, fiery furnace, and had the smell of it on
our garments. And, indeed, the sulphur had changed to red certain of
our clothes, and noticeably my pantaloons and the black velvet cap of
one of the ladies; and it was some days before they recovered their
color. But, as I say, there was no sense of danger in the adventure.
We descended by a different route, on the south side of the mountain,
to our horses, and made a lark of it. We went down an ash slope,
very steep, where we sank in a foot or little less at every step, and
there was nothing to do for it, but to run and jump. We took steps
as long as if we had worn seven-league boots. When the whole party
got in motion, the entire slope seemed to slide a little with us, and
there appeared some danger of an avalanche. But we did n't stop for
it. It was exactly like plunging down a steep hillside that is
covered thickly with light, soft snow. There was a gray-haired
gentleman with us, with a good deal of the boy in him, who thought it
great fun.
I have said little about the view; but I might have written about
nothing else, both in the ascent and descent. Naples, and all the
villages which rim the bay with white, the gracefully curving arms
that go out to sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies at
the entrance, made the outline of a picture of surpassing loveliness.
But as we came down, there was a sight that I am sure was unique. As
one in a balloon sees the earth concave beneath, so now, from where
we stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the white
villages were raised to the clouds; and by the peculiar light, the
sea looked exactly like sky, and the little boats on it seemed to
float, like balloons in the air. The illusion was perfect. As the
day waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that
the waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo in
a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet. Only it
still was not the sea at all; but the little chopping waves looked
like flecked clouds; and it was exactly as if one of the violet,
cloud-beautified skies that we see at home over some sunsets had
fallen to the ground. And the slant white sails and the black specks
of boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial as the
whole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. And as we descended
and a high wall hid it, a little handsome rascal, who had attended me
for an hour, now at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalled
me to the realities by the request that I should give him a franc.
For what? For carrying signor's coat up the mountain. I rewarded
the little liar with a German copper. I had carried my own overcoat
all day.
SORRENTO DAYS
OUTLINES
The day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, most
noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, was
founded by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Her
descendants still live here; and we have become a little weary of
their inherited musical ability: they have learned to play upon many
new instruments, with which they keep us awake late at night, and
arouse us early in the morning. One of them is always there under
the window, where the moonlight will strike him, or the early dawn
will light up his love-worn visage, strumming the guitar with his
horny thumb, and wailing through his nose as if his throat was full
of seaweed. He is as inexhaustible as Vesuvius. We shall have to
flee, or stop our ears with wax, like the sailors of Ulysses.
The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto,
Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii,
Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Let
us go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our
geography.
The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but never adequately,
must consent to be here described as essentially a parallelogram,
with an opening towards the southwest. The northeast side of this,
with Naples in the right-hand corner, looking seaward and
Castellamare in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen
miles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with towns, and
covered with white houses and gardens. Out of this rises the
isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This growing mountain is manufactured
exactly like an ant-hill.
The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction,
is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands.
First comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels,
partly natural and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of
one of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautiful
bay, the shore of which is incrusted with classic ruins. On this bay
stands Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli where St. Paul landed one May
day, and doubtless walked up this paved road, which leads direct to
Rome. At the entrance, near the head of Posilipo, is the volcanic
island of "shining Nisida," to which Brutus retired after the
assassination of Caesar, and where he bade Portia good-by before he
departed for Greece and Philippi: the favorite villa of Cicero, where
he wrote many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baiae,
epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime of
the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples,
palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, and
extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered
the great fleets of Rome.
This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thin
crust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out,
is one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine
Lake, the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the Lake
Avernus. This entrance to the infernal regions was frozen over the
day I saw it; so that the profane prophecy of skating on the
bottomless pit might have been realized. The islands of Procida and
Ischia continue and complete this side of the bay, which is about
twenty miles long as the boat sails.
At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and runs southwest
along the side of the Sorrentine promontory. This promontory is a
high, rocky, diversified ridge, which extends out between the bays of
Naples and Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards the
latter. Below Castellamare, the mountain range of the Great St.
Angelo (an offshoot of the Apennines) runs across the peninsula, and
cuts off that portion of it which we have to consider. The most
conspicuous of the three parts of this short range is over four
thousand seven hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, and the highest
land on it. From Great St. Angelo to the point, the Punta di
Campanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by balloon, but twenty by
any other conveyance. Three miles off this point lies Capri.
This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and hills; but it has
at intervals transverse ledges and ridges, and deep valleys and
chains cutting in from either side; so that it is not very passable
in any direction. These little valleys and bays are warm nooks for
the olive and the orange; and all the precipices and sunny slopes are
terraced nearly to the top. This promontory of rocks is far from
being barren.
From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rockcut road by the bay,
--one of the most charming in southern Italy,--a distance of seven
miles, we reach the Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the opposite
headland, the Capo di Sorrento, inclose the Piano di Sorrento, an
irregular plain, three miles long, encircled by limestone hills,
which protect it from the east and south winds. In this amphitheater
it lies, a mass of green foliage and white villages, fronting Naples
and Vesuvius.
If nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, and then
filled it up to a depth of two hundred to three hundred feet with
volcanic tufa, forming a precipice of that height along the shore, I
can understand how the present state of things came about.
This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs push down into
it from the hills; and great chasms, deep, ragged, impassable, split
in the tufa, extend up into it from the sea. At intervals, at the
openings of these ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermen
have their huts' and where their boats land. Little villages,
separate from the world, abound on these marinas. The warm volcanic
soil of the sheltered plain makes it a paradise of fruits and
flowers.
Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of
this plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to
the hills,--a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant
groves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The
ancient boundary of the city proper was the famous ravine on the east
side, a similar ravine on the south, which met it at right angles,
and was supplemented by a high Roman wall, and the same wall
continued on the west to the sea. The growing town has pushed away
the wall on the west side; but that on the south yet stands as good
as when the Romans made it. There is a little attempt at a mall,
with double rows of trees, under that wall, where lovers walk, and
ragged, handsome urchins play the exciting game of fives, or sit in
the dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do not
know what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper which
has the value of one sou.
The great ravine, three quarters of a mile long, the ancient boundary
which now cuts the town in two, is bridged where the main street, the
Corso, crosses, the bridge resting on old Roman substructions, as
everything else about here does. This ravine, always invested with
mystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. Demons inhabit
it. Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cut
for descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, at
the bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a mill
down there, where there is breadth enough for a building; and
altogether, the ravine is not so delivered over to the power of
darkness as it used to be. It is still damp and slimy, it is true;
but from above, it is always beautiful, with its luxuriant growth of
vines, and at twilight mysterious. I like as well, however, to look
into its entrance from the little marina, where the old fishwives are
weaving nets.
These little settlements under the cliff, called marinas, are worlds
in themselves, picturesque at a distance, but squalid seen close at
hand. They are not very different from the little fishing-stations
on the Isle of Wight; but they are more sheltered, and their
inhabitants sing at their work, wear bright colors, and bask in the
sun a good deal, feeling no sense of responsibility for the world
they did not create. To weave nets, to fish in the bay, to sell
their fish at the wharves, to eat unexciting vegetables and fish, to
drink moderately, to go to the chapel of St. Antonino on Sunday, not
to work on fast and feast days, nor more than compelled to any day,
this is life at the marinas. Their world is what they can see, and
Naples is distant and almost foreign. Generation after generation is
content with the same simple life. They have no more idea of the bad
way the world is in than bees in their cells.
THE VILLA NARDI
The Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on a rock, and I
know not what Roman and Greek foundations, and the remains of yet
earlier peoples, traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rock
there at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even in
this winter-time with a summer swing and sound of peace.
It was at the close of a day in January that I first knew the Villa
Nardi,--a warm, lovely day, at the hour when the sun was just going
behind the Capo di Sorrento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy,
before plunging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as is
his wont about this time of year. When we turned out of the little
piazza, our driver was obliged to take off one of our team of three
horses driven abreast, so that we could pass through the narrow and
crooked streets, or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip,
rattling wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove into the
Strada di San Francisca, and to an arched gateway. This led down a
straight path, between olives and orange and lemon-trees, gleaming
with shining leaves and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees in
full bloom, to another leafy arch, through which I saw tropical
trees, and a terrace with a low wall and battered busts guarding it,
and beyond, the blue sea, a white sail or two slanting across the
opening, and the whiteness of Naples some twenty miles away on the
shore.
The noble family of the Villa did not descend into the garden to
welcome us, as we should have liked; in fact, they have been absent
now for a long time, so long that even their ghosts, if they ever
pace the terrace-walk towards the convent, would appear strange to
one who should meet them; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, did
what the ancient occupants scarcely could have done, gave us the
choice of rooms in the entire house. The stranger who finds himself
in this secluded paradise, at this season, is always at a loss
whether to take a room on the sea, with all its changeable
loveliness, but no sun, or one overlooking the garden, where the sun
all day pours itself into the orange boughs, and where the birds are
just beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My friend, whose
capacity for taking in the luxurious repose of this region is
something extraordinary, has tried, I believe, nearly every room in
the house, and has at length gone up to a solitary room on the top,
where, like a bird on a tree he looks all ways, and, so to say,
swings in the entrancing air. But, wherever you are, you will grow
into content with your situation.
At the Villa Nardi we have no sound of wheels, no noise of work or
traffic, no suggestion of conflict. I am under the impression that
everything that was to have been done has been done. I am, it is
true, a little afraid that the Saracens will come here again, and
carry off more of the nut-brown girls, who lean over the walls, and
look down on us from under the boughs. I am not quite sure that a
French Admiral of the Republic will not some morning anchor his
three-decker in front, and open fire on us; but nothing else can
happen. Naples is a thousand miles away. The boom of the saluting
guns of Castel Nuovo is to us scarcely an echo of modern life. Rome
does not exist. And as for London and New York, they send their
people and their newspapers here, but no pulse of unrest from them
disturbs our tranquillity. Hemmed in on the land side by high walls,
groves, and gardens, perched upon a rock two hundred feet above the
water, how much more secure from invasion is this than any fabled
island of the southern sea, or any remote stream where the boats of
the lotus-eaters float!
There is a little terrace and flower-plat, where we sometimes sit,
and over the wall of which we like to lean, and look down the cliff
to the sea. This terrace is the common ground of many exotics as
well as native trees and shrubs. Here are the magnolia, the laurel,
the Japanese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, the
date-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the Cape of Good
Hope, the pomegranate, the elder in full leaf, the olive, salvia,
heliotrope; close by is a banana-tree.
I find a good deal of companionship in the rows of plaster busts that
stand on the wall, in all attitudes of listlessness, and all stages
of decay. I thought at first they were penates of the premises; but
better acquaintance has convinced me that they never were gods, but
the clayey representations of great men and noble dames. The stains
of time are on them; some have lost a nose or an ear; and one has
parted with a still more important member--his head,--an accident
that might profitably have befallen his neighbor, whose curly locks
and villainously low forehead proclaim him a Roman emperor. Cut in
the face of the rock is a walled and winding way down to the water.
I see below the archway where it issues from the underground recesses
of our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation
that some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no
one ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old
houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the
mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some
fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this
sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges and
lemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch. And
there is an uncommon stir of life; for a schooner is shipping a cargo
of oranges, and the entire population is in a clamor. Donkeys are
coming down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either flank;
stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads on their heads; the
drivers shout, the donkeys bray, the people jabber and order each
other about; and the oranges, in a continual stream, are poured into
the long, narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is a
yellow mass of them. Shouting, scolding, singing, and braying, all
come up to me a little mellowed. The disorder is not so great as on
the opera stage of San Carlo in Naples; and the effect is much more
pleasing.
This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to extend along
the shore; and a good road ran down there close by the water. The
rock has split off, and covered it; and perhaps the shore has sunk.
They tell me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow water
find sunken walls, and the remains of old foundations of Roman
workmanship. People who wander there pick up bits of marble,
serpentine, and malachite,--remains of the palaces that long ago fell
into the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners and
builders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybody
must in this seductive spot. Not far from here, they point out the
veritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and gone
away, like the rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner in
their day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away from
their soothing shore.
I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near the sailors'
Chapel of St. Antonino, past a pretty shrine of the Virgin, down the
zigzag path to this little marina; but it is better to be content
with looking at it from above, and imagining how delightful it would
be to push off in one of the little tubs of boats. Sometimes, at
night, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in their lusty
fashion; and I think it is a good haven to arrive at. I never go
down to search for stones on the beach: I like to believe that there
are great treasures there, which I might find; and I know that the
green and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused by the
showing through of the pavements of courts, and marble floors of
palaces, which might vanish if I went nearer, such a place of
illusion is this.
The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesuvius, which is
just across the bay, and is not so useless as it has been
represented; it is our weather-sign and prophet. When the white
plume on his top floats inland, that is one sort of weather; when it
streams out to sea, that is another. But I can never tell which is
which: nor in my experience does it much matter; for it seems
impossible for Sorrento to do anything but woo us with gentle
weather. But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to furnish us a
background for the violet light at sundown, when the villages at its
foot gleam like a silver fringe. I have become convinced of one
thing: it is always best when you build a house to have it front
toward a volcano, if you can. There is just that lazy activity about
a volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for something that
is not exactly dead, and yet does not disturb you.
Sometimes when I wake in the night,--though I don't know why one ever
wakes in the night, or the daytime either here,--I hear the bell of
the convent, which is in our demesne,--a convent which is suppressed,
and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of a
school. At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went
on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of
the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent
call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder
of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more
ghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who
were wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon these
same gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used to
come down here to repent--if she ever did repent--of her wanton ways
in Naples.
On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery. The narrow
front towards the sea has a secluded little balcony, where I like to
fancy the poor orphaned souls used to steal out at night for a breath
of fresh air, and perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Naples
with its lights like a conflagration on the horizon. Upon the tiles
of the parapet are cheerful devices, the crossbones tied with a cord,
and the like. How many heavy-hearted recluses have stood in that
secluded nook, and been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of the
waves below; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, and felt
like prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor where they trod; and
how many stupid louts have walked there, insensible to all the charm
of it!
If I pass into the Tramontano garden, it is not to escape the
presence of history, or to get into the modern world, where travelers
are arriving, and where there is the bustle and proverbial discontent
of those who travel to enjoy themselves. In the pretty garden, which
is a constant surprise of odd nooks and sunny hiding-places, with
ruins, and most luxuriant ivy, is a little cottage where, I am told
in confidence, the young king of Bavaria slept three nights not very
long ago. I hope he slept well. But more important than the sleep,
or even death, of a king, is the birth of a poet, I take it; and
within this inclosure, on the eleventh day of March, 1541, Torquato
Tasso, most melancholy of men, first saw the light; and here was born
his noble sister Cornelia, the descendants of whose union with the
cavalier Spasiano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory of
the poet green with the present generation. I am indebted to a
gentleman who is of this lineage for many favors, and for precise
information as to the position in the house that stood here of the
very room in which Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in a
memoir of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose careful
researches have disproved the slipshod statements of the guidebooks,
that the poet was born in a house which is still standing, farther to
the west, and that the room has fallen into the sea. The descendant
of the sister pointed out to me the spot on the terrace of the
Tramontano where the room itself was, when the house still stood;
and, of course, seeing is believing. The sun shone full upon it, as
we stood there; and the air was full of the scent of tropical fruit
and just-coming blossoms. One could not desire a more tranquil scene
of advent into life; and the wandering, broken-hearted author of
"Jerusalem Delivered" never found at court or palace any retreat so
soothing as that offered him here by his steadfast sister.
If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had Tasso born at the
Villa Nardi, where I like best to stay, and where I find traces of
many pilgrims from other countries. Here, in a little corner room on
the terrace, Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, every
morning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, Agnes of Sorrento
will come down the sweet-scented path with a basket of oranges on her
head.
SEA AND SHORE
It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which
encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere,
to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems.
practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into
heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there,
and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like
balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I
suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The
contours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as graceful
as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and
sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones
all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.
The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a
drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental
dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often
seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of
clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever
represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to
bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a
golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for
all these Mediterranean shores.
The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which
it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one
day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and
stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there
were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to
produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted
rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing
bow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, a
precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of
uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a
deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove,
where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the
precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas,
hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and
galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns,
natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and
it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy
mansion in this rocky front with a spade.
As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento,
with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives,
lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; and
soon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and the
olives also. These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring,
when the masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fill
all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eye
reaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bare
precipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still to
the left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful
dip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida,
the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and rough
Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp and
clear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we get
under its rocky side.
Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of those
effects which are the despair of artists. I had been told that
twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color
vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner
bay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color,
As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of
fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of
water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced,
glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what
seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The
colors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter's
palette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks of
eastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the stars
came out, crowding the sky with silver points.
Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspired
either by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulled
with new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs of
this coast. A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended
in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt of
excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was more
splash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there was
no harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was not
remarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is
very much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying to myself
that Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistake
noise for music.
The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let us
hope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whose
chapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silver
image of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marble
altar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five
times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different
times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things,
and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back
again,--an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is
worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about with
votive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, and
with coarse lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils of
ships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of the
deep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of the
image are worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the back
of the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose the
bones of the holy man.
The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is good
mousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content with
one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and
perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern,
circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final
resort of the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from entering
the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under the
Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or caves
of Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broad
interior flights of steps, which lead through galleries and
corridors, and high, vaulted passages, whence extend apartments and
caves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings,
where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats and
protecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn passage, as
if there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormous
fragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from
above.
Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where one
could sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay and
its shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lie
opposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gay
retinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us say
in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure or
warlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been trodden
for ages, by nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of
more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and
left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the
corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings,
quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place,
broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had
found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of
the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving
me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here
when it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past,
I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through the
narrow orange lanes.
ON TOP OF THE HOUSE
The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it
three feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very
much like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my
chair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.
I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the
heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one
gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great
elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out,
without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his
aerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive
nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in
parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless
composition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I
could distinguish the very house in Naples--that of Manso, Marquis of
Villa,--where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was
entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if
he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the
theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he
would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the
garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not
composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or it
would have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than it
is. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my
writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an
elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet
found.
I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should
look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a
white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and
the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person
delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs
of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the
plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of
the heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit
with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun,
which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I
remember such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting
sweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting
redder and softer day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit
of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it
is ripe, that the test is extending to other things. I saw a
gentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the same
manner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.
It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is
to-day. It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I
like the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an
illimitable opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am
nearer to it. There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which
I do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there
flecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and the
fishing-boats that have put out from the marina float in the most
dreamy manner. I fear that the fishermen who have made a show of
industry, and got away from their wives, who are busily weaving nets
on shore, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, and making
a day of it. And, as I look at them, I find myself debating which I
would rather be, a fisherman there in the boat, rocked by the swell,
and warmed by the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden on
the summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also soaked in
the sun. There is one other person, now that I think of it, who may
be having a good time to-day, though I do not know that I envy him.
His business is a new one to me, and is an occupation that one would
not care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it: it is being
carried about in a basket. As I went up the new Massa road the other
day, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman, with a large
shallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large man,
though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman asked
alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a man
in a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, she
had put him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of
the passing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature
thought that, if he got a new injury in this way, his value in the
beggar market would be increased. I do not mean to do this exemplary
wife any injustice; and I only suggest the idea in this land, where
every beggar who is born with a deformity has something to thank the
Virgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on your head in a
basket has something to recommend it, and is an exhibition of faith
on the one hand, and of devotion on the other, that is seldom met
with. Its consideration is commended to my countrywomen at home. It
is, at least, a new commentary on the apostolic remark, that the man
is the head of the woman. It is, in some respects, a happy division
of labor in the walk of life: she furnishes the locomotive power, and
he the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks abroad;
which reminds me that the sun is getting hot on my back. The little
bunch of bells in the convent tower is jangling out a suggestion of
worship, or of the departure of the hours. It is time to eat an
orange.
Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knew
him to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of the
bay is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze;
and the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit
is still distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column of
white smoke, greater in quantity than on any previous day of our
sojourn; and the sun turns it to silver. Above a long line of
ordinary looking clouds, float great white masses, formed of the
sulphurous vapor. This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny day
has an odd appearance; but it is easy enough, if one has such a
laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white smoke! It is
piled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the crater,
straight into the blue sky,--a pillar of cloud by day. One might sit
here all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious spring
singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to take possession
of the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily and
Tunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning has
gone; and I have written nothing.
THE PRICE OF ORANGES
If ever a northern wanderer could be suddenly transported to look
down upon the Piano di Sorrento, he would not doubt that he saw the
Garden of the Hesperides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller:
their branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the almond-trees
in full flower, and with the silver sheen of the olive leaves, the
oranges are apples of gold in pictures of silver. As I walk in these
sunken roads, and between these high walls, the orange boughs
everywhere hang over; and through the open gates of villas I look
down alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by the walk, and
the fruit above,--gardens of enchantment, with never a dragon, that I
can see, to guard them.
All the highways and the byways, the streets and lanes, wherever I
go, from the sea to the tops of the hills, are strewn with
orange-peel; so that one, looking above and below, comes back from a
walk with a golden dazzle in his eyes,--a sense that yellow is the
prevailing color. Perhaps the kerchiefs of the dark-skinned girls
and women, which take that tone, help the impression. The
inhabitants are all orange-eaters. The high walls show that the
gardens are protected with great care; yet the fruit seems to be as
free as apples are in a remote New England town about cider-time.
I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to ascertain the
price of oranges; not for purposes of exportation, nor yet for the
personal importation that I daily practice, but in order to give an
American basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths I
meet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets of
the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, as
large as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carrying
them to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots,
where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women are
cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes to England for
preserves. I am told that these oranges are sold for a couple of
francs a hundred. That seems to me so dear that I am not tempted
into any speculation, but stroll back to the Tramontano, in the
gardens of which I find better terms.
The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento oranges
are usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of the
fruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it is
that is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say,
if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),--or
he might as well eat a lemon. The mercenary aspect of my query does
not enter in here. I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of
the branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comes
off easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top bough
with a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, I
call it a cheap one. I can usually tell whether they are good by
splitting them open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare their
oranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and see
the yellow meat in the white casket. After you have eaten a few from
one tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but there
is nothing certain about it,--one bough that gets the sun will be
better than another that does not, and one half of an orange will
fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.
The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along the
lanes, don't cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think the
girls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile: and, in
that, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you
from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor. I
have no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have been
seeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves. As I walked
towards the heights, the other morning, and passed an orchard, the
gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, to
reach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he had
been picking. As an experiment on the price, I offered him a
two-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name of
money,--when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as I
liked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new red
Phrygian cap; and I had n't the heart to take advantage of his
generosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest. One
ought never to abuse generosity.
Another experience was of a different sort, and illustrates the
Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of
prices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its
long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of
the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a
handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood
untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would
measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the
owner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of the
neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies,
listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and
sauntered towards me.
"How much for this?" I ask.
"One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holding
up one finger.
I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether too much, in
fact, preposterous.
The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in an
amiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it in
his hand, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one, franc.
I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which he only
receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain.
A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned one
for my admiration.
As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please myself with
size, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round; and I
see, by a glance, that all the occupations in that neighborhood,
including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade.
The interest of the circle visibly increases; and others take such a
part in the transaction that I begin to doubt if the first man is,
after all, the proprietor.
At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There is
a little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have both
for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down the
oranges, amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My
offer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. I
can see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children of
the sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determine
upon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napoleon of
oranges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largest
oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me intently, and,
for the first time, pull out a piece of money. It is a two-sous
piece. I offer it for the four oranges.
"No, no, no, no, signor! Ah, signor! ah, signor!" in a chorus from
the whole crowd.
I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got somewhere near the
value; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, such
indignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small a
cause. It cannot be thought of; it is mere ruin! I am, in turn, as
firm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and
tender the money.
"No, never, never! The signor cannot be in earnest."
Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner,
befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down,
and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away.
There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost to a clamor. I
have not proceeded far, when a skinny old woman runs after me, and
begs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.
The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me is
intently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for four
sous. I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. I
will give two sous for the original four, and not a centesimo more.
That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewed
conference; but at last the proprietor relents; and, with the look of
one who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrifice
himself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead,
the crowd disperses, and the street is as quiet as ever; when I walk
away, bearing my hard-won treasures.
A little while after, as I sat upon the outer wall of the terrace of
the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges were
taken from my pockets by Americans; so that I am prevented from
making any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians.
There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons at the village of
Massa, through which travelers are shown by a surly fellow, who keeps
watch of his trees, and has a bulldog lurking about for the unwary.
I hate to see a bulldog in a fruit orchard. I have eaten a good many
oranges there, and been astonished at the boughs of immense lemons
which bend the trees to the ground. I took occasion to measure one
of the lemons, called a citron-lemon, and found its circumference to
be twenty-one inches one way by fifteen inches the other,--about as
big as a railway conductor's lantern. These lemons are not so sour
as the fellow who shows them: he is a mercenary dog, and his prices
afford me no clew to the just value of oranges.
I like better to go to a little garden in the village of Meta, under
a sunny precipice of rocks overhung by the ruined convent of
Camaldoli. I turn up a narrow lane, and push open the wooden door in
the garden of a little villa. It is a pretty garden; and, besides
the orange and lemon-trees on the terrace, it has other fruit-trees,
and a scent of many flowers. My friend, the gardener, is sorting
oranges from one basket to another, on a green bank, and evidently
selling the fruit to some women, who are putting it into bags to
carry away.
When he sees me approach, there is always the same pantomime. I
propose to take some of the fruit he is sorting. With a knowing air,
and an appearance of great mystery, he raises his left hand, the palm
toward me, as one says hush. Having dispatched his business, he
takes an empty basket, and with another mysterious flourish, desiring
me to remain quiet, he goes to a storehouse in one corner of the
garden, and returns with a load of immense oranges, all soaked with
the sun, ripe and fragrant, and more tempting than lumps of gold. I
take one, and ask him if it is sweet. He shrugs his shoulders,
raises his hands, and, with a sidewise shake of the head, and a look
which says, How can you be so faithless? makes me ashamed of my
doubts.
I cut the thick skin, which easily falls apart and discloses the
luscious quarters, plump, juicy, and waiting to melt in the mouth. I
look for a moment at the rich pulp in its soft incasement, and then
try a delicious morsel. I nod. My gardener again shrugs his
shoulders, with a slight smile, as much as to say, It could not be
otherwise, and is evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. I
fill capacious pockets with the choicest; and, if I have friends with
me, they do the same. I give our silent but most expressive
entertainer half a franc, never more; and he always seems surprised
at the size of the largesse. We exhaust his basket, and he proposes
to get more.
When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily-laden trees, and
pick up the largest, where they lie thickly on the ground, liking to
hold them in my hand and feel the agreeable weight, even when I can
carry away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches me; and
I think perhaps knows, and is not stingy about it, that more valuable
to me than the oranges I eat or take away are those on the trees
among the shining leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from a
country of snow and ice, where the year has six hostile months, and
that I have not money enough to pay for the rich possession of the
eye, the picture of beauty, which I take with me.
FASCINATION
There are three places where I should like to live; naming them in
the inverse order of preference,--the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and
Heaven. The first two have something in common, the almost mystic
union of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion that
works an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet there
are decided contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine of
Sorrento is of very different quality from that of the Isle of Wight.
On the island there is a sense of home, which one misses on this
promontory, the fascination of which, no less strong, is that of a
southern beauty, whose charms conquer rather than win. I remember
with what feeling I one day unexpectedly read on a white slab, in the
little inclosure of Bonchurch, where the sea whispered as gently as
the rustle of the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. Could there
be any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit?
There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not have
anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was
his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up to
the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have led
him by a spell he could not break.
I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, and half
believe that it is independent of anything visible. There is said to
be a fatal enchantment about Capri. The influences of Sorrento are
not so dangerous, but are almost as marked. I do not wonder that the
Greeks peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and built
temples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the Romans built
upon the Grecian ruins; that the ecclesiastics in succeeding
centuries gained possession of all the heights, and built convents
and monasteries, and set out vineyards, and orchards of olives and
oranges, and took root as the creeping plants do, spreading
themselves abroad in the sunshine and charming air. The Italian of
to-day does not willingly emigrate, is tempted by no seduction of
better fortune in any foreign clime. And so in all ages the swarming
populations have clung to these shores, filling all the coasts and
every nook in these almost inaccessible hills with life. Perhaps the
delicious climate, which avoids all extremes, sufficiently accounts
for this; and yet I have sometimes thought there is a more subtle
reason why travelers from far lands are spellbound here, often
against will and judgment, week after week, month after month.
However this may be, it is certain that strangers who come here, and
remain long enough to get entangled in the meshes which some
influence, I know not what, throws around them, are in danger of
never departing. I know there are scores of travelers, who whisk
down from Naples, guidebook in hand, goaded by the fell purpose of
seeing every place in Europe, ascend some height, buy a load of the
beautiful inlaid woodwork, perhaps row over to Capri and stay five
minutes in the azure grotto, and then whisk away again, untouched by
the glamour of the place. Enough that they write "delightful spot"
in their diaries, and hurry off to new scenes, and more noisy life.
But the visitor who yields himself to the place will soon find his
power of will departing. Some satirical people say, that, as one
grows strong in body here, he becomes weak in mind. The theory I do
not accept: one simply folds his sails, unships his rudder, and waits
the will of Providence, or the arrival of some compelling fate. The
longer one remains, the more difficult it is to go. We have a
fashion--indeed, I may call it a habit--of deciding to go, and of
never going. It is a subject of infinite jest among the habitues of
the villa, who meet at table, and who are always bidding each other
good-by. We often go so far as to write to Naples at night, and
bespeak rooms in the hotels; but we always countermand the order
before we sit down to breakfast. The good-natured mistress of
affairs, the head of the bureau of domestic relations, is at her
wits' end, with guests who always promise to go and never depart.
There are here a gentleman and his wife, English people of decision
enough, I presume, in Cornwall, who packed their luggage before
Christmas to depart, but who have not gone towards the end of
February,--who daily talk of going, and little by little unpack their
wardrobe, as their determination oozes out. It is easy enough to
decide at night to go next day; but in the morning, when the soft
sunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk in the
garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we do
not go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursions
which we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulge
in. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a day
on Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day,
boatload after boatload sails away from the little marina at the base
of the cliff, which we follow with eves of desire, but--to-morrow
will do as well. We are powerless to break the enchantment.
I confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influence working
this sea-change in us, which the guidebooks, in their enumeration of
the delights of the region, do not touch, and which maybe reaches
back beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the story
of Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intended
to illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, and
deaf to the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with the
world. But a lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me that
whoever climbs the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of
the Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to depart
from these coasts. I have gazed at those islands more than once, as
they lie there in the Bay of Salerno; and it has always happened that
they have been in a half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not so
draped that I could not see they were only three irregular rocks, not
far from shore, one of them with some ruins on it. There are neither
sirens there now, nor any other creatures; but I should be sorry to
think I should never see them again. When I look down on them, I can
also turn and behold on the other side, across the Bay of Naples, the
Posilipo, where one of the enchanters who threw magic over them is
said to lie in his high tomb at the opening of the grotto. Whether
he does sleep in his urn in that exact spot is of no moment. Modern
life has disillusioned this region to a great extent; but the romance
that the old poets have woven about these bays and rocky promontories
comes very easily back upon one who submits himself long to the
eternal influences of sky and sea which made them sing. It is all
one,--to be a Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the Middle
Ages toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted here out
of the active currents of life, and cannot make up his mind to
depart.
MONKISH PERCHES
On heights at either end of the Piano di Sorrento, and commanding it,
stood two religious houses: the Convent of the Carnaldoli to the
northeast, on the crest of the hill above Meta; the Carthusian
Monastery of the Deserto, to the southwest, three miles above
Sorrento. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have for the
taste of the monks of the Middle Ages. They invariably secured the
best places for themselves. They seized all the strategic points;
they appropriated all the commanding heights; they knew where the sun
would best strike the grapevines; they perched themselves wherever
there was a royal view. When I see how unerringly they did select
and occupy the eligible places, I think they were moved by a sort of
inspiration. In those days, when the Church took the first choice in
everything, the temptation to a Christian life must have been strong.
The monastery at the Deserto was suppressed by the French of the
first republic, and has long been in a ruinous condition. Its
buildings crown the apex of the highest elevation in this part of the
promontory: from its roof the fathers paternally looked down upon the
churches and chapels and nunneries which thickly studded all this
region; so that I fancy the air must have been full of the sound of
bells, and of incense perpetually ascending. They looked also upon
St. Agata under the hill, with a church bigger than itself; upon more
distinct Massa, with its chapels and cathedral and overlooking feudal
tower; upon Torca, the Greek Theorica, with its Temple of Apollo, the
scene yet of an annual religious festival, to which the peasants of
Sorrento go as their ancestors did to the shrine of the heathen god;
upon olive and orange orchards, and winding paths and wayside shrines
innumerable. A sweet and peaceful scene in the foreground, it must
have been, and a whole horizon of enchantment beyond the sunny
peninsula over which it lorded: the Mediterranean, with poetic Capri,
and Ischia, and all the classic shore from Cape Misenum, Baiae, and
Naples, round to Vesuvius; all the sparkling Bay of Naples; and on
the other side the Bay of Salerno, covered with the fleets of the
commerce of Amalfi, then a republican city of fifty thousand people;
and Grecian Paestum on the marshy shore, even then a ruin, its
deserted porches and columns monuments of an architecture never
equaled elsewhere in Italy. Upon this charming perch, the old
Carthusian monks took the summer breezes and the winter sun, pruned
their olives, and trimmed their grapevines, and said prayers for the
poor sinners toiling in the valleys below.
The monastery is a desolate old shed now. We left our donkeys to eat
thistles in front, while we climbed up some dilapidated steps, and
entered the crumbling hall. The present occupants are half a dozen
monks, and fine fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twenty
lads. We were invited to witness their noonday prayers. The
flat-roofed rear buildings extend round an oblong, quadrangular
space, which is a rich garden, watered from capacious tanks, and
coaxed into easy fertility by the impregnating sun. Upon these roofs
the brothers were wont to walk, and here they sat at peaceful
evening. Here, too, we strolled; and here I could not resist the
temptation to lie an unheeded hour or two, soaking in the benignant
February sun, above every human concern and care, looking upon a land
and sea steeped in romance. The sky was blue above; but in the south
horizon, in the direction of Tunis, were the prismatic colors. Why
not be a monk, and lie in the sun?
One of the handsome brothers invited us into the refectory, a place
as bare and cheerless as the feeding-room of a reform school, and set
before us bread and cheese, and red wine, made by the monks. I
notice that the monks do not water their wine so much as the osteria
keepers do; which speaks equally well for their religion and their
taste. The floor of the room was brick, the table plain boards, and
the seats were benches; not much luxury. The monk who served us was
an accomplished man, traveled, and master of several languages. He
spoke English a little. He had been several years in America, and
was much interested when we told him our nationality.
"Does the signor live near Mexico?"
"Not in dangerous proximity," we replied; but we did not forfeit his
good opinion by saying that we visited it but seldom.
Well, he had seen all quarters of the globe: he had been for years a
traveler, but he had come back here with a stronger love for it than
ever; it was to him the most delightful spot on earth, he said. And
we could not tell him where its equal is. If I had nothing else to
do, I think I should cast in my lot with him,--at least for a week.
But the monks never got into a cozier nook than the Convent of the
Camaldoli. That also is suppressed: its gardens, avenues, colonnaded
walks, terraces, buildings, half in ruins. It is the level surface
of a hill, sheltered on the east by higher peaks, and on the north by
the more distant range of Great St. Angelo, across the valley, and is
one of the most extraordinarily fertile plots of ground I ever saw.
The rich ground responds generously to the sun. I should like to
have seen the abbot who grew on this fat spot. The workmen were busy
in the garden, spading and pruning.
A group of wild, half-naked children came about us begging, as we sat
upon the walls of the terrace,--the terrace which overhangs the busy
plain below, and which commands the entire, varied, nooky promontory,
and the two bays. And these children, insensible to beauty, want
centesimi!
In the rear of the church are some splendid specimens of the
umbrella-like Italian pine. Here we found, also, a pretty little
ruin,--it might be Greek and--it might be Druid for anything that
appeared, ivy-clad, and suggesting a religion older than that of the
convent. To the east we look into a fertile, terraced ravine; and
beyond to a precipitous brown mountain, which shows a sharp outline
against the sky; halfway up are nests of towns, white houses,
churches, and above, creeping along the slope, the thread of an
ancient road, with stone arches at intervals, as old as Caesar.
We descend, skirting for some distance the monastery walls, over
which patches of ivy hang like green shawls. There are flowers in
profusion, scented violets, daisies, dandelions, and crocuses, large
and of the richest variety, with orange pistils, and stamens purple
and violet, the back of every alternate leaf exquisitely penciled.
We descend into a continuous settlement, past shrines, past brown,
sturdy men and handsome girls working in the vineyards; we descend
--but words express nothing--into a wonderful ravine, a sort of refined
Swiss scene,--high, bare steps of rock butting over a chasm, ruins,
old walls, vines, flowers. The very spirit of peace is here, and it
is not disturbed by the sweet sound of bells echoed in the passes.
On narrow ledges of precipices, aloft in the air where it would seem
that a bird could scarcely light, we distinguish the forms of men and
women; and their voices come down to us. They are peasants cutting
grass, every spire of which is too precious to waste.
We descend, and pass by a house on a knoll, and a terrace of olives
extending along the road in front. Half a dozen children come to the
road to look at us as we approach, and then scamper back to the house
in fear, tumbling over each other and shouting, the eldest girl
making good her escape with the baby. My companion swings his hat,
and cries, "Hullo, baby!" And when we have passed the gate, and are
under the wall, the whole ragged, brown-skinned troop scurry out upon
the terrace, and run along, calling after us, in perfect English, as
long as we keep in sight, "Hullo, baby!" "Hullo, baby!" The next
traveler who goes that way will no doubt be hailed by the
quick-witted natives with this salutation; and, if he is of a
philological turn, he will probably benefit his mind by running the
phrase back to its ultimate Greek roots.
A DRY TIME
For three years, once upon a time, it did not rain in Sorrento. Not
a drop out of the clouds for three years, an Italian lady here, born
in Ireland, assures me. If there was an occasional shower on the
Piano during all that drought, I have the confidence in her to think
that she would not spoil the story by noticing it.
The conformation of the hills encircling the plain would be likely to
lead any shower astray, and discharge it into the sea, with whatever
good intentions it may have started down the promontory for Sorrento.
I can see how these sharp hills would tear the clouds asunder, and
let out all their water, while the people in the plain below watched
them with longing eyes. But it can rain in Sorrento. Occasionally
the northeast wind comes down with whirling, howling fury, as if it
would scoop villages and orchards out of the little nook; and the
rain, riding on the whirlwind, pours in drenching floods. At such
times I hear the beat of the waves at the foot of the rock, and feel
like a prisoner on an island. Eden would not be Eden in a rainstorm.
The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the Bourbons from
Naples, and many think on account of it. There is this to be said in
favor of the Bourbons: that a dry time never had occurred while they
reigned,--a statement in which all good Catholics in Sorrento will
concur. As the drought went on, almost all the wells in the place
dried up, except that of the Tramontano and the one in the suppressed
convent of the Sacred Heart,--I think that is its name.
It is a rambling pile of old buildings, in the center of the town,
with a courtyard in the middle, and in it a deep well, boring down I
know not how far into the rock, and always full of cold sweet water.
The nuns have all gone now; and I look in vain up at the narrow slits
in the masonry, which served them for windows, for the glance of a
worldly or a pious eye. The poor people of Sorrento, when the public
wells and fountains had gone dry, used to come and draw at the
Tramontano; but they were not allowed to go to the well of the
convent, the gates were closed. Why the government shut them I
cannot see: perhaps it knew nothing of it, and some stupid official
took the pompous responsibility. The people grumbled, and cursed the
government; and, in their simplicity, probably never took any steps
to revoke the prohibitory law. No doubt, as the government had
caused the drought, it was all of a piece, the good rustics thought.
For the government did indirectly occasion the dry spell. I have the
information from the Italian lady of whom I have spoken. Among the
first steps of the new government of Italy was the suppression of the
useless convents and nunneries. This one at Sorrento early came
under the ban. It always seemed to me almost a pity to rout out this
asylum of praying and charitable women, whose occupation was the
encouragement of beggary and idleness in others, but whose prayers
were constant, and whose charities to the sick of the little city
were many. If they never were of much good to the community, it was
a pleasure to have such a sweet little hive in the center of it; and
I doubt not that the simple people felt a genuine satisfaction, as
they walked around the high walls, in believing that pure prayers
within were put up for them night and day; and especially when they
waked at night, and heard the bell of the convent, and knew that at
that moment some faithful soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayers
for them and all the world besides; and they slept the sounder for it
thereafter. I confess that, if one is helped by vicarious prayer, I
would rather trust a convent of devoted women (though many of them
are ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and none are fair to see)
to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse monks which I have
seen.
But the order came down from Naples to pack off all the nuns of the
Sacred Heart on a day named, to close up the gates of the nunnery,
and hang a flaming sword outside. The nuns were to be pulled up by
the roots, so to say, on the day specified, and without postponement,
and to be transferred to a house prepared for them at Massa, a few
miles down the promontory, and several hundred feet nearer heaven.
Sorrento was really in mourning: it went about in grief. It seemed
as if something sacrilegious were about to be done. It was the
intention of the whole town to show its sense of it in some way.
The day of removal came, and it rained! It poured: the water came
down in sheets, in torrents, in deluges; it came down with the
wildest tempest of many a year. I think, from accurate reports of
those who witnessed it, that the beginning of the great Deluge was
only a moisture compared to this. To turn the poor women out of
doors such a day as this was unchristian, barbarous, impossible.
Everybody who had a shelter was shivering indoors. But the officials
were inexorable. In the order for removal, nothing was said about
postponement on account of weather; and go the nuns must.
And go they did; the whole town shuddering at the impiety of it, but
kept from any demonstration by the tempest. Carriages went round to
the convent; and the women were loaded into them, packed into them,
carried and put in, if they were too infirm to go themselves. They
were driven away, cross and wet and bedraggled. They found their
dwelling on the hill not half prepared for them, leaking and cold and
cheerless. They experienced very rough treatment, if I can credit my
informant, who says she hates the government, and would not even look
out of her lattice that day to see the carriages drive past.
And when the Lady Superior was driven away from the gate, she said to
the officials, and the few faithful attendants, prophesying in the
midst of the rain that poured about her, "The day will come shortly,
when you will want rain, and shall not have it; and you will pray for
my return."
And it did not rain, from that day for three years.
And the simple people thought of the good Superior, whose departure
had been in such a deluge, and who had taken away with her all the
moisture of the land; and they did pray for her return, and believed
that the gates of heaven would be again opened if only the nunnery
were repeopled. But the government could not see the connection
between convents and the theory of storms, and the remnant of pious
women was permitted to remain in their lodgings at Massa. Perhaps
the government thought they could, if they bore no malice, pray as
effectually for rain there as anywhere.
I do not know, said my informant, that the curse of the Lady Superior
had anything to do with the drought, but many think it had; and those
are the facts.
CHILDREN OF THE SUN
The common people of this region are nothing but children; and
ragged, dirty, and poor as they are, apparently as happy, to speak
idiomatically, as the day is long. It takes very little to please
them; and their easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rare
that one gets a surly return to a salutation; and, if one shows the
least good-nature, his greeting is met with the most jolly return.
The boatman hauling in his net sings; the brown girl, whom we meet
descending a steep path in the hills, with an enormous bag or basket
of oranges on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands as
erect as a pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is a
merry twinkle in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, but
only puts in a "beg" at a venture because it is the fashion; the
workmen clipping the olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about
the foreigner in the street, vocalize their petitions for un po' di
moneta in a tuneful manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry than
with any expectation of gain. When I see how hard the peasants
labor, what scraps and vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what
wretched, dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they
are happy; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable
climate that do the business for them. They have few artificial
wants, and no uneasy expectation--bred by the reading of books and
newspapers--that anything is going to happen in the world, or that
any change is possible. Their fruit-trees yield abundantly year
after year; their little patches of rich earth, on the built-up
terraces and in the crevices of the rocks, produce fourfold. The sun
does it all.
Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is
sure to be an adventure. Only yesterday, we were coming down a
branch of the great gorge which splits the plain in two. On one side
the path is a high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On the
other, a stone parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, an
orange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men and
boys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundred
feet to the platform above with a windlass. As we came along, a
handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large block
of stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in the
rear; and she stopped to look at us. We stopped, and looked at her.
This attracted the attention of the men and boys in the quarry below,
who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money. We laughed,
and responded in English. The windlass ceased to turn. The workmen
on the height joined in the conversation. A grizzly beggar hobbled
up, and held out his greasy cap. We nonplussed him by extending our
hats, and beseeching him for just a little something. Some passers
on the road paused, and looked on, amused at the transaction. A boy
appeared on the high wall, and began to beg. I threatened to shoot
him with my walkingstick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall in
terror The workmen shouted; and this started up a couple of yellow
dogs, which came to the edge of the wall and barked violently. The
girl, alone calm in the confusion, stood stock still under her
enormous load looking at us. We swung out hats, and hurrahed. The
crowd replied from above, below, and around us, shouting, laughing,
singing, until the whole little valley was vocal with a gale of
merriment, and all about nothing. The beggar whined; the spectators
around us laughed; and the whole population was aroused into a jolly
mood. Fancy such a merry hullaballoo in America. For ten minutes,
while the funny row was going on, the girl never moved, having
forgotten to go a few steps and deposit her load; and when we
disappeared round a bend of the path, she was still watching us,
smiling and statuesque.
As we descend, we come upon a group of little children seated about a
doorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting oranges
into little bits, and playing "party," as children do on the other
side of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the
skinny hand of an old woman is stretched out of a window just above
our heads, the wrinkled palm itching for money. The mother comes
forward out of the house, evidently pleased with our notice of the
children, and shows us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good
terms with the whole family. The woman sees that there is nothing
impertinent in our cursory inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, I
fancy, knows that we are genial travelers, with human sympathies. So
the people universally are not quick to suspect any imposition, and
meet frankness with frankness, and good-nature with good-nature, in a
simple-hearted, primeval manner. If they stare at us from doorway
and balcony, or come and stand near us when we sit reading or writing
by the shore, it is only a childlike curiosity, and they are quite
unconscious of any breach of good manners. In fact, I think
travelers have not much to say in the matter of staring. I only pray
that we Americans abroad may remember that we are in the presence of
older races, and conduct ourselves with becoming modesty, remembering
always that we were not born in Britain.
Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even the
funerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked in
at the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and been
struck with the general good feeling of the occasion. The real
mourners I could not always distinguish; but the seats would be
filled with a motley gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemed
to enjoy the show and the ceremony. On one occasion, it was the
obsequies of an officer in the army. Guarding the gilded casket,
which stood upon a raised platform before the altar, were four
soldiers in uniform. Mass was being said and sung; and a priest was
playing the organ. The church was light and cheerful, and pervaded.
by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars, and dirty children
and dogs, went and came wherever they chose--about the unoccupied
spaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are numerous in
proportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white cotton,--a
sort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a hood of
the same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut for the
eyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the front;
others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing in the
sacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogether
conducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there was
anything they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expense.
They laughed and talked with each other in excellent spirits; and one
varlet near the coffin, who had slipped off his mask, winked at me
repeatedly, as if to inform me that it was not his funeral. A
masquerade might have been more gloomy and depressing.
SAINT ANTONINO
The most serviceable saint whom I know is St. Antonino. He is the
patron saint of the good town of Sorrento; he is the good genius of
all sailors and fishermen; and he has a humbler office,--that of
protector of the pigs. On his day the pigs are brought into the
public square to be blessed; and this is one reason why the pork of
Sorrento is reputed so sweet and wholesome. The saint is the friend,
and, so to say, companion of the common people. They seem to be all
fond of him, and there is little of fear in their confiding relation.
His humble origin and plebeian appearance have something to do with
his popularity, no doubt. There is nothing awe-inspiring in the
brown stone figure, battered and cracked, that stands at one corner
of the bridge, over the chasm at the entrance of the city. He holds
a crosier in one hand, and raises the other, with fingers uplifted,
in act of benediction. If his face is an indication of his
character, he had in him a mixture of robust good-nature with a touch
of vulgarity, and could rough it in a jolly manner with fishermen and
peasants. He may have appeared to better advantage when he stood on
top of the massive old city gate, which the present government, with
the impulse of a vandal, took down a few years ago. The demolition
had to be accomplished in the night, under a guard of soldiers, so
indignant were the populace. At that time the homely saint was
deposed; and he wears now, I think, a snubbed and cast-aside aspect.
Perhaps he is dearer to the people than ever; and I confess that I
like him much better than many grander saints, in stone, I have seen
in more conspicuous places. If ever I am in rough water and foul
weather, I hope he will not take amiss anything I have here written
about him.
Sunday, and it happened to be St. Valentine's also, was the great
fete-day of St. Antonino. Early in the morning there was a great
clanging of bells; and the ceremony of the blessing of the pigs took
place,--I heard, but I was not abroad early enough to see it,--a
laziness for which I fancy I need not apologize, as the Catholic is
known to be an earlier religion than the Protestant. When I did go
out, the streets were thronged with people, the countryfolk having
come in for miles around. The church of the patron saint was the
great center of attraction. The blank walls of the little square in
front, and of the narrow streets near, were hung with cheap and
highly-colored lithographs of sacred subjects, for sale; tables and
booths were set up in every available space for the traffic in
pre-Raphaelite gingerbread, molasses candy, strings of dried nuts,
pinecone and pumpkin seeds, scarfs, boots and shoes, and all sorts of
trumpery. One dealer had preempted a large space on the pavement,
where he had spread out an assortment of bits of old iron, nails,
pieces of steel traps, and various fragments which might be useful to
the peasants. The press was so great, that it was difficult to get
through it; but the crowd was a picturesque one, and in the highest
good humor. The occasion was a sort of Fourth of July, but without
its worry and powder and flowing bars.
The spectacle of the day was the procession bearing the silver image
of the saint through the streets. I think there could never be
anything finer or more impressive; at least, I like these little
fussy provincial displays,--these tag-rags and ends of grandeur, in
which all the populace devoutly believe, and at which they are lost
in wonder,--better than those imposing ceremonies at the capital, in
which nobody believes. There was first a band of musicians, walking
in more or less disorder, but blowing away with great zeal, so that
they could be heard amid the clangor of bells the peals of which
reverberate so deafeningly between the high houses of these narrow
streets. Then follow boys in white, and citizens in black and white
robes, carrying huge silken banners, triangular like sea-pennants,
and splendid silver crucifixes which flash in the sun. Then come
ecclesiastics, walking with stately step, and chanting in loud and
pleasant unison. These are followed by nobles, among whom I
recognize, with a certain satisfaction, two descendants of Tasso,
whose glowing and bigoted soul may rejoice in the devotion of his
posterity, who help to bear today the gilded platform upon which is
the solid silver image of the saint. The good old bishop walks
humbly in the rear, in full canonical rig, with crosier and miter,
his rich robes upborne by priestly attendants, his splendid footman
at a respectful distance, and his roomy carriage not far behind.
The procession is well spread out and long; all its members carry
lighted tapers, a good many of which are not lighted, having gone out
in the wind. As I squeeze into a shallow doorway to let the cortege
pass, I am sorry to say that several of the young fellows in white
gowns tip me the wink, and even smile in a knowing fashion, as if it
were a mere lark, after all, and that the saint must know it. But
not so thinks the paternal bishop, who waves a blessing, which I
catch in the flash of the enormous emerald on his right hand. The
procession ends, where it started, in the patron's church; and there
his image is set up under a gorgeous canopy of crimson and gold, to
hear high mass, and some of the choicest solos, choruses, and
bravuras from the operas.
In the public square I find a gaping and wondering crowd of rustics
collected about one of the mountebanks whose trade is not peculiar to
any country. This one might be a clock-peddler from Connecticut. He
is mounted in a one-seat vettura, and his horse is quietly eating
his dinner out of a bag tied to his nose. There is nothing unusual
in the fellow's dress; he wears a shiny silk hat, and has one of
those grave faces which would be merry if their owner were not
conscious of serious business on hand. On the driver's perch before
him are arranged his attractions,--a box of notions, a grinning
skull, with full teeth and jaws that work on hinges, some vials of
red liquid, and a closed jar containing a most disagreeable
anatomical preparation. This latter he holds up and displays,
turning it about occasionally in an admiring manner. He is
discoursing, all the time, in the most voluble Italian. He has an
ointment, wonderfully efficacious for rheumatism and every sort of
bruise: he pulls up his sleeve, and anoints his arm with it, binding
it up with a strip of paper; for the simplest operation must be
explained to these grown children. He also pulls teeth, with an ease
and expedition hitherto unknown, and is in no want of patients among
this open-mouthed crowd. One sufferer after another climbs up into
the wagon, and goes through the operation in the public gaze. A
stolid, good-natured hind mounts the seat. The dentist examines his
mouth, and finds the offending tooth. He then turns to the crowd and
explains the case. He takes a little instrument that is neither
forceps nor turnkey, stands upon the seat, seizes the man's nose, and
jerks his head round between his knees, pulling his mouth open (there
is nothing that opens the mouth quicker than a sharp upward jerk of
the nose) with a rude jollity that sets the spectators in a roar.
Down he goes into the cavern, and digs away for a quarter of a
minute, the man the while as immovable as a stone image, when he
holds up the bloody tooth. The patient still persists in sitting
with his mouth stretched open to its widest limit, waiting for the
operation to begin, and will only close the orifice when he is well
shaken and shown the tooth. The dentist gives him some yellow liquid
to hold in his mouth, which the man insists on swallowing, wets a
handkerchief and washes his face, roughly rubbing his nose the wrong
way, and lets him go. Every step of the process is eagerly watched
by the delighted spectators.
He is succeeded by a woman, who is put through the same heroic
treatment, and exhibits like fortitude. And so they come; and the
dentist after every operation waves the extracted trophy high in air,
and jubilates as if he had won another victory, pointing to the stone
statue yonder, and reminding them that this is the glorious day of
St. Antonino. But this is not all that this man of science does. He
has the genuine elixir d'amour, love-philters and powders which never
fail in their effects. I see the bashful girls and the sheepish
swains come slyly up to the side of the wagon, and exchange their
hard-earned francs for the hopeful preparation. O my brown beauty,
with those soft eyes and cheeks of smothered fire, you have no need
of that red philter! What a simple, childlike folk! The shrewd
fellow in the wagon is one of a race as old as Thebes and as new as
Porkopolis; his brazen face is older than the invention of bronze,
but I think he never had to do with a more credulous crowd than this.
The very cunning in the face of the peasants is that of the fox; it
is a sort of instinct, and not an intelligent suspicion.
This is Sunday in Sorrento, under the blue sky. These peasants, who
are fooled by the mountebank and attracted by the piles of adamantine
gingerbread, do not forget to crowd the church of the saint at
vespers, and kneel there in humble faith, while the choir sings the
Agnus Dei, and the priests drone the service. Are they so different,
then, from other people? They have an idea on Capri that England is
such another island, only not so pleasant; that all Englishmen are
rich and constantly travel to escape the dreariness at home; and
that, if they are not absolutely mad, they are all a little queer.
It was a fancy prevalent in Hamlet's day. We had the English service
in the Villa Nardi in the evening. There are some Englishmen staying
here, of the class one finds in all the sunny spots of Europe, ennuye
and growling, in search of some elixir that shall bring back youth
and enjoyment. They seem divided in mind between the attractions of
the equable climate of this region and the fear of the gout which
lurks in the unfermented wine. One cannot be too grateful to the
sturdy islanders for carrying their prayers, like their drumbeat, all
round the globe; and I was much edified that night, as the reading
went on, by a row of rather battered men of the world, who stood in
line on one side of the room, and took their prayers with a certain
British fortitude, as if they were conscious of performing a
constitutional duty, and helping by the act to uphold the majesty of
English institutions.
PUNTA DELLA CAMPANELLA
There is always a mild excitement about mounting donkeys in the
morning here for an excursion among the hills. The warm sun pouring
into the garden, the smell of oranges, the stimulating air, the
general openness and freshness, promise a day of enjoyment. There is
always a doubt as to who will go; generally a donkey wanting;
somebody wishes to join the party at the last moment; there is no end
of running up and downstairs, calling from balconies and terraces;
some never ready, and some waiting below in the sun; the whole house
in a tumult, drivers in a worry, and the sleepy animals now and then
joining in the clatter with a vocal performance that is neither a
trumpet-call nor a steam-whistle, but an indescribable noise, that
begins in agony and abruptly breaks down in despair. It is difficult
to get the train in motion. The lady who ordered Succarina has got a
strange donkey, and Macaroni has on the wrong saddle. Succarina is a
favorite, the kindest, easiest, and surest-footed of beasts,--a
diminutive animal, not bigger than a Friesland sheep; old, in fact
grizzly with years, and not unlike the aged, wizened little women who
are so common here: for beauty in this region dries up; and these
handsome Sorrento girls, if they live, and almost everybody does
live, have the prospect, in their old age, of becoming mummies, with
parchment skins. I have heard of climates that preserve female
beauty; this embalms it, only the beauty escapes in the process. As
I was saying, Succarina is little, old, and grizzly; but her head is
large, and one might be contented to be as wise as she looks.
The party is at length mounted, and clatters away through the narrow
streets. Donkey-riding is very good for people who think they cannot
walk. It looks very much like riding, to a spectator; and it
deceives the person undertaking it into an amount of exercise equal
to walking. I have a great admiration for the donkey character.
There never was such patience under wrong treatment, such return of
devotion for injury. Their obstinacy, which is so much talked about,
is only an exercise of the right of private judgment, and an
intelligent exercise of it, no doubt, if we could take the donkey
point of view, as so many of us are accused of doing in other things.
I am certain of one thing: in any large excursion party there will be
more obstinate people than obstinate donkeys; and yet the poor brutes
get all the thwacks and thumps. We are bound to-day for the Punta
della Campanella, the extreme point of the promontory, and ten miles
away. The path lies up the steps from the new Massa carriage-road,
now on the backbone of the ridge, and now in the recesses of the
broken country. What an animated picture is the donkeycade, as it
mounts the steeps, winding along the zigzags! Hear the little
bridlebells jingling, the drivers groaning their "a-e-ugh, a-e-ugh,"
the riders making a merry din of laughter, and firing off a fusillade
of ejaculations of delight and wonder.
The road is between high walls; round the sweep of curved terraces
which rise above and below us, bearing the glistening olive; through
glens and gullies; over and under arches, vine-grown,--how little we
make use of the arch at home!--round sunny dells where orange
orchards gleam; past shrines, little chapels perched on rocks, rude
villas commanding most extensive sweeps of sea and shore. The almond
trees are in full bloom, every twig a thickly-set spike of the pink
and white blossoms; daisies and dandelions are out; the purple
crocuses sprinkle the ground, the petals exquisitely varied on the
reverse side, and the stamens of bright salmon color; the large
double anemones have come forth, certain that it is spring; on the
higher crags by the wayside the Mediterranean heather has shaken out
its delicate flowers, which fill the air with a mild fragrance; while
blue violets, sweet of scent like the English, make our path a
perfumed one. And this is winter.
We have made a late start, owing to the fact that everybody is
captain of the expedition, and to the Sorrento infirmity that no one
is able to make up his mind about anything. It is one o'clock when
we reach a high transverse ridge, and find the headlands of the
peninsula rising before us, grim hills of limestone, one of them with
the ruins of a convent on top, and no road apparent thither, and
Capri ahead of us in the sea, the only bit of land that catches any
light; for as we have journeyed the sky has thickened, the clouds of
the sirocco have come up from the south; there has been first a mist,
and then a fine rain; the ruins on the peak of Santa Costanza are now
hid in mist. We halt for consultation. Shall we go on and brave a
wetting, or ignominiously retreat? There are many opinions, but few
decided ones. The drivers declare that it will be a bad time. One
gentleman, with an air of decision, suggests that it is best to go
on, or go back, if we do not stand here and wait. The deaf lady,
from near Dublin, being appealed to, says that, perhaps, if it is
more prudent, we had better go back if it is going to rain. It does
rain. Waterproofs are put on, umbrellas spread, backs turned to the
wind; and we look like a group of explorers under adverse
circumstances, "silent on a peak in Darien," the donkeys especially
downcast and dejected. Finally, as is usual in life, a, compromise
prevails. We decide to continue for half an hour longer and see what
the weather is. No sooner have we set forward over the brow of a
hill than it grows lighter on the sea horizon in the southwest, the
ruins on the peak become visible, Capri is in full sunlight. The
clouds lift more and more, and still hanging overhead, but with no
more rain, are like curtains gradually drawn up, opening to us a
glorious vista of sunshine and promise, an illumined, sparkling,
illimitable sea, and a bright foreground of slopes and picturesque
rocks. Before the half hour is up, there is not one of the party who
does not claim to have been the person who insisted upon going
forward.
We halt for a moment to look at Capri, that enormous, irregular rock,
raising its huge back out of the sea, its back broken in the middle,
with the little village for a saddle. On the farther summit, above
Anacapri, a precipice of two thousand feet sheer down to the water on
the other side, hangs a light cloud. The east elevation, whence the
playful Tiberius used to amuse his green old age by casting his
prisoners eight hundred feet down into the sea, has the strong
sunlight on it; and below, the row of tooth-like rocks, which are the
extreme eastern point, shine in a warm glow. We descend through a
village, twisting about in its crooked streets. The inhabitants, who
do not see strangers every day, make free to stare at and comment on
us, and even laugh at something that seems very comical in our
appearance; which shows how ridiculous are the costumes of Paris and
New York in some places. Stalwart girls, with only an apology for
clothes, with bare legs, brown faces, and beautiful eyes, stop in
their spinning, holding the distaff suspended, while they examine us
at leisure. At our left, as we turn from the church and its sunny
piazza, where old women sit and gabble, down the ravine, is a snug
village under the mountain by the shore, with a great square medieval
tower. On the right, upon rocky points, are remains of round towers,
and temples perhaps.
We sweep away to the left round the base of the hill, over a
difficult and stony path. Soon the last dilapidated villa is passed,
the last terrace and olive-tree are left behind; and we emerge upon a
wild, rocky slope, barren of vegetation, except little tufts of grass
and a sort of lentil; a wide sweep of limestone strata set on edge,
and crumbling in the beat of centuries, rising to a considerable
height on the left. Our path descends toward the sea, still creeping
round the end of the promontory. Scattered here and there over the
rocks, like conies, are peasants, tending a few lean cattle, and
digging grasses from the crevices. The women and children are wild
in attire and manner, and set up a clamor of begging as we pass. A
group of old hags begin beating a poor child as we approach, to
excite our compassion for the abused little object, and draw out
centimes.
Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly down the rugged
path, I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sun
on the rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a man
below me sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and moves away,
a solitary figure. I say solitary; and so it is in effect, although
he is leading a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs back
to bark at me. Is this the brigand of whom I have read, and is he
luring me to his haunt? Probably. I follow. He throws his cloak
about his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, and loiters
on. At last there is the point in sight, a gray wall with blind
arches. The man disappears through a narrow archway, and I follow.
Within is an enormous square tower. I think it was built in Spanish
days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates. A bell hung in it, which
was set clanging when the white sails of the robbers appeared to the
southward; and the alarm was repeated up the coast, the towers were
manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubt
not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so much to be dreaded
as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell is gone now,
and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just passed
would be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the tower;
and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red
stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,
and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other
a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty
circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the
point. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet
way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is
very solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of
everything. The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the
worn crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is
nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified
Capri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellent
place for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured. There must
be a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refused
to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so affected.
We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one,
was superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the
last point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us
stumbling over the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high
walls. We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa
road. For there lay the sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its
darkening groves and hundreds of twinkling lights. As we went down
the last descent, the bells of the town were all ringing, for it was
the eve of the fete of St. Antonino.
CAPRI
"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touching
his Phrygian cap. The people here abbreviate all names. With them
Massa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is
reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento
into Serent.
Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic,
and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb
the steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I have
read in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento.
But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust out
its rocky spur with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itself
has moved so far round to the south that Sorrento, which fronts
north, has lost sight of it.
We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared
from the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of
the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In
this atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the
northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as
Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to
guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a half
long, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high at
one end, and eighteen hundred feet at the other, with a depression
between. If it had been chiseled by hand and set there, it could not
be more sharply defined. So precipitous are its sides of rock, that
there are only two fit boat-landings, the marina on the north side,
and a smaller place opposite. One of those light-haired and freckled
Englishmen, whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round the
island alone in rough water, last summer, against the advice of the
boatman, and unable to make a landing, and weary with the strife of
the waves, was in considerable peril.
Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is still most
graceful and poetic. This wonderful atmosphere softens even its
ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes
the haze plays fantastic tricks with it,--a cloud-cap hangs on Monte
Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock
seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the
rising wind will carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by
"wandering islands." Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so
destroy forever another island of the imagination? The bane of
travel is the destruction of illusions.
We like to talk about Capri, and to talk of going there. The
Sorrento people have no end of gossip about the wild island; and,
simple and primitive as they are, Capri is still more out of the
world. I do not know what enchantment there is on the island; but
--whoever sets foot there, they say, goes insane or dies a drunkard. I
fancy the reason of this is found in the fact that the Capri girls
are raving beauties. I am not sure but the monotony of being
anchored off there in the bay, the monotony of rocks and precipices
that goats alone can climb, the monotony of a temperature that
scarcely ever, winter and summer, is below 55 or above 75 Fahrenheit
indoors, might drive one into lunacy. But I incline to think it is
due to the handsome Capri girls.
There are beautiful girls in Sorrento, with a beauty more than skin
deep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness like that of the grape and
the peach which grows in the soft air and the sun. And they wither,
like grapes that hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome,
scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are lank and dry,
and their bones are covered with parchment. One of these
brown-cheeked girls, with large, longing eyes, gives the stranger a
start, now and then, when he meets her in a narrow way with a basket
of oranges on her head. I hope he has the grace to go right by. Let
him meditate what this vision of beauty will be like in twenty ears.
The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, but they fade like
their mainland sisters. The Saracens used to descend on their
island, and carry them off to their harems. The English, a very
adventurous people, who have no harems, have followed the Saracens.
The young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for Capri. I
hear gossip enough about elopements, and not seldom marriages, with
the island girls,--bright girls, with the Greek mother-wit, and
surpassingly handsome; but they do not bear transportation to
civilized life (any more than some of the native wines do): they
accept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as they
grow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicated
by beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says,
have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now,
and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! the fatal gift of
beauty.
But I do not think Capri is so dangerous as it is represented. For
(of course we went to Capri) neither at the marina, where a crowd of
bare-legged, vociferous maidens with donkeys assailed us, nor in the
village above, did I see many girls for whom and one little isle a
person would forswear the world. But I can believe that they grow
here. One of our donkey girls was a handsome, dark-skinned,
black-eyed girl; but her little sister, a mite of a being of six
years, who could scarcely step over the small stones in the road, and
was forced to lead the donkey by her sister in order to establish
another lien on us for buona mano, was a dirty little angel in rags,
and her great soft black eyes will look somebody into the asylum or
the drunkard's grave in time, I have no doubt. There was a stout,
manly, handsome little fellow of five years, who established himself
as the guide and friend of the tallest of our party. His hat was
nearly gone; he was sadly out of repair in the rear; his short legs
made the act of walking absurd; but he trudged up the hill with a
certain dignity. And there was nothing mercenary about his attachment:
he and his friend got upon very cordial terms: they exchanged gifts of
shells and copper coin, but nothing was said about pay.
Nearly all the inhabitants, young and old, joined us in lively
procession, up the winding road of three quarters of a mile, to the
town. At the deep gate, entering between thick walls, we stopped to
look at the sea. The crowd and clamor at our landing had been so
great that we enjoyed the sight of the quiet old woman sitting here
in the sun, and the few beggars almost too lazy to stretch out their
hands. Within the gate is a large paved square, with the government
offices and the tobacco-shop on one side, and the church opposite;
between them, up a flight of broad stone steps, is the Hotel Tiberio.
Our donkeys walk up them and into the hotel. The church and hotel
are six hundred years old; the hotel was a villa belonging to Joanna
II. of Naples. We climb to the roof of the quaint old building, and
sit there to drink in the strange oriental scene. The landlord says
it is like Jaffa or Jerusalem. The landlady, an Irish woman from
Devonshire, says it is six francs a day. In what friendly
intercourse the neighbors can sit on these flat roofs! How sightly
this is, and yet how sheltered! To the east is the height where
Augustus, and after him Tiberius, built palaces. To the west, up
that vertical wall, by means of five hundred steps cut in the face of
the rock, we go to reach the tableland of Anacapri, the primitive
village of that name, hidden from view here; the medieval castle of
Barbarossa, which hangs over a frightful precipice; and the height of
Monte Solaro. The island is everywhere strewn with Roman ruins, and
with faint traces of the Greeks.
Capri turns out not to be a barren rock. Broken and picturesque as
it is, it is yet covered with vegetation. There is not a foot, one
might say a point, of soil that does not bear something; and there is
not a niche in the rock, where a scrap of dirt will stay, that is not
made useful. The whole island is terraced. The most wonderful thing
about it, after all, is its masonry. You come to think, after a
time, that the island is not natural rock, but a mass of masonry. If
the labor that has been expended here, only to erect platforms for
the soil to rest on, had been given to our country, it would have
built half a dozen Pacific railways, and cut a canal through the
Isthmus.
But the Blue Grotto? Oh, yes! Is it so blue? That depends upon the
time of day, the sun, the clouds, and something upon the person who
enters it. It is frightfully blue to some. We bend down in our
rowboat, slide into the narrow opening which is three feet high, and
passing into the spacious cavern, remain there for half an hour. It
is, to be sure, forty feet high, and a hundred by a hundred and fifty
in extent, with an arched roof, and clear water for a floor. The
water appears to be as deep as the roof is high, and is of a light,
beautiful blue, in contrast with the deep blue of the bay. At the
entrance the water is illuminated, and there is a pleasant, mild
light within: one has there a novel subterranean sensation; but it
did not remind me of anything I have seen in the "Arabian Nights." I
have seen pictures of it that were much finer.
As we rowed close to the precipice in returning, I saw many similar
openings, not so deep, and perhaps only sham openings; and the
water-line was fretted to honeycomb by the eating waves. Beneath the
water-line, and revealed here and there when the waves receded, was a
line of bright red coral.
THE STORY OF FIAMMETTA
At vespers on the fete of St. Antonino, and in his church, I saw the
Signorina Fiammetta. I stood leaning against a marble pillar near
the altar-steps, during the service, when I saw the young girl
kneeling on the pavement in act of prayer. Her black lace veil had
fallen a little back from her head; and there was something in her
modest attitude and graceful figure that made her conspicuous among
all her kneeling companions, with their gay kerchiefs and bright
gowns. When she rose and sat down, with folded hands and eyes
downcast, there was something so pensive in her subdued mien that I
could not take my eyes from her. To say that she had the rich olive
complexion, with the gold struggling through, large, lustrous black
eyes, and harmonious features, is only to make a weak photograph,
when I should paint a picture in colors and infuse it with the sweet
loveliness of a maiden on the way to sainthood. I was sure that I
had seen her before, looking down from the balcony of a villa just
beyond the Roman wall, for the face was not one that even the most
unimpressible idler would forget. I was sure that, young as she was,
she had already a history; had lived her life, and now walked amid
these groves and old streets in a dream. The story which I heard is
not long.
In the drawing-room of the Villa Nardi was shown, and offered for
sale, an enormous counterpane, crocheted in white cotton. Loop by
loop, it must have been an immense labor to knit it; for it was
fashioned in pretty devices, and when spread out was rich and showy
enough for the royal bed of a princess. It had been crocheted by
Fiammetta for her marriage, the only portion the poor child could
bring to that sacrament. Alas! the wedding was never to be; and the
rich work, into which her delicate fingers had knit so many maiden
dreams and hopes and fears, was offered for sale in the resort of
strangers. It could not have been want only that induced her to put
this piece of work in the market, but the feeling, also, that the
time never again could return when she would have need of it. I had
no desire to purchase such a melancholy coverlet, but I could well
enough fancy why she would wish to part with what must be rather a
pall than a decoration in her little chamber.
Fiammetta lived with her mother in a little villa, the roof of which
is in sight from my sunny terrace in the Villa Nardi, just to the
left of the square old convent tower, rising there out of the silver
olive-boughs,--a tumble-down sort of villa, with a flat roof and odd
angles and parapets, in the midst of a thrifty but small grove of
lemons and oranges. They were poor enough, or would be in any
country where physical wants are greater than here, and yet did not
belong to that lowest class, the young girls of which are little more
than beasts of burden, accustomed to act as porters, bearing about on
their heads great loads of stone, wood, water, and baskets of oranges
in the shipping season. She could not have been forced to such
labor, or she never would have had the time to work that wonderful
coverlet.
Giuseppe was an honest and rather handsome young fellow of Sorrento,
industrious and good-natured, who did not bother his head much about
learning. He was, however, a skillful workman in the celebrated
inlaid and mosaic woodwork of the place, and, it is said, had even
invented some new figures for the inlaid pictures in colored woods.
He had a little fancy for the sea as well, and liked to pull an oar
over to Capri on occasion, by which he could earn a few francs easier
than he could saw them out of the orangewood. For the stupid fellow,
who could not read a word in his prayer-book, had an idea of thrift
in his head, and already, I suspect, was laying up liras with an
object. There are one or two dandies in Sorrento who attempt to
dress as they do in Naples. Giuseppe was not one of these; but there
was not a gayer or handsomer gallant than he on Sunday, or one more
looked at by the Sorrento girls, when he had on his clean suit and
his fresh red Phrygian cap. At least the good Fiammetta thought so,
when she met him at church, though I feel sure she did not allow even
his handsome figure to come between her and the Virgin. At any rate,
there can be no doubt of her sentiments after church, when she and
her mother used to walk with him along the winding Massa road above
the sea, and stroll down to the shore to sit on the greensward over
the Temple of Hercules, or the Roman Baths, or the remains of the
villa of C. Fulvius Cunctatus Cocles, or whatever those ruins
subterranean are, there on the Capo di Sorrento. Of course, this is
mere conjecture of mine. They may have gone on the hills behind the
town instead, or they may have stood leaning over the garden-wall of
her mother's little villa, looking at the passers-by in the deep
lane, thinking about nothing in the world, and talking about it all
the sunny afternoon, until Ischia was purple with the last light, and
the olive terraces behind them began to lose their gray bloom. All I
do know is, that they were in love, blossoming out in it as the
almond-trees do here in February; and that all the town knew it, and
saw a wedding in the future, just as plain as you can see Capri from
the heights above the town.
It was at this time that the wonderful counterpane began to grow, to
the continual astonishment of Giuseppe, to whom it seemed a marvel of
skill and patience, and who saw what love and sweet hope Fiammetta
was knitting into it with her deft fingers. I declare, as I think of
it, the white cotton spread out on her knees, in such contrast to the
rich olive of her complexion and her black shiny hair, while she
knits away so merrily, glancing up occasionally with those liquid,
laughing eyes to Giuseppe, who is watching her as if she were an
angel right out of the blue sky, I am tempted not to tell this story
further, but to leave the happy two there at the open gate of life,
and to believe that they entered in.
This was about the time of the change of government, after this
region had come to be a part of the Kingdom of Italy. After the
first excitement was over, and the simple people found they were not
all made rich, nor raised to a condition in which they could live
without work, there began to be some dissatisfaction. Why the
convents need have been suppressed, and especially the poor nuns
packed off, they couldn't see; and then the taxes were heavier than
ever before; instead of being supported by the government, they had
to support it; and, worst of all, the able young fellows must still
go for soldiers. Just as one was learning his trade, or perhaps had
acquired it, and was ready to earn his living and begin to make a
home for his wife, he must pass the three best years of his life in
the army. The conscription was relentless.
The time came to Giuseppe, as it did to the others. I never heard
but he was brave enough; there was no storm on the Mediterranean that
he dare not face in his little boat; and he would not have objected
to a campaign with the red shirts of Garibaldi. But to be torn away
from his occupations by which he was daily laying aside a little for
himself and Fiammetta, and to leave her for three years,--that seemed
dreadful to him. Three years is a longtime; and though he had no
doubt of the pretty Fiammetta, yet women are women, said the shrewd
fellow to himself, and who knows what might happen, if a gallant came
along who could read and write, as Fiammetta could, and, besides,
could play the guitar?
The result was, that Giuseppe did not appear at the mustering-office
on the day set; and, when the file of soldiers came for him, he was
nowhere to be found. He had fled to the mountains. I scarcely know
what his plan was, but he probably trusted to some good luck to
escape the conscription altogether, if he could shun it now; and, at
least, I know that he had many comrades who did the same, so that at
times the mountains were full of young fellows who were lurking in
them to escape the soldiers. And they fared very roughly usually,
and sometimes nearly perished from hunger; for though the sympathies
of the peasants were undoubtedly with the quasi-outlaws rather than
with the carbineers, yet the latter were at every hamlet in the
hills, and liable to visit every hut, so that any relief extended to
the fugitives was attended with great danger; and, besides, the
hunted men did not dare to venture from their retreats. Thus
outlawed and driven to desperation by hunger, these fugitives, whom
nobody can defend for running away from their duties as citizens,
became brigands. A cynical German, who was taken by them some years
ago on the road to Castellamare, a few miles above here, and held for
ransom, declared that they were the most honest fellows he had seen
in Italy; but I never could see that he intended the remark as any
compliment to them. It is certain that the inhabitants of all these
towns held very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage: the poor
fellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were hungry, and
they must live somehow.
What Fiammetta thought, down in her heart, is not told: but I presume
she shared the feelings of those about her concerning the brigands,
and, when she heard that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxious
for the safety of his body than of his soul; though I warrant she did
not forget either, in her prayers to the Virgin and St. Antonino.
And yet those must have been days, weeks, months, of terrible anxiety
to the poor child; and if she worked away at the counterpane, netting
in that elaborate border, as I have no doubt she did, it must have
been with a sad heart and doubtful fingers. I think that one of the
psychological sensitives could distinguish the parts of the bedspread
that were knit in the sunny days from those knit in the long hours of
care and deepening anxiety.
It was rarely that she received any message from him and it was then
only verbal and of the briefest; he was in the mountains above
Amalfi; one day he had come so far round as the top of the Great St.
Angelo, from which he could look down upon the piano of Sorrento,
where the little Fiammetta was; or he had been on the hills near
Salerno, hunted and hungry; or his company had descended upon some
travelers going to Paestum, made a successful haul, and escaped into
the steep mountains beyond. He didn't intend to become a regular
bandit, not at all. He hoped that something might happen so that he
could steal back into Sorrento, unmarked by the government; or, at
least, that he could escape away to some other country or island,
where Fiammetta could join him. Did she love him yet, as in the old
happy days? As for him, she was now everything to him; and he would
willingly serve three or thirty years in the army, if the government
could forget he had been a brigand, and permit him to have a little
home with Fiammetta at the end of the probation. There was not much
comfort in all this, but the simple fellow could not send anything
more cheerful; and I think it used to feed the little maiden's heart
to hear from him, even in this downcast mood, for his love for her
was a dear certainty, and his absence and wild life did not dim it.
My informant does not know how long this painful life went on, nor
does it matter much. There came a day when the government was shamed
into new vigor against the brigands. Some English people of
consequence (the German of whom I have spoken was with them) had been
captured, and it had cost them a heavy ransom. The number of the
carbineers was quadrupled in the infested districts, soldiers
penetrated the fastnesses of the hills, there were daily fights with
the banditti; and, to show that this was no sham, some of them were
actually shot, and others were taken and thrown into prison. Among
those who were not afraid to stand and fight, and who would not be
captured, was our Giuseppe. One day the Italia newspaper of Naples
had an account of a fight with brigands; and in the list of those who
fell was the name of Giuseppe---, of Sorrento, shot through the head,
as he ought to have been, and buried without funeral among the rocks.
This was all. But when the news was read in the little post office
in Sorrento, it seemed a great deal more than it does as I write it;
for, if Giuseppe had an enemy in the village, it was not among the
people; and not one who heard the news did not think at once of the
poor girl to whom it would be more than a bullet through the heart.
And so it was. The slender hope of her life then went out. I am
told that there was little change outwardly, and that she was as
lovely as before; but a great cloud of sadness came over her, in
which she was always enveloped, whether she sat at home, or walked
abroad in the places where she and Giuseppe used to wander. The
simple people respected her grief, and always made a tender-hearted
stillness when the bereft little maiden went through the streets,--a
stillness which she never noticed, for she never noticed anything
apparently. The bishop himself when he walked abroad could not be
treated with more respect.
This was all the story of the sweet Fiammetta that was confided to
me. And afterwards, as I recalled her pensive face that evening as
she kneeled at vespers, I could not say whether, after all, she was
altogether to be pitied, in the holy isolation of her grief, which I
am sure sanctified her, and, in some sort, made her life complete.
For I take it that life, even in this sunny Sorrento, is not alone a
matter of time.
ST. MARIA A CASTELLO
The Great St. Angelo and that region are supposed to be the haunts of
brigands. From those heights they spy out the land, and from thence
have, more than once, descended upon the sea-road between
Castellamare and Sorrento, and caught up English and German
travelers. This elevation commands, also, the Paestum way. We have
no faith in brigands in these days; for in all our remote and lonely
explorations of this promontory we have never met any but the most
simple-hearted and good-natured people, who were quite as much afraid
of us as we were of them. But there are not wanting stories, every
day, to keep alive the imagination of tourists.
We are waiting in the garden this sunny, enticing morning-just the
day for a tramp among the purple hills--for our friend, the long
Englishman, who promised, over night, to go with us. This excellent,
good-natured giant, whose head rubs the ceiling of any room in the
house, has a wife who is fond of him, and in great dread of the
brigands. He comes down with a sheepish air, at length, and informs
us that his wife won't let him go.
"Of course I can go, if I like," he adds. "But the fact is, I have
n't slept much all night: she kept asking me if I was going!" On the
whole, the giant don't care to go. There are things more to be
feared than brigands.
The expedition is, therefore, reduced to two unarmed persons. In the
piazza we pick up a donkey and his driver for use in case of
accident; and, mounting the driver on the donkey,--an arrangement
that seems entirely satisfactory to him,--we set forward. If
anything can bring back youth, it is a day of certain sunshine and a
bit of unexplored country ahead, with a whole day in which to wander
in it without a care or a responsibility. We walk briskly up the
walled road of the piano, striking at the overhanging golden fruit
with our staves; greeting the orange-girls who come down the side
lanes; chaffing with the drivers, the beggars, the old women who sit
in the sun; looking into the open doors of houses and shops upon
women weaving, boys and girls slicing up heaps of oranges, upon the
makers of macaroni, the sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers,
whose little dens are centers of gossip here, as in all the East: the
whole life of these people is open and social; to be on the street is
to be at home.
We wind up the steep hill behind Meta, every foot of which is
terraced for olive-trees, getting, at length, views over the wayside
wall of the plain and bay and rising into the purer air and the scent
of flowers and other signs of coming spring, to the little village of
Arola, with its church and bell, its beggars and idlers,--just a
little street of houses jammed in between the hills of Camaldoli and
Pergola, both of which we know well.
Upon the cliff by Pergola is a stone house, in front of which I like
to lie, looking straight down a thousand or two feet upon the roofs
of Meta, the map of the plain, and the always fascinating bay. I
went down the backbone of the limestone ridge towards the sea the
other afternoon, before sunset, and unexpectedly came upon a group of
little stone cottages on a ledge, which are quite hidden from below.
The inhabitants were as much surprised to see a foreigner break
through their seclusion as I was to come upon them. However, they
soon recovered presence of mind to ask for a little money. Half a
dozen old hags with the parchment also sat upon the rocks in the sun,
spinning from distaffs, exactly as their ancestors did in Greece two
thousand years ago, I doubt not. I do not know that it is true, as
Tasso wrote, that this climate is so temperate and serene that one
almost becomes immortal in it. Since two thousand years all these
coasts have changed more or less, risen and sunk, and the temples and
palaces of two civilizations have tumbled into the sea. Yet I do not
know but these tranquil old women have been sitting here on the rocks
all the while, high above change and worry and decay, gossiping and
spinning, like Fates. Their yarn must be uncanny.
But we wander. It is difficult to go to any particular place here;
impossible to write of it in a direct manner. Our mulepath continues
most delightful, by slopes of green orchards nestled in sheltered
places, winding round gorges, deep and ragged with loose stones, and
groups of rocks standing on the edge of precipices, like medieval
towers, and through village after village tucked away in the hills.
The abundance of population is a constant surprise. As we proceed,
the people are wilder and much more curious about us, having, it is
evident, seen few strangers lately. Women and children, half-dressed
in dirty rags which do not hide the form, come out from their low
stone huts upon the windy terraces, and stand, arms akimbo, staring
at us, and not seldom hailing us in harsh voices. Their sole dress
is often a single split and torn gown, not reaching to the bare
knees, evidently the original of those in the Naples ballet (it will,
no doubt, be different when those creatures exchange the ballet for
the ballot); and, with their tangled locks and dirty faces, they seem
rather beasts than women. Are their husbands brigands, and are they
in wait for us in the chestnut-grove yonder?
The grove is charming; and the men we meet there gathering sticks are
not so surly as the women. They point the way; and when we emerge
from the wood, St. Maria a Castello is before us on a height, its
white and red church shining in the sun. We climb up to it. In
front is a broad, flagged terrace; and on the edge are deep wells in
the rock, from which we draw cool water. Plentifully victualed, one
could stand a siege here, and perhaps did in the gamey Middle Ages.
Monk or soldier need not wish a pleasanter place to lounge.
Adjoining the church, but lower, is a long, low building with three
rooms, at once house and stable, the stable in the center, though all
of them have hay in the lofts. The rooms do not communicate. That
is the whole of the town of St. Maria a Castello.
In one of the apartments some rough-looking peasants are eating
dinner, a frugal meal: a dish of unclean polenta, a plate of grated
cheese, a basket of wormy figs, and some sour red wine; no bread, no
meat. They looked at us askance, and with no sign of hospitality.
We made friends, however, with the ragged children, one of whom took
great delight in exhibiting his litter of puppies; and we at length
so far worked into the good graces of the family that the mother was
prevailed upon to get us some milk and eggs. I followed the woman
into one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs.
It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindled
against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a
baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the
smudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out
at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the woman
brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at length
got the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggs
and drank our milk on the terrace, with the entire family interested
spectators. The men were the hardest-looking ruffians we had met
yet: they were making a bit of road near by, but they seemed capable
of turning their hands to easier money-getting; and there couldn't be
a more convenient place than this.
When our repast was over, and I had drunk a glass of wine with the
proprietor, I offered to pay him, tendering what I knew was a fair
price in this region. With some indignation of gesture, he refused
it, intimating that it was too little. He seemed to be seeking an
excuse for a quarrel with us; so I pocketed the affront, money and
all, and turned away. He appeared to be surprised, and going indoors
presently came out with a bottle of wine and glasses, and followed us
down upon the rocks, pressing us to drink. Most singular conduct; no
doubt drugged wine; travelers put into deep sleep; robbed; thrown
over precipice; diplomatic correspondence, flattering, but no
compensation to them. Either this, or a case of hospitality. We
declined to drink, and the brigand went away.
We sat down upon the jutting ledge of a precipice, the like of which
is not in the world: on our left, the rocky, bare side of St. Angelo,
against which the sunshine dashes in waves; below us, sheer down two
thousand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, thickly
clustered on a conical spur, and lying along the shore, the home of
three thousand people,--with a running jump I think I could land in
the midst of it,--a pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look down
upon it; a little beach of white sand, a sailboat lying on it, and
some fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the beach; beyond, by
the green shore, a country seat charmingly situated amid trees and
vines; higher up, the ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of
ruin, towers, arches. How still it is! All the stiller that I can,
now and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts of some
children in a garden below. How still the sea is! How many ages has
it been so? Does the purple mist always hang there upon the waters
of Salerno Bay, forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples,
and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than Roman?
After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering rock of St.
Angelo; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire of grass, on its
perpendicular side. We try to analyze the satisfaction there is in
such a bald, treeless, verdureless mass. We can grasp it
intellectually, in its sharp solidity, which is undisturbed by any
ornament: it is, to the mind, like some complete intellectual
performance; the mind rests on it, like a demonstration in Euclid.
And yet what a color of beauty it takes on in the distance!
When we return, the bandits have all gone to their road-making: the
suspicious landlord is nowhere to be seen. We call the woman from
the field, and give her money, which she seemed not to expect, and
for which she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent to
these people. But, if these be brigands, we prefer them to those of
Naples, and even to the innkeepers of England. As we saunter home in
the pleasant afternoon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other,
making the sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and all
the piano is jubilant with them, as we come down the steeps at
sunset.
"You see there was no danger," said the giant to his wife that
evening at the supper-table.
"You would have found there was danger, if you had gone," returned
the wife of the giant significantly.
THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS
I like to walk upon the encircling ridge behind Sorrento, which
commands both bays. From there I can look down upon the Isles of the
Sirens. The top is a broad, windy strip of pasture, which falls off
abruptly to the Bay of Salerno on the south: a regular embankment of
earth runs along the side of the precipitous steeps, towards
Sorrento. It appears to be a line of defence for musketry, such as
our armies used to throw up: whether the French, who conducted siege
operations from this promontory on Capri, under Murat, had anything
to do with it, does not appear.
Walking there yesterday, we met a woman shepherdess, cowherd,
or siren--standing guard over three steers while they fed;
a scantily-clad, brown woman, who had a distaff in her hand, and spun
the flax as she watched the straying cattle, an example of double
industry which the men who tend herds never imitate. Very likely her
ancestors so spun and tended cattle on the plains of Thessaly. We gave
the rigid woman good-morning, but she did not heed or reply; we made
some inquiries as to paths, but she ignored us; we bade her good-day,
and she scowled at us: she only spun. She was so out of tune with the
people, and the gentle influences of this region, that we could only
regard her as an anomaly,--the representative of some perversity and
evil genius, which, no doubt, lurks here as it does elsewhere in the
world. She could not have descended from either of the groups of the
Sirens; for she was not fascinating enough to be fatal.
I like to look upon these islets or rocks of the Sirens, barren and
desolate, with a few ruins of the Roman time and remains of the
Middle-Age prisons of the doges of Amalfi; but I do not care to
dissipate any illusions by going to them. I remember how the Sirens
sat on flowery meads by the shore and sang, and are vulgarly supposed
to have allured passing mariners to a life of ignoble pleasure, and
then let them perish, hungry with all unsatisfied longings. The
bones of these unfortunates, whitening on the rocks, of which Virgil
speaks, I could not see. Indeed, I think any one who lingers long in
this region will doubt if they were ever there, and will come to
believe that the characters of the Sirens are popularly misconceived.
Allowing Ulysses to be only another name for the sun-god, who appears
in myths as Indra, Apollo, William Tell, the sure-hitter, the great
archer, whose arrows are sunbeams, it is a degrading conception of
him that he was obliged to lash himself to the mast when he went into
action with the Sirens, like Farragut at Mobile, though for a very
different reason. We should be forced to believe that Ulysses was
not free from the basest mortal longings, and that he had not
strength of mind to resist them, but must put himself in durance; as
our moderns who cannot control their desires go into inebriate
asylums.
Mr. Ruskin says that "the Sirens are the great constant desires, the
infinite sicknesses of heart, which, rightly placed, give life, and,
wrongly placed, waste it away; so that there are two groups of
Sirens, one noble and saving, as the other is fatal." Unfortunately
we are all, as were the Greeks, ministered unto by both these groups,
but can fortunately, on the other hand, choose which group we will
listen to the singing of, though the strains are somewhat mingled;
as, for instance, in the modern opera, where the music quite as often
wastes life away, as gives to it the energy of pure desire. Yet, if
I were to locate the Sirens geographically, I should place the
beneficent desires on this coast, and the dangerous ones on that of
wicked Baiae; to which group the founder of Naples no doubt belonged.
Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beautiful myths of
Greece, the springlike freshness of the idyllic and heroic age, than
on this Sorrentine promontory. It was no chance that made these
coasts the home of the kind old monarch Eolus, inventor of sails and
storm-signals. On the Telegrafo di Mare Cuccola is a rude
signal-apparatus for communication with Capri,--to ascertain if wind
and wave are propitious for entrance to the Blue Grotto,--which
probably was not erected by Eolus, although he doubtless used this
sightly spot as one of his stations. That he dwelt here, in great
content, with his six sons and six daughters, the Months, is nearly
certain; and I feel as sure that the Sirens, whose islands were close
at hand, were elevators and not destroyers of the primitive races
living here.
It seems to me this must be so; because the pilgrim who surrenders
himself to the influences of these peaceful and sun-inundated coasts,
under this sky which the bright Athena loved and loves, loses, by and
by, those longings and heart-sicknesses which waste away his life,
and comes under the dominion, more and more, of those constant
desires after that which is peaceful and enduring and has the saving
quality of purity. I know, indeed, that it is not always so; and
that, as Boreas is a better nurse of rugged virtue than Zephyr, so
the soft influences of this clime only minister to the fatal desires
of some: and such are likely to sail speedily back to Naples.
The Sirens, indeed, are everywhere; and I do not know that we can go
anywhere that we shall escape the infinite longings, or satisfy them.
Here, in the purple twilight of history, they offered men the choice
of good and evil. I have a fancy, that, in stepping out of the whirl
of modern life upon a quiet headland, so blessed of two powers, the
air and the sea, we are able to come to a truer perception of the
drift of the eternal desires within us. But I cannot say whether it
is a subtle fascination, linked with these mythic and moral
influences, or only the physical loveliness of this promontory, that
lures travelers hither, and detains them on flowery meads.
BEING A BOY
By Charles Dudley Warner
BEING A BOY
One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no
experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The
disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it
is soon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be
something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much
fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy
with the restrictions that are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it
is to yoke up the calves and play work, there is not a boy on a farm
but would rather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glorious
feeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for the first time given the
long whip and permitted to drive the oxen, walking by their side,
swinging the long lash, and shouting "Gee, Buck!" "Haw, Golden!"
"Whoa, Bright!" and all the rest of that remarkable language, until
he is red in the face, and all the neighbors for half a mile are
aware that something unusual is going on. If I were a boy, I am not
sure but I would rather drive the oxen than have a birthday.
The proudest day of my life was one day when I rode on the neap of
the cart, and drove the oxen, all alone, with a load of apples to the
cider-mill. I was so little that it was a wonder that I did n't fall
off, and get under the broad wheels. Nothing could make a boy, who
cared anything for his appearance, feel flatter than to be run over
by the broad tire of a cart-wheel. But I never heard of one who was,
and I don't believe one ever will be. As I said, it was a great day
for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. They
sagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in my
face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that
side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I
"came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use such
a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't
know that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have
seen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round the
Forum (of course in Latin, a language that those cattle understood as
well as ours do English); but what I mean is, that I stood up and
"hollered" with all my might, as everybody does with oxen, as if they
were born deaf, and whacked them with the long lash over the head,
just as the big folks did when they drove. I think now that it was a
cowardly thing to crack the patient old fellows over the face and
eyes, and make them wink in their meek manner. If I am ever a boy
again on a farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen, and not go
screaming round the farm like a crazy man; and I shall not hit them a
cruel cut with the lash every few minutes, because it looks big to do
so and I cannot think of anything else to do. I never liked lickings
myself, and I don't know why an ox should like them, especially as he
cannot reason about the moral improvement he is to get out of them.
Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my cows Latin. I
don't mean that I taught them to read it, for it is very difficult to
teach a cow to read Latin or any of the dead languages,--a cow cares
more for her cud than she does for all the classics put together.
But if you begin early, you can teach a cow, or a calf (if you can
teach a calf anything, which I doubt), Latin as well as English.
There were ten cows, which I had to escort to and from pasture night
and morning. To these cows I gave the names of the Roman numerals,
beginning with Unus and Duo, and going up to Decem. Decem was, of
course, the biggest cow of the party, or at least she was the ruler
of the others, and had the place of honor in the stable and
everywhere else. I admire cows, and especially the exactness with
which they define their social position. In this case, Decem could
"lick" Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so on down to Unus,
who could n't lick anybody, except her own calf. I suppose I ought
to have called the weakest cow Una instead of Unus, considering her
sex; but I did n't care much to teach the cows the declensions of
adjectives, in which I was not very well up myself; and, besides, it
would be of little use to a cow. People who devote themselves too
severely to study of the classics are apt to become dried up; and you
should never do anything to dry up a cow. Well, these ten cows knew
their names after a while, at least they appeared to, and would take
their places as I called them. At least, if Octo attempted to get
before Novem in going through the bars (I have heard people speak of
a "pair of bars" when there were six or eight of them), or into the
stable, the matter of precedence was settled then and there, and,
once settled, there was no dispute about it afterwards. Novem either
put her horns into Octo's ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, or
else the two locked horns and tried the game of push and gore until
one gave up. Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a party of
cows. There is nothing in royal courts equal to it; rank is exactly
settled, and the same individuals always have the precedence. You
know that at Windsor Castle, if the Royal Three-Ply Silver Stick
should happen to get in front of the Most Royal Double-and-Twisted
Golden Rod, when the court is going in to dinner, something so
dreadful would happen that we don't dare to think of it. It is
certain that the soup would get cold while the Golden Rod was
pitching the Silver Stick out of the Castle window into the moat, and
perhaps the island of Great Britain itself would split in two. But
the people are very careful that it never shall happen, so we shall
probably never know what the effect would be. Among cows, as I say,
the question is settled in short order, and in a different manner
from what it sometimes is in other society. It is said that in other
society there is sometimes a great scramble for the first place, for
the leadership, as it is called, and that women, and men too, fight
for what is called position; and in order to be first they will
injure their neighbors by telling stories about them and by
backbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, not
excepting the bite of fleas. But in cow society there is nothing of
this detraction in order to get the first place at the crib, or the
farther stall in the stable. If the question arises, the cows turn
in, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that ends
it. I have often admired this trait in COWS.
Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, and
it is a very good plan. It does not do the cows much good, but it is
very good exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory as
good short poems as I could find (the cows liked to listen to
"Thanatopsis" about as well as anything), and repeat them when I went
to the pasture, and as I drove the cows home through the sweet ferns
and down the rocky slopes. It improves a boy's elocution a great
deal more than driving oxen.
It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he is
milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.
II
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notions
about farming were not so very different from those they entertain.
What passes for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in a
particular way. For instance, some morning in early summer John is
told to catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring wagon, and
put in the buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to drive
over to the "Corners, to see a man" about some cattle, to talk with
the road commissioner, to go to the store for the "women folks," and
to attend to other important business; and very likely he will not be
back till sundown. It must be very pressing business, for the old
gentleman drives off in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day,
and appears to have a great deal on his mind.
Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up
the chores. As if the chores could ever be "done up" on a farm. He
is first to clean out the horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and
cut down the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home
mowing-lot and along the road towards the village; to dig up the
docks round the garden patch; to weed out the beet-bed; to hoe the
early potatoes; to rake the sticks and leaves out of the front yard;
in short, there is work enough laid out for John to keep him busy, it
seems to him, till he comes of age; and at half an hour to sundown he
is to go for the cows "and mind he don't run 'em!"
"Yes, sir," says John, "is that all?"
"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat."
John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore more
cheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing the
sprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mounts
his wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dog
bounding along beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John's
call. John half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of
farming that suits him. He likes to run along the road and see all
the dogs and other people, and he likes best of all to lie on the
store steps at the Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at the
post and his master is talking politics in the store--with the other
dogs of his acquaintance, snapping at mutually annoying flies, and
indulging in that delightful dog gossip which is expressed by a wag
of the tail and a sniff of the nose. Nobody knows how many dogs'
characters are destroyed in this gossip, or how a dog may be able to
insinuate suspicion by a wag of the tail as a man can by a shrug of
the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man can suggest one by raising
his eyebrows.
John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the
odorous buffalo-robe and the new whip, and he thinks that is the sort
of farming he would like to do. And he cries after his departing
parent,
"Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt the
cattle?" John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantly
in going over to that pasture, looking for bird's nests and shying at
red squirrels on the way, and who knows but he might "see" a sucker
in the meadow brook, and perhaps get a "jab" at him with a sharp
stick. He knows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of his
plans in life is to go some day and snare him, and bring him home in
triumph. It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the
cattle want salting. But his father, without turning his head,
replies,
"No, they don't need salting any more 'n you do!" And the old
equipage goes rattling down the road, and John whistles his
disappointment. When I was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is so
now, cattle were never salted half enough!
John goes to his chores, and gets through the stable as soon as he
can, for that must be done; but when it comes to the out-door work,
that rather drags. There are so many things to distract the
attention--a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, and a
hen-hawk circling high in the air over the barnyard. John loses a
little time in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and
in watching the bird, to find where its nest is; and he convinces
himself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon the
chickens, and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteen
minutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows it away out of
sight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again. And
then a carriage with two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes along the
road; and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John, who
is suddenly aware that his trousers are patched on each knee and in
two places behind; and he wonders if she is rich, and whose name is on
the trunk, and how much the horses cost, and whether that nice-looking
man is the girl's father, and if that boy on the seat with the driver
is her brother, and if he has to do chores; and as the gay sight
disappears, John falls to thinking about the great world beyond the
farm, of cities, and people who are always dressed up, and a great
many other things of which he has a very dim notion. And then a boy,
whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the boy
makes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twist of
his own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things take
time. The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although
it is not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play. John
imagines that yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom he
has read in a fairy book, and he advances on him with "Die, ruffian!"
and slashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon the
rows of mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, and
hews them down without mercy. What fun it might be if there were only
another boy there to help. But even war, single handed, gets to be
tiresome. It is dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is
cow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.
This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn all
day than work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work that
John can do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan in
this life is to go fishing. When there comes a rainy day, he
attempts to carry it out. But ten chances to one his father has
different views. As it rains so that work cannot be done out-doors,
it is a good time to work in the garden. He can run into the house
between the heavy showers. John accordingly detests the garden; and
the only time he works briskly in it is when he has a stent set, to
do so much weeding before the Fourth of July. If he is spry, he can
make an extra holiday the Fourth and the day after. Two days of
gunpowder and ball-playing! When I was a boy, I supposed there was
some connection between such and such an amount of work done on the
farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there could be any
Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at least, worked for my
Independence.
III
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that I
sometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I should
almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There
is a great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of
doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand,
--he who leads the school in a race. The world is new and
interesting to him, and there is so much to take his attention off,
when he is sent to do anything. Perhaps he himself couldn't explain
why, when he is sent to the neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone
the frogs; he is not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he can hit
'em. No other living thing can go so slow as a boy sent on an
errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless he happens to espy a
woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase to it like a deer;
and it is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a great deal
slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you have to help
on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a great power
of helping each other to do nothing; and they are so innocent about
it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could," says the
boy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he has
been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no
effect on the boy.
Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a
hill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could
any boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill
pasture there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of
columbine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to
eat or to smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in
my way to climb a tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the
top, and to try if I could see the steeple of the village church. It
became very important sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in
the midst of my investigations the tin horn would blow a great blast
from the farmhouse, which would send a cold chill down my back in the
hottest days. I knew what it meant. It had a frightfully impatient
quaver in it, not at all like the sweet note that called us to dinner
from the hay-field. It said, "Why on earth does n't that boy come
home? It is almost dark, and the cows ain't milked!" And that was
the time the cows had to start into a brisk pace and make up for lost
time. I wonder if any boy ever drove the cows home late, who did not
say that the cows were at the very farther end of the pasture, and
that "Old Brindle" was hidden in the woods, and he couldn't find her
for ever so long! The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat, many a
time.
No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy does;
and his best ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing is of course
one sort. The excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait,
and the anticipation of great luck! These are pure pleasures,
enjoyed because they are rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any time
care but little for it. Tramping all day through bush and brier,
fighting flies and mosquitoes, and branches that tangle the line, and
snags that break the hook, and returning home late and hungry, with
wet feet and a string of speckled trout on a willow twig, and having
the family crowd out at the kitchen door to look at 'em, and say,
"Pretty well done for you, bub; did you catch that big one yourself?"
--this is also pure happiness, the like of which the boy will never
have again, not if he comes to be selectman and deacon and to "keep
store."
But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring
and fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, in a neighboring
town, maybe, to drive thither the young cattle and colts, and to
bring them back again. It was a wild and rocky upland where our
great pasture was, many miles from home, the road to it running by a
brawling river, and up a dashing brook-side among great hills. What
a day's adventure it was! It was like a journey to Europe. The
night before, I could scarcely sleep for thinking of it! and there
was no trouble about getting me up at sunrise that morning. The
breakfast was eaten, the luncheon was packed in a large basket, with
bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel, which packing I
superintended with the greatest interest; and then the cattle were to
be collected for the march, and the horses hitched up. Did I shirk
any duty? Was I slow? I think not. I was willing to run my legs
off after the frisky steers, who seemed to have an idea they were
going on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing into all gates, and
through all bars except the right ones; and how cheerfully I did yell
at them.
It was a glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heard
any public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting who could make
more noise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount of
noise in a boy does not increase in proportion to his size; if it
did, the world could not contain it.
The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. We were away
from the farm, which to a boy is one of the best parts of farming; we
saw other farms and other people at work; I had the pleasure of
marching along, and swinging my whip, past boys whom I knew, who were
picking up stones. Every turn of the road, every bend and rapid of
the river, the great bowlders by the wayside, the watering-troughs,
the giant pine that had been struck by lightning, the mysterious
covered bridge over the river where it was, most swift and rocky and
foamy, the chance eagle in the blue sky, the sense of going
somewhere,--why, as I recall all these things I feel that even the
Prince Imperial, as he used to dash on horseback through the Bois de
Boulogne, with fifty mounted hussars clattering at his heels, and
crowds of people cheering, could not have been as happy as was I, a
boy in short jacket and shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust that
day behind the steers and colts, cracking my black-stock whip.
I wish the journey would never end; but at last, by noon, we reach
the pastures and turn in the herd; and after making the tour of the
lots to make sure there are no breaks in the fences, we take our
luncheon from the wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring.
This is the supreme moment of the day. This is the way to live; this
is like the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the rest of my delightful
acquaintances in romance. Baked beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist,
remember), doughnuts and cheese, pie, and root beer. What richness!
You may live to dine at Delmonico's, or, if those Frenchmen do not
eat each other up, at Philippe's, in Rue Montorgueil in Paris, where
the dear old Thackeray used to eat as good a dinner as anybody; but
you will get there neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer, nor
anything so good as that luncheon at noon in the old pasture, high
among the Massachusetts hills! Nor will you ever, if you live to be
the oldest boy in the world, have any holiday equal to the one I have
described. But I always regretted that I did not take along a
fishline, just to "throw in" the brook we passed. I know there were
trout there.
IV
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, it is my
impression that a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief.
What the boy does is the life of the farm. He is the factotum,
always in demand, always expected to do the thousand indispensable
things that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds and
ends, the most difficult things. After everybody else is through, he
has to finish up. His work is like a woman's,--perpetual waiting on
others. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner
than it is to wash the dishes afterwards. Consider what a boy on a
farm is required to do; things that must be done, or life would
actually stop.
It is understood, in the first place, that he is to do all the
errands, to go to the store, to the post office, and to carry all
sorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would
tire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirely
inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a
wheel has spokes, and rotate about in the same way. This he
sometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turning
cart-wheels" along the side of the road have supposed that he was
amusing himself, and idling his time; he was only trying to invent a
new mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do his
errands with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head, in
order to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of his
methods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go an
errand any distance if he could leap-frog it with a few other boys.
He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This is
the reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water,
and the family are waiting at the dinner-table, he is absent so long;
for he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or, if there is
a penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirt the water a
little while. He is the one who spreads the grass when the men have
cut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse to cultivate
the corn, up and down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the potatoes
when they are dug; he drives the cows night and morning; he brings
wood and water and splits kindling; he gets up the horse and puts out
the horse; whether he is in the house or out of it, there is always
something for him to do. Just before school in winter he shovels
paths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are
lots of winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for
them, he is to stay in-doors and pare apples and stone raisins and
pound something in a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of schemes
of what he would like to do, and his hands full of occupations, he is
an idle boy who has nothing to busy himself with but school and
chores! He would gladly do all the work if somebody else would do the
chores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if any boy ever amounted to
anything in the world, or was of much use as a man, who did not enjoy
the advantages of a liberal education in the way of chores.
A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and
probably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens. A guinea-hen
suits a boy. It is entirely useless, and makes a more disagreeable
noise than a Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young fox which a
neighbor had caught. It is a mistake to suppose the fox cannot be
tamed. Jacko was a very clever little animal, and behaved, in all
respects, with propriety. He kept Sunday as well as any day, and all
the ten commandments that he could understand. He was a very
graceful playfellow, and seemed to have an affection for me. He
lived in a wood-pile in the dooryard, and when I lay down at the
entrance to his house and called him, he would come out and sit on
his tail and lick my face just like a grown person. I taught him a
great many tricks and all the virtues. That year I had a large
number of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect
indifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could
see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his
reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark
without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was
fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors
as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the
brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with much
patience, taught to go up a long hill alone and surround the cows,
and drive them home from the remote pasture. He liked the fun of it
at first, but by and by he seemed to get the notion that it was a
"chore," and when I whistled for him to go for the cows, he would
turn tail and run the other way, and the more I whistled and threw
stones at him, the faster he would run. His name was Turk, and I
should have sold him if he had not been the kind of dog that nobody
will buy. I suppose he was not a cow-dog, but what they call a
sheep-dog. At least, when he got big enough, he used to get into the
pasture and chase the sheep to death. That was the way he got into
trouble, and lost his valuable life. A dog is of great use on a
farm, and that is the reason a boy likes him. He is good to bite
peddlers and small children, and run out and yelp at wagons that pass
by, and to howl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were a
boy again, the first thing I would have should be a dog; for dogs are
great companions, and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing.
They are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes.
A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole long after the animal has
retired to a remote part of his residence, and escaped by another
hole. This deceives the woodchuck. Some of the most delightful
hours of my life have been spent in hiding and watching the hole
where the dog was not. What an exquisite thrill ran through my frame
when the timid nose appeared, was withdrawn, poked out again, and
finally followed by the entire animal, who looked cautiously about,
and then hopped away to feed on the clover. At that moment I rushed
in, occupied the "home base," yelled to Turk, and then danced with
delight at the combat between the spunky woodchuck and the dog. They
were about the same size, but science and civilization won the day.
I did not reflect then that it would have been more in the interest
of civilization if the woodchuck had killed the dog. I do not know
why it is that boys so like to hunt and kill animals; but the excuse
that I gave in this case for the murder was, that the woodchuck ate
the clover and trod it down, and, in fact, was a woodchuck. It was
not till long after that I learned with surprise that he is a rodent
mammal, of the species Arctomys monax, is called at the West a
ground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish.
But I have forgotten my beautiful fox. Jacko continued to deport
himself well until the young chickens came; he was actually cured of
the fox vice of chicken-stealing. He used to go with me about the
coops, pricking up his ears in an intelligent manner, and with a
demure eye and the most virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox!
If he had held out a little while longer, I should have put him into
a Sunday-school book. But I began to miss chickens. They
disappeared mysteriously in the night. I would not suspect Jacko at
first, for he looked so honest, and in the daytime seemed to be as
much interested in the chickens as I was. But one morning, when I
went to call him, I found feathers at the entrance of his hole,
--chicken feathers. He couldn't deny it. He was a thief. His fox
nature had come out under severe temptation. And he died an
unnatural death. He had a thousand virtues and one crime. But that
crime struck at the foundation of society. He deceived and stole; he
was a liar and a thief, and no pretty ways could hide the fact. His
intelligent, bright face couldn't save him. If he had been honest,
he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.
V
THE BOY'S SUNDAY
Sunday in the New England hill towns used to begin Saturday night at
sundown; and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills there before
it has set by the almanac. I remember that we used to go by the
almanac Saturday night and by the visible disappearance Sunday night.
On Saturday night we very slowly yielded to the influences of the
holy time, which were settling down upon us, and submitted to the
ablutions which were as inevitable as Sunday; but when the sun (and
it never moved so slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night, the
effect upon the watching boy was like a shock from a galvanic
battery; something flashed through all his limbs and set them in
motion, and no "play" ever seemed so sweet to him as that between
sundown and dark Sunday night. This, however, was on the supposition
that he had conscientiously kept Sunday, and had not gone in swimming
and got drowned. This keeping of Saturday night instead of Sunday
night we did not very well understand; but it seemed, on the whole, a
good thing that we should rest Saturday night when we were tired, and
play Sunday night when we were rested. I supposed, however, that it
was an arrangement made to suit the big boys who wanted to go
"courting" Sunday night. Certainly they were not to be blamed, for
Sunday was the day when pretty girls were most fascinating, and I
have never since seen any so lovely as those who used to sit in the
gallery and in the singers' seats in the bare old meeting-houses.
Sunday to the country farmer-boy was hardly the relief that it was to
the other members of the family; for the same chores must be done
that day as on others, and he could not divert his mind with
whistling, hand-springs, or sending the dog into the river after
sticks. He had to submit, in the first place, to the restraint of
shoes and stockings. He read in the Old Testament that when Moses
came to holy ground, he put off his shoes; but the boy was obliged to
put his on, upon the holy day, not only to go to meeting, but while
he sat at home. Only the emancipated country-boy, who is as agile on
his bare feet as a young kid, and rejoices in the pressure of the
warm soft earth, knows what a hardship it is to tie on stiff shoes.
The monks who put peas in their shoes as a penance do not suffer more
than the country-boy in his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the
celerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown.
Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy. He must rise
tolerably early, for the cows were to be milked and driven to
pasture; family prayers were a little longer than on other days;
there were the Sunday-school verses to be relearned, for they did not
stay in mind over night; perhaps the wagon was to be greased before
the neighbors began to drive by; and the horse was to be caught out
of the pasture, ridden home bareback, and harnessed.
This catching the horse, perhaps two of them, was very good fun
usually, and would have broken the Sunday if the horse had not been
wanted for taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful and
still in the pasture on Sunday morning; but the horses were never so
playful, the colts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the boy
went calling, in an entreating Sunday voice, "Jock, jock, jock,
jock," and shaking his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads erect,
and shaking tails and flashing heels, dashed from corner to corner,
and gave the boy a pretty good race before he could coax the nose of
one of them into his dish. The boy got angry, and came very near
saying "dum it," but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.
The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the
set of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory
of the Sunday-school verses; and what a wild confusion there was
through the house in getting off for meeting, and how he was kept
running hither and thither, to get the hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan,
or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the
bunch of caraway-seed. Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load
of the deacon's folks, had gone shambling past, head and tail
drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the good
deacon sat jerking the reins, in an automatic way, and the
"womenfolks" patiently saw the dust settle upon their best summer
finery. Wagon after wagon went along the sandy road, and when our
boy's family started, they became part of a long procession, which
sent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pious smell of
buffalo-robes. There were fiery horses in the trail which had to be
held in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to pass anybody on
Sunday. It was a great delight to the farmer-boy to see all this
procession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys,
who leaned over the wagon-seats for that purpose. Occasionally a boy
rode behind, with his back to the family, and his pantomime was always
some thing wonderful to see, and was considered very daring and
wicked.
The meeting-house which our boy remembers was a high, square
building, without a steeple. Within it had a lofty pulpit, with
doors underneath and closets where sacred things were kept, and where
the tithing-men were supposed to imprison bad boys. The pews were
square, with seats facing each other, those on one side low for the
children, and all with hinges, so that they could be raised when the
congregation stood up for prayers and leaned over the backs of the
pews, as horses meet each other across a pasture fence. After
prayers these seats used to be slammed down with a long-continued
clatter, which seemed to the boys about the best part of the
exercises. The galleries were very high, and the singers' seats,
where the pretty girls sat, were the most conspicuous of all. To sit
in the gallery away from the family, was a privilege not often
granted to the boy. The tithing-man, who carried a long rod and kept
order in the house, and out-doors at noontime, sat in the gallery,
and visited any boy who whispered or found curious passages in the
Bible and showed them to another boy. It was an awful moment when
the bushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time. The
eyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the
guilt ooze out of his burning face.
At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon
service, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon
together at the watering-trough, where some of the elders were likely
to be gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle; or they went over
to a neighboring barn to see the calves; or they slipped off down the
roadside to a place where they could dig sassafras or the root of the
sweet-flag, roots very fragrant in the mind of many a boy with
religious associations to this day. There was often an odor of
sassafras in the afternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as a
substitute for the Old Testament incense of the Jews. Something in
the same way the big bass-viol in the choir took the place of
"David's harp of solemn sound."
The going home from meeting was more cheerful and lively than the
coming to it. There was all the bustle of getting the horses out of
the sheds and bringing them round to the meeting-house steps. At
noon the boys sometimes sat in the wagons and swung the whips without
cracking them: now it was permitted to give them a little snap in
order to bring the horses up in good style; and the boy was
rather proud of the horse if it pranced a little while the timid
"women-folks" were trying to get in. The boy had an eye for whatever
life and stir there was in a New England Sunday. He liked to drive
home fast. The old house and the farm looked pleasant to him. There
was an extra dinner when they reached home, and a cheerful
consciousness of duty performed made it a pleasant dinner. Long
before sundown the Sunday-school book had been read, and the boy sat
waiting in the house with great impatience the signal that the "day of
rest" was over. A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not see the
need of "rest." Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of older
farmers.
VI
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the
farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind
scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which
one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however
faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little
reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying--I mean for
those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the
scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink,
who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of the
dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a
rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much
time to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" after
half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low,
while the boy has the whole hay-field on his hands. He has little
time for the poetry of haying, as he struggles along, filling the air
with the wet mass which he shakes over his head, and picking his way
with short legs and bare feet amid the short and freshly cut stubble.
But if the scythes cut well and swing merrily, it is due to the boy
who turned the grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just turn the
grindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast; any
"hired man" was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone.
How they did bear on, those great strapping fellows! Turn, turn,
turn, what a weary go it was. For my part, I used to like a
grindstone that "wabbled" a good deal on its axis, for when I turned
it fast, it put the grinder on a lively lookout for cutting his
hands, and entirely satisfied his desire that I should "turn faster."
It was some sport to make the water fly and wet the grinder, suddenly
starting up quickly and surprising him when I was turning very
slowly. I used to wish sometimes that I could turn fast enough to
make the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Steady turning is what the
grinders like, and any boy who turns steadily, so as to give an even
motion to the stone, will be much praised, and will be in demand. I
advise any boy who desires to do this sort of work to turn steadily.
If he does it by jerks and in a fitful manner, the "hired men" will
be very apt to dispense with his services and turn the grindstone for
each other.
This is one of the most disagreeable tasks of the boy farmer, and,
hard as it is, I do, not know why it is supposed to belong especially
to childhood. But it is, and one of the certain marks that second
childhood has come to a man on a farm is, that he is asked to turn
the grindstone as if he were a boy again. When the old man is good
for nothing else, when he can neither mow nor pitch, and scarcely
"rake after," he can turn grindstone, and it is in this way that he
renews his youth. "Ain't you ashamed to have your granther turn the
grindstone?" asks the hired man of the boy. So the boy takes hold
and turns himself, till his little back aches. When he gets older,
he wishes he had replied, "Ain't you ashamed to make either an old
man or a little boy do such hard grinding work?"
Doing the regular work of this world is not much, the boy thinks, but
the wearisome part is the waiting on the people who do the work. And
the boy is not far wrong. This is what women and boys have to do on
a farm, wait upon everybody who--works. The trouble with the boy's
life is, that he has no time that he can call his own. He is, like a
barrel of beer, always on draft. The men-folks, having worked in the
regular hours, lie down and rest, stretch themselves idly in the
shade at noon, or lounge about after supper. Then the boy, who has
done nothing all day but turn grindstone, and spread hay, and rake
after, and run his little legs off at everybody's beck and call, is
sent on some errand or some household chore, in order that time shall
not hang heavy on his hands. The boy comes nearer to perpetual
motion than anything else in nature, only it is not altogether a
voluntary motion. The time that the farm-boy gets for his own is
usually at the end of a stent. We used to be given a certain piece
of corn to hoe, or a certain quantity of corn to husk in so many
days. If we finished the task before the time set, we had the
remainder to ourselves. In my day it used to take very sharp work to
gain anything, but we were always anxious to take the chance. I
think we enjoyed the holiday in anticipation quite as much as we did
when we had won it. Unless it was training-day, or Fourth of July,
or the circus was coming, it was a little difficult to find anything
big enough to fill our anticipations of the fun we would have in the
day or the two or three days we had earned. We did not want to waste
the time on any common thing. Even going fishing in one of the wild
mountain brooks was hardly up to the mark, for we could sometimes do
that on a rainy day. Going down to the village store was not very
exciting, and was, on the whole, a waste of our precious time.
Unless we could get out our military company, life was apt to be a
little blank, even on the holidays for which we had worked so hard.
If you went to see another boy, he was probably at work in the
hay-field or the potato-patch, and his father looked at you askance.
You sometimes took hold and helped him, so that he could go and play
with you; but it was usually time to go for the cows before the task
was done. The fact is, or used to be, that the amusements of a boy in
the country are not many. Snaring "suckers" out of the deep meadow
brook used to be about as good as any that I had. The North American
sucker is not an engaging animal in all respects; his body is comely
enough, but his mouth is puckered up like that of a purse. The mouth
is not formed for the gentle angle-worm nor the delusive fly of the
fishermen. It is necessary, therefore, to snare the fish if you want
him. In the sunny days he lies in the deep pools, by some big stone
or near the bank, poising himself quite still, or only stirring his
fins a little now and then, as an elephant moves his ears. He will
lie so for hours, or rather float, in perfect idleness and apparent
bliss. The boy who also has a holiday, but cannot keep still, comes
along and peeps over the bank. "Golly, ain't he a big one!" Perhaps
he is eighteen inches long, and weighs two or three pounds. He lies
there among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a school of
them, perhaps a district school, that only keeps in warm days in the
summer. The pupils seem to have little to learn, except to balance
themselves and to turn gracefully with a flirt of the tail. Not much
is taught but "deportment," and some of the old suckers are perfect
Turveydrops in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line,
and on the end of it a brass wire bent into a hoop, which is a
slipnoose, and slides together when anything is caught in it. The boy
approaches the bank and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale.
The boy devours him with his eyes. He is almost too much excited to
drop the snare into the water without making a noise. A puff of wind
comes and ruffles the surface, so that he cannot see the fish. It is
calm again, and there he still is, moving his fins in peaceful
security. The boy lowers his snare behind the fish and slips it
along. He intends to get it around him just back of the gills and
then elevate him with a sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation, for
the snare will turn a little, and if it hits the fish, he is off.
However, it goes well; the wire is almost in place, when suddenly the
fish, as if he had a warning in a dream, for he appears to see
nothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out of the loop, and
with no seeming appearance of frustrating any one's plans, lounges
over to the other side of the pool; and there he reposes just as if he
was not spoiling the boy's holiday. This slight change of base on the
part of the fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign,
get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patiently
wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time,
cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the
unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as he
gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has got
him fast. Out he comes, up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to
look at him. In this transaction, however, no one can be more
surprised than the sucker.
VII
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his
city cousin. When school keeps, he has only to "do chores and go to
school," but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm
that have been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in the
pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them. Some lots
appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the
surface, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft garden
soil; it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys
this sort of fall work. And very lively work it was on frosty
mornings for the barefooted boys, who were continually turning up the
larger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that
had been covered from the frost. A boy can stand on one leg as well
as a Holland stork; and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole of
his foot was likely to stand in it until the words, "Come, stir your
stumps," broke in discordantly upon his meditations. For the boy is
very much given to meditations. If he had his way, he would do
nothing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think about things, and
enjoy his work as he goes along. He picks up potatoes as if each one
were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, and requiring
careful examination.
Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as
he does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he
is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school
is his opening into the world,--his romance. Its opportunities for
enjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set at
books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs,
standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of
consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as
something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not
at all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But
recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy
rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess?
He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer;
he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entire
self-forgetfulness, and an energy that would overturn the world if
his strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is
absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and
he is his own master for that brief time,--as he never again will be
if he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,--and nobody knows how
old he was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast
projects can be carried out which have been slyly matured during the
school-hours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between the
Indians on one side and the settlers on the other; the military
company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are carried
on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of wind
sufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and
enmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot,
after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases
of long credit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys;
boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered
much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if
the explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and
then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The
country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world
than he knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a
copy of the Arabian Nights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page,
and the last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly read
under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents
disapprove of novel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the house
except a pious fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latest
comic almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the
treasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in
the land of enchantment open before him. He tells at home that he
has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has
promised to lend it to him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks the
grandmother; "because, if it is n't true, it is the worst thing that a
boy can read." (This happened years ago.) John cannot answer as to
the truth of the book, and so does not bring it home; but he borrows
it, nevertheless, and conceals it in the barn and, lying in the
hay-mow, is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he is
supposed to be doing chores. There were no chores in the Arabian
Nights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius, who
would feed the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood in a minute.
It was through this emblazoned portal that the boy walked into the
world of books, which he soon found was larger than his own, and
filled with people he longed to know.
And the farmer-boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets,
though he has never been at a children's party in his life, and, in
fact, never has heard that children go into society when they are
seven, and give regular wine-parties when they reach the ripe age of
nine. But one of his regrets at having the summer school close is
dimly connected with a little girl, whom he does not care much for,
would a great deal rather play with a boy than with her at recess,
--but whom he will not see again for some time,--a sweet little thing,
who is very friendly with John, and with whom he has been known to
exchange bits of candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom he cut in
two his lead-pencil, and gave her half. At the last day of school
she goes part way with John, and then he turns and goes a longer
distance towards her home, so that it is late when he reaches his
own. Is he late? He did n't know he was late; he came straight home
when school was dismissed, only going a little way home with Alice
Linton to help her carry her books. In a box in his chamber, which
he has lately put a padlock on, among fishhooks and lines and
baitboxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet apples, pop-corn,
beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux,
fancifully folded, three-cornered or otherwise, and written, I will
warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These little notes are
parting gifts at the close of school, and John, no doubt, gave his
own in exchange for them, though the writing was an immense labor,
and the folding was a secret bought of another boy for a big piece of
sweet flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry
in his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that
putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into
the sugar-bowl at home. Each precious note contained a lock or curl
of girl's hair,--a rare collection of all colors, after John had been
in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting
scenes,--black, brown, red, tow-color, and some that looked like spun
gold and felt like silk. The sentiment contained in the notes was
that which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy
foreboding of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enough
this side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance.
With little variation, the poetry that made the hair precious was in
the words, and, as a Cockney would say, set to the hair, following:
"This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead."
John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and fresh
impression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they were
for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used
when he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And it
did not occur to him until he was a great deal older and less
innocent, to smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep
every lock of hair intrusted to him, though death should come on the
wings of cholera and take away every one of these sad, red-ink
correspondents. When John's big brother one day caught sight of
these treasures, and brutally told him that he "had hair enough to
stuff a horse-collar," John was so outraged and shocked, as he should
have been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarse
suggestion, this profanation of his most delicate feeling, that he
was kept from crying only by the resolution to "lick" his brother as
soon as ever he got big enough.
VIII
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
hickory-nuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts, in the late fall, after
the frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shaken
them, and the colored leaves have strewn the ground. On a bright
October day, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there is
nothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor is the pleasure
of it altogether destroyed for the boy by the consideration that he
is making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winter
household. The getting-in of potatoes and corn is a different thing;
that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry, of farm life. I am not
sure but the boy would find it very irksome, though, if he were
obliged to work at nut-gathering in order to procure food for the
family. He is willing to make himself useful in his own way. The
Italian boy, who works day after day at a huge pile of pine-cones,
pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds, which are
sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are almost as good as
pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not
see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at
pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-burs
as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a hardship
the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out with
his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy is
willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the
boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they
leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts. To climb
a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass
to the next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion of
boys scamper over our grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one
as active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, sweeping the
ground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could go
to the door and speak to them about it. Indeed, I have noticed that
boys don't care much for conversation with the owners of fruit-trees.
They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly
in cotton-fields. I have never seen anything like it, except a flock
of turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.
Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our
best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of the
skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major
of our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey
gobbler; he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step,
and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in
the field, but goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so
that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements.
This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural
history. I like to watch the gobbler maneuvering his forces in a
grasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in
a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed at equal
distances, while he walks majestically in the rear. They advance
rapidly, picking right and left, with military precision, killing the
foe and disposing of the dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody has
yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but he is
very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner,--he keeps on eating as
long as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of these raids, does
not condescend to grab a single grasshopper,--at least, not while
anybody is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when his
dignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his voracity;
perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a
corner of the field. But he is only fattening himself for
destruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if
the turkeys had any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great
event of the year. He was apt to get stents set him,--so much corn
to husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an
extra play-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at
his task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had the
day after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted
on. Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival,--very much
like Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his
imagination for months before as completely as it did his stomach for
that day and a week after. There was an impression in the house that
that dinner was the most important event since the landing from the
Mayflower. Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at
all, but who had prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous
banquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and
liked peacocks stuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never had
anything like a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or
Sardanapalus either, ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie at
one dinner? Therein many a New England boy is greater than the Roman
emperor or the Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxurious
eaters of their day and generation. But something more is necessary
to make good men than plenty to eat, as Heliogabalus no doubt found
when his head was cut off. Cutting off the head was a mode the
people had of expressing disapproval of their conspicuous men.
Nowadays they elect them to a higher office, or give them a mission
to some foreign country, if they do not do well where they are.
For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work
evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not being
allowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of
fragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,--a world that he
was only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house
was with the most delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made!
If John had been shut in solid walls with them piled about him, he
could n't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were dainties
enough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire year
luscious with good living, if they had been scattered along in it.
But people were probably all the better for scrimping themselves a
little in order to make this a great feast. And it was not by any
means over in a day. There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and other
pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long
time to excavate all its riches.
Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being so
subdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of the Sunday
clothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt little
exhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the real
holiday. Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps the
skatings and sleigh-rides, for the freezing weather came before the
governor's proclamation in many parts of New England. The night
after Thanksgiving occurred, perhaps, the first real party that the
boy had ever attended, with live girls in it, dressed so
bewitchingly. And there he heard those philandering songs, and
played those sweet games of forfeits, which put him quite beside
himself, and kept him awake that night till the rooster crowed at the
end of his first chicken-nap. What a new world did that party open
to him! I think it likely that he saw there, and probably did not
dare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older than
himself, who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see
her face just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wondered
if she noticed how awkward he was, and how short his trousers-legs
were. He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes; and
determined, then and there, that he wouldn't be put off with a ribbon
any longer, but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhat
painful, thinking the party over, but it was delicious, too. He did
not think, probably, that he would die for that tall, handsome girl;
he did not put it exactly in that way. But he rather resolved to
live for her, which might in the end amount to the same thing. At
least, he thought that nobody would live to speak twice
disrespectfully of her in his presence.
IX
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but
that was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that
mince would be better.
The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie has never been properly
considered. There is an air of festivity about its approach in the
fall. The boy is willing to help pare and cut up the pumpkin, and he
watches with the greatest interest the stirring-up process and the
pouring into the scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the baking
reaches his nostrils, he is filled with the most delightful
anticipations. Why should he not be? He knows that for months to
come the buttery will contain golden treasures, and that it will
require only a slight ingenuity to get at them.
The fact is, that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part of
farming. His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is a
very coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a world
that is full of good things to eat, and there is, on the whole, a
very short time in which to eat them; at least, he is told, among the
first information he receives, that life is short. Life being brief,
and pie and the like fleeting, he very soon decides upon an active
campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for
forty or fifty years, but it is different with a beginner. He takes
the thick and thin as it comes, as to pie, for instance. Some people
do make them very thin. I knew a place where they were not thicker
than the poor man's plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust
that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it.
They used to be made up by the great oven-full and kept in the dry
cellar, where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardly
believe. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie in
the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so
discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into the
world.
The truth is, that boys have always been so plenty that they are not
half appreciated. We have shown that a farm could not get along
without them, and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of the
most amusing things is their effort to acquire personal property.
The boy has the care of the calves; they always need feeding, or
shutting up, or letting out; when the boy wants to play, there are
those calves to be looked after,--until he gets to hate the name of
calf. But in consideration of his faithfulness, two of them are
given to him. There is no doubt that they are his: he has the entire
charge of them. When they get to be steers he spends all his
holidays in breaking them in to a yoke. He gets them so broken in
that they will run like a pair of deer all over the farm, turning the
yoke, and kicking their heels, while he follows in full chase,
shouting the ox language till he is red in the face. When the steers
grow up to be cattle, a drover one day comes along and takes them
away, and the boy is told that he can have another pair of calves;
and so, with undiminished faith, he goes back and begins over again
to make his fortune. He owns lambs and young colts in the same way,
and makes just as much out of them.
There are ways in which the farmer-boy can earn money, as by
gathering the early chestnuts and taking them to the corner store, or
by finding turkeys' eggs and selling them to his mother; and another
way is to go without butter at the table--but the money thus made is
for the heathen. John read in Dr. Livingstone that some of the
tribes in Central Africa (which is represented by a blank spot in the
atlas) use the butter to grease their hair, putting on pounds of it
at a time; and he said he had rather eat his butter than have it put
to that use, especially as it melted away so fast in that hot
climate.
Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do not
actually carry butter to Africa, and that they must usually go
without it themselves there, it being almost impossible to make it
good from the milk in the cocoanuts. And it was further explained to
him that even if the heathen never received his butter or the money
for it, it was an excellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit of
self-denial and of benevolence, and if the heathen never heard of
him, he would be blessed for his generosity. This was all true.
But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of his
butter, and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eating
butter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know where
the other members of the family got their money to send to the
heathen; and his mother said that he was about half right, and that
self-denial was just as good for grown people as it was for little
boys and girls.
The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights.
Speaking of those thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cupboard. I
used to know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, and
brushed his hair straight up like General Jackson, and went to the
legislature, where he always voted against every measure that was
proposed, in the most honest manner, and got the reputation of being
the "watch-dog of the treasury." Rats in the cellar were nothing to
be compared to this boy for destructiveness in pies. He used to go
down whenever he could make an excuse, to get apples for the family,
or draw a mug of cider for his dear old grandfather (who was a famous
story-teller about the Revolutionary War, and would no doubt have
been wounded in battle if he had not been as prudent as he was
patriotic), and come upstairs with a tallow candle in one hand and
the apples or cider in the other, looking as innocent and as
unconscious as if he had never done anything in his life except deny
himself butter for the sake of the heathen. And yet this boy would
have buttoned under his jacket an entire round pumpkin-pie. And the
pie was so well made and so dry that it was not injured in the least,
and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more than if it had been
inside of him instead of outside; and this boy would retire to a
secluded place and eat it with another boy, being never suspected
because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and he
never appeared to have one about him. But he did something worse
than this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she told
the family that she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said a
word, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired man was
probably regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his
days, and if he had been accused of robbing, they would have believed
him guilty.
I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse now
about that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his
jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his
stomach like a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals.
Perhaps not. It is difficult to say exactly what was the sin of
stealing that kind of pie, especially if the one who stole it ate it.
It could have been used for the game of pitching quoits, and a pair
of them would have made very fair wheels for the dog-cart. And yet
it is probably as wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one; and it
made no difference because it was easy to steal this sort. Easy
stealing is no better than easy lying, where detection of the lie is
difficult. The boy who steals his mother's pies has no right to be
surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons. Stealing is
like charity in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.
X
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,--the best
kind of boy to be in the summer,--I would be about ten years of age.
As soon as I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boy
is, that just as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has to
be set to doing something else. If a country boy were wise, he would
stay at just that age when he could enjoy himself most, and have the
least expected of him in the way of work.
Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do
"chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters,
rather than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such
boy. He lived in the town of Goshen,--not the place where the butter
is made, but a much better Goshen than that. And I never saw him,
but I heard of him; and being about the same age, as I supposed, I
was taken once from Zoah, where I lived, to Goshen to see him. But
he was dead. He had been dead almost a year, so that it was
impossible to see him. He died of the most singular disease: it was
from not eating green apples in the season of them. This boy, whose
name was Solomon, before he died, would rather split up kindling-wood
for his mother than go a-fishing,--the consequence was, that he was
kept at splitting kindling-wood and such work most of the time, and
grew a better and more useful boy day by day. Solomon would not
disobey his parents and eat green apples,--not even when they were
ripe enough to knock off with a stick, but he had such a longing for
them, that he pined, and passed away. If he had eaten the green
apples, he would have died of them, probably; so that his example is
a difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to get a
moral from. All his little playmates who ate green apples came to
Solomon's funeral, and were very sorry for what they had done.
John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, nor
half so dead. He was a farmer's boy, as Solomon was, but he did not
take so much interest in the farm. If John could have had his way,
he would have discovered a cave full of diamonds, and lots of
nail-kegs full of gold-pieces and Spanish dollars, with a pretty
little girl living in the cave, and two beautifully caparisoned
horses, upon which, taking the jewels and money, they would have
ridden off together, he did not know where. John had got thus far in
his studies, which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but were
in reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of high and mighty
adventure. He was a simple country-boy, and did not know much about
the world as it is, but he had one of his own imagination, in which he
lived a good deal. I daresay he found out soon enough what the world
is, and he had a lesson or two when he was quite young, in two
incidents, which I may as well relate.
If you had seen John at this time, you might have thought he was only
a shabbily dressed country lad, and you never would have guessed what
beautiful thoughts he sometimes had as he went stubbing his toes
along the dusty road, nor what a chivalrous little fellow he was.
You would have seen a short boy, barefooted, with trousers at once
too big and too short, held up perhaps by one suspender only, a
checked cotton shirt, and a hat of braided palm-leaf, frayed at the
edges and bulged up in the crown. It is impossible to keep a hat
neat if you use it to catch bumblebees and whisk 'em; to bail the
water from a leaky boat; to catch minnows in; to put over honey-bees'
nests, and to transport pebbles, strawberries, and hens' eggs. John
usually carried a sling in his hand, or a bow, or a limber stick,
sharp at one end, from which he could sling apples a great distance.
If he walked in the road, he walked in the middle of it, shuffling up
the dust; or if he went elsewhere, he was likely to be running on the
top of the fence or the stone wall, and chasing chipmunks.
John knew the best place to dig sweet-flag in all the farm; it was in
a meadow by the river, where the bobolinks sang so gayly. He never
liked to hear the bobolink sing, however, for he said it always
reminded him of the whetting of a scythe, and that reminded him of
spreading hay; and if there was anything he hated, it was spreading
hay after the mowers. "I guess you would n't like it yourself," said
John, "with the stubbs getting into your feet, and the hot sun, and
the men getting ahead of you, all you could do."
Towards evening, once, John was coming along the road home with some
stalks of the sweet-flag in his hand; there is a succulent pith in
the end of the stalk which is very good to eat,--tender, and not so
strong as the root; and John liked to pull it, and carry home what he
did not eat on the way. As he was walking along he met a carriage,
which stopped opposite to him; he also stopped and bowed, as country
boys used to bow in John's day. A lady leaned from the carriage, and
said:
"What have you got, little boy?"
She seemed to be the most beautiful woman John had ever seen; with
light hair, dark, tender eyes, and the sweetest smile. There was
that in her gracious mien and in her dress which reminded John of the
beautiful castle ladies, with whom he was well acquainted in books.
He felt that he knew her at once, and he also seemed to be a sort of
young prince himself. I fancy he did n't look much like one. But of
his own appearance he thought not at all, as he replied to the lady's
question, without the least embarrassment:
"It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?"
"Indeed, I should like to taste it," said the lady, with a most
winning smile. "I used to be very fond of it when I was a little
girl."
John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, and that she
was pleased to accept it from him. He thought himself that it was
about the best thing to eat he knew. He handed up a large bunch of
it. The lady took two or three stalks, and was about to return the
rest, when John said:
"Please keep it all, ma'am. I can get lots more."
"I know where it's ever so thick."
"Thank you, thank you," said the lady; and as the carriage started,
she reached out her hand to John. He did not understand the motion,
until he saw a cent drop in the road at his feet. Instantly all his
illusion and his pleasure vanished. Something like tears were in his
eyes as he shouted:
"I don't want your cent. I don't sell flag!"
John was intensely mortified. "I suppose," he said, "she thought I
was a sort of beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!"
At any rate, he walked away and left the cent in the road, a
humiliated boy. The next day he told Jim Gates about it. Jim said
he was green not to take the money; he'd go and look for it now, if
he would tell him about where it dropped. And Jim did spend an hour
poking about in the dirt, but he did not find the cent. Jim,
however, had an idea; he said he was going to dig sweet-flag, and see
if another carriage wouldn't come along.
John's next rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort.
He was again walking the road at twilight, when he was overtaken by a
wagon with one seat, upon which were two pretty girls, and a young
gentleman sat between them, driving. It was a merry party, and John
could hear them laughing and singing as they approached him. The
wagon stopped when it overtook him, and one of the sweet-faced girls
leaned from the seat and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:
"Little boy, how's your mar?"
John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the
young lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any
rate, his instinct of politeness made him say:
"She's pretty well, I thank you."
"Does she know you are out?"
And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter,
and dashed on.
It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and it
hurt him dreadfully. His self-respect was injured somehow, and he
felt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would
like to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
"You're a nice...." but he could n't think of any hard, bitter words
quick enough.
Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady,
never knew what a cruel thing she had done.
XI
HOME INVENTIONS
The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, by
any means; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any
part of the year. There is a difference in boys: some are always
jolly, and some go scowling always through life as if they had a
stone-bruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses
candy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fifty
cents a day to see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He
is now the owner of a large town at the West. To be sure, there are
no houses in it except his own; but there is a map of it, and roads
and streets are laid out on it, with dwellings and churches and
academies and a college and an opera-house, and you could scarcely
tell it from Springfield or Hartford,--on paper. He and all his
family have the fever and ague, and shake worse than the people at
Lebanon; but they do not mind it; it makes them lively, in fact. Ed
May is just as jolly as he used to be. He calls his town Mayopolis,
and expects to be mayor of it; his wife, however, calls the town
Maybe.
The farmer-boy likes to have winter come for one thing, because it
freezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it; and it is covered
with snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cows
to pasture. He would have a very easy time if it were not for the
getting up before daylight to build the fires and do the "chores."
Nature intended the long winter nights for the farmer-boy to sleep;
but in my day he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the cock
crew, get out of the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his
cold pantaloons, and pull on boots in which the thermometer would
have gone down to zero, rake open the coals on the hearth and start
the morning fire, and then go to the barn to "fodder." The frost was
thick on the kitchen windows, the snow was drifted against the door,
and the journey to the barn, in the pale light of dawn, over the
creaking snow, was like an exile's trip to Siberia. The boy was not
half awake when he stumbled into the cold barn, and was greeted by
the lowing and bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for their
breakfast. How their breath steamed up from the mangers, and hung in
frosty spears from their noses. Through the great lofts above the
hay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind whistled, and the
snow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated.
I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should be
tight and warm, with a fire in it, if necessary, in order to keep the
temperature somewhere near the freezing-point. I could n't see how
the cattle could live in a place where a lively boy, full of young
blood, would freeze to death in a short time if he did not swing his
arms and slap his hands, and jump about like a goat. I thought I
would have a sort of perpetual manger that should shake down the hay
when it was wanted, and a self-acting machine that should cut up the
turnips and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing for
the cattle and horses to drink. With these simple arrangements I
could lie in bed, and know that the "chores" were doing themselves.
It would also be necessary, in order that I should not be disturbed,
that the crow should be taken out of the roosters, but I could think
of no process to do it. It seems to me that the hen-breeders, if
they know as much as they say they do, might raise a breed of
crowless roosters for the benefit of boys, quiet neighborhoods, and
sleepy families.
There was another notion that I had about kindling the kitchen fire,
that I never carried out. It was to have a spring at the head of my
bed, connecting with a wire, which should run to a torpedo which I
would plant over night in the ashes of the fireplace. By touching
the spring I could explode the torpedo, which would scatter the ashes
and cover the live coals, and at the same time shake down the sticks
of wood which were standing by the side of the ashes in the chimney,
and the fire would kindle itself. This ingenious plan was frowned on
by the whole family, who said they did not want to be waked up every
morning by an explosion. And yet they expected me to wake up without
an explosion! A boy's plans for making life agreeable are hardly
ever heeded.
I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the district
school in the winter. There is such a chance for learning, that he
must be a dull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater,
an accurate snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with
or without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.
Take a moderate hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy
smoothness, and a "go-round" of boys on it, and there is nothing like
it for whittling away boot-leather. The boy is the shoemaker's
friend. An active lad can wear down a pair of cowhide soles in a
week so that the ice will scrape his toes. Sledding or coasting is
also slow fun compared to the "bareback" sliding down a steep hill
over a hard, glistening crust. It is not only dangerous, but it is
destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to make a tailor
laugh. If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy
wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one once a
month. In a country district-school patches were not by any means a
sign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurous
disposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and
put sheet-iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out
his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering
hard sums. For that extraordinary statement he received two
castigations,--one at home, that was mild, and one from the
schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's
sliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on a
sliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history,
--early history,--the Indian wars. We studied it mostly at
noontime, and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have
"object-lessons," though our object was not so much to have lessons
as it was to revive real history.
Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition
said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by the
settlers for defense against the Indians. For the Indians had the
idea that the whites were not settled enough, and used to come nights
to settle--them with a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It was
very steep on each side, and the river ran close by. It was a
charming place in summer, where one could find laurel, and
checkerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit in the cool breeze,
looking at the mountains across the river, and listening to the
murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built a meeting-house there
afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter that the aged
could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it blew nearly
all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards heard of
in the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came down into the
valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards. It
used to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought to
stand as near heaven as possible.
The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one was
the Early Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the most
numerous. The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a
strong fortress it was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast
size (larger than the cyclopean blocks of stone which form the
ancient Etruscan walls in Italy), piled one upon another, and the
whole cemented by pouring on water which froze and made the walls
solid. The Pequots helped the whites build it. It had a covered way
under the snow, through which only could it be entered, and it had
bastions and towers and openings to fire from, and a great many other
things for which there are no names in military books. And it had a
glacis and a ditch outside.
When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in the
schoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and await
the attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison,
while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that
they should be barbarous. And it was in this light that the great
question was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he
had soaked over night in water and let freeze. They were as hard as
cobble-stones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them,
he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It
was considered as unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it
is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But as the whites were
protected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it
was decided that the latter might use the hard missiles.
The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideous
war-whoops, attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and a
shower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance and
well-directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they attempted to
scale the walls. The Settlers had the advantage of position, but
they were sometimes overpowered by numbers, and would often have had
to surrender but for the ringing of the school-bell. The Pequots
were in great fear of the school-bell.
I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and
surrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried by
storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of the
fortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was to
scalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There were
a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it
was in the cause of our early history. The history of Greece and
Rome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our school
who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could
scan arma, virumque cano.
XII
THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be
so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of
age. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up
with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded
with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks
like a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the
traveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the light
from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a
blazing fire. But it is no less a fort, into which the family retire
when the New England winter on the hills really sets in.
The boy is an important part of the garrison. He is not only one of
the best means of communicating with the outer world, but he
furnishes half the entertainment and takes two thirds of the scolding
of the family circle. A farm would come to grief without a boy-on
it, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
"That boy" brings life into the house; his tracks are to be seen
everywhere; he leaves all the doors open; he has n't half filled the
wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
brown-study by the fire and cannot be stirred, or he has fastened a
grip into some Crusoe book which cannot easily be shaken off. I
suppose that the farmer-boy's evenings are not now what they used to
be; that he has more books, and less to do, and is not half so good a
boy as formerly, when he used to think the almanac was pretty lively
reading, and the comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a
supreme delight.
Of course he had the evenings to himself, after he had done the
"chores" at the barn, brought in the wood and piled it high in the
box, ready to be heaped upon the great open fire. It was nearly dark
when he came from school (with its continuation of snowballing and
sliding), and he always had an agreeable time stumbling and fumbling
around in barn and wood-house, in the waning light.
John used to say that he supposed nobody would do his "chores" if he
did not get home till midnight; and he was never contradicted.
Whatever happened to him, and whatever length of days or sort of
weather was produced by the almanac, the cardinal rule was that he
should be at home before dark.
John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wonder
sometimes whether he was n't still in them.
Of course, John had nothing to do all the evening, after his
"chores,"--except little things. While he drew his chair up to the
table in order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on his
slate or his book, the women of the house also sat by the table
knitting and sewing. The head of the house sat in his chair, tipped
back against the chimney; the hired man was in danger of burning his
boots in the fire. John might be deep in the excitement of a bear
story, or be hard at writing a "composition" on his greasy slate; but
whatever he was doing, he was the only one who could always be
interrupted. It was he who must snuff the candles, and put on a
stick of wood, and toast the cheese, and turn the apples, and crack
the nuts. He knew where the fox-and-geese board was, and he could
find the twelve-men-Morris. Considering that he was expected to go
to bed at eight o'clock, one would say that the opportunity for study
was not great, and that his reading was rather interrupted. There
seemed to be always something for him to do, even when all the rest
of the family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a New
England household.
No wonder that John was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had been
flying about while the others had been yawning before the fire. He
would like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it
would become as the night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, to
mend his sled, to finish that chapter. Why should he go away from
that bright blaze, and the company that sat in its radiance, to the
cold and solitude of his chamber? Why did n't the people who were
sleepy go to bed?
How lonesome the old house was; how cold it was, away from that great
central fire in the heart of it; how its timbers creaked as if in the
contracting pinch of the frost; what a rattling there was of windows,
what a concerted attack upon the clapboards; how the floors squeaked,
and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame of
the candle from the boy's hand. How he shivered, as he paused at the
staircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow, upon the
stripped forest, through which he could hear the wind raving in a
kind of fury, and up at the black flying clouds, amid which the young
moon was dashing and driven on like a frail shallop at sea. And his
teeth chattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets, and
drew himself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox in
his hole.
For a little time he could hear the noises downstairs, and an
occasional laugh; he could guess that now they were having cider, and
now apples were going round; and he could feel the wind tugging at
the house, even sometimes shaking the bed. But this did not last
long. He soon went away into a country he always delighted to be in:
a calm place where the wind never blew, and no one dictated the time
of going to bed to any one else. I like to think of him sleeping
there, in such rude surroundings, ingenious, innocent, mischievous,
with no thought of the buffeting he is to get from a world that has a
good many worse places for a boy than the hearth of an old farmhouse,
and the sweet, though undemonstrative, affection of its family life.
But there were other evenings in the boy's life, that were different
from these at home, and one of them he will never forget. It opened
a new world to John, and set him into a great flutter. It produced a
revolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder if
greased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; and
he wished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as he
walked away from it, what was the effect of round patches on the
portion of his trousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and if
patches were quite stylish, even on everyday trousers. And he began
to be very much troubled about the parting of his hair, and how to
find out on which side was the natural part.
The evening to which I refer was that of John's first party. He knew
the girls at school, and he was interested in some of them with a
different interest from that he took in the boys. He never wanted to
"take it out" with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight,
and he instinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he was
with them. He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and
slide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with
cold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples into
which he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two
his lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he not
some of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate,
spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home? And yet the grand sentiment
of life was little awakened in John. He liked best to be with boys,
and their rough play suited him better than the amusements of the
shrinking, fluttering, timid, and sensitive little girls. John had
not learned then that a spider-web is stronger than a cable; or that
a pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great deal
easier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry "enough."
John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the
feat of "going home with a girl" afterwards; and he had been growing
into the habit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing
how Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as much
if Cynthia was absent as when she was present. But there was very
little sentiment in all this, and nothing whatever to make John blush
at hearing her name.
But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the
invitation, in a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparent
wafer: "Miss C. Rudd requests the pleasure of the company of," etc.,
all in blue ink, and the finest kind of pin-scratching writing. What
a precious document it was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of
perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed he could not tell. He
read it over a hundred times, and showed it confidentially to his
favorite cousin, who had beaux of her own and had even "sat up" with
them in the parlor. And from this sympathetic cousin John got advice
as to what he should wear and how he should conduct himself at the
party.
XIII
JOHN'S FIRST PARTY
It turned out that John did not go after all to Cynthia Rudd's party,
having broken through the ice on the river when he was skating that
day, and, as the boy who pulled him out said, "come within an inch of
his life." But he took care not to tumble into anything that should
keep him from the next party, which was given with due formality by
Melinda Mayhew.
John had been many a time to the house of Deacon Mayhew, and never
with any hesitation, even if he knew that both the deacon's
daughters--Melinda and Sophronia were at home. The only fear he had
felt was of the deacon's big dog, who always surlily watched him as
he came up the tan-bark walk, and made a rush at him if he showed the
least sign of wavering. But upon the night of the party his courage
vanished, and he thought he would rather face all the dogs in town
than knock at the front door.
The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging
before the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound of
voices--girls' voices--which set his heart in a flutter. He could
face the whole district school of girls without flinching,--he didn't
mind 'em in the meeting-house in their Sunday best; but he began to
be conscious that now he was passing to a new sphere, where the girls
are supreme and superior, and he began to feel for the first time
that he was an awkward boy. The girl takes to society as naturally
as a duckling does to the placid pond, but with a semblance of shy
timidity; the boy plunges in with a great splash, and hides his shy
awkwardness in noise and commotion.
When John entered, the company had nearly all come. He knew them
every one, and yet there was something about them strange and
unfamiliar. They were all a little afraid of each other, as people
are apt to be when they are well dressed and met together for social
purposes in the country. To be at a real party was a novel thing for
most of them, and put a constraint upon them which they could not at
once overcome. Perhaps it was because they were in the awful
parlor,--that carpeted room of haircloth furniture, which was so
seldom opened. Upon the wall hung two certificates framed in black,
--one certifying that, by the payment of fifty dollars, Deacon Mayhew
was a life member of the American Tract Society, and the other that,
by a like outlay of bread cast upon the waters, his wife was a life
member of the A. B. C. F. M., a portion of the alphabet which has an
awful significance to all New England childhood. These certificates
are a sort of receipt in full for charity, and are a constant and
consoling reminder to the farmer that he has discharged his religious
duties.
There was a fire on the broad hearth, and that, with the tallow
candles on the mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in the room,
and enabled the boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to see
the girls, who were on the other, quite plainly. How sweet and
demure the girls looked, to be sure! Every boy was thinking if his
hair was slick, and feeling the full embarrassment of his entrance
into fashionable life. It was queer that these children, who were so
free everywhere else, should be so constrained now, and not know what
to do with themselves. The shooting of a spark out upon the carpet
was a great relief, and was accompanied by a deal of scrambling to
throw it back into the fire, and caused much giggling. It was only
gradually that the formality was at all broken, and the young people
got together and found their tongues.
John at length found himself with Cynthia Rudd, to his great delight
and considerable embarrassment, for Cynthia, who was older than John,
never looked so pretty. To his surprise he had nothing to say to
her. They had always found plenty to talk about before--but now
nothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at a party.
"It is a pleasant evening," said John.
"It is quite so," replied Cynthia.
"Did you come in a cutter?" asked John anxiously.
"No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,"
said Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.
"Was it slippery?" continued John.
"Not very."
John hoped it would be slippery--very--when he walked home with
Cynthia, as he determined to do, but he did not dare to say so, and
the conversation ran aground again. John thought about his dog and
his sled and his yoke of steers, but he didn't see any way to bring
them into conversation. Had she read the "Swiss Family Robinson"?
Only a little ways. John said it was splendid, and he would lend it
to her, for which she thanked him, and said, with such a sweet
expression, she should be so glad to have it from him. That was
encouraging.
And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the
husking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't
she think she was a real pretty girl.
"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it
pretty well. But did John like the color of her eyes?
No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.
"Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show
her teeth."
John said her mouth was her worst feature.
"Oh, no," said Cynthia warmly; "her mouth is better than her nose."
John did n't know but it was better than her nose, and he should like
her looks better if her hair was n't so dreadful black.
But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked
black hair, and she wished hers was dark. Whereupon John protested
that he liked light hair--auburn hair--of all things.
And Cynthia said that Sally was a dear, good girl, and she did n't
believe one word of the story that she only really found one red ear
at the husking that night, and hid that and kept pulling it out as if
it were a new one.
And so the conversation, once started, went on as briskly as
possible about the paring-bee, and the spelling-school, and the new
singing-master who was coming, and how Jack Thompson had gone to
Northampton to be a clerk in a store, and how Elvira Reddington, in
the geography class at school, was asked what was the capital of
Massachusetts, and had answered "Northampton," and all the school
laughed. John enjoyed the conversation amazingly, and he half wished
that he and Cynthia were the whole of the party.
But the party had meantime got into operation, and the formality was
broken up when the boys and girls had ventured out of the parlor into
the more comfortable living-room, with its easy-chairs and everyday
things, and even gone so far as to penetrate the kitchen in their
frolic. As soon as they forgot they were a party, they began to
enjoy themselves.
But the real pleasure only began with the games. The party was
nothing without the games, and, indeed, it was made for the games.
Very likely it was one of the timid girls who proposed to play
something, and when the ice was once broken, the whole company went
into the business enthusiastically. There was no dancing. We should
hope not. Not in the deacon's house; not with the deacon's
daughters, nor anywhere in this good Puritanic society. Dancing was
a sin in itself, and no one could tell what it would lead to. But
there was no reason why the boys and girls shouldn't come together
and kiss each other during a whole evening occasionally. Kissing was
a sign of peace, and was not at all like taking hold of hands and
skipping about to the scraping of a wicked fiddle.
In the games there was a great deal of clasping hands, of going round
in a circle, of passing under each other's elevated arms, of singing
about my true love, and the end was kisses distributed with more or
less partiality, according to the rules of the play; but, thank
Heaven, there was no fiddler. John liked it all, and was quite brave
about paying all the forfeits imposed on him, even to the kissing all
the girls in the room; but he thought he could have amended that by
kissing a few of them a good many times instead of kissing them all
once.
But John was destined to have a damper put upon his enjoyment. They
were playing a most fascinating game, in which they all stand in a
circle and sing a philandering song, except one who is in the center
of the ring, and holds a cushion. At a certain word in the song, the
one in the center throws the cushion at the feet of some one in the
ring, indicating thereby the choice of a "mate" and then the two
sweetly kneel upon the cushion, like two meek angels, and--and so
forth. Then the chosen one takes the cushion and the delightful play
goes on. It is very easy, as it will be seen, to learn how to play
it. Cynthia was holding the cushion, and at the fatal word she threw
it down, not before John, but in front of Ephraim Leggett. And they
two kneeled, and so forth. John was astounded. He had never
conceived of such perfidy in the female heart. He felt like wiping
Ephraim off the face of the earth, only Ephraim was older and bigger
than he. When it came his turn at length,--thanks to a plain little
girl for whose admiration he did n't care a straw,--he threw the
cushion down before Melinda Mayhew with all the devotion he could
muster, and a dagger look at Cynthia. And Cynthia's perfidious smile
only enraged him the more. John felt wronged, and worked himself up
to pass a wretched evening.
When supper came, he never went near Cynthia, and busied himself in
carrying different kinds of pie and cake, and red apples and cider,
to the girls he liked the least. He shunned Cynthia, and when he was
accidentally near her, and she asked him if he would get her a glass
of cider, he rudely told her--like a goose as he was--that she had
better ask Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got more
and more miserable, and began to feel that he was making himself
ridiculous.
Girls have a great deal more good sense in such matters than boys.
Cynthia went to John, at length, and asked him simply what the matter
was. John blushed, and said that nothing was the matter. Cynthia
said that it wouldn't do for two people always to be together at a
party; and so they made up, and John obtained permission to "see"
Cynthia home.
It was after half-past nine when the great festivities at the
Deacon's broke up, and John walked home with Cynthia over the shining
crust and under the stars. It was mostly a silent walk, for this was
also an occasion when it is difficult to find anything fit to say.
And John was thinking all the way how he should bid Cynthia
good-night; whether it would do and whether it wouldn't do, this not
being a game, and no forfeits attaching to it. When they reached the
gate, there was an awkward little pause. John said the stars were
uncommonly bright. Cynthia did not deny it, but waited a minute and
then turned abruptly away, with "Good-night, John!"
"Good-night, Cynthia!"
And the party was over, and Cynthia was gone, and John went home in a
kind of dissatisfaction with himself.
It was long before he could go to sleep for thinking of the new world
opened to him, and imagining how he would act under a hundred
different circumstances, and what he would say, and what Cynthia
would say; but a dream at length came, and led him away to a great
city and a brilliant house; and while he was there, he heard a loud
rapping on the under floor, and saw that it was daylight.
XIV
THE SUGAR CAMP
I think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than the
making of maple sugar; it is better than "blackberrying," and nearly
as good as fishing. And one reason he likes this work is, that
somebody else does the most of it. It is a sort of work in which he
can appear to be very active, and yet not do much.
And it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busy
about nothing. If the power, for instance, that is expended in play
by a boy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied to
some industry, we should see wonderful results. But a boy is like a
galvanic battery that is not in connection with anything; he
generates electricity and plays it off into the air with the most
reckless prodigality. And I, for one, would n't have it otherwise.
It is as much a boy's business to play off his energies into space as
it is for a flower to blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the
tunes of all the other birds.
In my day maple-sugar-making used to be something between picnicking
and being shipwrecked on a fertile island, where one should save from
the wreck tubs and augers, and great kettles and pork, and hen's eggs
and rye-and-indian bread, and begin at once to lead the sweetest life
in the world. I am told that it is something different nowadays, and
that there is more desire to save the sap, and make good, pure sugar,
and sell it for a large price, than there used to be, and that the
old fun and picturesqueness of the business are pretty much gone. I
am told that it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and bring
it to the house, where there are built brick arches, over which it is
evaporated in shallow pans, and that pains is taken to keep the
leaves, sticks, and ashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar is
clarified; and that, in short, it is a money-making business, in
which there is very little fun, and that the boy is not allowed to
dip his paddle into the kettle of boiling sugar and lick off the
delicious sirup. The prohibition may improve the sugar, but it is
cruel to the boy.
As I remember the New England boy (and I am very intimate with one),
he used to be on the qui vive in the spring for the sap to begin
running. I think he discovered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he
knew it by a feeling of something starting in his own veins,--a sort
of spring stir in his legs and arms, which tempted him to stand on
his head, or throw a handspring, if he could find a spot of ground
from which the snow had melted. The sap stirs early in the legs of a
country-boy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get
tired of boots, and want to come out and touch the soil just as soon
as the sun has warmed it a little. The country-boy goes barefoot
just as naturally as the trees burst their buds, which were packed
and varnished over in the fall to keep the water and the frost out.
Perhaps the boy has been out digging into the maple-trees with his
jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery
as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement--as
if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn--with "Sap's runnin'!"
And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sap-buckets,
which have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, and which
the boy has occasionally climbed up to look at with another boy, for
they are full of sweet suggestions of the annual spring frolic,--the
sap-buckets are brought down and set out on the south side of the
house and scalded. The snow is still a foot or two deep in the
woods, and the ox-sled is got out to make a road to the sugar camp,
and the campaign begins. The boy is everywhere present,
superintending everything, asking questions, and filled with a desire
to help the excitement.
It is a great day when the cart is loaded with the buckets and the
procession starts into the woods. The sun shines almost
unobstructedly into the forest, for there are only naked branches to
bar it; the snow is soft and beginning to sink down, leaving the
young bushes spindling up everywhere; the snowbirds are twittering
about, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes
far and wide. This is spring, and the boy can scarcely contain his
delight that his out-door life is about to begin again.
In the first place, the men go about and tap the trees, drive in the
spouts, and hang the buckets under. The boy watches all these
operations with the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, when
a hole is bored in a tree, the sap would spout out in a stream as it
does when a cider-barrel is tapped; but it never does, it only drops,
sometimes almost in a stream, but on the whole slowly, and the boy
learns that the sweet things of the world have to be patiently waited
for, and do not usually come otherwise than drop by drop.
Then the camp is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is re-covered
with boughs. In front of it two enormous logs are rolled nearly
together, and a fire is built between them. Forked sticks are set at
each end, and a long pole is laid on them, and on this are hung the
great caldron kettles. The huge hogsheads are turned right side up,
and cleaned out to receive the sap that is gathered. And now, if
there is a good "sap run," the establishment is under full headway.
The great fire that is kindled up is never let out, night or day, as
long as the season lasts. Somebody is always cutting wood to feed
it; somebody is busy most of the time gathering in the sap; somebody
is required to watch the kettles that they do not boil over, and to
fill them. It is not the boy, however; he is too busy with things in
general to be of any use in details. He has his own little sap-yoke
and small pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid. He has a
little boiling-place of his own, with small logs and a tiny kettle.
In the great kettles the boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, as
it thickens, is dipped from one to another, until in the end kettle
it is reduced to sirup, and is taken out to cool and settle, until
enough is made to "sugar off." To "sugar off" is to boil the sirup
until it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is the
grand event, and is done only once in two or three days.
But the boy's desire is to "sugar off" perpetually. He boils his
kettle down as rapidly as possible; he is not particular about chips,
scum, or ashes; he is apt to burn his sugar; but if he can get enough
to make a little wax on the snow, or to scrape from the bottom of the
kettle with his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal is wasted on
his hands, and the outside of his face, and on his clothes, but he
does not care; he is not stingy.
To watch the operations of the big fire gives him constant pleasure.
Sometimes he is left to watch the boiling kettles, with a piece of
pork tied on the end of a stick, which he dips into the boiling mass
when it threatens to go over. He is constantly tasting of it,
however, to see if it is not almost sirup. He has a long round
stick, whittled smooth at one end, which he uses for this purpose, at
the constant risk of burning his tongue. The smoke blows in his
face; he is grimy with ashes; he is altogether such a mass of dirt,
stickiness, and sweetness, that his own mother would n't know him.
He likes to boil eggs in the hot sap with the hired man; he likes to
roast potatoes in the ashes, and he would live in the camp day and
night if he were permitted. Some of the hired men sleep in the bough
shanty and keep the fire blazing all night. To sleep there with
them, and awake in the night and hear the wind in the trees, and see
the sparks fly up to the sky, is a perfect realization of all the
stories of adventures he has ever read. He tells the other boys
afterwards that he heard something in the night that sounded very
much like a bear. The hired man says that he was very much scared by
the hooting of an owl.
The great occasions for the boy, though, are the times of
"sugaring-off." Sometimes this used to be done in the evening, and it
was made the excuse for a frolic in the camp. The neighbors were
invited; sometimes even the pretty girls from the village, who filled
all the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter and little
affectations of fright. The white snow still lies on all the ground
except the warm spot about the camp. The tree branches all show
distinctly in the light of the fire, which sends its ruddy glare far
into the darkness, and lights up the bough shanty, the hogsheads, the
buckets on the trees, and the group about the boiling kettles, until
the scene is like something taken out of a fairy play. If Rembrandt
could have seen a sugar party in a New England wood, he would have
made out of its strong contrasts of light and shade one of the finest
pictures in the world. But Rembrandt was not born in Massachusetts;
people hardly ever do know where to be born until it is too late.
Being born in the right place is a thing that has been very much
neglected.
At these sugar parties every one was expected to eat as much sugar as
possible; and those who are practiced in it can eat a great deal. It
is a peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you may
eat so much of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it,
you will want it the next day more than ever. At the "sugaring-off"
they used to pour the hot sugar upon the snow, where it congealed,
without crystallizing, into a sort of wax, which I do suppose is the
most delicious substance that was ever invented. And it takes a
great while to eat it. If one should close his teeth firmly on a
ball of it, he would be unable to open his mouth until it dissolved.
The sensation while it is melting is very pleasant, but one cannot
converse.
The boy used to make a big lump of it and give it to the dog, who
seized it with great avidity, and closed his jaws on it, as dogs will
on anything. It was funny the next moment to see the expression of
perfect surprise on the dog's face when he found that he could not
open his jaws. He shook his head; he sat down in despair; he ran
round in a circle; he dashed into the woods and back again. He did
everything except climb a tree, and howl. It would have been such a
relief to him if he could have howled. But that was the one thing he
could not do.
XV
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet,
or a missionary, or a peddler. Most of them used to. There is
everything in the heart of the New England hills to feed the
imagination of the boy, and excite his longing for strange countries.
I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and
attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and
yet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to become
a roamer in literature and in the world, a poet and a wanderer.
There is something in the soil and the pure air, I suspect, that
promises more romance than is forthcoming, that excites the
imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of
adventure. And the prosaic life of the sweet home does not at all
correspond to the boy's dreams of the world. In the good old days, I
am told, the boys on the coast ran away and became sailors; the
countryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries, and
then they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports.
John used to spend hours in the top of a slender hickory-tree that a
little detached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of the
steep and lofty pasture behind his house. He was sent to make war on
the bushes that constantly encroached upon the pastureland; but John
had no hostility to any growing thing, and a very little bushwhacking
satisfied him. When he had grubbed up a few laurels and young
tree-sprouts, he was wont to retire into his favorite post of
observation and meditation. Perhaps he fancied that the wide-swaying
stem to which he clung was the mast of a ship; that the tossing forest
behind him was the heaving waves of the sea; and that the wind which
moaned over the woods and murmured in the leaves, and now and then
sent him a wide circuit in the air, as if he had been a blackbird on
the tip-top of a spruce, was an ocean gale. What life, and action, and
heroism there was to him in the multitudinous roar of the forest, and
what an eternity of existence in the monologue of the river, which
brawled far, far below him over its wide stony bed! How the river
sparkled and danced and went on, now in a smooth amber current, now
fretted by the pebbles, but always with that continuous busy song!
John never knew that noise to cease, and he doubted not, if he stayed
here a thousand years, that same loud murmur would fill the air.
On it went, under the wide spans of the old wooden, covered bridge,
swirling around the great rocks on which the piers stood, spreading
away below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples
that lined the green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him,
except now and then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or the
muffled far-off voices of some chance passers on the road. Seen from
this high perch, the familiar village, sending its brown roofs and
white spires up through the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and
was like some town in a book, say a village nestled in the Swiss
mountains, or something in Bohemia. And there, beyond the purple
hills of Bozrah, and not so far as the stony pastures of Zoah,
whither John had helped drive the colts and young stock in the
spring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John had himself once
been to the land of Canaan with his grandfather, when he was a very
small boy; and he had once seen an actual, no-mistake Jew, a
mysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who sold
scythe-snaths in that region, and about whom there was a rumor that he
was once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who apprehended
in his long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the world
had vast possibilities for John. Away to the south, up a vast basin of
forest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line of
woods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an army
might appear, perhaps British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red and
of yellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose,
and open on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute,
winding down the mountain road, deploying in the meadows, and giving
the valley to pillage and to flame. In which event his position would
be an excellent one for observation and for safety. While he was in
the height of this engagement, perhaps the horn would be blown from
the back porch, reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brush
and go for the cows. As if there were no better use for a warrior and
a poet in New England than to send him for the cows!
John knew a boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who afterwards became a
general in the war, and went to Congress, and got to be a real
governor, who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures,
and hated it in his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast what
kind of a man he would be. This boy, as soon as he had cut about one
brush, would seek for one of several holes in the ground (and he was
familiar with several), in which lived a white-and-black animal that
must always be nameless in a book, but an animal quite capable of the
most pungent defense of himself. This young aspirant to Congress
would cut a long stick, with a little crotch in the end of it, and
run it into the hole; and when the crotch was punched into the fur
and skin of the animal, he would twist the stick round till it got a
good grip on the skin, and then he would pull the beast out; and
when he got the white-and-black just out of the hole so that his dog
could seize him, the boy would take to his heels, and leave the two
to fight it out, content to scent the battle afar off. And this boy,
who was in training for public life, would do this sort of thing all
the afternoon, and when the sun told him that he had spent long
enough time cutting brush, he would industriously go home as innocent
as anybody. There are few such boys as this nowadays; and that is
the reason why the New England pastures are so much overgrown with
brush.
John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a
special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility
that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a
woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The
woodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small apple-tree.
John thought this a most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood under
the tree and taunted the animal and stoned it. Thereupon the
woodchuck dropped down on John and seized him by the leg of his
trousers. John was both enraged and scared by this dastardly attack;
the teeth of the enemy went through the cloth and met; and there he
hung. John then made a pivot of one leg and whirled himself around,
swinging the woodchuck in the air, until he shook him off; but in his
departure the woodchuck carried away a large piece of John's summer
trousers-leg. The boy never forgot it. And whenever he had a
holiday, he used to expend an amount of labor and ingenuity in the
pursuit of woodchucks that would have made his for tune in any useful
pursuit. There was a hill pasture, down on one side of which ran a
small brook, and this pasture was full of woodchuck-holes. It
required the assistance of several boys to capture a woodchuck. It
was first necessary by patient watching to ascertain that the
woodchuck was at home. When one was seen to enter his burrow, then
all the entries to it except one--there are usually three--were
plugged up with stones. A boy and a dog were then left to watch the
open hole, while John and his comrades went to the brook and began to
dig a canal, to turn the water into the residence of the woodchuck.
This was often a difficult feat of engineering, and a long job.
Often it took more than half a day of hard labor with shovel and hoe
to dig the canal. But when the canal was finished and the water
began to pour into the hole, the excitement began. How long would it
take to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it
seemed as if the hole was a bottomless pit. But sooner or later the
water would rise in it, and then there was sure to be seen the nose
of the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level with the rising flood.
It was piteous to see the anxious look of the hunted, half-drowned
creature as--it came to the surface and caught sight of the dog.
There the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole, quivering with
excitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him were
the cruel boys dancing with joy and setting the dog on. The poor
creature would disappear in the water in terror; but he must breathe,
and out would come his nose again, nearer the dog each time. At last
the water ran out of the hole as well as in, and the soaked beast
came with it, and made a desperate rush. But in a trice the dog had
him, and the boys stood off in a circle, with stones in their hands,
to see what they called "fair play." They maintained perfect
"neutrality" so long as the dog was getting the best of the
woodchuck; but if the latter was likely to escape, they "interfered"
in the interest of peace and the "balance of power," and killed the
woodchuck. This is a boy's notion of justice; of course, he'd no
business to be a woodchuck,--an--unspeakable woodchuck.
I used the word "aromatic" in relation to the New England soil.
John knew very well all its sweet, aromatic, pungent, and medicinal
products, and liked to search for the scented herbs and the wild
fruits and exquisite flowers; but he did not then know, and few do
know, that there is no part of the globe where the subtle chemistry
of the earth produces more that is agreeable to the senses than a New
England hill-pasture and the green meadow at its foot. The poets
have succeeded in turning our attention from it to the comparatively
barren Orient as the land of sweet-smelling spices and odorous gums.
And it is indeed a constant surprise that this poor and stony soil
elaborates and grows so many delicate and aromatic products.
John, it is true, did not care much for anything that did not appeal
to his taste and smell and delight in brilliant color; and he trod
down the exquisite ferns and the wonderful mosses--without
compunction. But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks the
columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the
high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild
currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of
the pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots
of the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; he ate the tender
leaves of the wintergreen and its red berries; he gathered the
peppermint and the spearmint; he gnawed the twigs of the black birch;
there was a stout fern which he called "brake," which he pulled up,
and found that the soft end "tasted good;" he dug the amber gum from
the spruce-tree, and liked to smell, though he could not chew, the
gum of the wild cherry; it was his melancholy duty to bring home such
medicinal herbs for the garret as the gold-thread, the tansy, and the
loathsome "boneset;" and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel,
stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, and
butternuts. But that which lives most vividly in his memory and most
strongly draws him back to the New England hills is the aromatic
sweet-fern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to crush in his
hands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of New
England.
XVI
JOHN'S REVIVAL
The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard of
Christmas. There was no such day in his calendar. If John ever came
across it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word.
If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders about
it, he might have got the dim impression that it was a kind of
Popish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as
"card-playing," or being a "Democrat." John knew a couple of
desperately bad boys who were reported to play "seven-up" in a barn,
on the haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder. He
had once seen a pack of greasy "playing-cards," and it seemed to him
to contain the quintessence of sin. If he had desired to defy all
Divine law and outrage all human society, he felt that he could do it
by shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two bad boys enjoyed in
stealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the most
wicked thing they could do. If it had been as sinless as playing
marbles, they would n't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past a
brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless inhabitants, it was
said, were card-playing people; and it is impossible to describe how
wicked that house appeared to John. He almost expected to see its
shingles stand on end. In the old New England one could not in any
other way so express his contempt of all holy and orderly life as by
playing cards for amusement.
There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than there
was of Easter; and probably nobody about him could have explained
Easter; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas
gifts. Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on his
birthday or any other day. He expected nothing that he did not earn,
or make in the way of "trade" with another boy. He was taught to
work for what he received. He even earned, as I said, the extra
holidays of the day after the Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving.
Of the free grace and gifts of Christmas he had no conception. The
single and melancholy association he had with it was the quaking hymn
which his grandfather used to sing in a cracked and quavering voice:
"While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground."
The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of it--the doleful voice
always repeating, "and glory shone around "--made John as miserable
as "Hark! from the tombs." It was all one dreary expectation of
something uncomfortable. It was, in short, "religion." You'd got to
have it some time; that John believed. But it lay in his unthinking
mind to put off the "Hark! from the tombs" enjoyment as long as
possible. He experienced a kind of delightful wickedness in
indulging his dislike of hymns and of Sunday.
John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his
wickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much to
lie; and he despised "meanness" and stinginess, and had a chivalrous
feeling toward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him that
there was any virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty and
veracity were in the atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he
"got mad" easily; but he did work, and he was always ashamed when he
was over his fit of passion. In short, you couldn't find a much
better wicked boy than John.
When the "revival" came, therefore, one summer, John was in a
quandary. Sunday meeting and Sunday-school he did n't mind; they
were a part of regular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy's
pleasures. But when there began to be evening meetings at the
different houses, a new element came into affairs. There was a kind
of solemnity over the community, and a seriousness in all faces. At
first these twilight assemblies offered a little relief to the
monotony of farm life; and John liked to meet the boys and girls, and
to watch the older people coming in, dressed in their second best. I
think John's imagination was worked upon by the sweet and mournful
hymns that were discordantly sung in the stiff old parlors. There
was a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity too, in the odor of
caraway-seed that pervaded the room. The windows were wide open also,
and the scent of June roses came in, with all the languishing sounds
of a summer night. All the little boys had a scared look, but the
little girls were never so pretty and demure as in this their
susceptible seriousness. If John saw a boy who did not come to the
evening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling down the meadow,
looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster of
wickedness.
After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under the
general impression of fright and seriousness. All the talk was of
"getting religion," and he heard over and over again that the
probability was if he did not get it now, he never would. The chance
did not come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would be
given over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that he
was not one of the elect. John fancied that he could feel his heart
hardening, and he began to look with a wistful anxiety into the faces
of the Christians to see what were the visible signs of being one of
the elect. John put on a good deal of a manner that he "did n't
care," and he never admitted his disquiet by asking any questions or
standing up in meeting to be prayed for. But he did care. He heard
all the time that all he had to do was to repent and believe. But
there was nothing that he doubted, and he was perfectly willing to
repent if he could think of anything to repent of.
It was essential he learned, that he should have a "conviction of
sin." This he earnestly tried to have. Other people, no better than
he, had it, and he wondered why he could n't have it. Boys and girls
whom he knew were "under conviction," and John began to feel not only
panicky, but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days and
days, and not able to sleep at night, but now she had given herself
up and found peace. There was a kind of radiance in her face that
struck John with awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulf
between him and Cynthia. Everybody was going away from him, and his
heart was getting harder than ever. He could n't feel wicked, all he
could do. And there was Ed Bates his intimate friend, though older
than he, a "whaling," noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction and
sure he was going to be lost. How John envied him! And pretty soon
Ed "experienced religion." John anxiously watched the change in Ed's
face when he became one of the elect. And a change there was.
And John wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to go
trout-fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a meadow brook near the
river; and when the trout didn't bite right off, Ed would--get mad,
and as soon as one took hold he would give an awful jerk, sending the
fish more than three hundred feet into the air and landing it in the
bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out, "Gul darn ye, I'll
learn ye." And John wondered if Ed would take the little trout out
any more gently now.
John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of his
playmates came out and made a profession. Cynthia (she too was older
than John) sat on Sunday in the singers' seat; her voice, which was
going to be a contralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and he
heard it with a heartache. "There she is," thought John, "singing
away like an angel in heaven, and I am left out." During all his
after life a contralto voice was to John one of his most bitter and
heart-wringing pleasures. It suggested the immaculate scornful, the
melancholy unattainable.
If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction of
sin, John tried. And what made him miserable was, that he couldn't
feel miserable when everybody else was miserable. He even began to
pretend to be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like the
others. He pretended he did n't care for play; he refrained from
chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the
bright vivacity of the summer--time that used to make him turn
hand-springs smote him as a discordant levity. He was not a hypocrite
at all, and he was getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at
himself. Every day and night he heard that the spirit of the Lord
would probably soon quit striving with him, and leave him out. The
phrase was that he would "grieve away the Holy Spirit." John wondered
if he was not doing it. He did everything to put himself in the way of
conviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore a grave face,
refrained from play, and tried to feel anxious. At length he concluded
that he must do something.
One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several
of his little playmates had "come forward," he felt that he could
force the crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was an
enchanting summer night; the stars danced overhead, and by his side
the broad and shallow river ran over its stony bed with a loud but
soothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty. John did not
then know that it sang, "But I go on forever," yet there was in it
for him something of the solemn flow of the eternal world. When he
came in sight of the house, he knelt down in the dust by a pile of
rails and prayed. He prayed that he might feel bad, and be
distressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly, and yet
not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs by the
meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in it
a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted.
What is there in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring,
the despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years
after it happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on
the edge of the Ravenna marshes. A little way over the purple plain
he saw the darkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola."
The Holy Pontiff Pius IX. was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood
in that serene and moist region. As the train waited, John heard
from miles of marshes round about the evening song of millions of
frogs, louder and more melancholy and entreating than the vesper call
of the bells. And instantly his mind went back for the association
of sound is as subtle as that of odor--to the prayer, years ago, by
the roadside and the plaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and he
wondered if the little Pope had not heard the like importunity, and
perhaps, when he thought of himself as a little Pope, associated his
conversion with this plaintive sound.
John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperately
into the house, and told the family that he was in an anxious state
of mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and
the little boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and
to become that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told to
read the Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the
texts of Scripture and hymns he could think of. John did this, and
said over and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about
in a real discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing
the hypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough in wanting to
feel, as the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner.
He tried to think of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed,
it often came to his mind. It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie,
that never injured anybody but himself John knew he was not wicked
enough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's class
was to recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a young lady he held
in great love and respect, came in to visit the school. John was a
favorite with her, and she had come to hear him recite. As it
happened, John felt shaky in the geographical lesson of that day, and
he feared to be humiliated in the presence of his cousin; he felt
embarrassed to that degree that he could n't have "bounded"
Massachusetts. So he stood up and raised his hand, and said to the
schoolma'am, "Please, ma'am, I 've got the stomach-ache; may I go
home?" And John's character for truthfulness was so high (and even
this was ever a reproach to him), that his word was instantly
believed, and he was dismissed without any medical examination. For
a moment John was delighted to get out of school so early; but soon
his guilt took all the light out of the summer sky and the
pleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly, without a single
hop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a woodchuck at a
distance from his well-known hole tempted John, but he restrained
himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a
woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. He was acting a
miserable part, but it had to be gone through with. He went home and
told his mother the reason he had left school, but he added that he
felt "some" better now. The "some" did n't save him. Genuine
sympathy was lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff dose of
nasty "picra,"--the horror of all childhood, and he was put in bed
immediately. The world never looked so pleasant to John, but to bed
he was forced to go. He was excused from all chores; he was not even
to go after the cows. John said he thought he ought to go after the
cows,--much as he hated the business usually, he would now willingly
have wandered over the world after cows,--and for this heroic offer,
in the condition he was, he got credit for a desire to do his duty;
and this unjust confidence in him added to his torture. And he had
intended to set his hooks that night for eels. His cousin came home,
and sat by his bedside and condoled with him; his schoolma'am had
sent word how sorry she was for him, John was Such a good boy. All
this was dreadful.
He groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; it
would be very dangerous to eat a morsel. The prospect was appalling.
Never was there such a long twilight; never before did he hear so
many sounds outdoors that he wanted to investigate. Being ill
without any illness was a horrible condition. And he began to have
real stomach-ache now; and it ached because it was empty. John was
hungry enough to have eaten the New England Primer. But by and by
sleep came, and John forgot his woes in dreaming that he knew where
Madagascar was just as easy as anything.
It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying to be
affected by the revival. And he was very much ashamed of it, and
believed he would never tell another. But then he fell thinking
whether, with the "picra," and the going to bed in the afternoon, and
the loss of his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it.
And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer to
realizing the terrors he desired to feel. But he was a conscientious
boy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of the
season. He not only put himself away from them all, but he refrained
from doing almost everything that he wanted to do. There came at
that time a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a long
account of the Long Island races, in which the famous horse
"Lexington" was a runner. John was fond of horses, he knew about
Lexington, and he had looked forward to the result of this race with
keen interest. But to read the account of it how he felt might
destroy his seriousness of mind, and in all reverence and simplicity
he felt it--be a means of "grieving away the Holy Spirit." He
therefore hid away the paper in a table-drawer, intending to read it
when the revival should be over. Weeks after, when he looked for the
newspaper, it was not to be found, and John never knew what "time"
Lexington made nor anything about the race. This was to him a
serious loss, but by no means so deep as another feeling that
remained with him; for when his little world returned to its ordinary
course, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehension of his own
separateness from other people, in his insensibility to the revival.
Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pity that
there was no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
him is not a "scheme."
XVII
WAR
Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. The
scientists who want to study the primitive man, and have so much
difficulty in finding one anywhere in this sophisticated age,
couldn't do better than to devote their attention to the common
country-boy. He has the primal, vigorous instincts and impulses of
the African savage, without any of the vices inherited from a
civilization long ago decayed or developed in an unrestrained
barbaric society. You want to catch your boy young, and study him
before he has either virtues or vices, in order to understand the
primitive man.
Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before
children were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with the
word "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing,
and war. The military instinct, which is the special mark of
barbarism, is strong in him. It arises not alone from his love of
fighting, for the boy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, but
from his fondness for display,--the same that a corporal or a general
feels in decking himself in tinsel and tawdry colors and strutting
about in view of the female sex. Half the pleasure in going out to
murder another man with a gun would be wanting if one did not wear
feathers and gold-lace and stripes on his pantaloons. The law also
takes this view of it, and will not permit men to shoot each other in
plain clothes. And the world also makes some curious distinctions in
the art of killing. To kill people with arrows is barbarous; to kill
them with smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; to
kill them with breech-loading rifles is civilized. That nation is
the most civilized which has the appliances to kill the most of
another nation in the shortest time. This is the result of six
thousand years of constant civilization. By and by, when the nations
cease to be boys, perhaps they will not want to kill each other at
all. Some people think the world is very old; but here is an
evidence that it is very young, and, in fact, has scarcely yet begun
to be a world. When the volcanoes have done spouting, and the
earthquakes are quaked out, and you can tell what land is going to be
solid and keep its level twenty-four hours, and the swamps are filled
up, and the deltas of the great rivers, like the Mississippi and the
Nile, become terra firma, and men stop killing their fellows in order
to get their land and other property, then perhaps there will be a
world that an angel would n't weep over. Now one half the world are
employed in getting ready to kill the other half, some of them by
marching about in uniform, and the others by hard work to earn money
to pay taxes to buy uniforms and guns.
John was not naturally very cruel, and it was probably the love of
display quite as much as of fighting that led him into a military
life; for he, in common with all his comrades, had other traits of
the savage. One of them was the same passion for ornament that
induces the African to wear anklets and bracelets of hide and of
metal, and to decorate himself with tufts of hair, and to tattoo his
body. In John's day there was a rage at school among the boys for
wearing bracelets woven of the hair of the little girls. Some of
them were wonderful specimens of braiding and twist. These were not
captured in war, but were sentimental tokens of friendship given by
the young maidens themselves. John's own hair was kept so short (as
became a warrior) that you couldn't have made a bracelet out of it,
or anything except a paintbrush; but the little girls were not under
military law, and they willingly sacrificed their tresses to decorate
the soldiers they esteemed. As the Indian is honored in proportion
to the scalps he can display, at John's school the boy was held in
highest respect who could show the most hair trophies on his wrist.
John himself had a variety that would have pleased a Mohawk, fine and
coarse and of all colors. There were the flaxen, the faded straw,
the glossy black, the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the undecided
auburn, and the fiery red. Perhaps his pulse beat more quickly under
the red hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account of all the other
wristlets put together; it was a sort of gold-tried-in-the-fire-color
to John, and burned there with a steady flame. Now that Cynthia had
become a Christian, this band of hair seemed a more sacred if less
glowing possession (for all detached hair will fade in time), and if
he had known anything about saints, he would have imagined that it
was a part of the aureole that always goes with a saint. But I am
bound to say that while John had a tender feeling for this red
string, his sentiment was not that of the man who becomes entangled
in the meshes of a woman's hair; and he valued rather the number than
the quality of these elastic wristlets.
John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the breast
of any slaughterer of his fellows. He liked to read of war, of
encounters with the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing in
glittering uniform, to the noise of the terribly exciting fife and
drum, which maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the
wounded. In his future he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword
and snug-fitting, decorated clothes,--very different from his
somewhat roomy trousers and country-cut roundabout, made by Aunt
Ellis, the village tailoress, who cut out clothes, not according to
the shape of the boy, but to what he was expected to grow to,--going
where glory awaited him. In his observation of pictures, it was the
common soldier who was always falling and dying, while the officer
stood unharmed in the storm of bullets and waved his sword in a
heroic attitude. John determined to be an officer.
It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the military
company of his village. He had risen from the grade of corporal to
that of first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father was
captain of the grown militia company, and consequently had inherited
military aptness and knowledge. The old captain was a flaming son of
Mars, whose nose militia, war, general training, and New England rum
had painted with the color of glory and disaster. He was one of the
gallant old soldiers of the peaceful days of our country, splendid in
uniform, a martinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious object
when he marched at the head of his company of flintlock muskets, with
the American banner full high advanced, and the clamorous drum
defying the world. In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen,
faithfully teaching his uniformed companions how to march by the left
leg, and to get reeling drunk by sundown; otherwise he did n't amount
to much in the community; his house was unpainted, his fences were
tumbled down, his farm was a waste, his wife wore an old gown to
meeting, to which the captain never went; but he was a good
trout-fisher, and there was no man in town who spent more time at the
country store and made more shrewd observations upon the affairs of
his neighbors. Although he had never been in an asylum any more than
he had been in war, he was almost as perfect a drunkard as he was
soldier. He hated the British, whom he had never seen, as much as he
loved rum, from which he was never separated.
The company which his son commanded, wearing his father's belt and
sword, was about as effective as the old company, and more orderly.
It contained from thirty to fifty boys, according to the pressure of
"chores" at home, and it had its great days of parade and its autumn
maneuvers, like the general training. It was an artillery company,
which gave every boy a chance to wear a sword, and it possessed a
small mounted cannon, which was dragged about and limbered and
unlimbered and fired, to the imminent danger of everybody, especially
of the company. In point of marching, with all the legs going
together, and twisting itself up and untwisting breaking into
single-file (for Indian fighting), and forming platoons, turning a
sharp corner, and getting out of the way of a wagon, circling the town
pump, frightening horses, stopping short in front of the tavern, with
ranks dressed and eyes right and left, it was the equal of any
military organization I ever saw. It could train better than the big
company, and I think it did more good in keeping alive the spirit of
patriotism and desire to fight. Its discipline was strict. If a boy
left the ranks to jab a spectator, or make faces at a window, or "go
for" a striped snake, he was "hollered" at no end.
It was altogether a very serious business; there was no levity about
the hot and hard marching, and as boys have no humor, nothing
ludicrous occurred. John was very proud of his office, and of his
ability to keep the rear ranks closed up and ready to execute any
maneuver when the captain "hollered," which he did continually. He
carried a real sword, which his grandfather had worn in many a
militia campaign on the village green, the rust upon which John
fancied was Indian blood; he had various red and yellow insignia of
military rank sewed upon different parts of his clothes, and though
his cocked hat was of pasteboard, it was decorated with gilding and
bright rosettes, and floated a red feather that made his heart beat
with martial fury whenever he looked at it. The effect of this
uniform upon the girls was not a matter of conjecture. I think they
really cared nothing about it, but they pretended to think it fine,
and they fed the poor boy's vanity, the weakness by which women
govern the world.
The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay was
never equaled in any subsequent occupation. The display of the
company in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. There
was nothing wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had
by half the company staining themselves with elderberry juice and
going into the woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind
trees with bows and arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners.
This, however, was made to seem very like real war. Traditions of
Indian cruelty were still fresh in western Massachusetts. Behind
John's house in the orchard were some old slate tombstones, sunken
and leaning, which recorded the names of Captain Moses Rice and
Phineas Arms, who had been killed by Indians in the last century
while at work in the meadow by the river, and who slept there in the
hope of the glorious resurrection. Phineas Arms martial name--was
long since dust, and even the mortal part of the great Captain Moses
Rice had been absorbed in the soil and passed perhaps with the sap up
into the old but still blooming apple-trees. It was a quiet place
where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--the
loud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the long
grass on that sunny slope. There was a tradition that years ago an
Indian, probably the last of his race, had been seen moving along the
crest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley which
had been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he
grew his corn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish.
John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that
red specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone
suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from
the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas
Arms. The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; and this
was an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with the
elderberry Indians. It was warned in time. If there was no
war-whoop, the killing did n't count; the artillery man got up and
killed the Indian. The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not only
got killed by the regulars, but he got whipped by the home guard at
night for staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.
But once a year the company had a superlative parade. This was when
the military company from the north part of the town joined the
villagers in a general muster. This was an infantry company, and not
to be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions.
There was a great and natural hatred between the north town boys and
the center. I don't know why, but no contiguous African tribes could
be more hostile. It was all right for one of either section to
"lick" the other if he could, or for half a dozen to "lick" one of
the enemy if they caught him alone. The notion of honor, as of
mercy, comes into the boy only when he is pretty well grown; to some
neither ever comes. And yet there was an artificial military
courtesy (something like that existing in the feudal age, no doubt)
which put the meeting of these two rival and mutually detested
companies on a high plane of behavior. It was beautiful to see the
seriousness of this lofty and studied condescension on both sides.
For the time everything was under martial law. The village company
being the senior, its captain commanded the united battalion in the
march, and this put John temporarily into the position of captain,
with the right to march at the head and "holler;" a responsibility
which realized all his hopes of glory. I suppose there has yet been
discovered by man no gratification like that of marching at the head
of a column in uniform on parade, unless, perhaps, it is marching at
their head when they are leaving a field of battle. John experienced
all the thrill of this conspicuous authority, and I daresay that
nothing in his later life has so exalted him in his own esteem;
certainly nothing has since happened that was so important as the
events of that parade day seemed. He satiated himself with all the
delights of war.
XVIII
COUNTRY SCENES
It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about
the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. These
harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least,
a generation ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only for
a master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.
But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it is
easy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, were
expanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was the
lovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were
the great hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretching
away to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures,
and the wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempests
howled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the great
shadows of summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves,
shouldering up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,--the
clouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden
dashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue
and distant, a fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the
eagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can
you say how these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few
books and no contact with the great world? Do you think any city lad
could have written "Thanatopsis" at eighteen?
If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used
straw hat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along the
river-bank of a cool morning to see if an eel had "got on," you would
not have fancied that he lived in an ideal world. Nor did he
consciously. So far as he knew, he had no more sentiment than a
jack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed
scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming
hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root,
tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a
vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious
possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him
comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only a
single and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, and
there was no harm in letting his imagination play about her illumined
head. Since Cynthia had "got religion" and John had got nothing, his
love was tempered with a little awe and a feeling of distance. He
was not fickle, and yet I cannot say that he was not ready to
construct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated.
Nothing was easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage,
drawn by two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the
sandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front
seat, and on the back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl
beside her. Behind, on the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy,
an imp out of a story-book. John was told that the black boy was a
slave, and that the carriage was from Baltimore. Here was a chance
for a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on
the part of the slender boy on the front seat,--here was an opening
into a vast realm. The high-stepping horses and the shining harness
were enough to excite John's admiration, but these were nothing to
the little girl. His eyes had never before fallen upon that kind of
girl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovely creature could exist.
Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the brown curls, or the
large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut features, or the
charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was this
expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing a
country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in
him what John felt himself to be? Then he would go the world over to
serve her. In a moment he was self-conscious. His trousers seemed
to creep higher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush.
He hoped that she had not seen the other side of him, for, in fact,
the patches were not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth.
The vision flashed by him in a moment, but it left him with a
resentful feeling. Perhaps that proud little girl would be sorry
some day, when he had become a general, or written a book, or kept a
store, to see him go away and marry another. He almost made up his
cruel mind on the instant that he would never marry her, however bad
she might feel. And yet he could n't get her out of his mind for
days and days, and when her image was present, even Cynthia in the
singers' seat on Sunday looked a little cheap and common. Poor
Cynthia! Long before John became a general or had his revenge on the
Baltimore girl, she married a farmer and was the mother of children,
red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she looked tired and
discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none of the
romance of her youth.
Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusements John had.
The middle pier of the long covered bridge over the river stood upon
a great rock, and this rock (which was known as the swimming-rock,
whence the boys on summer evenings dove into the deep pool by its
side) was a favorite spot with John when he could get an hour or two
from the everlasting "chores." Making his way out to it over the
rocks at low water with his fish-pole, there he was content to sit
and observe the world; and there he saw a great deal of life. He
always expected to catch the legendary trout which weighed two pounds
and was believed to inhabit that pool. He always did catch horned
dace and shiners, which he despised, and sometimes he snared a
monstrous sucker a foot and a half long. But in the summer the
sucker is a flabby fish, and John was not thanked for bringing him
home. He liked, however, to lie with his face close to the water and
watch the long fishes panting in the clear depths, and occasionally
he would drop a pebble near one to see how gracefully he would scud
away with one wave of the tail into deeper water. Nothing fears the
little brown boy. The yellow-bird slants his wings, almost touches
the deep water before him, and then escapes away under the bridge to
the east with a glint of sunshine on his back; the fish-hawk comes
down with a swoop, dips one wing, and, his prey having darted under a
stone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring on even-poised
pinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle which is
sweeping the sky in widening circles.
But there is other life. A wagon rumbles over the bridge, and the
farmer and his wife, jogging along, do not know that they have
startled a lazy boy into a momentary fancy that a thunder-shower is
coming up. John can see as he lies there on a still summer day, with
the fishes and the birds for company, the road that comes down the
left bank of the river,--a hot, sandy, well-traveled road, hidden
from view here and there by trees and bushes. The chief point of
interest, however, is an enormous sycamore-tree by the roadside and
in front of John's house. The house is more than a century old, and
its timbers were hewed and squared by Captain Moses Rice (who lies in
his grave on the hillside above it), in the presence of the Red Man
who killed him with arrow and tomahawk some time after his house was
set in order. The gigantic tree, struck with a sort of leprosy, like
all its species, appears much older, and of course has its
tradition. They say that it grew from a green stake which the first
land-surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight. John was
reminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of the
decrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally a
twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand
when he dropped exhausted in the square with the word "Victory!" on
his lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat,
where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad
but scanty shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called)
stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and
well-worn spout pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the
overflowing trough. It is fed by a spring near by, and the water is
sweeter and colder than any in the known world, unless it be the well
Zem-zem, as generations of people and horses which have drunk of it
would testify, if they could come back. And if they could file along
this road again, what a procession there would be riding down the
valley!--antiquated vehicles, rusty wagons adorned with the
invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest days, lean and
long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation after
generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to
meeting and to mill.
What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there are
pilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them.
Here comes a gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle
buyers, probably. Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a
good draught the nag takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a
sulky; man in a brown linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute,
horsey-looking man. They turn up, of course. Ah, there is an
establishment he knows well: a sorrel horse and an old chaise. The
sorrel horse scents the water afar off, and begins to turn up long
before he reaches the trough, thrusting out his nose in anticipation
of the coot sensation. No check to let down; he plunges his nose in
nearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it. Two maiden ladies
--unmistakably such, though they appear neither "anxious nor aimless"
--within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back. It is
the deacon's horse, a meeting-going nag, with a sedate, leisurely jog
as he goes; and these are two of the "salt of the earth,"--the brevet
rank of the women who stand and wait,--going down to the village
store to dicker. There come two men in a hurry, horse driven up
smartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and the
horse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back,
the nervous man in the buggy hitches forward on his seat, as if that
would carry the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumber-wagon with load
of boards; horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and cries
"G'lang," and the horse reluctantly goes by, turning his head
wistfully towards the flowing spout. Ah, here comes an equipage
strange to these parts, and John stands up to look; an elegant
carriage and two horses; trunks strapped on behind; gentleman and boy
on front seat and two ladies on back seat,--city people. The
gentleman descends, unchecks the horses, wipes his brow, takes a
drink at the spout and looks around, evidently remarking upon the
lovely view, as he swings his handkerchief in an explanatory manner.
Judicious travelers. John would like to know who they are. Perhaps
they are from Boston, whence come all the wonderfully painted
peddlers' wagons drawn by six stalwart horses, which the driver,
using no rein, controls with his long whip and cheery voice. If so,
great is the condescension of Boston; and John follows them with an
undefined longing as they drive away toward the mountains of Zoar.
Here is a footman, dusty and tired, who comes with lagging steps. He
stops, removes his hat, as he should to such a tree, puts his mouth
to the spout, and takes a long pull at the lively water. And then he
goes on, perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
So they come and go all the summer afternoon; but the great event of
the day is the passing down the valley of the majestic stage-coach,
--the vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off
the shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, and the creaking of
its leathern braces, as the great bulk swings along piled high with
trunks. It represents to John, somehow, authority, government, the
right of way; the driver is an autocrat, everybody must make way for
the stage-coach. It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal
vehicle; one can go in it to the confines of the world,--to Boston
and to Albany.
There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy's
education. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band of
gypsies who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little
roadside patch of green turf by the river-bank not far from his
house. It was shaded by elms and butternut-trees, and a long spit of
sand and pebbles ran out from it into the brawling stream. Probably
they were not a very good kind of gypsy, although the story was that
the men drank and beat the women. John didn't know much about
drinking; his experience of it was confined to sweet cider; yet he
had already set himself up as a reformer, and joined the Cold Water
Band. The object of this Band was to walk in a procession under a
banner that declared,
"So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate;"
and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of a
well-curb with a long sweep. It kept John and all the little boys and
girls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age;
though perhaps a few of them died meantime from eating loaf-cake and
pie and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of
curiosity and fear. Nothing more alien could come into the New
England life than this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible
that here were actually people who lived out-doors, who slept in
their covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air;
it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and the
remote times of the story-books; and John took these city thieves,
who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing
horses and robbing hen-roosts and cornfields, for the mysterious race
who for thousands of years have done these same things in all lands,
by right of their pure blood and ancient lineage. John was afraid to
approach the camp when any of the scowling and villainous men were
lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took more courage when only
women and children were visible. The swarthy, black-haired women in
dirty calico frocks were anything but attractive, but they spoke
softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him into
bringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course of
the season. In front of the tent were planted in the ground three
poles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle. This
was the kitchen, and it was sufficient. The fuel for the fire was
the driftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require to
be sawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the "chores" about
this establishment were reduced to the minimum. And an older person
than John might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid
neither rent nor taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature.
It seemed to the boy that affairs would go more smoothly in the world
if everybody would live in this simple manner. Nor did he then know,
or ever after find out, why it is that the world permits only wicked
people to be Bohemians.
XIX
A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music from
the swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church much
frequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedingly
pretty sight rewarded me.
It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart for
some festival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I suppose
that when leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint
ready to claim the 29th of February. Whatever the day was to the
elders, the evening was devoted to the children. The first thing I
noticed was, that the quaint old church was lighted up with
innumerable wax tapers,--an uncommon sight, for the darkness of a
Catholic church in the evening is usually relieved only by a candle
here and there, and by a blazing pyramid of them on the high altar.
The use of gas is held to be a vulgar thing all over Europe, and
especially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.
Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and the
groups of children were scattered all about the church. There was a
group by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupied
by knots of them, and there were so many circles of them seated on
the pavement that I could with difficulty make my way among them.
There were hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in their
holiday apparel, and all intent upon the illumination, which seemed
to be a private affair to each one of them.
And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vast
vaults above them. The tapers were little spiral coils of wax, which
the children unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they were
tired of holding them, they rested them on the ground and watched the
burning. I stood some time by a group of a dozen seated in a corner
of the church. They had massed all the tapers in the center and
formed a ring about the spectacle, sitting with their legs straight
out before them and their toes turned up. The light shone full in
their happy faces, and made the group, enveloped otherwise in
darkness, like one of Correggio's pictures of children or angels.
Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the sixteenth century, who
painted cherubs like children who were just going to heaven, and
children like cherubs who had just come out of it. But then, he had
the Italian children for models, and they get the knack of being
lovely very young. An Italian child finds it as easy to be pretty as
an American child to be good.
One could not but be struck with the patience these little people
exhibited in their occupation, and the enjoyment they got out of it.
There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved in
the most gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, and
there were many of them so small that they could only toddle about by
the most judicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say this
by way of reproof to any other kind of children.
These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about the
church; and they made with their tapers little spots of light, which
looked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is at
Dresden,--the Holy Family at Night, and the light from the Divine
Child blazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of the
children were infants in the nurses' arms, but no one was too small
to have a taper, and to run the risk of burning its fingers.
There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and
the church has understood this longing in human nature, and found
means to gratify it by this festival of tapers.
The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there is
a good deal of shifting about, and I see little stragglers wandering
over the church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionally
they form a little procession and march from one altar to another,
their lights twinkling as they go.
But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft at the
end of the church, and flooding all its spaces with its volume. In
front of the organ is a choir of boys, led by a round-faced and jolly
monk, who rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noise
rumble about a long time in his stomach before he pours it out of his
mouth. I can see the faces of all of them quite well, for each
singer has a candle to light his music-book.
And next to the monk stands the boy,--the handsomest boy in the whole
world probably at this moment. I can see now his great, liquid, dark
eyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his long
waving hair when he struck into his part. He resembled the portraits
of Raphael, when that artist was a boy; only I think he looked better
than Raphael, and without trying, for he seemed to be a spontaneous
sort of boy. And how that boy did sing! He was the soprano of the
choir, and he had a voice of heavenly sweetness. When he opened his
mouth and tossed back his head, he filled the church with exquisite
melody.
He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As we never heard an angel
sing, that comparison is not worth much. I have seen pictures of
angels singing, there is one by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck in the
gallery at Berlin,--and they open their mouths like this boy, but I
can't say as much for their singing. The lark, which you very likely
never heard either, for larks are as scarce in America as angels,--is
a bird that springs up from the meadow and begins to sing as he rises
in a spiral flight, and the higher he mounts, the sweeter he sings,
until you think the notes are dropping out of heaven itself, and you
hear him when he is gone from sight, and you think you hear him long
after all sound has ceased.
And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes
and a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his
voice in the same gleesome abundance.
I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy was
a good boy. He was probably one of the most mischievous boys that
was ever in an organ-loft. All the time that he was singing the
vespers he was skylarking like an imp. While he was pouring out the
most divine melody, he would take the opportunity of kicking the
shins of the boy next to him, and while he was waiting for his part,
he would kick out behind at any one who was incautious enough to
approach him. There never was such a vicious boy; he kept the whole
loft in a ferment. When the monk rumbled his bass in his stomach,
the boy cut up monkey-shines that set every other boy into a laugh,
or he stirred up a row that set them all at fisticuffs.
And yet this boy was a great favorite. The jolly monk loved him best
of all and bore with his wildest pranks. When he was wanted to sing
his part and was skylarking in the rear, the fat monk took him by the
ear and brought him forward; and when he gave the boy's ear a twist,
the boy opened his lovely mouth and poured forth such a flood of
melody as you never heard. And he did n't mind his notes; he seemed
to know his notes by heart, and could sing and look off like a
nightingale on a bough. He knew his power, that boy; and he stepped
forward to his stand when he pleased, certain that he would be
forgiven as soon as he began to sing. And such spirit and life as he
threw into the performance, rollicking through the Vespers with a
perfect abandon of carriage, as if he could sing himself out of his
skin if he liked.
While the little angels down below were pattering about with their
wax tapers, keeping the holy fire burning, suddenly the organ
stopped, the monk shut his book with a bang, the boys blew out the
candles, and I heard them all tumbling down-stairs in a gale of noise
and laughter. The beautiful boy I saw no more.
About him plays the light of tender memory; but were he twice as
lovely, I could never think of him as having either the simple
manliness or the good fortune of the New England boy.
ON HORSEBACK
By Charles Dudley Warner
I
"The way to mount a horse"--said the Professor.
"If you have no ladder--put in the Friend of Humanity."
The Professor had ridden through the war for the Union on the right
side, enjoying a much better view of it than if he had walked, and
knew as much about a horse as a person ought to know for the sake of
his character. The man who can recite the tales of the Canterbury
Pilgrims, on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, never
missing an accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witch
North Carolina and a strip of East Tennessee with his noble
horsemanship, is a kind of Literary Centaur of whose double
instruction any Friend of Humanity may be glad to avail himself.
"The way to mount a horse is to grasp the mane with the left hand
holding the bridle-rein, put your left foot in the stirrup, with the
right hand on the back of the saddle, and---"
Just then the horse stepped quickly around on his hind feet,
and looked the Professor in the face. The Superintendents of
Affairs, who occupy the flagging in front of the hotel, seated in
cane-bottomed chairs tilted back, smiled. These useful persons appear
to have a life-lease of this portion of the city pavement, and pretty
effectually block it up nearly all day and evening. When a lady wishes
to make her way through the blockade, it is the habit of these
observers of life to rise and make room, touching their hats, while she
picks her way through, and goes down the street with a pretty
consciousness of the flutter she has caused. The war has not changed
the Southern habit of sitting out-of-doors, but has added a new element
of street picturesqueness in groups of colored people lounging about
the corners. There appears to be more leisure than ever.
The scene of this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town of
Abingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennessee
railway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to the
Johnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that still
preserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of the
easy-going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educational
center, where the young ladies of the region add the final graces of
intellectual life in moral philosophy and the use of the globes to
their natural gifts. The mansion of the late and left Floyd is now a
seminary, and not far from it is the Stonewall Jackson Institute, in
the midst of a grove of splendid oaks, whose stately boles and
wide-spreading branches give a dignity to educational life. The
distinction of the region is its superb oak-trees. As it was
vacation in these institutions of learning, the travelers did not see
any of the vines that traditionally cling to the oak.
The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on a
journey, across country southward, through regions about which the
people of Abingdon could give little useful information. If the
travelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, they
would not have started without a supply train, or the establishment
of bases of provisions in advance. But, as the Professor remarked,
knowledge is something that one acquires when he has no use for it.
The horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirts
and leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen,
and novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it would
have been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in real
life meat is more than raiment.
The hotel, in front of which there is cultivated so much of what the
Germans call sitzfleisch, is a fair type of the majority of Southern
hotels, and differs from the same class in the North in being left a
little more to run itself. The only information we obtained about it
was from its porter at the station, who replied to the question, "Is
it the best?" "We warrant you perfect satisfaction in every
respect." This seems to be only a formula of expression, for we
found that the statement was highly colored. It was left to our
imagination to conjecture how the big chambers of the old house, with
their gaping fireplaces, might have looked when furnished and filled
with gay company, and we got what satisfaction we could out of a
bygone bustle and mint-julep hilarity. In our struggles with the
porter to obtain the little items of soap, water, and towels, we were
convinced that we had arrived too late, and that for perfect
satisfaction we should have been here before the war. It was not
always as now. In colonial days the accommodations and prices at
inns were regulated by law. In the old records in the court-house we
read that if we had been here in 1777, we could have had a gallon of
good rum for sixteen shillings; a quart bowl of rum toddy made with
loaf sugar for two shillings, or with brown sugar for one shilling
and sixpence. In 1779 prices had risen. Good rum sold for four
pounds a gallon. It was ordered that a warm dinner should cost
twelve shillings, a cold dinner nine shillings, and a good breakfast
twelve shillings. But the item that pleased us most, and made us
regret our late advent, was that for two shillings we could have had
a "good lodging, with clean sheets." The colonists were fastidious
people.
Abingdon, prettily situated on rolling hills, and a couple of
thousand feet above the sea, with views of mountain peaks to the
south, is a cheerful and not too exciting place for a brief sojourn,
and hospitable and helpful to the stranger. We had dined--so much,
at least, the public would expect of us--with a descendant of
Pocahontas; we had assisted on Sunday morning at the dedication of a
new brick Methodist church, the finest edifice in the region
--a dedication that took a long time, since the bishop would not
proceed with it until money enough was raised in open meeting to pay
the balance due on it: a religious act, though it did give a business
aspect to the place at the time; and we had been the light spots in
the evening service at the most aristocratic church of color. The
irresponsibility of this amiable race was exhibited in the tardiness
with which they assembled: at the appointed time nobody was there
except the sexton; it was three quarters of an hour before the
congregation began to saunter in, and the sermon was nearly over
before the pews were at all filled. Perhaps the sermon was not new,
but it was fervid, and at times the able preacher roared so that
articulate sounds were lost in the general effect. It was precisely
these passages of cataracts of sound and hard breathing which excited
the liveliest responses,--"Yes, Lord," and "Glory to God." Most of
these responses came from the "Amen corner." The sermon contained
the usual vivid description of the last judgment--ah, and I fancied
that the congregation did not get the ordinary satisfaction out of
it. Fashion had entered the fold, and the singing was mostly
executed by a choir in the dusky gallery, who thinly and harshly
warbled the emotional hymns. It occupied the minister a long time to
give out the notices of the week, and there was not an evening or
afternoon that had not its meetings, its literary or social
gathering, its picnic or fair for the benefit of the church, its
Dorcas society, or some occasion of religious sociability. The
raising of funds appeared to be the burden on the preacher's mind.
Two collections were taken up. At the first, the boxes appeared to
get no supply except from the two white trash present. But the
second was more successful. After the sermon was over, an elder took
his place at a table within the rails, and the real business of the
evening began. Somebody in the Amen corner struck up a tune that had
no end, but a mighty power of setting the congregation in motion.
The leader had a voice like the pleasant droning of a bag-pipe, and
the faculty of emitting a continuous note like that instrument,
without stopping to breathe. It went on and on like a Bach fugue,
winding and whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of the
catch without a break. The effect was soon visible in the emotional
crowd: feet began to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in,
with spurts of ejaculation; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, the
members began to leave their seats and pass before the table and
deposit their contributions. It was a cent contribution, and we
found it very difficult, under the contagious influence of the hum
from the Amen corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent.
If anything could extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, it
would be the buzzing of this tune. It went on and on, until the
house appeared to be drained dry of its cash; and we inferred by the
stopping of the melody that the preacher's salary was secure for the
time being. On inquiring, we ascertained that the pecuniary flood
that evening had risen to the height of a dollar and sixty cents.
All was ready for the start. It should have been early in the
morning, but it was not; for Virginia is not only one of the blessed
regions where one can get a late breakfast, but where it is almost
impossible to get an early one. At ten A. M. the two horsemen rode
away out of sight of the Abingdon spectators, down the eastern
turnpike. The day was warm, but the air was full of vitality and the
spirit of adventure. It was the 22d of July. The horses were not
ambitious, but went on at an easy fox-trot that permits observation
and encourages conversation. It had been stipulated that the horses
should be good walkers, the one essential thing in a horseback
journey. Few horses, even in a country where riding is general, are
trained to walk fast. We hear much of horses that can walk five
miles an hour, but they are as rare as white elephants. Our
horses were only fair walkers. We realized how necessary this
accomplishment is, for between the Tennessee line and Asheville,
North Carolina, there is scarcely a mile of trotting-ground.
We soon turned southward and descended into the Holston River Valley.
Beyond lay the Tennessee hills and conspicuous White-Top Mountain
(5530 feet), which has a good deal of local celebrity (standing where
the States of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina corner), and
had been pointed out to us at Abingdon. We had been urged,
personally and by letter, to ascend this mountain, without fail.
People recommend mountains to their friends as they do patent
medicines. As we leisurely jogged along we discussed this, and
endeavored to arrive at some rule of conduct for the journey. The
Professor expressed at once a feeling about mountain-climbing that
amounted to hostility,--he would go nowhere that he could not ride.
Climbing was the most unsatisfactory use to which a mountain could be
put. As to White-Top, it was a small mountain, and not worth
ascending. The Friend of Humanity, who believes in mountain-climbing
as a theory, and for other people, and knows the value of being able
to say, without detection, that he has ascended any high mountain
about which he is questioned,--since this question is the first one
asked about an exploration in a new country,--saw that he should have
to use a good deal of diplomacy to get the Professor over any
considerable elevation on the trip. And he had to confess also that
a view from a mountain is never so satisfactory as a view of a
mountain, from a moderate height. The Professor, however, did not
argue the matter on any such reasonable ground, but took his stand on
his right as a man not to ascend a mountain. With this appeal to
first principles,--a position that could not be confuted on account
of its vagueness (although it might probably be demonstrated that in
society man has no such right), there was no way of agreement except
by a compromise. It was accordingly agreed that no mountain under
six thousand feet is worth ascending; that disposed of White-Top. It
was further agreed that any mountain that is over six thousand feet
high is too high to ascend on foot.
With this amicable adjustment we forded the Holston, crossing it
twice within a few miles. This upper branch of the Tennessee is a
noble stream, broad, with a rocky bed and a swift current. Fording
it is ticklish business except at comparatively low water, and as it
is subject to sudden rises, there must be times when it seriously
interrupts travel. This whole region, full of swift streams, is
without a bridge, and, as a consequence, getting over rivers and
brooks and the dangers of ferries occupy a prominent place in the
thoughts of the inhabitants. The life necessarily had the "frontier"
quality all through, for there can be little solid advance in
civilization in the uncertainties of a bridgeless condition. An
open, pleasant valley, the Holston, but cultivation is more and more
negligent and houses are few and poorer as we advance.
We had left behind the hotels of "perfect satisfaction," and expected
to live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remunerated
hospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants. We were to dine at
Ramsey's. Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place of
entertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot in
the sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, we
magnified Ramsey's in our imagination,--the nobility of its
situation, its cuisine, its inviting restfulness,--and half decided
to pass the night there in the true abandon of plantation life. Long
before we reached it, the Holston River which we followed had become
the Laurel, a most lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we forded
continually, for the valley became too narrow much of the way to
accommodate a road and a river. Eagerly as we were looking out for
it, we passed the great Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was the
first of a little settlement of two houses and a saw-mill and barn.
It was a neat log house of two lower rooms and a summer kitchen,
quite the best of the class that we saw, and the pleasant mistress of
it made us welcome. Across the road and close, to the Laurel was the
spring-house, the invariable adjunct to every well-to-do house in the
region, and on the stony margin of the stream was set up the big
caldron for the family washing; and here, paddling in the shallow
stream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy with
the children and exchanged philosophical observations on life with
the old negress who was dabbling the clothes. What impressed this
woman was the inequality in life. She jumped to the unwarranted
conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and
spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting
shoes and tobacco. It was useless to point out to her that her
alfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the
happy lot of any one who could loiter all day by this laughing
stream, undisturbed by debt or ambition. Everybody about the place
was barefooted, except the mistress, including the comely daughter of
eighteen, who served our dinner in the kitchen. The dinner was
abundant, and though it seemed to us incongruous at the time, we were
not twelve hours older when we looked back upon it with longing. On
the table were hot biscuit, ham, pork, and green beans, apple-sauce,
blackberry preserves, cucumbers, coffee, plenty of milk, honey, and
apple and blackberry pie. Here we had our first experience, and I
may say new sensation, of "honey on pie." It has a cloying sound as
it is written, but the handmaiden recommended it with enthusiasm, and
we evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from an uncultivated
society, when we declared our inexperience of "honey on pie." "Where
be you from?" It turned out to be very good, and we have tried to
introduce it in families since our return, with indifferent success.
There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about the
world at large, nor much stir of social life. The gayety of madame
appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and
grandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.
Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims went
gayly along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoon
sun, which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way.
Inspired by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and the
dainties of the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:
"So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet."
Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed. The
Laurel became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valley
narrowed down to the riverway, with standing room, however, for
stately trees along the banks. The oaks, both black and white, were,
as they had been all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage.
There is a certain dignity in riding in such stately company, and the
travelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression of
possible high adventure in a new world of such freshness. Nor was
beauty wanting. The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached
their climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground with
their brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they were
still matchlessly beautiful. Great banks of pink and white covered
the steep hillsides; the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hung
their rich clusters over the river; avenues of glory opened away in
the glade of the stream; and at every turn of the winding way vistas
glowing with the hues of romance wrenched exclamations of delight and
wonder from the Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend. In
the deep recesses of the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like the
splashes of splendor on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, these
wonders of color,--the glowing summer-heart of the woods.
It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out in
the river, or the river in the road. In the few miles to Egger's
(this was the destination of our great expectations for the night)
the stream was crossed twenty-seven times,--or perhaps it would be
more proper to say that the road was crossed twenty-seven times.
Where the road did not run in the river, its bed was washed out and
as stony as the bed of the stream. This is a general and accurate
description of all the roads in this region, which wind along and in
the streams, through narrow valleys, shut in by low and steep hills.
The country is full of springs and streams, and between Abingdon and
Egger's is only one (small) bridge. In a region with scarcely any
level land or intervale, farmers are at a disadvantage. All along
the road we saw nothing but mean shanties, generally of logs, with
now and then a decent one-story frame, and the people looked
miserably poor.
As we picked our way along up the Laurel, obliged for the most part
to ride single-file, or as the Professor expressed it,
"Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one,"
we gathered information about Egger's from the infrequent hovels on
the road, which inflamed our imaginations. Egger was the thriving
man of the region, and lived in style in a big brick house. We began
to feel a doubt that Egger would take us in, and so much did his
brick magnificence impress us that we regretted we had not brought
apparel fit for the society we were about to enter.
It was half-past six, and we were tired and hungry, when the domain
of Egger towered in sight,--a gaunt, two-story structure of raw
brick, unfinished, standing in a narrow intervale. We rode up to the
gate, and asked a man who sat in the front-door porch if this was
Egger's, and if we could be accommodated for the night. The man,
without moving, allowed that it was Egger's, and that we could
probably stay there. This person, however, exhibited so much
indifference to our company, he was such a hairy, unkempt man, and
carried on face, hands, and clothes so much more of the soil of the
region than a prudent proprietor would divert from raising corn, that
we set him aside as a poor relation, and asked for Mr. Egger. But
the man, still without the least hospitable stir, admitted that that
was the name he went by, and at length advised us to "lite" and hitch
our horses, and sit on the porch with him and enjoy the cool of the
evening. The horses would be put up by and by, and in fact things
generally would come round some time. This turned out to be the easy
way of the country. Mr. Egger was far from being inhospitable, but
was in no hurry, and never had been in a hurry. He was not exactly a
gentleman of the old school. He was better than that. He dated from
the time when there were no schools at all, and he lived in that
placid world which is without information and ideas. Mr. Egger
showed his superiority by a total lack of curiosity about any other
world.
This brick house, magnificent by comparison with other dwellings in
this country, seemed to us, on nearer acquaintance, only a thin,
crude shell of a house, half unfinished, with bare rooms, the
plastering already discolored. In point of furnishing it had not yet
reached the "God bless our Home" stage in crewel. In the narrow
meadow, a strip of vivid green south of the house, ran a little
stream, fed by a copious spring, and over it was built the inevitable
spring-house. A post, driven into the bank by the stream, supported
a tin wash-basin, and here we performed our ablutions. The traveler
gets to like this freedom and primitive luxury.
The farm of Egger produces corn, wheat, grass, and sheep; it is a
good enough farm, but most of it lies at an angle of thirty-five to
forty degrees. The ridge back of the house, planted in corn, was as
steep as the roof of his dwelling. It seemed incredible that it ever
could have been plowed, but the proprietor assured us that it was
plowed with mules, and I judged that the harvesting must be done by
squirrels. The soil is good enough, if it would stay in place, but
all the hillsides are seamed with gullies. The discolored state of
the streams was accounted for as soon as we saw this cultivated land.
No sooner is the land cleared of trees and broken up than it begins
to wash. We saw more of this later, especially in North Carolina,
where we encountered no stream of water that was not muddy, and saw
no cultivated ground that was not washed. The process of denudation
is going on rapidly wherever the original forests are girdled (a
common way of preparing for crops), or cut away.
As the time passed and there was no sign of supper, the question
became a burning one, and we went to explore the kitchen. No sign of
it there. No fire in the stove, nothing cooked in the house, of
course. Mrs. Egger and her comely young barefooted daughter had
still the milking to attend to, and supper must wait for the other
chores. It seemed easier to be Mr. Egger, in this state of
existence, and sit on the front porch and meditate on the price of
mules and the prospect of a crop, than to be Mrs. Egger, whose work
was not limited from sun to sun; who had, in fact, a day's work to do
after the men-folks had knocked off; whose chances of neighborhood
gossip were scanty, whose amusements were confined to a religious
meeting once a fortnight. Good, honest people these, not unduly
puffed up by the brick house, grubbing away year in and year out.
Yes, the young girl said, there was a neighborhood party, now and
then, in the winter. What a price to pay for mere life!
Long before supper was ready, nearly nine o'clock, we had almost lost
interest in it. Meantime two other guests had arrived, a couple of
drovers from North Carolina, who brought into the circle--by this
time a wood-fire had been kindled in the sitting-room, which
contained a bed, an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper--a
rich flavor of cattle, and talk of the price of steers. As to
politics, although a presidential campaign was raging, there was
scarcely an echo of it here. This was Johnson County, Tennessee, a
strong Republican county but dog-gone it, says Mr. Egger, it's no
use to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest of the State. Yes,
they'd got a Republican member of Congress,--he'd heard his name, but
he'd forgotten it. The drover said he'd heard it also, but he didn't
take much interest in such things, though he wasn't any Republican.
Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed. Even the
Professor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't wake
up a discussion out of such a state of mind.
Alas! the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp,
on a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse
the delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not
lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated
through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork
swimming in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers
raw, coffee (so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially
asked for (the correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie.
This was not the pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,--two
thick slabs of dough, with a squeezing of apple between. The
profusion of this supper staggered the novices, but the drovers
attacked it as if such cooking were a common occurrence and did
justice to the weary labors of Mrs. Egger.
Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several rooms
and several beds in each room. Upon consultation with the drovers,
they said they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, and
we gave up their society for the night. The beds in our chamber had
each one sheet, and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modern
spirit; for in one corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decoration
of our Queen Anne drawing-rooms,--the spinning-wheel. Soothed by
this concession to taste, we crowded in between the straw and the
home-made blanket and sheet, and soon ceased to hear the barking of
dogs and the horned encounters of the drovers' herd.
We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy of
the supper) with more respect than regret. His total charge for the
entertainment of two men and two horses--supper, lodging, and
breakfast--was high or low, as the traveler chose to estimate it. It
was $1.20: that is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten cents
for each meal and lodging.
Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut Laurel
Gap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina,--the next
available halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, and
turning out to be twenty-two, and a rough road. There is a little
settlement about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we had
the company of the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl.
Neither she nor any other people we encountered had any dialect or
local peculiarity of speech. Indeed, those we encountered that
morning had nothing in manner or accent to distinguish them. The
novelists had led us to expect something different; and the modest
and pretty young lady with frank and open blue eyes, who wore gloves
and used the common English speech, had never figured in the fiction
of the region. Cherished illusions vanish often on near approach.
The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note, except the occasional
use of "hit" for "it."
The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, the
thermometer mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty of
the way, the ride became tedious before we reached the summit. On
the summit is the dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous in
these parts. We stopped at the house for a glass of milk; the
colonel was absent, and while the woman in charge went after it, we
sat on the veranda and conversed with a young lady, tall, gent, well
favored, and communicative, who leaned in the doorway.
"Yes, this house stands on the line. Where you sit, you are in
Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina."
"Do you live here?"
"Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's. I live
over the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville. I thought I'd
be where I could step into North Carolina easy."
"How's that?"
"Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify about
some pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got into
a little difficulty,--and I did n't want to. I never has no
difficulty with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothing
against nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me."
"Did you come alone?"
"Why, of course. I come across the mountain by a path through the
woods. That's nothing."
A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl. This surely must be the Esmeralda
who lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virgin
purity and sentiment. As she talked on, she turned from time to time
to the fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from her
pretty lips, with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that was
not assumed, but belongs to our free-born American girls. I cannot
tell why this habit of hers (which is no worse than the sister habit
of "dipping") should take her out of the romantic setting that her
face and figure had placed her in; but somehow we felt inclined to
ride on farther for our heroine.
"And yet," said the Professor, as we left the site of the colonel's
thriving distillery, and by a winding, picturesque road through a
rough farming country descended into the valley,--"and yet, why fling
aside so readily a character and situation so full of romance, on
account of a habit of this mountain Helen, which one of our best
poets has almost made poetical, in the case of the pioneer taking his
westward way, with ox-goad pointing to the sky:
"'He's leaving on the pictured rock
His fresh tobacco stain.'
"To my mind the incident has Homeric elements. The Greeks would have
looked at it in a large, legendary way. Here is Helen, strong and
lithe of limb, ox-eyed, courageous, but woman-hearted and
love-inspiring, contended for by all the braves and daring moonshiners
of Cut Laurel Gap, pursued by the gallants of two States, the prize of
a border warfare of bowie knives and revolvers. This Helen,
magnanimous as attractive, is the witness of a pistol difficulty on her
behalf, and when wanted by the areopagus, that she may neither
implicate a lover nor punish an enemy (having nothing, this noble type
of her sex against nobody), skips away to Mount Ida, and there, under
the aegis of the flag of her country, in a Licensed Distillery, stands
with one slender foot in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina"
"Like the figure of the Republic itself, superior to state
sovereignty," interposed the Friend.
"I beg your pardon," said the Professor, urging up Laura Matilda (for
so he called the nervous mare, who fretted herself into a fever in
the stony path), "I was quite able to get the woman out of that
position without the aid of a metaphor. It is a large and Greek
idea, that of standing in two mighty States, superior to the law,
looking east and looking west, ready to transfer her agile body to
either State on the approach of messengers of the court; and I'll be
hanged if I didn't think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed,
combined with her lofty moral attitude, added something to the
picture."
The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremest
defense of the privileges of beauty,--that he even held in abeyance
judgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gum
was as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.
"When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment..."
The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashing
through the stream. No sooner had we descended than the fording of
streams began again. The Friend had been obliged to stipulate that
the Professor should go ahead at these crossings, to keep the
impetuous nag of the latter from throwing half the contents of the
stream upon his slower and uncomplaining companion.
What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the long
wearisomeness of the way!--not that the distance was great, but miles
and miles more than expected. How charming the open glades of the
river, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and what
a panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingled
with the lighter pink and white of the laurel! In this region the
rhododendron is called laurel and the laurel (the sheep-laurel of
New England) is called ivy.
At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, open
farming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decent
dwellings. Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a post
office and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling of
the proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house.
Worth's has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region where
places of accommodation are few. The proprietor, now an elderly man,
whose reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow up
about him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come up
into the modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education and
glimpses of city life and foreign travel. I fancy that nothing but
tradition and a remaining Southern hospitality could induce this
private family to suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man. Our
travelers are not apt to be surprised at anything in American life,
but they did not expect to find a house in this region with two
pianos and a bevy of young ladies, whose clothes were certainly not
made on Cut Laurel Gap, and to read in the books scattered about the
house the evidences of the finishing schools with which our country
is blessed, nor to find here pupils of the Stonewall Jackson
Institute at Abingdon. With a flush of local pride, the Professor
took up, in the roomy, pleasant chamber set apart for the guests, a
copy of Porter's "Elements of Moral Science."
"Where you see the 'Elements of Moral Science,'" the Friend
generalized, "there'll be plenty of water and towels;" and the sign
did not fail. The friends intended to read this book in the cool of
the day; but as they sat on the long veranda, the voice of a maiden
reading the latest novel to a sewing group behind the blinds in the
drawing-room; and the antics of a mule and a boy in front of the
store opposite; and the arrival of a spruce young man, who had just
ridden over from somewhere, a matter of ten miles' gallop, to get a
medicinal potion for his sick mother, and lingered chatting with the
young ladies until we began to fear that his mother would recover
before his return; the coming and going of lean women in shackly
wagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the cows, splashing
through the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing for the hand
of the milker,--all these interruptions, together with the generally
drowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the study of
the Elements. And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest, went
on their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianos
and the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is not
treated of in the text-book referred to, they were content with a
bill double that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.
The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be content
to feed on natural beauties. And it is an unfortunate truth in
natural history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after a
time, if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food.
There is no landscape in the world that is agreeable after two days
of rusty-bacon and slack biscuit.
"How lovely this would be," exclaimed the Professor, if it had a
background of beefsteak and coffee!
We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguished
locally as Three Top Creek,--or, rather, we were riding in it,
crossing it thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (and
water) road, under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendron
illuminating the way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in the
stream, all the ten miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination.
We had heard a great deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map,
it was down in the itinerary furnished by a member of the Coast
Survey. We looked forward to it as a sweet place of repose from the
noontide heat. Alas! Elk Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store,
encumbered with dry-goods boxes, fly-blown goods, flies, loafers. In
reply to our inquiry we were told that they had nothing to eat, for
us, and not a grain of feed for the horses. But there was a man a
mile farther on, who was well to do and had stores of food,--old man
Tatern would treat us in bang-up style. The difficulty of getting
feed for the horses was chronic all through the journey. The last
corn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not come in, and the
country was literally barren. We had noticed all along that the hens
were taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put forward as an
article of diet.
We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to
imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose. His house is
of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft
accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney. The chimney is a
huge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in
fact, the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms were
then built against it. The proprietor sat in a little railed
veranda. These Southern verandas give an air to the meanest
dwelling, and they are much used; the family sit here, and here are
the washbasin and pail (which is filled from the neighboring
spring-house), and the row of milk-pans. The old man Tatern did not
welcome us with enthusiasm; he had no corn,--these were hard times. He
looked like hard times, grizzled times, dirty times. It seemed time
out of mind since he had seen comb or razor, and although the lovely
New River, along which we had ridden to his house,--a broad, inviting
stream,--was in sight across the meadow, there was no evidence that he
had ever made acquaintance with its cleansing waters. As to corn, the
necessities of the case and pay being dwelt on, perhaps he could find a
dozen ears. A dozen small cars he did find, and we trust that the
horses found them.
We took a family dinner with old man Tatern in the kitchen, where
there was a bed and a stove,--a meal that the host seemed to enjoy,
but which we could not make much of, except the milk; that was good.
A painful meal, on the whole, owing to the presence in the room of a
grown-up daughter with a graveyard cough, without physician or
medicine, or comforts. Poor girl! just dying of "a misery."
In the spare room were two beds; the walls were decorated with the
gay-colored pictures of patent-medicine advertisements--a favorite
art adornment of the region; and a pile of ancient illustrated papers
with the usual patent-office report, the thoughtful gift of the
member for the district. The old man takes in the "Blue Ridge
Baptist," a journal which we found largely taken up with the
experiences of its editor on his journeys roundabout in search of
subscribers. This newspaper was the sole communication of the family
with the world at large, but the old man thought he should stop it,
--he did n't seem to get the worth of his money out of it. And old man
Tatem was a thrifty and provident man. On the hearth in this best
room--as ornaments or memento mori were a couple of marble
gravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on bases and
ready for use, except the lettering. These may not have been so
mournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple,
humble faith; they may have been taken for debt. But as parlor
ornaments they had a fascination which we could not escape.
It was while we were bathing in the New River, that afternoon, and
meditating on the grim, unrelieved sort of life of our host, that the
Professor said, "judging by the face of the 'Blue Ridge Baptist,' he
will charge us smartly for the few nubbins of corn and the milk."
The face did not deceive us; the charge was one dollar. At this rate
it would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhaps
he is not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.
It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climb
the sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem. But we
entered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rode
under the shade of great oaks. The way, which began by the New
River, soon led us over the hills to the higher levels of Watauga
County. So far on our journey we had been hemmed in by low hills,
and without any distant or mountain outlooks. The excessive heat
seemed out of place at the elevation of over two thousand feet, on
which we were traveling. Boone, the county seat of Watauga County,
was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and the
trend of the roads had notified us that everything in this region
tends towards Boone as a center of interest. The simple ingenuity of
some of the guide-boards impressed us. If, on coming to a fork, the
traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,
To BOONE 10 M.
If he was to go to the left, it read,
.M 01 ENOOB oT
A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,
unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to this
capital. When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders
over gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns,
the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet above
Albemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highest
village east of the Rocky Mountains. The Professor said that it
might be so, but it was a God-forsaken place. Its inhabitants
numbered perhaps two hundred and fifty, a few of them colored. It
had a gaunt, shaky court-house and jail, a store or two, and two
taverns. The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges and
lawyers and their clients during the session of the court. The court
is the only excitement and the only amusement. It is the event from
which other events date. Everybody in the county knows exactly when
court sits, and when court breaks. During the session the whole
county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children. They camp
there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them,
perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the
neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit. To be fond of
lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new
conditions. The early settlers of New England were.
Notwithstanding the elevation of Boone, which insured a pure air, the
thermometer that afternoon stood at from 85 to 89 deg. The flies
enjoyed it. How they swarmed in this tavern! They would have
carried off all the food from the dining-room table (for flies do not
mind eating off oilcloth, and are not particular how food is cooked),
but for the machine with hanging flappers that swept the length of
it; and they destroy all possibility of sleep except in the dark.
The mountain regions of North Carolina are free from mosquitoes, but
the fly has settled there, and is the universal scourge. This
tavern, one end of which was a store, had a veranda in front, and a
back gallery, where there were evidences of female refinement in pots
of plants and flowers. The landlord himself kept tavern very much as
a hostler would, but we had to make a note in his favor that he had
never heard of a milk punch. And it might as well be said here, for
it will have to be insisted on later, that the traveler, who has read
about the illicit stills till his imagination dwells upon the
indulgence of his vitiated tastes in the mountains of North Carolina,
is doomed to disappointment. If he wants to make himself an
exception to the sober people whose cooking will make him long for
the maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him. We had found
no bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and water,
slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and bacon
incrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drink
stronger than buttermilk. And we can say that, so far as our example
is concerned, we left the country as temperate as we found it. How
can there be mint juleps (to go into details) without ice? and in the
summer there is probably not a pound of ice in all the State north of
Buncombe County.
There is nothing special to be said about Boone. We were anxious to
reach it, we were glad to leave it; we note as to all these places
that our joy at departing always exceeds that on arriving, which is a
merciful provision of nature for people who must keep moving. This
country is settled by genuine Americans, who have the aboriginal
primitive traits of the universal Yankee nation. The front porch in
the morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally covered
with the whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the evening
there in the sedative occupation of whittling.
We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles,
through noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons,--a
charming wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keep
the promise of its name. Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and a
dirty, flyblown store. While the Professor consulted the blacksmith
about a loose shoe, the Friend carried his weariness of life without
provisions up to a white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiled
milk. This house was occupied by flies. They must have numbered
millions, settled in black swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, the
veranda; the kitchen was simply a hive of them. The only book in
sight, Whewell's--"Elements of Morality," seemed to attract flies.
Query, Why should this have such a different effect from Porter's? A
white house,--a pleasant-looking house at a distance,--amiable,
kindly people in it,--why should we have arrived there on its dirty
day? Alas! if we had been starving, Valle Crusis had nothing to
offer us.
So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the
Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and
passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape,
and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge,
rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it. From the summit we
had the first extensive prospect during our journey. The road can be
described as awful,--steep, stony, the horses unable to make two
miles an hour on it. Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin
without barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn. The
women who regarded the passers from their cabin doors were frowzy and
looked tired. What with the heat and the road and this discouraged
appearance of humanity, we reached the residence of Dugger, at
Banner's Elk, to which we had been directed, nearly exhausted. It is
no use to represent this as a dash across country on impatient
steeds. It was not so. The love of truth is stronger than the
desire of display. And for this reason it is impossible to say that
Mr. Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in a clean and attractive
house, or that he offers much that the pampered child of civilization
can eat. But we shall not forget the two eggs, fresh from the hens,
whose temperature must have been above the normal, nor the
spring-house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies and
the heat. The higher we go, the hotter it is. Banner's Elk boasts an
elevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.
We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk River
towards Cranberry Forge. The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though not
very clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was under
operation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance to
multiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of its
reputation. Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string of
quarter-pound trout, which he had taken out with a hook and a feather
rudely tied on it, to resemble a fly. The road, though not to be
commended, was much better than that of the morning, the forests grew
charming in the cool of the evening, the whippoorwill sang, and as
night fell the wanderers, in want of nearly everything that makes
life desirable, stopped at the Iron Company's hotel, under the
impression that it was the only comfortable hotel in North Carolina.
II
Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into
the northwest mountains of North Carolina. A narrow-gauge railway,
starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe
River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry,
where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rows
of tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks,
raw embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, are
the signs of a great devastating American enterprise. The Cranberry
iron is in great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of the
Swedish iron. There are remains of old furnaces lower down the
stream, which we passed on our way. The present "plant" is that of a
Philadelphia company, whose enterprise has infused new life into all
this region, made it accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.
When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, which
crowns a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect of
many gentle hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removed
from all sordid associations, we were at the point of willingness
that the whole country should be devastated by civilization. In the
local imagination this hotel of the company is a palace of unequaled
magnificence, but probably its good taste, comfort, and quiet
elegance are not appreciated after all. There is this to be said
about Philadelphia,--and it will go far in pleading for it in the
Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity and the babel-like
ambition of its Public Building,--that wherever its influence
extends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the luxury of
an undeniably excellent cuisine. The visible seal that Philadelphia
sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good hotel.
This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set about
with easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished in
native woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of the
cucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by a
Philadelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap. Is it
"low" to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tour
in search of the picturesque? Let the reader ride from Abingdon
through a wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge.
There were, to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, and
fragments of information to be picked up about a world into which the
travelers seemed to emerge. They, at least, were satisfied, and went
off to their rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrived
somewhere and no unquiet spirit at morn would say "to horse." To
sleep, perchance to dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; and
the Professor was heard muttering in his chamber,
"Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd."
The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be between
twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy;
and the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon the
veranda, read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of the
white birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron
--trees, twenty feet high, which were shaking off their last pink
blossoms, and look down into the valley of the Doe. It is not an
exciting landscape, nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restful
with the monotony of some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.
Sunday came up smiling, a lovely day, but offering no church
privileges, for the ordinance of preaching is only occasional in this
region. The ladies of the hotel have, however, gathered in the
valley a Sunday-school of fifty children from the mountain cabins. A
couple of rainy days, with the thermometer rising to 80 deg.,
combined with natural laziness to detain the travelers in this
cottage of ease. They enjoyed this the more because it was on their
consciences that they should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-five
miles eastward, long held up before them as the most magnificent
feature of this region, and on no account to be omitted. Hence,
naturally, a strong desire to omit it. The Professor takes bold
ground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and it was nothing to
him that the public would demand that we should see Linville Falls.
In the first place, we could find no one who had ever seen them, and
we spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers. The nearest
we came to information was from a workman at the furnace, who was
born and raised within three miles of the Falls. He had heard of
people going there. He had never seen them himself. It was a good
twenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd think
it thirty before we got there. Fifty miles of such travel to see a
little water run down-hill! The travelers reflected. Every country
has a local waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many.
One more would add little to the experience of life. The vagueness
of information, to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake the
journey; but the temptation was resisted--something ought to be left
for the next explorer--and so Linville remains a thing of the
imagination.
Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and the
Friend rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, to
Roan Station, the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain. It
was a ride of an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed with
rhododendrons, nearly blossomless; but at a point on the stream this
sturdy shrub had formed a long bower where under a table might have
been set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wild
grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are
mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is
introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of
ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to
precede comfort in our civilization.
Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from Roan
Mountain), and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea. The visitor
will find here a good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful in
a July evening), and obliging people. This railway from Johnson
City, hanging on the edge of the precipices that wall the gorge of
the Doe, is counted in this region by the inhabitants one of the
engineering wonders of the world. The tourist is urged by all means
to see both it and Linville Falls.
The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, is
not probably expected to take stock of moral conditions. But this
Mitchell County, although it was a Union county during the war and is
Republican in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps prefer
another adverb to "although"), has had the worst possible reputation.
The mountains were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woods
were full of grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as
"native brandy," quarrels and neighborhood difficulties were
frequent, and the knife and pistol were used on the slightest
provocation. Fights arose about boundaries and the title to mica
mines, and with the revenue officers; and force was the arbiter of
all disputes. Within the year four murders were committed in the
sparsely settled county. Travel on any of the roads was unsafe. The
tone of morals was what might be expected with such lawlessness. A
lady who came up on the road on the 4th of July, when an excursion
party of country people took possession of the cars, witnessed a
scene and heard language past belief. Men, women, and children drank
from whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a wild orgy
resulted. Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the license
of the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom of
manners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on canvas,
made the journey horrible.
The unrestrained license of whisky and assault and murder had
produced a reaction a few months previous to our visit. The people
had risen up in their indignation and broken up the groggeries. So
far as we observed temperance prevailed, backed by public-opinion.
In our whole ride through the mountain region we saw only one or two
places where liquor was sold.
It is called twelve miles from Roan Station to Roan Summit. The
distance is probably nearer fourteen, and our horses were five hours
in walking it. For six miles the road runs by Doe River, here a
pretty brook shaded with laurel and rhododendron, and a few
cultivated patches of ground, and infrequent houses. It was a blithe
morning, and the horsemen would have given full indulgence to the
spirit of adventure but for the attitude of the Professor towards
mountains. It was not with him a matter of feeling, but of
principle, not to ascend them. But here lay Roan, a long, sprawling
ridge, lifting itself 6250 feet up into the sky. Impossible to go
around it, and the other side must be reached. The Professor was
obliged to surrender, and surmount a difficulty which he could not
philosophize out of his mind.
From the base of the mountain a road is very well engineered, in easy
grades for carriages, to the top; but it was in poor repair and
stony. We mounted slowly through splendid forests, specially of fine
chestnuts and hemlocks. This big timber continues till within a mile
and a half of the summit by the winding road, really within a short
distance of the top. Then there is a narrow belt of scrubby
hardwood, moss-grown, and then large balsams, which crown the
mountain. As soon as we came out upon the southern slope we found
great open spaces, covered with succulent grass, and giving excellent
pasturage to cattle. These rich mountain meadows are found on all
the heights of this region. The surface of Roan is uneven, and has
no one culminating peak that commands the country, like the peak of
Mount Washington, but several eminences within its range of probably
a mile and a half, where various views can be had. Near the highest
point, sheltered from the north by balsams, stands a house of
entertainment, with a detached cottage, looking across the great
valley to the Black Mountain range. The surface of the mountain is
pebbly, but few rocks crop out; no ledges of any size are seen except
at a distance from the hotel, on the north side, and the mountain
consequently lacks that savage, unsubduable aspect which the White
Hills of New Hampshire have. It would, in fact, have been difficult
to realize that we were over six thousand feet above the sea, except
for that pallor in the sunlight, that atmospheric thinness and want
of color which is an unpleasant characteristic of high altitudes. To
be sure, there is a certain brilliancy in the high air,--it is apt to
be foggy on Roan,--and objects appear in sharp outline, but I have
often experienced on such places that feeling of melancholy, which
would, of course, deepen upon us all if we were sensible that the sun
was gradually withdrawing its power of warmth and light. The black
balsam is neither a cheerful nor a picturesque tree; the frequent
rains and mists on Roan keep the grass and mosses green, but the
ground damp. Doubtless a high mountain covered with vegetation has
its compensation, but for me the naked granite rocks in sun and
shower are more cheerful.
The advantage of Roan is that one can live there and be occupied for
a long time in mineral and botanical study. Its mild climate,
moisture, and great elevation make it unique in this country for the
botanist. The variety of plants assembled there is very large, and
there are many, we were told, never or rarely found elsewhere in the
United States. At any rate, the botanists rave about Roan Mountain,
and spend weeks at a time on it. We found there ladies who could
draw for us Grey's lily (then passed), and had kept specimens of the
rhododendron (not growing elsewhere in this region) which has a deep
red, almost purple color.
The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountain
structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and
sitting-room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the
thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was
welcome. Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave the
occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being
primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the
loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not
unlike that of being at sea. The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and
Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the
season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands. This
statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the
character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.
The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North
Carolina mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in
mist; and it would rather rain on them than not. On the afternoon of
our arrival there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky.
The distance was hazy, but the outlines were preserved. We could see
White Top, in Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range;
the twin towers of Linville; and the entire range of the Black
Mountains, rising from the valley, and apparently lower than we were.
They get the name of Black from the balsams which cover the summits.
The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful
company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,
and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in
agreeableness. There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of
the virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston;
the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the
literature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of
bright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull
day or evening on Roan. I can fancy, however, that it might tire in
time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women's
society. The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished
botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of
plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued
as Humana, perplexia negligens. The species is, however, common
elsewhere.
The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
thunder-shower. After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle
Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had,
but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the
day. Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a
mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley. On the lower mountains, at
wide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched
cabin and a spot of girdled trees. A clergyman here, not long ago,
undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to
them. In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom,
after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray. She
offered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed. The woman
heard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an
effort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said:
"Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole."
Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest,
and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some
rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.
In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained
of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States--a
continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or
distance. The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of
the atmosphere. Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day
before, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim
inaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwest
horizon, King's Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distant
one hundred and fifty miles. To the north Roan falls from this point
abruptly, and we had, like a map below us, the low country all the
way into Virginia. The clouds lay like lakes in the valleys of the
lower hills, and in every direction were ranges of mountains wooded
to the summits. Off to the west by south lay the Great Smoky
Mountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.
Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged to
contrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills. The rock here
is a sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite.
And all the hills are tree-covered. To many this clothing of verdure
is most restful and pleasing. I missed the sharp outlines, the
delicate artistic sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granite
peaks and ridges, with the purple and violet color of the northern
mountains, and which it seems to me that limestone and granite
formations give. There are none of the great gorges and awful
abysses of the White Mountains, both valleys and mountains here being
more uniform in outline. There are few precipices and jutting crags,
and less is visible of the giant ribs and bones of the planet.
Yet Roan is a noble mountain. A lady from Tennessee asked me if I
had ever seen anything to compare with it--she thought there could be
nothing in the world. One has to dodge this sort of question in the
South occasionally, not to offend a just local pride. It is
certainly one of the most habitable of big mountains. It is roomy on
top, there is space to move about without too great fatigue, and one
might pleasantly spend a season there, if he had agreeable company
and natural tastes.
Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascending
on the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain is
merely a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which the
horses picked their way painfully. The travelers endeavored to
present a dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies who
waved good-by from the hotel, as they took their way over the waste
and wind-blown declivities, but it was only a show, for the horses
would neither caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day)
down-hill over the slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderers
turned with regret from the society of leisure and persiflage to face
the wilderness of Mitchell County.
"How heavy," exclaimed the Professor, pricking Laura Matilda to call
her attention sharply to her footing--
"How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek--my weary travel's end
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
This was not spoken to the group who fluttered their farewells, but
poured out to the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in ever
statelier--and grander ranks to greet the travelers as they
descended--the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip of
squirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead in
response to the sonnet. Is there any region or circumstance of life
that the poet did not forecast and provide for? But what would have
been his feelings if he could have known that almost three centuries
after these lines were penned, they would be used to express the
emotion of an unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of the
New World? At any rate, he peopled the New World with the children
of his imagination. And, thought the Friend, whose attention to his
horse did not permit him to drop into poetry, Shakespeare might have
had a vision of this vast continent, though he did not refer to it,
when he exclaimed:
"What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"
Bakersville, the capital of Mitchell County, is eight miles from the
top of Roan, and the last three miles of the way the horsemen found
tolerable going, over which the horses could show their paces. The
valley looked fairly thrifty and bright, and was a pleasing
introduction to Bakersville, a pretty place in the hills, of some six
hundred inhabitants, with two churches, three indifferent hotels, and
a court-house. This mountain town, 2550 feet above the sea, is said
to have a decent winter climate, with little snow, favorable to
fruit-growing, and, by contrast with New England, encouraging to
people with weak lungs.
This is the center of the mica mining, and of considerable excitement
about minerals. All around, the hills are spotted with "diggings."
Most of the mines which yield well show signs of having been worked
before, a very long time ago, no doubt by the occupants before the
Indians. The mica is of excellent quality and easily mined. It is
got out in large irregular-shaped blocks and transported to the
factories, where it is carefully split by hand, and the laminae, of
as large size as can be obtained, are trimmed with shears and tied up
in packages for market. The quantity of refuse, broken, and rotten
mica piled up about the factories is immense, and all the roads round
about glisten with its scales. Garnets are often found imbedded in
the laminae, flattened by the extreme pressure to which the mass was
subjected. It is fascinating material, this mica, to handle, and we
amused ourselves by experimenting on the thinness to which its scales
could be reduced by splitting. It was at Bakersville that we saw
specimens of mica that resembled the delicate tracery in the
moss-agate and had the iridescent sheen of the rainbow colors--the most
delicate greens, reds, blues, purples, and gold, changing from one to
the other in the reflected light. In the texture were the tracings
of fossil forms of ferns and the most exquisite and delicate
vegetable beauty of the coal age. But the magnet shows this tracery
to be iron. We were shown also emeralds and "diamonds," picked up in
this region, and there is a mild expectation in all the inhabitants
of great mineral treasure. A singular product of the region is the
flexible sandstone. It is a most uncanny stone. A slip of it a
couple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in the
hand like a half-frozen snake. This conduct of a substance that we
have been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence in
the stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does.
This excitement over mica and other minerals has the usual effect of
starting up business and creating bad blood. Fortunes have been
made, and lost in riotous living; scores of visionary men have been
disappointed; lawsuits about titles and claims have multiplied, and
quarrels ending in murder have been frequent in the past few years.
The mica and the illicit whisky have worked together to make this
region one of lawlessness and violence. The travelers were told
stories of the lack of common morality and decency in the region, but
they made no note of them. And, perhaps fortunately, they were not
there during court week to witness the scenes of license that were
described. This court week, which draws hither the whole population,
is a sort of Saturnalia. Perhaps the worst of this is already a
thing of the past; for the outrages a year before had reached such a
pass that by a common movement the sale of whisky was stopped (not
interdicted, but stopped), and not a drop of liquor could be bought
in Bakersville nor within three miles of it.
The jail at Bakersville is a very simple residence. The main
building is brick, two stories high and about twelve feet square.
The walls are so loosely laid up that it seems as if a colored
prisoner might butt his head through. Attached to this is a room for
the jailer. In the lower room is a wooden cage, made of logs bolted
together and filled with spikes, nine feet by ten feet square and
perhaps seven or eight feet high. Between this cage and the wall is
a space of eighteen inches in width. It has a narrow door, and an
opening through which the food is passed to the prisoners, and a
conduit leading out of it. Of course it soon becomes foul, and in
warm weather somewhat warm. A recent prisoner, who wanted more
ventilation than the State allowed him, found some means, by a loose
plank, I think, to batter a hole in the outer wall opposite the
window in the cage, and this ragged opening, seeming to the jailer a
good sanitary arrangement, remains. Two murderers occupied this
apartment at the time of our visit. During the recent session of
court, ten men had been confined in this narrow space, without room
enough for them to lie down together. The cage in the room above, a
little larger, had for tenant a person who was jailed for some
misunderstanding about an account, and who was probably innocent
--from the jailer's statement. This box is a wretched residence, month
after month, while awaiting trial.
We learned on inquiry that it is practically impossible to get a jury
to convict of murder in this region, and that these admitted felons
would undoubtedly escape. We even heard that juries were purchasable
here, and that a man's success in court depended upon the length of
his purse. This is such an unheard-of thing that we refused to
credit it. When the Friend attempted to arouse the indignation of
the Professor about the barbarity of this jail, the latter defended
it on the ground that as confinement was the only punishment that
murderers were likely to receive in this region, it was well to make
their detention disagreeable to them. But the Friend did not like
this wild-beast cage for men, and could only exclaim,
"Oh, murder! what crimes are done in thy name."
If the comrades wished an adventure, they had a small one, more
interesting to them than to the public, the morning they left
Bakersville to ride to Burnsville, which sets itself up as the
capital of Yancey. The way for the first three miles lay down a
small creek and in a valley fairly settled, the houses, a store, and
a grist-mill giving evidence of the new enterprise of the region.
When Toe River was reached, there was a choice of routes. We might
ford the Toe at that point, where the river was wide, but shallow,
and the crossing safe, and climb over the mountain by a rough but
sightly road, or descend the stream by a better road and ford the
river at a place rather dangerous to those unfamiliar with it. The
danger attracted us, but we promptly chose the hill road on account
of the views, for we were weary of the limited valley prospects.
The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a very
respectable stream in size, and not to be trifled with after a
shower. It gradually turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky,
becomes part of the Tennessee system. We crossed it by a long,
diagonal ford, slipping and sliding about on the round stones, and
began the ascent of a steep hill. The sun beat down unmercifully,
the way was stony, and the horses did not relish the weary climbing.
The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but
to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer
occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and
perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general,
cried out:
"Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,--
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."
In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of the
inequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often put
at disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazen
assumption raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest merit
to plod along in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attack
a blackberry bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, and
desirous of getting a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill.
At the top he encountered a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom he
entered into conversation and extracted all the discouragement the
man had as to the road to Burnsville.
Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively. There are few
exhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a high
ridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above the
point of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when he
encountered the blackberry bushes. Luckily the Friend soon fell in
with a like temptation, and dismounted. He discovered something that
spoiled his appetite for berries. His coat, strapped on behind the
saddle, had worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book
was gone. This was serious business. For while the Professor was
the cashier, and traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the
Friend represented the sub-treasury. That very morning, in response
to inquiry as to the sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed,
without counting, a roll of bills. These bills had now disappeared,
and when the Friend turned back to communicate his loss, in the
character of needy nothing not trimm'd in jollity, he had a
sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.
Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retrace
our steps we must. Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not half
a mile back. But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found.
Probably, then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up. But
who was the man on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone? Probably
the coat worked loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book had
gone down-stream. The number of probabilities was infinite, and each
more plausible than the others as it occurred to us. We inquired at
every house we had passed on the way, we questioned every one we met.
At length it began to seem improbable that any one would remember if
he had picked up a pocketbook that morning. This is just the sort of
thing that slips an untrained memory.
At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might be
either or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence, and
a group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, we
unfolded our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on a
sorrel horse. Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just ridden
towards Bakersville. If he had found the pocket-book, we would
recover it. He was an honest man. It might, however, fall into
hands that would freeze to it.
Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men in
the county who would keep it if they had picked it up. But the
assembly manifested the liveliest interest in the incident. One
suggested Toe River. Another thought it risky to drop a purse on any
road. But there was a chorus of desire expressed that we should find
it, and in this anxiety was exhibited a decided sensitiveness about
the honor of Mitchell County. It seemed too bad that a stranger
should go away with the impression that it was not safe to leave
money anywhere in it. We felt very much obliged for this genuine
sympathy, and we told them that if a pocket-book were lost in this
way on a Connecticut road, there would be felt no neighborhood
responsibility for it, and that nobody would take any interest in the
incident except the man who lost, and the man who found.
By the time the travelers pulled up at a store in Bakersville they
had lost all expectation of recovering the missing article, and were
discussing the investment of more money in an advertisement in the
weekly newspaper of the capital. The Professor, whose reform
sentiments agreed with those of the newspaper, advised it. There was
a group of idlers, mica acquaintances of the morning, and
philosophers in front of the store, and the Friend opened the
colloquy by asking if a man named David Thomas had been seen in town.
He was in town, had ridden in within an hour, and his brother, who
was in the group, would go in search of him. The information was
then given of the loss, and that the rider had met David Thomas just
before it was discovered, on the mountain beyond the Toe. The news
made a sensation, and by the time David Thomas appeared a crowd of a
hundred had drawn around the horsemen eager for further developments.
Mr. Thomas was the least excited of the group as he took his position
on the sidewalk, conscious of the dignity of the occasion and that he
was about to begin a duel in which both reputation and profit were
concerned. He recollected meeting the travelers in the morning.
The Friend said, "I discovered that I had lost my purse just after
meeting you; it may have been dropped in Toe River, but I was told
back here that if David Thomas had picked it up, it was as safe as if
it were in the bank."
"What sort of a pocket-book was it?" asked Mr. Thomas.
"It was of crocodile skin, or what is sold for that, very likely it
is an imitation, and about so large indicating the size."
"What had it in it?"
"Various things. Some specimens of mica; some bank checks, some
money."
"Anything else?"
"Yes, a photograph. And, oh, something that I presume is not in
another pocket-book in North Carolina,--in an envelope, a lock of the
hair of George Washington, the Father of his Country." Sensation
mixed with incredulity. Washington's hair did seem such an odd part
of an outfit for a journey of this kind.
"How much money was in it?"
"That I cannot say, exactly. I happen to remember four twenty-dollar
United States notes, and a roll of small bills, perhaps something
over a hundred dollars."
"Is that the pocket-book?" asked David Thomas, slowly pulling the
loved and lost out of his trousers pocket.
"It is."
"You'd be willing to take your oath on it?"
"I should be delighted to."
"Well, I guess there ain't so much money in it. You can count it
[handing it over]; there hain't been nothing taken out. I can't
read, but my friend here counted it over, and he says there ain't as
much as that."
Intense interest in the result of the counting. One hundred and ten
dollars! The Friend selected one of the best engraved of the notes,
and appealed to the crowd if they thought that was the square thing
to do. They did so think, and David Thomas said it was abundant.
And then said the Friend:
"I'm exceedingly grateful to you besides. Washington's hair is
getting scarce, and I did not want to lose these few hairs, gray as
they are. You've done the honest thing, Mr. Thomas, as was expected
of you. You might have kept the whole. But I reckon if there had
been five hundred dollars in the book and you had kept it, it
wouldn't have done you half as much good as giving it up has done;
and your reputation as an honest man is worth a good deal more than
this pocket-book. [The Professor was delighted with this sentiment,
because it reminded him of a Sunday-school.] I shall go away with a
high opinion of the honesty of Mitchell County."
"Oh, he lives in Yancey," cried two or three voices. At which there
was a great laugh.
"Well, I wondered where he came from." And the Mitchell County
people laughed again at their own expense, and the levee broke up.
It was exceedingly gratifying, as we spread the news of the recovered
property that afternoon at every house on our way to the Toe, to see
what pleasure it gave. Every man appeared to feel that the honor of
the region had been on trial--and had stood the test.
The eighteen miles to Burnsville had now to be added to the morning
excursion, but the travelers were in high spirits, feeling the truth
of the adage that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to
have lost at all. They decided, on reflection, to join company with
the mail-rider, who was going to Burnsville by the shorter route, and
could pilot them over the dangerous ford of the Toe.
The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry
sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a
fast walker and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, a
natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely
road, and has nothing whatever to think of. He had been in the war
sixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,--reckon you've heerd of
him?
"Confederate?"
"Which?"
"Was he on the Union or Confederate side?"
"Oh, Union."
"Were you in any engagements?"
"Which?"
"Did you have any fighting?"
"Not reg'lar."
"What did you do?"
"Which?"
"What did you do in Hugh White's regiment?"
"Oh, just cavorted round the mountains."
"You lived on the country?"
"Which?"
"Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?"
"That's about so. Did n't make much difference which side was round,
the country got cleaned out."
"Plunder seems to have been the object?"
"Which?"
"You got a living out of the farmers?"
"You bet."
Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain
marauder--on the right side. His attachment to the word "which"
prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to be
only two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject of
horses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were
coming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring
to excite our alarm. He returned to the ford from every other
conversational excursion, and after every silence.
"I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford.
Folks is carried away there. The Toe gits up sudden. There's been
right smart rain lately.
"If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll take
your horses across. Mebbe you're used to fording? It's a pretty bad
ford for them as don't know it. But you'll get along if you mind
your eye. There's some rocks you'll have to look out for. But
you'll be all right if you follow me."
Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers of
his ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasure
in trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned his
attention to a trade. "This hoss of mine," he said, "is just the
kind of brute-beast you want for this country. Your hosses is too
heavy. How'll you swap for that one o' yourn?" The reiterated
assertion that the horses were not ours, that they were hired, made
little impression on him. All the way to Burnsville he kept
referring to the subject of a trade. The instinct of "swap" was
strong in him. When we met a yoke of steers, he turned round and
bantered the owner for a trade. Our saddles took his fancy. They
were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would just
suit him. He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flung
the United States mail pouch, apparently empty. He dwelt upon the
fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantages
that would accrue to us from the exchange. He did n't care if they
had been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army saddle.
The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged to a
distinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was put
there by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, and
the owner would not part with it for money. But the mail-rider said
he did n't mind that. He would n't mind swapping his new saddle for
my old one and the rubber coat and leggings. Long before we reached
the ford we thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the,
risk of drowning. The ford was passed, in due time, with no
inconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast high
to the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks and
slippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to be
commended. There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossing
a swift broad stream. It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream,
while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.
The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams
and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.
Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped. The travelers
endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land.
Not much sold, he said. "There was one sale of a big piece last
year; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know
what he got for it."
All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one
room, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only
occasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like
a cob house, that served for a stable. Not much cultivation, except
now and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside,
occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit. Here
and there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned,
or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were just
beginning life. Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of the
census of 1880) swarmed with children, and nearly all the women were
thin and sickly.
In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now and
then a horse. We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer,
sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the
mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much
pride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.
In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the
rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a
letter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with
patent-medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an
evidence of culture that was worth noting. Mica was the rage. Every
one with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the mineral
fever. The impression was general that the mountain region of North
Carolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral development,
and the most extravagant expectations were entertained. Mica was the
shining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also on the cards.
The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very
pleasing. Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of
2840 feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen.
Most of the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabby
court-house; around it are two small churches, a jail, an inviting
tavern with a long veranda, and a couple of stores. On an
overlooking hill is the seminary. Mica mining is the exciting
industry, but it is agriculturally a good country. The tavern had
recently been enlarged to meet the new demands for entertainment and
is a roomy structure, fresh with paint and only partially organized.
The travelers were much impressed with the brilliant chambers, the
floors of which were painted in alternate stripes of vivid green and
red. The proprietor, a very intelligent and enterprising man, who
had traveled often in the North, was full of projects for the
development of his region and foremost in its enterprises, and had
formed a considerable collection of minerals. Besides, more than any
one else we met, he appreciated the beauty of his country, and took
us to a neighboring hill, where we had a view of Table Mountain to
the east and the nearer giant Blacks. The elevation of Burnsville
gives it a delightful summer climate, the gentle undulations of the
country are agreeable, the views noble, the air is good, and it is
altogether a "livable" and attractive place. With facilities of
communication, it would be a favorite summer resort. Its nearness to
the great mountains (the whole Black range is in Yancey County), its
fine pure air, its opportunity for fishing and hunting, commend it to
those in search of an interesting and restful retreat in summer.
But it should be said that before the country can attract and retain
travelers, its inhabitants must learn something about the preparation
of food. If, for instance, the landlord's wife at Burnsville had
traveled with her husband, her table would probably have been more on
a level with his knowledge of the world, and it would have contained
something that the wayfaring man, though a Northerner, could eat. We
have been on the point several times in this journey of making the
observation, but have been restrained by a reluctance to touch upon
politics, that it was no wonder that a people with such a cuisine
should have rebelled. The travelers were in a rebellious mood most
of the time.
The evidences of enterprise in this region were pleasant to see, but
the observers could not but regret, after all, the intrusion of the
money-making spirit, which is certain to destroy much of the present
simplicity. It is as yet, to a degree, tempered by a philosophic
spirit. The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-bearded
traveler for some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and the
landlord fell into a conversation upon what Socrates calls the
disadvantage of the pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all noble
objects, and they let their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who was
agreed to be the richest man in the world, or that ever lived.
"All I want," said the long-bearded man, "is enough to be
comfortable. I would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it to
me."
"Nor I," said the landlord. "Give me just enough to be comfortable."
[The tourist couldn't but note that his ideas of enough to be
comfortable had changed a good deal since he had left his little farm
and gone into the mica business, and visited New York, and enlarged
and painted his tavern.] I should like to know what more Vanderbilt
gets out of his money than I get out of mine. I heard tell of a
young man who went to Vanderbilt to get employment. Vanderbilt
finally offered to give the young man, if he would work for him, just
what he got himself. The young man jumped at that--he'd be perfectly
satisfied with that pay. And Vanderbilt said that all he got was
what he could eat and wear, and offered to give the young man his
board and clothes."
"I declare" said the long-bearded man. "That's just it. Did you
ever see Vanderbilt's house? Neither did I, but I heard he had a
vault built in it five feet thick, solid. He put in it two hundred
millions of dollars, in gold. After a year, he opened it and put in
twelve millions more, and called that a poor year. They say his
house has gold shutters to the windows, so I've heard."
"I shouldn't wonder," said the landlord. "I heard he had one door in
his house cost forty thousand dollars. I don't know what it is made
of, unless it's made of gold."
Sunday was a hot and quiet day. The stores were closed and the two
churches also, this not being the Sunday for the itinerant preacher.
The jail also showed no sign of life, and when we asked about it, we
learned that it was empty, and had been for some time. No liquor is
sold in the place, nor within at least three miles of it. It is not
much use to try to run a jail without liquor.
In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived,
leading between them a young man whom they had arrested,--it didn't
appear on any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed and
locked up. The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had
not used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about and
threatened, and the neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound to
enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.
The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms
with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not
unwilling to go to jail. But a practical difficulty arose. The jail
was locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the
key, and no one could get in. It did not appear that there was any
provision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it. The
sheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and
his captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence,
rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust that
the jail would be open some time.
Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the
jail. But we took a personal leaf out of this experience. Our
Virginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had
urged us not to venture into it without arms--take at least, they
insisted, a revolver each. And now we had to congratulate ourselves
that we had not done so. If we had, we should doubtless on that
Sunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission
into the Yancey County jail.
III
From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
the capital of Buncombe County. It is distant some forty to
forty-five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads. The
easier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, the
first stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoon
when we were in condition to move.
The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville,
cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to
Asheville. He represented this route as shorter and infinitely more
picturesque. There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.
With scarcely a moment's reflection and while the horses were
saddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson's. I could not at the
time understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented. I
should hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend Mount
Mitchell. It was equally fixed in the Professor's mind not to do it.
We had not discussed it much. But it is safe to say that if he had
one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell.
"Not," as he put it,--
"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"
had suggested the possibility that he could do it.
But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
to Wilson's. When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy
as anywhere--a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and
never got off her horse. You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's,
you can go any way you please.
Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most
characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman,
hunter, guide. So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty,
broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a few
miles to Wilson's plantation. There are little intervales along the
river, where hay is cut and corn grown, but the region is not much
cleared, and the stock browse about in the forest. Wilson is the
agent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand
acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a
wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams
abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the rattlesnake.
With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching
game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the
few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in the
forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves
against the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and
lately they have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the
fish.
Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together
frame house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a
loft, and a spring-house in the rear. Chickens and other animals
have free run of the premises. Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and
hunter's gear depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen.
In one room were three beds, in the other two, only one in the
kitchen. On the porch was a loom, with a piece of cloth in process.
The establishment had the air of taking care of itself. Neither Big
Tom nor his wife was at home. Sunday seemed to be a visiting day,
and the travelers had met many parties on horseback. Mrs. Wilson
was away for a visit of a day or two. One of the sons, who was
lounging on the veranda, was at last induced to put up the horses; a
very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the visitors, was found in
the kitchen, but no intelligible response could be got out of her.
Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in charge, appeared.
She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's (her brother was
just married and lived up the river in the house where Mr. Murchison
stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear that had
been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before. She expected
him back by sundown--by dark anyway. 'Les he'd gone after the bear,
and then you could n't tell when he would come.
It appeared that Big Tom was a thriving man in the matter of family.
More boys appeared. Only one was married, but four had "got their
time." As night approached, and no Wilson, there was a good deal of
lively and loud conversation about the stock and the chores, in all
of which the girl took a leading and intelligent part, showing a
willingness to do her share, but not to have all the work put upon
her. It was time to go down the road and hunt up the cows; the mule
had disappeared and must be found before dark; a couple of steers
hadn't turned up since the day before yesterday, and in the midst of
the gentle contention as to whose business all this was, there was an
alarm of cattle in the corn-patch, and the girl started off on a run
in that direction. It was due to the executive ability of this small
girl, after the cows had been milked and the mule chased and the boys
properly stirred up, that we had supper. It was of the oilcloth,
iron fork, tin spoon, bacon, hot bread and honey variety,
distinguished, however, from all meals we had endured or enjoyed
before by the introduction of fried eggs (as the breakfast next
morning was by the presence of chicken), and it was served by the
active maid with right hearty good-will and genuine hospitable
intent.
While it was in progress, after nine o'clock, Big Tom arrived, and,
with a simple greeting, sat down and attacked the supper and began to
tell about the bear. There was not much to tell except that he
hadn't seen the bear, and that, judged by his tracks and his sloshing
around, he must be a big one. But a trap had been set for him, and
he judged it wouldn't be long before we had some bear meat. Big Tom
Wilson, as he is known all over this part of the State, would not
attract attention from his size. He is six feet and two inches tall,
very spare and muscular, with sandy hair, long gray beard, and honest
blue eyes. He has a reputation for great strength and endurance; a
man of native simplicity and mild manners. He had been rather
expecting us from what Mr. Murchison wrote; he wrote (his son had
read out the letter) that Big Tom was to take good care of us, and
anybody that Mr. Murchison sent could have the best he'd got.
Big Tom joined us in our room after supper. This apartment, with two
mighty feather-beds, was hung about with all manner of stuffy family
clothes, and had in one end a vast cavern for a fire. The floor was
uneven, and the hearthstones billowy. When the fire was lighted, the
effect of the bright light in the cavern and the heavy shadows in the
room was Rembrandtish. Big Tom sat with us before the fire and told
bear stories. Talk? Why, it was not the least effort. The stream
flowed on without a ripple. "Why, the old man," one of the sons
confided to us next morning, "can begin and talk right over Mount
Mitchell and all the way back, and never make a break." Though Big
Tom had waged a lifelong warfare with the bears, and taken the hide
off at least a hundred of them, I could not see that he had any
vindictive feeling towards the varmint, but simply an insatiable love
of killing him, and he regarded him in that half-humorous light in
which the bear always appears to those who study him. As to deer--he
couldn't tell how many of them he had slain. But Big Tom was a
gentleman: he never killed deer for mere sport. With rattlesnakes,
now, it was different. There was the skin of one hanging upon a tree
by the route we would take in the morning, a buster, he skinned him
yesterday. There was an entire absence, of braggadocio in Big Tom's
talk, but somehow, as he went on, his backwoods figure loomed larger
and larger in our imagination, and he seemed strangely familiar. At
length it came over us where we had met him before. It was in
Cooper's novels. He was the Leather-Stocking exactly. And yet he
was an original; for he assured us that he had never read the
Leather-Stocking Tales. What a figure, I was thinking, he must have
made in the late war! Such a shot, such a splendid physique, such
iron endurance! I almost dreaded to hear his tales of the havoc he
had wrought on the Union army. Yes, he was in the war, he was
sixteen months in the Confederate army, this Homeric man. In what
rank? "Oh, I was a fifer!"
But hunting and war did not by any means occupy the whole of Big
Tom's life. He was also engaged in "lawin'." He had a long-time
feud with a neighbor about a piece of land and alleged trespass, and
they'd been "lawin'" for years, with no definite result; but as a
topic of conversation it was as fully illustrative of frontier life
as the bear-fighting.
Long after we had all gone to bed, we heard Big Tom's continuous
voice, through the thin partition that separated us from the kitchen,
going on to his little boy about the bear; every circumstance of how
he tracked him, and what corner of the field he entered, and where he
went out, and his probable size and age, and the prospect of his
coming again; these were the details of real everyday life, and
worthy to be dwelt on by the hour. The boy was never tired of
pursuing them. And Big Tom was just a big boy, also, in his delight
in it all.
Perhaps it was the fascination of Big Tom, perhaps the representation
that we were already way off the Big Ivy route, and that it would, in
fact, save time to go over the mountain and we could ride all the
way, that made the Professor acquiesce, with no protest worth
noticing, in the preparations that went on, as by a natural
assumption, for going over Mitchell. At any rate, there was an early
breakfast, luncheon was put up, and by half-past seven we were riding
up the Caney,--a half-cloudy day,--Big Tom swinging along on foot
ahead, talking nineteen to the dozen. There was a delightful
freshness in the air, the dew-laden bushes, and the smell of the
forest. In half an hour we called at the hunting shanty of Mr.
Murchison, wrote our names on the wall, according to custom, and
regretted that we could not stay for a day in that retreat and try
the speckled trout. Making our way through the low growth and bushes
of the valley, we came into a fine open forest, watered by a noisy
brook, and after an hour's easy going reached the serious ascent.
From Wilson's to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles;
we made it in five and a half hours. A bridle path was cut years
ago, but it has been entirely neglected. It is badly washed, it is
stony, muddy, and great trees have fallen across it which wholly
block the way for horses. At these places long detours were
necessary, on steep hillsides and through gullies, over treacherous
sink-holes in the rocks, through quaggy places, heaps of brush, and
rotten logs. Those who have ever attempted to get horses over such
ground will not wonder at the slow progress we made. Before we were
halfway up the ascent, we realized the folly of attempting it on
horseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as to go back. The way
was also exceedingly steep in places, and what with roots, and logs,
and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb for the
horses.
What a magnificent forest! Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, the
cucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone),
and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here in
splendid array. And this gigantic forest, with little diminution in
size of trees, continued two thirds of the way up. We marked, as we
went on, the maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, the
locust, and the guide pointed out in one section the largest
cherry-trees we had ever seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sum
if it could be got to market. After the great trees were left behind,
we entered a garden of white birches, and then a plateau of swamp,
thick with raspberry bushes, and finally the ridges, densely crowded
with the funereal black balsam.
Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew.
It was a poplar, or tulip. It stands more like a column than a tree,
rising high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhaps
sixty, more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.
Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet! I think it
might be called Big Tom. It stood here, of course, a giant, when
Columbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler
will attach the name of Columbus to it.
In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely the
note of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwise
primeval silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost like
the sound of the wind in pine tops. It was the humming of bees! The
upper branches were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tom
was always on the alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which he
could visit afterwards. Honey hunting is one of his occupations.
Collecting spruce gum is another, and he was continually hacking off
with his hatchet knobs of the translucent secretion. How rich and
fragrant are these forests! The rhododendron was still in occasional
bloom' and flowers of brilliant hue gleamed here and there.
The struggle was more severe as we neared the summit, and the footing
worse for the horses. Occasionally it was safest to dismount and
lead them up slippery ascents; but this was also dangerous, for it
was difficult to keep them from treading on our heels, in their
frantic flounderings, in the steep, wet, narrow, brier-grown path.
At one uncommonly pokerish place, where the wet rock sloped into a
bog, the rider of Jack thought it prudent to dismount, but Big Tom
insisted that Jack would "make it" all right, only give him his head.
The rider gave him his head, and the next minute Jack's four heels
were in the air, and he came down on his side in a flash. The rider
fortunately extricated his leg without losing it, Jack scrambled out
with a broken shoe, and the two limped along. It was a wonder that
the horses' legs were not broken a dozen times.
As we approached the top, Big Tom pointed out the direction, a half
mile away, of a small pond, a little mountain tarn, overlooked by a
ledge of rock, where Professor Mitchell lost his life. Big Tom was
the guide that found his body. That day, as we sat on the summit, he
gave in great detail the story, the general outline of which is well
known.
The first effort to measure the height of the Black Mountains was
made in 1835, by Professor Elisha Mitchell, professor of mathematics
and chemistry in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mr. Mitchell was a native of Connecticut, born in Washington,
Litchfield County, in 1793; graduated at Yale, ordained a
Presbyterian minister, and was for a time state surveyor; and became
a professor at Chapel Hill in 1818. He first ascertained and
published the fact that the Black Mountains are the highest land east
of the Rocky Mountains. In 1844 he visited the locality again.
Measurements were subsequently made by Professor Guyot and by Senator
Clingman. One of the peaks was named for the senator (the one next
in height to Mitchell is described as Clingman on the state map), and
a dispute arose as to whether Mitchell had really visited and
measured the highest peak. Senator Clingman still maintains that he
did not, and that the peak now known as Mitchell is the one that
Clingman first described. The estimates of altitudes made by the
three explorers named differed considerably. The height now fixed
for Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285. There
are twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if
we add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are
some twenty in this State higher than the granite giant of New
Hampshire.
In order to verify his statement, Professor Mitchell (then in his
sixty-fourth year) made a third ascent in June, 1857. He was alone,
and went up from the Swannanoa side. He did not return. No anxiety
was felt for two or three days, as he was a good mountaineer, and it
was supposed he had crossed the mountain and made his way out by the
Caney River. But when several days passed without tidings of him, a
search party was formed. Big Tom Wilson was with it. They explored
the mountain in all directions unsuccessfully. At length Big Tom
separated himself from his companions and took a course in accordance
with his notion of that which would be pursued by a man lost in the
clouds or the darkness. He soon struck the trail of the wanderer,
and, following it, discovered Mitchell's body lying in a pool at the
foot of a rocky precipice some thirty feet high. It was evident that
Mitchell, making his way along the ridge in darkness or fog, had
fallen off. It was the ninth (or the eleventh) day of his
disappearance, but in the pure mountain air the body had suffered no
change. Big Tom brought his companions to the place, and on
consultation it was decided to leave the body undisturbed till
Mitchell's friends could be present.
There was some talk of burying him on the mountain, but the friends
decided otherwise, and the remains, with much difficulty, were got
down to Asheville and there interred.
Some years afterwards, I believe at the instance of a society of
scientists, it was resolved to transport the body to the summit of
Mount Mitchell; for the tragic death of the explorer had forever
settled in the popular mind the name of the mountain. The task was
not easy. A road had to be cut, over which a sledge could be hauled,
and the hardy mountaineers who undertook the removal were three days
in reaching the summit with their burden. The remains were
accompanied by a considerable concourse, and the last rites on the
top were participated in by a hundred or more scientists and
prominent men from different parts of the State. Such a strange
cortege had never before broken the silence of this lonely
wilderness, nor was ever burial more impressive than this wild
interment above the clouds.
We had been preceded in our climb all the way by a huge bear. That
he was huge, a lunker, a monstrous old varmint, Big Tom knew by the
size of his tracks; that he was making the ascent that morning ahead
of us, Big Tom knew by the freshness of the trail. We might come
upon him at any moment; he might be in the garden; was quite likely
to be found in the raspberry patch. That we did not encounter him I
am convinced was not the fault of Big Tom, but of the bear.
After a struggle of five hours we emerged from the balsams and briers
into a lovely open meadow, of lush clover, timothy, and blue grass.
We unsaddled the horses and turned them loose to feed in it. The
meadow sloped up to a belt of balsams and firs, a steep rocky knob,
and climbing that on foot we stood upon the summit of Mitchell at one
o'clock. We were none too soon, for already the clouds were
preparing for what appears to be a daily storm at this season.
The summit is a nearly level spot of some thirty or forty feet in
extent either way, with a floor of rock and loose stones. The
stunted balsams have been cut away so as to give a view. The sweep
of prospect is vast, and we could see the whole horizon except in the
direction of Roan, whose long bulk was enveloped in cloud. Portions
of six States were in sight, we were told, but that is merely a
geographical expression. What we saw, wherever we looked, was an
inextricable tumble of mountains, without order or leading line of
direction,--domes, peaks, ridges, endless and countless, everywhere,
some in shadow, some tipped with shafts of sunlight, all wooded and
green or black, and all in more softened contours than our Northern
hills, but still wild, lonesome, terrible. Away in the southwest,
lifting themselves up in a gleam of the western sky, the Great Smoky
Mountains loomed like a frowning continental fortress, sullen and
remote. With Clingman and Gibbs and Holdback peaks near at hand and
apparently of equal height, Mitchell seemed only a part and not
separate from the mighty congregation of giants.
In the center of the stony plot on the summit lie the remains of
Mitchell. To dig a grave in the rock was impracticable, but the
loose stones were scooped away to the depth of a foot or so, the body
was deposited, and the stones were replaced over it. It was the
original intention to erect a monument, but the enterprise of the
projectors of this royal entombment failed at that point. The grave
is surrounded by a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitor
adds one, and in the course of ages the cairn may grow to a good
size. The explorer lies there without name or headstone to mark his
awful resting-place. The mountain is his monument. He is alone with
its majesty. He is there in the clouds, in the tempests, where the
lightnings play, and thunders leap, amid the elemental tumult, in the
occasional great calm and silence and the pale sunlight. It is the
most majestic, the most lonesome grave on earth.
As we sat there, awed a little by this presence, the clouds were
gathering from various quarters and drifting towards us. We could
watch the process of thunder-storms and the manufacture of tempests.
I have often noticed on other high mountains how the clouds, forming
like genii released from the earth, mount into the upper air, and in
masses of torn fragments of mist hurry across the sky as to a
rendezvous of witches. This was a different display. These clouds
came slowly sailing from the distant horizon, like ships on an aerial
voyage. Some were below us, some on our level; they were all in
well-defined, distinct masses, molten silver on deck, below trailing
rain, and attended on earth by gigantic shadows that moved with them.
This strange fleet of battle-ships, drifted by the shifting currents,
was maneuvering for an engagement. One after another, as they came
into range about our peak of observation, they opened fire. Sharp
flashes of lightning darted from one to the other; a jet of flame
from one leaped across the interval and was buried in the bosom of
its adversary; and at every discharge the boom of great guns echoed
through the mountains. It was something more than a royal salute to
the tomb of the mortal at our feet, for the masses of cloud were rent
in the fray, at every discharge the rain was precipitated in
increasing torrents, and soon the vast hulks were trailing torn
fragments and wreaths of mist, like the shot-away shrouds and sails
of ships in battle. Gradually, from this long-range practice with
single guns and exchange of broadsides, they drifted into closer
conflict, rushed together, and we lost sight of the individual
combatants in the general tumult of this aerial war.
We had barely twenty minutes for our observations, when it was time
to go; and had scarcely left the peak when the clouds enveloped it.
We hastened down under the threatening sky to the saddles and the
luncheon. Just off from the summit, amid the rocks, is a complete
arbor, or tunnel, of rhododendrons. This cavernous place a Western
writer has made the scene of a desperate encounter between Big Tom
and a catamount, or American panther, which had been caught in a trap
and dragged it there, pursued by Wilson. It is an exceedingly
graphic narrative, and is enlivened by the statement that Big Tom had
the night before drunk up all the whisky of the party which had spent
the night on the summit. Now Big Tom assured us that the whisky part
of the story was an invention; he was not (which is true) in the
habit of using it; if he ever did take any, it might be a drop on
Mitchell; in fact, when he inquired if we had a flask, he remarked
that a taste of it would do him good then and there. We regretted
the lack of it in our baggage. But what inclined Big Tom to
discredit the Western writer's story altogether was the fact that he
never in his life had had a difficulty with a catamount, and never
had seen one in these mountains.
Our lunch was eaten in haste. Big Tom refused the chicken he had
provided for us, and strengthened himself with slices of raw salt
pork, which he cut from a hunk with his clasp-knife. We caught and
saddled our horses, who were reluctant to leave the rich feed,
enveloped ourselves in waterproofs, and got into the stony path for
the descent just as the torrent came down. It did rain. It
lightened, the thunder crashed, the wind howled and twisted the
treetops. It was as if we were pursued by the avenging spirits of
the mountains for our intrusion. Such a tempest on this height had
its terrors even for our hardy guide. He preferred to be lower down
while it was going on. The crash and reverberation of the thunder
did not trouble us so much as the swish of the wet branches in our
faces and the horrible road, with its mud, tripping roots, loose
stones, and slippery rocks. Progress was slow. The horses were in
momentary danger of breaking their legs. In the first hour there was
not much descent. In the clouds we were passing over Clingman,
Gibbs, and Holdback. The rain had ceased, but the mist still shut
off all view, if any had been attainable, and bushes and paths were
deluged. The descent was more uncomfortable than the ascent, and we
were compelled a good deal of the way to lead the jaded horses down
the slippery rocks.
From the peak to the Widow Patten's, where we proposed to pass the
night, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, every
step of the road bad, in five and a half hours. Halfway down we came
out upon a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house in
ruins. Here had been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war,
but now abandoned. Above it we turned aside for the view from
Elizabeth rock, named from the daughter of the proprietor of the
hotel, who often sat here, said Big Tom, before she went out of this
world. It is a bold rocky ledge, and the view from it, looking
south, is unquestionably the finest, the most pleasing and
picture-like, we found in these mountains. In the foreground is the
deep gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite is the great wall
of the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most capricious and
inexplicable system) making off to the Blacks. The depth of the gorge,
the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the scene to the
sunny south made this view both grand and charming. Nature does not
always put the needed dash of poetry into her extensive prospects.
Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashion
used to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side through
a forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and at
length struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, which
led us to the first settlement. Just at night,--it was nearly seven
o'clock,--we entered one of the most stately forests I have ever
seen, and rode for some distance in an alley of rhododendrons that
arched overhead and made a bower. It was like an aisle in a temple;
high overhead was the somber, leafy roof, supported by gigantic
columns. Few widows have such an avenue of approach to their domain
as the Widow Patten has.
Cheering as this outcome was from the day's struggle and storm, the
Professor seemed sunk in a profound sadness. The auguries which the
Friend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and a
royal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind. "Alas," he
said,
"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss."
"Loss of what?" cried the Friend, as he whipped up his halting
steed.
"Loss of self-respect. I feel humiliated that I consented to climb
this mountain."
"Nonsense! You'll live to thank me for it, as the best thing you
ever did. It's over and done now, and you've got it to tell your
friends."
"That's just the trouble. They'll ask me if I went up Mitchell, and
I shall have to say I did. My character for consistency is gone.
Not that I care much what they think, but my own self-respect is
gone. I never believed I would do it. A man ca'nt afford to lower
himself in his own esteem, at my time of life."
The Widow Patten's was only an advanced settlement in this narrow
valley on the mountain-side, but a little group of buildings, a
fence, and a gate gave it the air of a place, and it had once been
better cared for than it is now. Few travelers pass that way, and
the art of entertaining, if it ever existed, is fallen into
desuetude. We unsaddled at the veranda, and sat down to review our
adventure, make the acquaintance of the family, and hear the last
story from Big Tom. The mountaineer, though wet, was as fresh as a
daisy, and fatigue in no wise checked the easy, cheerful flow of his
talk. He was evidently a favorite with his neighbors, and not
unpleasantly conscious of the extent of his reputation. But he
encountered here another social grade. The Widow Patten was highly
connected. We were not long in discovering that she was an
Alexander. She had been a schoolmate of Senator Vance,--"Zeb Vance"
he still was to her,--and the senator and his wife had stayed at her
house. I wish I could say that the supper, for which we waited till
nine o'clock, was as "highly connected" as the landlady. It was,
however, a supper that left its memory. We were lodged in a detached
house, which we had to ourselves, where a roaring wood fire made
amends for other things lacking. It was necessary to close the doors
to keep out the wandering cows and pigs, and I am bound to say that,
notwithstanding the voices of the night, we slept there the sleep of
peace.
In the morning a genuine surprise awaited us; it seemed impossible,
but the breakfast was many degrees worse than the supper; and when we
paid our bill, large for the region, we were consoled by the
thought that we paid for the high connection as well as for the
accommodations. This is a regular place of entertainment, and one is
at liberty to praise it without violation of delicacy.
The broken shoe of Jack required attention, and we were all the
morning hunting a blacksmith, as we rode down the valley. Three
blacksmith's shanties were found, and after long waiting to send for
the operator it turned out in each case that he had no shoes, no
nails, no iron to make either of. We made a detour of three miles to
what was represented as a regular shop. The owner had secured the
service of a colored blacksmith for a special job, and was, not
inclined to accommodate us; he had no shoes, no nails. But the
colored blacksmith, who appreciated the plight we were in, offered to
make a shoe, and to crib four nails from those he had laid aside for
a couple of mules; and after a good deal of delay, we were enabled to
go on. The incident shows, as well as anything, the barrenness and
shiftlessness of the region. A horseman with whom we rode in the
morning gave us a very low estimate of the trustworthiness of the
inhabitants. The valley is wild and very pretty all the way down to
Colonel Long's,--twelve miles,--but the wretched-looking people along
the way live in a wretched manner.
Just before reaching Colonel Long's we forded the stream (here of
good size), the bridge having tumbled down, and encountered a party
of picnickers under the trees--signs of civilization; a railway
station is not far off. Colonel Long's is a typical Southern
establishment: a white house, or rather three houses, all of one
story, built on to each other as beehives are set in a row, all
porches and galleries. No one at home but the cook, a rotund,
broad-faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very appearance suggested
good cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the children had gone up
to the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere about the place; always
was away when he was wanted. Guess he'd take us in, mighty fine man
the Colonel; and she dispatched a child from a cabin in the rear to
hunt him up. The Colonel was a great friend of her folks down to
Greenville; they visited here. Law, no, she didn't live here. Was
just up here spending the summer, for her health. God-forsaken lot of
people up here, poor trash. She wouldn't stay here a day, but the
Colonel was a friend of her folks, the firstest folks in Greenville.
Nobody round here she could 'sociate with. She was a Presbyterian, the
folks round here mostly Baptists and Methodists. More style about the
Presbyterians. Married? No, she hoped not. She did n't want to
support no husband. Got 'nuff to do to take care of herself. That her
little girl? No; she'd only got one child, down to Greenville, just
the prettiest boy ever was, as white as anybody. How did she what?
reconcile this state of things with not being married and being a
Presbyterian? Sho! she liked to carry some religion along; it was
mighty handy occasionally, mebbe not all the time. Yes, indeed, she
enjoyed her religion.
The Colonel appeared and gave us a most cordial welcome. The fat and
merry cook blustered around and prepared a good dinner, memorable for
its "light" bread, the first we had seen since Cranberry Forge. The
Colonel is in some sense a public man, having been a mail agent, and
a Republican. He showed us photographs and engravings of Northern
politicians, and had the air of a man who had been in Washington.
This was a fine country for any kind of fruit,--apples, grapes,
pears; it needed a little Northern enterprise to set things going.
The travelers were indebted to the Colonel for a delightful noonday
rest, and with regret declined his pressing invitation to pass the
night with him.
The ride down the Swannanoa to Asheville was pleasant, through a
cultivated region, over a good road. The Swannanoa is, however, a
turbid stream. In order to obtain the most impressive view of
Asheville we approached it by the way of Beaucatcher Hill, a sharp
elevation a mile west of the town. I suppose the name is a
corruption of some descriptive French word, but it has long been a
favorite resort of the frequenters of Asheville, and it may be
traditional that it is a good place to catch beaux. The summit is
occupied by a handsome private residence, and from this ridge the
view, which has the merit of "bursting" upon the traveler as he comes
over the hill, is captivating in its extent and variety. The pretty
town of Asheville is seen to cover a number of elevations gently
rising out of the valley, and the valley, a rich agricultural region,
well watered and fruitful, is completely inclosed by picturesque
hills, some of them rising to the dignity of mountains. The most
conspicuous of these is Mount Pisgah, eighteen miles distant to the
southwest, a pyramid of the Balsam range, 5757 feet high. Mount
Pisgah, from its shape, is the most attractive mountain in this
region.
The sunset light was falling upon the splendid panorama and softening
it. The windows of the town gleamed as if on fire. From the steep
slope below came the mingled sounds of children shouting, cattle
driven home, and all that hum of life that marks a thickly peopled
region preparing for the night. It was the leisure hour of an August
afternoon, and Asheville was in all its watering-place gayety, as we
reined up at the Swannanoa hotel. A band was playing on the balcony.
We had reached ice-water, barbers, waiters, civilization.
IV
Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise above
the French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sort
of fourteenth cousin to Saratoga. It has no springs, but lying 2250
feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pure
atmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winter
resort, it has acquired a watering-place air. There are Southerners
who declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the complete
circuit of mountains shuts out any lively movement of air. But the
scenery is so charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roads
so unusually passable for a Southern country, and the facilities for
excursions so good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.
Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is so
irregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys that
improvements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque.
It is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts--the
enterprise of taste and money-making struggling with the laissez
faire of the South. The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as a
conservative element; he has not much inclination to change his
clothes or his cabin, and his swarming presence gives a ragged aspect
to the new civilization. And to say the truth, the new element of
Southern smartness lacks the trim thrift the North is familiar with;
though the visitor who needs relaxation is not disposed to quarrel
with the easy-going terms on which life is taken.
Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulating
to the riders from the wilderness. The Professor, who does not even
pretend to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about the
streets (there is but one of much consideration), immensely
entertained by the picturesque contrasts. There was more life and
amusement here in five minutes, he declared, than in five days of
what people called scenery--the present rage for scenery, anyway,
being only a fashion and a modern invention. The Friend suspected
from this penchant for the city that the Professor must have been
brought up in the country.
There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Asheville
however, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave to
it the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places. We
fancied that the lively movement in the streets had an air of
unreality. A band of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa were
scraping and tooting and twanging with a hired air, and on the
opposite balcony of the Eagle a rival band echoed and redoubled the
perfunctory joyousness. The gayety was contagious: the horses felt
it; those that carried light burdens of beauty minced and pranced,
the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to dash, the few passing
equipages had an air of pleasure; and the people of color, the comely
waitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded to the animation
of the festive strains. In the late afternoon the streets were full
of people, wagons, carriages, horsemen, all with a holiday air,
dashed with African color and humor--the irresponsibility of the most
insouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more comical than
humorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness, peculiar and
amusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern abandon and
Northern wealth, though the North was little represented at this
season.
As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still more
animated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white and
black throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro is
preeminently a night bird. In the hotels dancing was promised--the
german was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors were
groups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,--the young
gentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing and
hat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,
with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engaging
cordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic. I do not
know what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women were
not superior to the Southern young men, but he is always asking
questions nobody can answer. At the Swannanoa were half a dozen
bridal couples, readily recognizable by the perfect air they had of
having been married a long time. How interesting such young voyagers
are, and how interesting they are to each other! Columbus never
discovered such a large world as they have to find out and possess
each in the other.
Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose.
There was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a fine
hotel has since been built) and we walked up to that round knob after
dark. It is a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, and
was fortified during the war. We found it illuminated with Chinese
lanterns; and little tables set about under the trees, laden with
cake and ice-cream, offered a chance to the stranger to contribute
money for the benefit of the Presbyterian Church. I am afraid it was
not a profitable entertainment, for the men seemed to have business
elsewhere, but the ladies about the tables made charming groups in
the lighted grove. Man is a stupid animal at best, or he would not
make it so difficult for the womenkind to scrape together a little
money for charitable purposes. But probably the women like this
method of raising money better than the direct one.
The evening gayety of the town was well distributed. When we
descended to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected,
black, white, and yellow, about a high platform, upon which four
glaring torches lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read
might decipher this legend on a standard at the back of the stage:
HAPPY JOHN.
ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON.
COME AND SEE HIM!
Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a "bright" yellow
girl, took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by
his audience. His face was blackened to the proper color of the
stage-darky, and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and
coat striped longitudinally according to Punch's idea of "Uncle Sam,"
the coat a swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a
bell-crowned white hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to
tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman
(this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a
pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with
scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner of all traveling sawdust
performers.
"Oh, yes," exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, "Happy John was
sure enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking
when he's not blackened up."
Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayety
and enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a
ready, rude wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling
of impudence, deference, and patronage, commenting upon them
generally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humor
that kept his hearers in a pleased excitement. He handled the banjo
and the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was not
singing. Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is in
such a position than a man of the same caliber!) sang, in an
untutored treble, songs of sentiment, often risque, in solo and in
company with John, but with a cold, indifferent air, in contrast to
the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.
The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched
lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic
refrain:
"Mary's gone away wid de coon."
All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of
darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing,
the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene. The
entertainment was quite free, with a "collection" occasionally during
the performance.
What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy
John of the "nigger" side of the black man as a means of low comedy,
and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color. They appeared to
appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, and
Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and
exaggerating the "nigger" peculiarities. I presume none of them
analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the
pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery,
and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the
melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.
A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the
crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the
yellow girl. John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces
into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes,
called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on
the platform and devour them. He offered a prize of fifteen cents to
the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his
hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory. The
cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple
of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece
came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize. Each one grasped his
saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word
"go," which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjo
accompaniment. To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it
down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the
task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved
cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to
see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging,
and the crowd roaring. As the combat deepened and the contestants
strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of
laughter. The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his
empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like
a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable
to speak. The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but
said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten
cents to one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly
increased his popularity. And then he dismissed the assembly, saying
that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not
wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the
courthouse.
The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that
out-doors; a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and
stuck on the judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of
black and white who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and
cast only a fitful light upon the orator, who paced back and forth
and pounded the rail. It was to have been a joint discussion between
the two presidential electors running in that district, but, the
Republican being absent, his place was taken by a young man of the
town. The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of his
opponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to give
a portrait of his adversary. He was represented as a cross between a
baboon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum.
"I intend," said the orator, "to put him in a cage and exhibit him
about the deestrict." This political hit called forth great
applause. All his arguments were of this pointed character, and they
appeared to be unanswerable. The orator appeared to prove that there
wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who wasn't an
office-holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not an
office-holder. If there were any issues or principles in the canvass,
he paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he
never alluded to any. In another state of society, such a speech of
personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt his
adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and the
exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and
enlightened political canvassing for votes. The speaker who replied,
opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first speaker
had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom of
a corner. The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted to
speak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sort
of thing. At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room
(more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slow
headway against the refished blackguardism of the evening. The german
was still "on" at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfied
that Asheville was a lively town.
The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking or
driving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; livery
stables abound, and the roads are good. The Beau-catcher Hill is
always attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of miles
from town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in the
valley, commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has the
air of repose which is so seldom experienced in the location of a
dwelling in America whence an extensive prospect is given. Or if the
visitor is disinclined to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of the
hospitable Asheville Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front of
the hotels, and talk with the colonels and judges and generals and
ex-members of Congress, the talk generally drifting to the new
commercial and industrial life of the South, and only to politics as
it affects these; and he will be pleased, if the conversation
takes a reminiscent turn, with the lack of bitterness and the
tone of friendliness. The negro problem is commonly discussed
philosophically and without heat, but there is always discovered,
underneath, the determination that the negro shall never again get
the legislative upper hand. And the gentleman from South Carolina
who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is gone, and
wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in politics
--such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would do
yourself. This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social
question, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much
friendly and agreeable conversation. It is that the Southern whites
misapprehend and make a scarecrow of "social equality." When, during
the war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people
of the Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be
stated in the form of a question: "Do you want your daughter to marry
a negro?" Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and
there has come no change in the social conditions whatever. And
there is no doubt that the social conditions would remain exactly as
they are at the South if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which
the Constitution tries to give him. The most sensible view of this
whole question was taken by an intelligent colored man, whose brother
was formerly a representative in Congress. "Social equality," he
said in effect, "is a humbug. We do not expect it, we do not want
it. It does not exist among the blacks themselves. We have our own
social degrees, and choose our own associates. We simply want the
ordinary civil rights, under which we can live and make our way in
peace and amity. This is necessary to our self-respect, and if we
have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed that the race can
improve. I'll tell you what I mean. My wife is a modest,
intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat, and
tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not
permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered
into one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any
refined woman would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly
dressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be
disgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy. It
is this sort of thing that hurts."
We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),
some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway that
descends, a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap
(2657 feet elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet). The Swannanoa
Summit is the dividing line between the waters that flow to the
Atlantic and those that go to the Gulf of Mexico. This fact was
impressed upon us by the inhabitants, who derive a good deal of
comfort from it. Such divides are always matter of local pride.
Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark before we reached Henry's to
enable us to see the road in all its loops and parallels as it
appears on the map, but we gained a better effect. The hotel, when
we first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light, was at the
bottom of a well. Beside it--it was sufficiently light to see that
--a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as we
learned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;
and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in the
world. This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its feathery
head of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the most
charming effect. We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, but
were conscious of being--whirled on a circular descending grade, and
very soon they were in sight again. Again and again they disappeared
and came to view, now on one side and now on the other, until our
train seemed to be bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings and
turnings, now through tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, to
escape the inevitable attraction that was gravitating it down to the
hospitable lights at the bottom of the well. When we climbed back up
the road in the morning, we had an opportunity to see the marvelous
engineering, but there is little else to see, the view being nearly
always very limited.
The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob,
offers little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place,
and we could understand why it was full of visitors when we came to
the table. It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment in
the State, and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers good
chances for fishing and mountain climbing.
In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refused
to play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which clogged
the conduit. But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time,
like a sulky geyser, mud and foul water. When it got freedom and
tolerable clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations,
which were marked at short distances by the water falling off, giving
the column the appearance of a spine. The summit, always beating the
air in efforts to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.
There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville must
make. He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson and
Transylvania to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, where
the mountain system abruptly breaks down into the vast southern
plain; where the observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, has
behind him and before him the greatest contrast that nature can
offer. He must also take the rail to Waynesville, and visit the
much-frequented White Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains,
and penetrate the Great Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and make
the acquaintance of the remnant of Cherokee Indians living on the
north slope of Cheoah Mountain. The Professor could have made it a
matter of personal merit that he escaped all these encounters with
wild and picturesque nature, if his horse had not been too disabled
for such long jaunts. It is only necessary, however, to explain to
the public that the travelers are not gormandizers of scenery, and
were willing to leave some portions of the State to the curiosity of
future excursionists.
But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it could
not be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of
Asheville. In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us
to make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region.
We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was with
high anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm,
foggy morning. We followed a very good road through a broken,
pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated.
There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills, and occasionally a
shower swept across our path. The conspicuous object toward which we
traveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at the beginning
of the Gap.
At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner. Her
house, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquely
situated on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view.
The house is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two
sides. If one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air
and fair entertainment, this could be commended. It is an excellent
fruit region; apples especially are sound and of good flavor. That
may be said of all this part of the State. The climate is adapted to
apples, as the hilly part of New England is. I fancy the fruit
ripens slowly, as it does in New England, and is not subject to quick
decay like much of that grown in the West. But the grape also can be
grown in all this mountain region. Nothing but lack of enterprise
prevents any farmer from enjoying abundance of fruit. The industry
carried on at the moment at the Widow Sherrill's was the artificial
drying of apples for the market. The apples are pared, cored, and
sliced in spirals, by machinery, and dried on tin sheets in a
patented machine. The industry appears to be a profitable one
hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the aid of
invention.
While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
"Jane" and "Eliza," the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union. Madame Sherrill, who
carries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of
strong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort
in the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a
discouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.
The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles,
is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque,
following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it,
but roaring, rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and
then tumbling down in rapids. The noisy stream made the ride
animated, and an occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a
schoolhouse, a store with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the
hitching rails, gave the Professor opportunity for remarks upon the
value of life under such circumstances.
The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to the
uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices. The
inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally
wooded. I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country
where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common. It is
only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable.
About a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees,
of the famous waterfall. From the top of the high ridge on the
right, a nearly perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks
and is lost in the forest. We could see nearly the whole of it, at a
great height above us, on the opposite side of the river, and it
would require an hour's stiff climb to reach its foot. From where we
viewed it, it seemed a slender and not very important, but certainly
a very beautiful cascade, a band of silver in the mass of green
foliage. The fall is said to be 1400 feet. Our colonel insists that
it is a thousand. It may be, but the valley where we stood is at
least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could not believe that the
ridge over which the water pours is much higher than 3000 feet, and
the length of the fall certainly did not appear to be a quarter of
the height of the mountain from our point of observation. But we had
no desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we found
that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as a
personal grievance. Mr. Logan once performed the functions of local
judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises now
in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wife
is postmistress. His house of entertainment is at the bottom of the
valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay,
although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
which we had been for a month. The Judge himself was reticent, as
became a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster
prospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and
Logan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, this
sentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civil
battle] ever known in this world. The thunder of the supreme
struggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months,
and will be felt from Pole to Pole."
For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in. There
was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
mosquitoes besides. Had there not been other travelers staying here,
we should have felt still more uneasy. The house faced Bald
Mountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some
years ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters. This is, in fact,
the famous Shaking Mountain. For a long time it had a habit of
trembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion
very different from that produced by an earthquake. The only good
that came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," and
caused them to join the church. It is not reported what became of
the church afterwards. It is believed now that the trembling was
caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the mountain, which slowly
parted asunder. Bald Mountain is the scene of Mrs. Burnett's
delightful story of "Louisiana," and of the play of "Esmeralda."
A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder is asked
to see resembles a hut, and which is called "Esmeralda's Cottage."
But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did not discover any
woman in the region who remotely answers to her description.
In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and
followed up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which
the Judge said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless.
These pools, not round, but on one side circular excavations, some
twenty feet across, worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good
specimens, and perhaps remarkable specimens, of "pot-holes." They
are, however, regarded here as one of the wonders of the world. On
the way to them we saw beautiful wild trumpet-creepers in blossom,
festooning the trees.
The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through
the channel of the Santee. It is not to be confounded with the
French Broad, which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs
northward past Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through
the Warm Springs Gap in the Bald Mountains. As the French claimed
ownership of all the affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was
called the French Broad.
It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher
than Asheville. It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of
leisure to the scattered population; at every store and mill was a
congregation of loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and
mules to the fences, and had the professional air of the idler and
gossip the world over. The vehicles met on the road were a variety
of the prairie schooner, long wagons with a top of hoops over which
is stretched a cotton cloth. The wagons are without seats, and the
canvas is too low to admit of sitting upright, if there were. The
occupants crawl in at either end, sit or lie on the bottom of the
wagon, and jolt along in shiftless uncomfortableness.
Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
journey. Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the
route on horseback is impracticable. The distance to the Warm
Springs is thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the
road is clear, as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the
railway, and the valley is something more than river and rails. But
below Marshall the valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good
portion of the way in the old stage road. One can walk the track,
but to ride a horse over its sleepers and culverts and occasional
bridges, and dodge the trains, is neither safe nor agreeable. We
sent our horses round--the messenger taking the risk of leading them,
between trains, over the last six or eight miles,--and took the
train.
The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
all the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low,
monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a
pretty turn and "reach," with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on
either side. The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of
rocks, with an occasional little island covered with low bushes. The
rock seems to be a clay formation, rotten and colored. As we
approach Warm Springs the scenery becomes a little bolder, and we
emerge into the open space about the Springs through a narrower
defile, guarded by rocks that are really picturesque in color and
splintered decay, one of them being known, of course, as the "Lover's
Leap," a name common in every part of the modern or ancient world
where there is a settlement near a precipice, with always the same
legend attached to it.
There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel--since
burned and rebuilt--(which may be briefly described as a palatial
shanty) stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep,
rapid, turbid stream. A bridge once connected it with the road on
the opposite bank, but it was carried away three or four years ago,
and its ragged butments stand as a monument of procrastination, while
the stream is crossed by means of a flatboat and a cable. In front
of the hotel, on the slight slope to the river, is a meager grove of
locusts. The famous spring, close to-the stream, is marked only by a
rough box of wood and an iron pipe, and the water, which has a
temperature of about one hundred degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house
below, in which is a pool for bathing. The bath is very agreeable,
the tepid water being singularly soft and pleasant. It has a
slightly sulphurous taste. Its good effects are much certified. The
grounds, which might be very pretty with care, are ill-kept and
slatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was left to the
easy-going nature of the servants. The main house is of brick, with
verandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade of thirteen huge
brick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen States,--a relic
of post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the resort of
Southern fashion and romance. These columns have stood through one
fire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of the
structure. The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, with
galleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly seven
hundred feet long. In a rear building is a vast, barrack-like
dining-room, with a noble ball-room above, for dancing is the
important occupation of visitors.
The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has a
picturesqueness of its own. Even the ugly little brick structure
near the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage. No
doubt we liked the place better than if it had been smart, and
enjoyed the neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life is
taken there. There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowls
tiptoeing about the verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor was
a sort of guarantee that we should meet him later on in the
dining-room. There was nothing incongruous in the presence of pigs,
turkeys, and chickens on the grounds; they went along with the
good-natured negro-service and the general hospitality; and we had a
mental rest in the thought that all the gates would have been off the
hinges, if there had been any gates. The guests were very well
treated indeed, and were put under no sort of restraint by
discipline. The long colonnade made an admirable promenade and
lounging-place and point of observation. It was interesting to watch
the groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, the
mounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study the
colors on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neat
cottage and flower-garden. The type of people was very pleasantly
Southern. Colonels and politicians stand in groups and tell stories,
which are followed by explosions of laughter; retire occasionally
into the saloon, and come forth reminded of more stories, and all
lift their hats elaborately and suspend the narratives when a lady
goes past. A company of soldiers from Richmond had pitched its tents
near the hotel, and in the evening the ball-room was enlivened with
uniforms. Among the graceful dancers--and every one danced well, and
with spirit was pointed out the young widow of a son of Andrew
Johnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village. But the
Professor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted whether
here it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the owner
of this region than to be connected with a President of the United
States.
A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broad
and the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of in
order to appreciate either. This was the great highway of trade and
travel. At certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession
of herds of cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of
trains of big wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered
by the Tennessee. Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters
in coach and four, with a great retinue of household servants, and
kept up for months that unique social life, a mixture of courtly
ceremony and entire freedom, the civilization which had the
drawing-room at one end and the negro-quarters at the other,--which has
passed away. It was a continuation into our own restless era of the
manners and the literature of George the Third, with the accompanying
humor and happy-go-lucky decadence of the negro slaves. On our way
down we saw on the river-bank, under the trees, the old hostelry,
Alexander's, still in decay,--an attractive tavern, that was formerly
one of the notable stopping-places on the river. Master, and fine
lady, and obsequious, larking darky, and lumbering coach, and throng
of pompous and gay life, have all disappeared. There was no room in
this valley for the old institutions and for the iron track.
"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
We, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."
This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
French Broad.
The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he
alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the
Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites,
known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of
minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock
is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign
substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of the
process it is as white and fine as the best bolted flour. This heavy
adulterant is shipped to the North in large quantities,--the manager
said he had recently an order for a hundred thousand dollars' worth
of it. What is the use of this powder? Well, it is of use to the
dealer who sells white lead for paint, to increase the weight of the
lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that it is mixed with powdered
sugar. The industry is profitable to those engaged in it.
It was impossible to get much information about our route into
Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross Paint
Mountain. Late one morning,--a late start is inevitable here,
--accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope ferry,
and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream and
tree-shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water and
overhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side of
the river), to Paint Rock,--six miles. This Paint Rock is a naked
precipice by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a large
local reputation. It is said that its face shows painting done by
the Indians, and hieroglyphics which nobody can read. On this bold,
crumbling cliff, innumerable visitors have written their names. We
stared at it a good while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics,
but could see nothing except iron stains. Round the corner is a
farmhouse and place of call for visitors, a neat cottage, with a
display of shells and minerals and flower-pots; and here we turned
north crossed the little stream called Paint River, the only clear
water we had seen in a month, passed into the State of Tennessee, and
by a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain. The open forest road,
with the murmur of the stream below, was delightfully exhilarating,
and as we rose the prospect opened,--the lovely valley below, Bald
Mountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains rising as we came over
the ridge.
Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men,
knew anything of the route, or could give us any information of the
country beyond. But as we descended in Tennessee the country and the
farms decidedly improved,--apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.
A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed to
receive hospitality. We passed by an old farm building to a new
two-storied, gayly painted house on a hill. We were deceived by
appearances. The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to
offer us except some buttermilk. Why should anybody be obliged to
feed roving strangers? As to our horses, the young woman with a baby
in her arms declared,
"We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get
something at the other house."
"Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in this
region. We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and
for our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a
few sonnets. On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve
miles farther, through a rolling, good farming country, offering
little for comment, in search of a night's lodging with one of the
brothers Snap. But one brother declined our company on the plea that
his wife was sick, and the other because his wife lived in
Greenville, and we found ourselves as dusk came on without shelter in
a tavernless land. Between the two refusals we enjoyed the most
picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at the crossing of Camp Creek,
a swift little stream, that swirled round under the ledge of bold
rocks before the ford. This we learned was a favorite camp-meeting
ground. Mary was calling the cattle home at the farm of the second
Snap. It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and we were
inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the
cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this
pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and
intelligent farming. Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with
plenty of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity),
who owes his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas. He
was a Unionist during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his
county (Greene) has been Republican. We had been riding all the
afternoon through good land, and encountering a better class of
farmers. Peach-trees abounded (though this was an off year for
fruit), and apples and grapes throve. It is a land of honey and of
milk. The persimmon flourishes; and, sign of abundance generally, we
believe, great flocks of turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the
high air--hovered about. This country was ravaged during the war by
Unionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots as
they passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving the
farmers little to live on. Mr. Alexander's farm cost him forty
dollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize. This was
the first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace before
meat, though there had been many tables that needed it more. From
the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;
and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomed
to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer and
enjoy a real primitive woods life.
Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling,
rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt
ranges, which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed the
Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle
girth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and
came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a
hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat
of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one
pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the
currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The
big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell
and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of
mahogany, recalled rural New England. Perhaps these refinements are
due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is
near. We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the
word fruit. When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the
oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,
set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and
a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want
company. The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here
ever since the war.
A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and
were entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous
and hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in the
morning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to
Jonesboro, and Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits
before us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.
It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she
excelled any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she
was by her own confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age
till she has passed this point) and the testimony of others a hundred
years old. But age had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor
the limberness of her tongue, nor her shrewd good sense. She talked
freely about the want of decency and morality in the young colored
folks of the present day. It was n't so when she was a girl. Long,
long time ago, she and her husband had been sold at sheriff's sale
and separated, and she never had another husband. Not that she
blamed her master so much he could n't help it; he got in debt. And
she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the danger they are
in. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he can borrow
money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and pilin' up
the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a ladder to
get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and the man
has to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her life
over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now.
The thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and
kept her eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she had
seen some fence up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr.
Devault that she didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as
white folks was much better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes,
slavery was pretty bad--she had seen five hundred niggers in
handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to be sent South.
About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest,
worth a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the large
beech (six and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which
Daniel Boone shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. He
himself cut an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it
is still distinctly legible:
D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.
This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all
parts of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for
any more records of such devotion. The grove is ancient looking, the
trees are gnarled and moss-grown. Hundreds of people go there, and
the trees are carved all over with their immortal names.
A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip
of forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other
adventure than the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road,
with steam up, clattering along. The devil himself could not invent
any machine calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this.
Jack took one look and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his
rider's hat but did not succeed in getting rid of his burden or
knocking down any trees.
Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, with
some three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by an
ex-stage-driver. The village, which lies on the Holston, has no
drinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a well
nor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crosses
the river to a spring on the other side. A considerable part of the
labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge. On a hill
overlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a
tower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those who
have seen it. It belonged to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter of
Andrew Johnson. The whole family of the ex-President have departed
this world, but his memory is still green in this region, where he
was almost worshiped--so the people say in speaking of him.
Forlorn as was the hotel at Union, the landlord's daughters were
beginning to draw the lines in rural refinement. One of them had
been at school in Abingdon. Another, a mature young lady of fifteen,
who waited on the table, in the leisure after supper asked the Friend
for a light for her cigarette, which she had deftly rolled.
"Why do you smoke?"
"So as I shan't get into the habit of dipping. Do you think dipping
is nice?"
The traveler was compelled to say that he did not, though he had seen
a good deal of it wherever he had been.
"All the girls dips round here. But me and my sisters rather smoke
than get in a habit of dipping."
To the observation that Union seemed to be a dull place:
"Well, there's gay times here in the winter--dancing. Like to dance?
Well, I should say! Last winter I went over to Blountsville to a
dance in the court-house; there was a trial between Union and
Blountsville for the best dancing. You bet I brought back the cake
and the blue ribbon."
The country was becoming too sophisticated, and the travelers
hastened to the end of their journey. The next morning Bristol, at
first over a hilly country with magnificent oak-trees,--happily not
girdled, as these stately monarchs were often seen along the roads in
North Carolina,--and then up Beaver Creek, a turbid stream, turning
some mills. When a closed woolen factory was pointed out to the
Professor (who was still traveling for Reform), as the result of the
agitation in Congress, he said, Yes, the effect of agitation was
evident in all the decayed dams and ancient abandoned mills we had
seen in the past month.
Bristol is mainly one long street, with some good stores, but
generally shabby, and on this hot morning sleepy. One side of the
street is in Tennessee, the other in Virginia. How handy for
fighting this would have been in the war, if Tennessee had gone out
and Virginia stayed in. At the hotel--may a kind Providence wake it
up to its responsibilities--we had the pleasure of reading one of
those facetious handbills which the great railway companies of the
West scatter about, the serious humor of which is so pleasing to our
English friends. This one was issued by the accredited agents of the
Ohio and Mississippi Railway, and dated April 1, 1984. One sentence
will suffice:
"Allow us to thank our old traveling friends for the many favors in
our line, and if you are going on your bridal trip, or to see your
girl out West, drop in at the general office of the Ohio and
Mississippi Railway and we will fix you up in Queen Anne style.
Passengers for Dakota, Montana, or the Northwest will have an
overcoat and sealskin cap thrown in with all tickets sold on or after
the above date."
The great republic cannot yet take itself seriously. Let us hope the
humors of it will last another generation. Meditating on this, we
hailed at sundown the spires of Abingdon, and regretted the end of a
journey that seems to have been undertaken for no purpose.
THE COMPLETE ESSAYS OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
BACKLOG EDITION
THE COMPLETE WRITINGS
OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
1904
CONTENTS OF THE ENTIRE VOLUME:
AS WE WERE SAYING
ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM
THE RED BONNET
THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION
SOCIAL SCREAMING
DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?
THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX
THE CLOTHES OF FICTION
THE BROAD A
CHEWING GUM
WOMEN IN CONGRESS
SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?
FROCKS AND THE STAGE
ALTRUISM
SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE
DINNER-TABLE TALK
NATURALIZATION
ART OF GOVERNING
LOVE OF DISPLAY
VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE
THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS
THE CAP AND GOWN
A TENDENCY OF THE AGE
A LOCOED NOVELIST
AS WE GO
OUR PRESIDENT
THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN
INTERESTING GIRLS
GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE
THE ADVENT OF CANDOR
THE AMERICAN MAN
THE ELECTRIC WAY
CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?
A LEISURE CLASS
WEATHER AND CHARACTER
BORN WITH AN "EGO"
JUVENTUS MUNDI
A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE
THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE
GIVING AS A LUXURY
CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS
THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE
REPOSE IN ACTIVITY
WOMEN--IDEAL AND REAL
THE ART OF IDLENESS
IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION
THE TALL GIRL
THE DEADLY DIARY
THE WHISTLING GIRL
BORN OLD AND RICH
THE "OLD SOLDIER"
THE ISLAND OF BIMINI
JUNE
NINE SHORT ESSAYS
A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES
TRUTHFULNESS
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE
THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART
"H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
SIMPLICITY
THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION
NATHAN HALE
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE
THE PILGRIM, AND THE AMERICAN OF TODAY--[1892]
SOME CAUSES OF THE PREVAILING DISCONTENT
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE
LITERARY COPYRIGHT
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
"EQUALITY"
WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?
MODERN FICTION
THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. FROUDE'S "PROGRESS"
ENGLAND
THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL
THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE
AS WE WERE SAYING
By Charles Dudley Warner
BACKLOG EDITION
THE COMPLETE WRITINGS
OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
1904
AS WE WERE SAYING
CONTENTS: (25 Short Studies)
ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM
THE RED BONNET
THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION
SOCIAL SCREAMING
DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?
THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX
THE CLOTHES OF FICTION
THE BROAD A
CHEWING GUM
WOMEN IN CONGRESS
SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?
FROCKS AND THE STAGE
ALTRUISM
SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE
DINNER-TABLE TALK
NATURALIZATION
ART OF GOVERNING
LOVE OF DISPLAY
VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE
THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS
THE CAP AND GOWN
A TENDENCY OF THE AGE
A LOCOED NOVELIST
ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM
The Drawer will still bet on the rose. This is not a wager, but only a
strong expression of opinion. The rose will win. It does not look so now.
To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum. What this gaudy
flower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion,
no one can tell. It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spread
out like an umbrella--it can never be large enough nor showy enough to
suit us. Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses of
gorgeous color. In its innumerable shades and enlarging proportions, it
is a triumph of the gardener. It is a rival to the analine dyes and to
the marabout feathers. It goes along with all the conceits and fantastic
unrest of the decorative art. Indeed, but for the discovery of the
capacities of the chrysanthemum, modern life would have experienced a
fatal hitch in its development. It helps out our age of plush with a
flame of color. There is nothing shamefaced or retiring about it, and it
already takes all provinces for its own. One would be only
half-married--civilly, and not fashionably--without a chrysanthemum
wedding; and it lights the way to the tomb. The maiden wears a bunch of
it in her corsage in token of her blooming expectations, and the young
man flaunts it on his coat lapel in an effort to be at once effective and
in the mode. Young love that used to express its timid desire with the
violet, or, in its ardor, with the carnation, now seeks to bring its
emotions to light by the help of the chrysanthemum. And it can express
every shade of feeling, from the rich yellow of prosperous wooing to the
brick-colored weariness of life that is hardly distinguishable from the
liver complaint. It is a little stringy for a boutonniere, but it fills
the modern-trained eye as no other flower can fill it. We used to say
that a girl was as sweet as a rose; we have forgotten that language. We
used to call those tender additions to society, on the eve of their event
into that world which is always so eager to receive fresh young life,
"rose-buds"; we say now simply "buds," but we mean chrysanthemum buds.
They are as beautiful as ever; they excite the same exquisite interest;
perhaps in their maiden hearts they are one or another variety of that
flower which bears such a sweet perfume in all literature; but can it
make no difference in character whether a young girl comes out into the
garish world as a rose or as a chrysanthemum? Is her life set to the note
of display, of color and show, with little sweetness, or to that retiring
modesty which needs a little encouragement before it fully reveals its
beauty and its perfume? If one were to pass his life in moving in a
palace car from one plush hotel to another, a bunch of chrysanthemums in
his hand would seem to be a good symbol of his life. There are aged
people who can remember that they used to choose various roses, as to
their color, odor, and degree of unfolding, to express the delicate
shades of advancing passion and of devotion. What can one do with this
new favorite? Is not a bunch of chrysanthemums a sort of
take-it-or-leave-it declaration, boldly and showily made, an offer
without discrimination, a tender without romance? A young man will catch
the whole family with this flaming message, but where is that sentiment
that once set the maiden heart in a flutter? Will she press a
chrysanthemum, and keep it till the faint perfume reminds her of the
sweetest moment of her life?
Are we exaggerating this astonishing rise, development, and spread of the
chrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt,
or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovely
head. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nations
and times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held its
own as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of sentiment.
But here comes a flaunting thing with no desirable perfume, looking as if
it were cut with scissors out of tissue-paper, but capable of taking
infinite varieties of color, and growing as big as a curtain tassel, that
literally captures the world, and spreads all over the globe, like the
Canada thistle. The florists have no eye for anything else, and the
biggest floral prizes are awarded for the production of its
eccentricities. Is the rage for this flower typical of this fast and
flaring age?
The Drawer is not an enemy to the chrysanthemum, nor to the sunflower,
nor to any other gorgeous production of nature. But it has an
old-fashioned love for the modest and unobtrusive virtues, and an abiding
faith that they will win over the strained and strident displays of life.
There is the violet: all efforts of cultivation fail to make it as big as
the peony, and it would be no more dear to the heart if it were
quadrupled in size. We do, indeed, know that satisfying beauty and
refinement are apt to escape us when we strive too much and force nature
into extraordinary display, and we know how difficult it is to get mere
bigness and show without vulgarity. Cultivation has its limits. After we
have produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the most
precious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our admiration put
a limit to her size. There being, then, certain laws that ultimately
fetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable that the
chrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its splendor; that
fashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret heart of
love; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its capacity of
shyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty; the rose, with that odor--of
the first garden exhaled and yet kept down through all the ages of sin
--will become again the fashion, and be more passionately admired for its
temporary banishment. Perhaps the poet will then come back again and
sing. What poet could now sing of the "awful chrysanthemum of dawn"?
THE RED BONNET
The Drawer has no wish to make Lent easier for anybody, or rather to
diminish the benefit of the penitential season. But in this period of
human anxiety and repentance it must be said that not enough account is
made of the moral responsibility of Things. The doctrine is sound; the
only difficulty is in applying it. It can, however, be illustrated by a
little story, which is here confided to the reader in the same trust in
which it was received. There was once a lady, sober in mind and sedate in
manner, whose plain dress exactly represented her desire to be
inconspicuous, to do good, to improve every day of her life in actions
that should benefit her kind. She was a serious person, inclined to
improving conversation, to the reading of bound books that cost at least
a dollar and a half (fifteen cents of which she gladly contributed to the
author), and she had a distaste for the gay society which was mainly a
flutter of ribbons and talk and pretty faces; and when she meditated, as
she did in her spare moments, her heart was sore over the frivolity of
life and the emptiness of fashion. She longed to make the world better,
and without any priggishness she set it an example of simplicity and
sobriety, of cheerful acquiescence in plainness and inconspicuousness.
One day--it was in the autumn--this lady had occasion to buy a new hat.
From a great number offered to her she selected a red one with a dull red
plume. It did not agree with the rest of her apparel; it did not fit her
apparent character. What impulse led to this selection she could not
explain. She was not tired of being good, but something in the jauntiness
of the hat and the color pleased her. If it were a temptation, she did
not intend to yield to it, but she thought she would take the hat home
and try it. Perhaps her nature felt the need of a little warmth. The hat
pleased her still more when she got it home and put it on and surveyed
herself in the mirror. Indeed, there was a new expression in her face
that corresponded to the hat. She put it off and looked at it. There was
something almost humanly winning and temptatious in it. In short, she
kept it, and when she wore it abroad she was not conscious of its
incongruity to herself or to her dress, but of the incongruity of the
rest of her apparel to the hat, which seemed to have a sort of
intelligence of its own, at least a power of changing and conforming
things to itself. By degrees one article after another in the lady's
wardrobe was laid aside, and another substituted for it that answered to
the demanding spirit of the hat. In a little while this plain lady was
not plain any more, but most gorgeously dressed, and possessed with the
desire to be in the height of the fashion. It came to this, that she had
a tea-gown made out of a window-curtain with a flamboyant pattern.
Solomon in all his glory would have been ashamed of himself in her
presence.
But this was not all. Her disposition, her ideas, her whole life, was
changed. She did not any more think of going about doing good, but of
amusing herself. She read nothing but stories in paper covers. In place
of being sedate and sober-minded, she was frivolous to excess; she spent
most of her time with women who liked to "frivol." She kept Lent in the
most expensive way, so as to make the impression upon everybody that she
was better than the extremest kind of Lent. From liking the sedatest
company she passed to liking the gayest society and the most fashionable
method of getting rid of her time. Nothing whatever had happened to her,
and she is now an ornament to society.
This story is not an invention; it is a leaf out of life. If this lady
that autumn day had bought a plain bonnet she would have continued on in
her humble, sensible way of living. Clearly it was the hat that made the
woman, and not the woman the hat. She had no preconception of it; it
simply happened to her, like any accident--as if she had fallen and
sprained her ankle. Some people may say that she had in her a concealed
propensity for frivolity; but the hat cannot escape the moral
responsibility of calling it out if it really existed. The power of
things to change and create character is well attested. Men live up to or
live down to their clothes, which have a great moral influence on manner,
and even on conduct. There was a man run down almost to vagabondage,
owing to his increasingly shabby clothing, and he was only saved from
becoming a moral and physical wreck by a remnant of good-breeding in him
that kept his worn boots well polished. In time his boots brought up the
rest of his apparel and set him on his feet again. Then there is the
well-known example of the honest clerk on a small salary who was ruined
by the gift of a repeating watch--an expensive timepiece that required at
least ten thousand a year to sustain it: he is now in Canada.
Sometimes the influence of Things is good and sometimes it is bad. We
need a philosophy that shall tell us why it is one or the other, and fix
the responsibility where it belongs. It does no good, as people always
find out by reflex action, to kick an inanimate thing that has offended,
to smash a perverse watch with a hammer, to break a rocking-chair that
has a habit of tipping over backward. If Things are not actually
malicious, they seem to have a power of revenging themselves. We ought to
try to understand them better, and to be more aware of what they can do
to us. If the lady who bought the red hat could have known the hidden
nature of it, could have had a vision of herself as she was transformed
by it, she would as soon have taken a viper into her bosom as have placed
the red tempter on her head. Her whole previous life, her feeling of the
moment, show that it was not vanity that changed her, but the
inconsiderate association with a Thing that happened to strike her fancy,
and which seemed innocent. But no Thing is really powerless for good or
evil.
THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION
Have we yet hit upon the right idea of civilization? The process which
has been going on ever since the world began seems to have a defect in
it; strength, vital power, somehow escapes. When you've got a man
thoroughly civilized you cannot do anything more with him. And it is
worth reflection what we should do, what could we spend our energies on,
and what would evoke them, we who are both civilized and enlightened, if
all nations were civilized and the earth were entirely subdued. That is
to say, are not barbarism and vast regions of uncultivated land a
necessity of healthful life on this globe? We do not like to admit that
this process has its cycles, that nations and men, like trees and fruit,
grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that the
globe could be made entirely habitable, and all over the home of a
society constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we have
striven to eliminate barbarism in man and in nature:
Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect house, perfect
grounds, perfect gardens, art and nature brought into the most absolute
harmony of taste and culture? What more can a man do with it? What
satisfaction has a man in it if he really gets to the end of his power to
improve it? There have been such nearly ideal places, and how strong
nature, always working against man and in the interest of untamed
wildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesque
destruction! And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, the
human mind finds in such a ruin! And a society that has attained its end
in all possible culture, entire refinement in manners, in tastes, in the
art of elegant intellectual and luxurious living--is there nothing
pathetic in that? Where is the primeval, heroic force that made the joy
of living in the rough old uncivilized days? Even throw in goodness, a
certain amount of altruism, gentleness, warm interest in unfortunate
humanity--is the situation much improved? London is probably the most
civilized centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of the
elements of that which we reckon the best. Where in history, unless some
one puts in a claim for the Frenchman, shall we find a Man so nearly
approaching the standard we have set up of civilization as the
Englishman, refined by inheritance and tradition, educated almost beyond
the disturbance of enthusiasm, and cultivated beyond the chance of
surprise? We are speaking of the highest type in manner, information,
training, in the acquisition of what the world has to give. Could these
men have conquered the world? Is it possible that our highest
civilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element that
we admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth? What is this London,
the most civilized city ever known? Why, a considerable part of its
population is more barbarous, more hopelessly barbarous, than any wild
race we know, because they are the barbarians of civilization, the refuse
and slag of it, if we dare say that of any humanity. More hopeless,
because the virility of savagery has measurably gone out of it. We can do
something with a degraded race of savages, if it has any stamina in it.
What can be done with those who are described as "East-Londoners"?
Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, or
is it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on calling
civilization? We are always sending out missionaries to savage or
perverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy and
reduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How would
it be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no more
peoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under
productive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this
energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our
civilization last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized,
wouldn't it be too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres,
where is accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's best
efforts, is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity that
attends our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can do
something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, which
our own hands have made?
If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must it
always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization and
barbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed and
growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization? Does
our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of the
race? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmed
over, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs the
soul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile,
blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian painting
of Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the consciousness of
the tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a barbaric force left in
the world that we have been daintily trying to cover and apologize for
and refine into gentle agreeableness?
These questions are too deep for these pages. Let us make the world
pleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, on
the whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work on.
And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that the
inhabitants, two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do.
SOCIAL SCREAMING
Of all the contrivances for amusement in this agreeable world the
"Reception" is the most ingenious, and would probably most excite the
wonder of an angel sent down to inspect our social life. If he should
pause at the entrance of the house where one is in progress, he would be
puzzled. The noise that would greet his ears is different from the deep
continuous roar in the streets, it is unlike the hum of millions of
seventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the spring
conventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not compare
it to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really subdued
and infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but when he
caught sight of the company he would be compelled to recognize it as the
noise of our highest civilization. It may not be perfect, for there are
limits to human powers of endurance, but it is the best we can do. It is
not a chance affair. Here are selected, picked out by special invitation,
the best that society can show, the most intelligent, the most
accomplished, the most beautiful, the best dressed persons in the
community--all receptions have this character. The angel would notice
this at once, and he would be astonished at the number of such persons,
for the rooms would be so crowded that he would see the hopelessness of
attempting to edge or wedge his way through the throng without tearing
off his wings. An angel, in short, would stand no chance in one of these
brilliant assemblies on account of his wings, and he probably could not
be heard, on account of the low, heavenly pitch of his voice. His
inference would be that these people had been selected to come together
by reason of their superior power of screaming. He would be wrong.
--They are selected on account of their intelligence, agreeableness, and
power of entertaining each other. They come together, not for exercise,
but pleasure, and the more they crowd and jam and struggle, and the
louder they scream, the greater the pleasure. It is a kind of contest,
full of good-humor and excitement. The one that has the shrillest voice
and can scream the loudest is most successful. It would seem at first
that they are under a singular hallucination, imagining that the more
noise there is in the room the better each one can be heard, and so each
one continues to raise his or her voice in order to drown the other
voices. The secret of the game is to pitch the voice one or two octaves
above the ordinary tone. Some throats cannot stand this strain long; they
become rasped and sore, and the voices break; but this adds to the
excitement and enjoyment of those who can scream with less inconvenience.
The angel would notice that if at any time silence was called, in order
that an announcement of music could be made, in the awful hush that
followed people spoke to each other in their natural voices, and
everybody could be heard without effort. But this was not the object of
the Reception, and in a moment more the screaming would begin again, the
voices growing higher and higher, until, if the roof were taken off, one
vast shriek would go up to heaven.
This is not only a fashion, it is an art. People have to train for it,
and as it is a unique amusement, it is worth some trouble to be able to
succeed in it. Men, by reason of their stolidity and deeper voices, can
never be proficients in it; and they do not have so much practice--unless
they are stock-brokers. Ladies keep themselves in training in their
ordinary calls. If three or four meet in a drawing-room they all begin to
scream, not that they may be heard--for the higher they go the less they
understand each other--but simply to acquire the art of screaming at
receptions. If half a dozen ladies meeting by chance in a parlor should
converse quietly in their sweet, ordinary home tones, it might be in a
certain sense agreeable, but it would not be fashionable, and it would
not strike the prevailing note of our civilization. If it were true that
a group of women all like to talk at the same time when they meet (which
is a slander invented by men, who may be just as loquacious, but not so
limber-tongued and quick-witted), and raise their voices to a shriek in
order to dominate each other, it could be demonstrated that they would be
more readily heard if they all spoke in low tones. But the object is not
conversation; it is the social exhilaration that comes from the wild
exercise of the voice in working off a nervous energy; it is so seldom
that in her own house a lady gets a chance to scream.
The dinner-party, where there are ten or twelve at table, is a favorite
chance for this exercise. At a recent dinner, where there were a dozen
uncommonly intelligent people, all capable of the most entertaining
conversation, by some chance, or owing to some nervous condition, they
all began to speak in a high voice as soon as they were seated, and the
effect was that of a dynamite explosion. It was a cheerful babel of
indistinguishable noise, so loud and shrill and continuous that it was
absolutely impossible for two people seated on the opposite sides of the
table, and both shouting at each other, to catch an intelligible
sentence. This made a lively dinner. Everybody was animated, and if there
was no conversation, even between persons seated side by side, there was
a glorious clatter and roar; and when it was over, everybody was hoarse
and exhausted, and conscious that he had done his best in a high social
function.
This topic is not the selection of the Drawer, the province of which is
to note, but not to criticise, the higher civilization. But the inquiry
has come from many cities, from many women, "Cannot something be done to
stop social screaming?" The question is referred to the scientific branch
of the Social Science Association. If it is a mere fashion, the
association can do nothing. But it might institute some practical
experiments. It might get together in a small room fifty people all let
loose in the ordinary screaming contest, measure the total volume of
noise and divide it by fifty, and ascertain how much throat power was
needed in one person to be audible to another three feet from the
latter's ear. This would sift out the persons fit for such a contest. The
investigator might then call a dead silence in the assembly, and request
each person to talk in a natural voice, then divide the total noise as
before, and see what chance of being heard an ordinary individual had in
it. If it turned out in these circumstances that every person present
could speak with ease and hear perfectly what was said, then the order
might be given for the talk to go on in that tone, and that every person
who raised the voice and began to scream should be gagged and removed to
another room. In this room could be collected all the screamers to enjoy
their own powers. The same experiment might be tried at a dinner-party,
namely, to ascertain if the total hum of low voices in the natural key
would not be less for the individual voice to overcome than the total
scream of all the voices raised to a shriek. If scientific research
demonstrated the feasibility of speaking in an ordinary voice at
receptions, dinner-parties, and in "calls," then the Drawer is of opinion
that intelligible and enjoyable conversation would be possible on these
occasions, if it becomes fashionable not to scream.
DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?
Is it true that cultivation, what we call refinement, kills
individuality? Or, worse than that even, that one loses his taste by
over-cultivation? Those persons are uninteresting, certainly, who have
gone so far in culture that they accept conventional standards supposed
to be correct, to which they refer everything, and by which they measure
everybody. Taste usually implies a sort of selection; the cultivated
taste of which we speak is merely a comparison, no longer an individual
preference or appreciation, but only a reference to the conventional and
accepted standard. When a man or woman has reached this stage of
propriety we are never curious any more concerning their opinions on any
subject. We know that the opinions expressed will not be theirs, evolved
out of their own feeling, but that they will be the cut-and-dried results
of conventionality.
It is doubtless a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feel
and what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life is
not dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room for
surprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of Bar
Harbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper and
agreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? Is your compact,
graceful, orderly society liable to be monotonous in its gay repetition
of the same thing week after week? Is there nothing outside of that
envied circle which you make so brilliant? Is the Atlantic shore the only
coast where beauty may lounge and spread its net of enchantment? The
Atlantic shore and Europe? Perhaps on the Pacific you might come back to
your original selves, and find again that freedom and that charm of
individuality that are so attractive. Some sparkling summer morning, if
you chanced to drive four-in-hand along the broad beach at Santa Barbara,
inhaling, the spicy breeze from the Sandwich Islands, along the curved
shore where the blue of the sea and the purple of the mountains remind
you of the Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon of
Montecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks and
palms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the garden
and the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air,
would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new life
where it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be
surprised? It is a far cry from Newport to Santa Barbara, and a whole
world of new sensations lies on the way, experiences for which you will
have no formula of experience. To take the journey is perhaps too heroic
treatment for the disease of conformity--the sort of malaria of our
exclusive civilization.
The Drawer is not urging this journey, nor any break-up of the social
order, for it knows how painful a return to individuality may be. It is
easier to go on in the subordination of one's personality to the strictly
conventional life. It expects rather to record a continually perfected
machinery, a life in which not only speech but ideas are brought into
rule. We have had something to say occasionally of the art of
conversation, which is in danger of being lost in the confused babel of
the reception and the chatter of the dinner-party--the art of listening
and the art of talking both being lost. Society is taking alarm at this,
and the women as usual are leaders in a reform. Already, by reason of
clubs-literary, scientific, economic--woman is the well-informed part of
our society. In the "Conversation Lunch" this information is now brought
into use. The lunch, and perhaps the dinner, will no longer be the
occasion of satisfying the appetite or of gossip, but of improving talk.
The giver of the lunch will furnish the topic of conversation. Two
persons may not speak at once; two persons may not talk with each other;
all talk is to be general and on the topic assigned, and while one is
speaking, the others must listen. Perhaps each lady on taking her seat
may find in her napkin a written slip of paper which shall be the guide
to her remarks. Thus no time is to be wasted on frivolous topics. The
ordinary natural flow of rejoinder and repartee, the swirling of talk
around one obstacle and another, its winding and rippling here and there
as individual whim suggests, will not be allowed, but all will be
improving, and tend to that general culture of which we have been
speaking. The ladies' lunch is not to be exactly a debating society, but
an open occasion for the delivery of matured thought and the acquisition
of information.
The object is not to talk each other down, but to improve the mind,
which, unguided, is apt to get frivolous at the convivial board. It is
notorious that men by themselves at lunch or dinner usually shun grave
topics and indulge in persiflage, and even descend to talk about wine and
the made dishes. The women's lunch of this summer takes higher ground. It
will give Mr. Browning his final estimate; it will settle Mr. Ibsen; it
will determine the suffrage question; it will adjudicate between the
total abstainers and the halfway covenant of high license; it will not
hesitate to cut down the tariff.
The Drawer anticipates a period of repose in all our feverish social
life. We shall live more by rule and less by impulse. When we meet we
shall talk on set topics, determined beforehand. By this concentration we
shall be able as one man or one woman to reach the human limit of
cultivation, and get rid of all the aberrations of individual assertion
and feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in monotone and
by rule, by thinking the same things and exchanging ideas until we have
none left, we shall come into that social placidity which is one dream of
the nationalists--one long step towards what may be called a prairie
mental condition--the slope of Kansas, where those who are five thousand
feet above the sea-level seem to be no higher than those who dwell in the
Missouri Valley.
THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN
We are all more or less devoted to 'liberte', 'egalite', and considerable
'fraternite', and we have various ways of showing it. It is the opinion
of many that women do not care much about politics, and that if they are
interested at all in them, they are by nature aristocrats. It is said,
indeed, that they care much more about their dress than they do about the
laws or the form of government. This notion arises from a misapprehension
both of the nature of woman and of the significance of dress.
Men have an idea that fashions are haphazard, and are dictated and guided
by no fixed principles of action, and represent no great currents in
politics or movements of the human mind. Women, who are exceedingly
subtle in all their operations, feel that it is otherwise. They have a
prescience of changes in the drift of public affairs, and a delicate
sensitiveness that causes them to adjust their raiment to express these
changes. Men have written a great deal in their bungling way about the
philosophy of clothes. Women exhibit it, and if we should study them more
and try to understand them instead of ridiculing their fashions as whims
bred of an inconstant mind and mere desire for change, we would have a
better apprehension of the great currents of modern political life and
society.
Many observers are puzzled by the gradual and insidious return recently
to the mode of the Directoire, and can see in it no significance other
than weariness of some other mode. We need to recall the fact of the
influence of the centenary period upon the human mind. It is nearly a
century since the fashion of the Directoire. What more natural,
considering the evidence that we move in spirals, if not in circles, that
the signs of the anniversary of one of the most marked periods in history
should be shown in feminine apparel? It is woman's way of hinting what is
in the air, the spirit that is abroad in the world. It will be remembered
that women took a prominent part in the destruction of the Bastile,
helping, indeed, to tear down that odious structure with their own hands,
the fall of which, it is well known, brought in the classic Greek and
republican simplicity, the subtle meaning of the change being expressed
in French gowns. Naturally there was a reaction from all this towards
aristocratic privileges and exclusiveness, which went on for many years,
until in France monarchy and empire followed the significant leadership
of the French modistes. So strong was this that it passed to other
countries, and in England the impulse outlasted even the Reform Bill, and
skirts grew more and more bulbous, until it did not need more than three
or four women to make a good-sized assembly. This was not the result of,
a whim about clothes, but a subtle recognition of a spirit of
exclusiveness and defense abroad in the world. Each woman became her own
Bastile. Men surrounded it and thundered against it without the least
effect. It seemed as permanent as the Pyramids. At every male attack it
expanded, and became more aggressive and took up more room. Women have
such an exquisite sense of things--just as they have now in regard to big
obstructive hats in the theatres. They know that most of the plays are
inferior and some of them are immoral, and they attend the theatres with
head-dresses that will prevent as many people as possible from seeing the
stage and being corrupted by anything that takes place on it. They object
to the men seeing some of the women who are now on the stage. It
happened, as to the private Bastiles, that the women at last recognized a
change in the sociological and political atmosphere of the world, and
without consulting any men of affairs or caring for their opinion, down
went the Bastiles. When women attacked them, in obedience to their
political instincts, they collapsed like punctured balloons. Natural
woman was measurably (that is, a capacity of being measured) restored to
the world. And we all remember the great political revolutionary
movements of 1848.
Now France is still the arbiter of the modes. Say what we may about
Berlin, copy their fashion plates as we will, or about London, or New
York, or Tokio, it is indisputable that the woman in any company who has
on a Paris gown--the expression is odious, but there is no other that in
these days would be comprehended--"takes the cake." It is not that the
women care for this as a mere matter of apparel. But they are sensitive
to the political atmosphere, to the philosophical significance that it
has to great impending changes. We are approaching the centenary of the
fall of the Bastile. The French have no Bastile to lay low, nor, indeed,
any Tuileries to burn up; but perhaps they might get a good way ahead by
demolishing Notre Dame and reducing most of Paris to ashes. Apparently
they are on the eve of doing something. The women of the world may not
know what it is, but they feel the approaching recurrence of a period.
Their movements are not yet decisive. It is as yet only tentatively that
they adopt the mode of the Directoire. It is yet uncertain--a sort of
Boulangerism in dress. But if we watch it carefully we shall be able to
predict with some assurance the drift in Paris. The Directoire dress
points to another period of republican simplicity, anarchy, and the rule
of a popular despot.
It is a great pity, in view of this valuable instinct in women and the
prophetic significance of dress, that women in the United States do not
exercise their gifts with regard to their own country. We should then
know at any given time whether we are drifting into Blaineism, or
Clevelandism, or centralization, or free-trade, or extreme protection, or
rule by corporations. We boast greatly of our smartness. It is time we
were up and dressed to prove it.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX
There appears to be a great quantity of conceit around, especially
concerning women. The statement was recently set afloat that a well-known
lady had admitted that George Meredith understands women better than any
writer who has preceded him. This may be true, and it may be a wily
statement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains the
old assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble, about the gentler
sex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerly
treatment of it seemed to accept it. But is it well-founded, is there any
more mystery about women--than about men? Is the feminine nature any more
difficult to understand than the masculine nature? Have women, conscious
of inferior strength, woven this notion of mystery about themselves as a
defense, or have men simply idealized them for fictitious purposes? To
recur to the case cited, is there any evidence that Mr. Meredith
understands human nature--as exhibited in women any better than human
nature--in men, or is more consistent in the production of one than of
the other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of this
notion of woman as an enigma. The savage races do not appear to have it.
A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt with
without circumlocution. In the Bible records there is not much mystery
about her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities, and some
pretty severe and uncomplimentary things are said about her, but there is
little affectation of not understanding her. She may be a prophetess, or
a consoler, or a snare, but she is no more "deceitful and desperately
wicked" than anybody else. There is nothing mysterious about her first
recorded performance. Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve. The
mystery was in the serpent. There is no evidence that the ancient
Egyptian woman was more difficult to comprehend than the Egyptian man.
They were both doubtless wily as highly civilized people are apt to be;
the "serpent of old Nile" was in them both. Is it in fact till we come to
mediaeval times, and the chivalric age, that women are set up as being
more incomprehensible than men? That is, less logical, more whimsical,
more uncertain in their mental processes? The play-writers and essayists
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "worked" this notion
continually. They always took an investigating and speculating attitude
towards women, that fostered the conceit of their separateness and veiled
personality. Every woman was supposed to be playing a part behind a mask.
Montaigne is always investigating woman as a mystery. It is, for
instance, a mystery he does not relish that, as he says, women commonly
reserve the publication of their vehement affections for their husbands
till they have lost them; then the woful countenance "looks not so much
back as forward, and is intended rather to get a new husband than to
lament the old." And he tells this story:
"When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady who is yet living,
and the widow of a prince, had, I know not what, more ornament in her
dress than our laws of widowhood will well allow, which being reproached
with as a great indecency, she made answer 'that it was because she was
not cultivating more friendships, and would never marry again.'" This
cynical view of woman, as well as the extravagantly complimentary one
sometimes taken by the poets, was based upon the notion that woman was an
unexplainable being. When she herself adopted the idea is uncertain. Of
course all this has a very practical bearing upon modern life, the
position of women in it, and the so-called reforms. If woman is so
different from man, to the extent of being an unexplainable mystery,
science ought to determine the exact state of the case, and ascertain if
there is any remedy for it. If it is only a literary creation, we ought
to know it. Science could tell, for instance, whether there is a
peculiarity in the nervous system, any complications in the nervous
centres, by which the telegraphic action of the will gets crossed, so
that, for example, in reply to a proposal of marriage, the intended "Yes"
gets delivered as "No." Is it true that the mental process in one sex is
intuitive, and in the other logical, with every link necessary and
visible? Is it true, as the romancers teach, that the mind in one sex
acts indirectly and in the other directly, or is this indirect process
only characteristic of exceptions in both sexes? Investigation ought to
find this out, so that we can adjust the fit occupations for both sexes
on a scientific basis. We are floundering about now in a sea of doubt. As
society becomes more complicated, women will become a greater and greater
mystery, or rather will be regarded so by themselves and be treated so by
men.
Who can tell how much this notion of mystery in the sex stands in the way
of its free advancement all along the line? Suppose the proposal were
made to women to exchange being mysterious for the ballot? Would they do
it? Or have they a sense of power in the possession of this conceded
incomprehensibility that they would not lay down for any visible insignia
of that power? And if the novelists and essayists have raised a mist
about the sex, which it willingly masquerades in, is it not time that the
scientists should determine whether the mystery exists in nature or only
in the imagination?
THE CLOTHES OF FICTION
The Drawer has never undervalued clothes. Whatever other heresies it may
have had, however it may have insisted that the more a woman learns, the
more she knows of books, the higher her education is carried in all the
knowledges, the more interesting she will be, not only for an hour, but
as a companion for life, it has never said that she is less attractive
when dressed with taste and according to the season. Love itself could
scarcely be expected to survive a winter hat worn after Easter. And the
philosophy of this is not on the surface, nor applicable to women only.
In this the highest of created things are under a law having a much wider
application. Take as an item novels, the works of fiction, which have
become an absolute necessity in the modern world, as necessary to divert
the mind loaded with care and under actual strain as to fill the vacancy
in otherwise idle brains. They have commonly a summer and a winter
apparel. The publishers understand this. As certainly as the birds
appear, comes the crop of summer novels, fluttering down upon the stalls,
in procession through the railway trains, littering the drawing-room
tables, in light paper, covers, ornamental, attractive in colors and
fanciful designs, as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. When
the thermometer is in the eighties, anything heavy and formidable is
distasteful. The housekeeper knows we want few solid dishes, but salads
and cooling drinks. The publisher knows that we want our literature (or
what passes for that) in light array. In the winter we prefer the boards
and the rich heavy binding, however light the tale may be; but in the
summer, though the fiction be as grave and tragic as wandering love and
bankruptcy, we would have it come to us lightly clad--out of stays, as it
were.
It would hardly be worth while to refer to this taste in the apparel of
our fiction did it not have deep and esoteric suggestions, and could not
the novelists themselves get a hint from it. Is it realized how much
depends upon the clothes that are worn by the characters in the novels
--clothes put on not only to exhibit the inner life of the characters,
but to please the readers who are to associate with them? It is true that
there are novels that almost do away with the necessity of fashion
magazines and fashion plates in the family, so faithful are they in the
latest millinery details, and so fully do they satisfy the longing of all
of us to know what is chic for the moment. It is pretty well understood,
also, that women, and even men, are made to exhibit the deepest passions
and the tenderest emotions in the crises of their lives by the clothes
they put on. How the woman in such a crisis hesitates before her
wardrobe, and at last chooses just what will express her innermost
feeling! Does she dress for her lover as she dresses to receive her
lawyer who has come to inform her that she is living beyond her income?
Would not the lover be spared time and pain if he knew, as the novelist
knows, whether the young lady is dressing for a rejection or an
acceptance? Why does the lady intending suicide always throw on a
waterproof when she steals out of the house to drown herself? The
novelist knows the deep significance of every article of toilet, and
nature teaches him to array his characters for the summer novel in the
airy draperies suitable to the season. It is only good art that the cover
of the novel and the covers of the characters shall be in harmony. He
knows, also, that the characters in the winter novel must be adequately
protected. We speak, of course, of the season stories. Novels that are to
run through a year, or maybe many years, and are to set forth the
passions and trials of changing age and varying circumstance, require
different treatment and wider millinery knowledge. They are naturally
more expensive. The wardrobe required in an all-round novel would
bankrupt most of us.
But to confine ourselves to the season novel, it is strange that some one
has not invented the patent adjustable story that with a slight change
would do for summer or winter, following the broad hint of the
publishers, who hasten in May to throw whatever fiction they have on hand
into summer clothes. The winter novel, by this invention, could be easily
fitted for summer wear. All the novelist need do would be to change the
clothes of his characters. And in the autumn, if the novel proved
popular, he could change again, with the advantage of being in the latest
fashion. It would only be necessary to alter a few sentences in a few of
the stereotype pages. Of course this would make necessary other slight
alterations, for no kind-hearted writer would be cruel to his own
creations, and expose them to the vicissitudes of the seasons. He could
insert "rain" for "snow," and "green leaves" for "skeleton branches,"
make a few verbal changes of that sort, and regulate the thermometer. It
would cost very little to adjust the novel in this way to any season. It
is worth thinking of.
And this leads to a remark upon the shocking indifference of some
novelists to the ordinary comfort of their characters. In practical life
we cannot, but in his realm the novelist can, control the weather. He can
make it generally pleasant. We do not object to a terrific thunder-shower
now and then, as the sign of despair and a lost soul, but perpetual
drizzle and grayness and inclemency are tedious to the reader, who has
enough bad weather in his private experience. The English are greater
sinners in this respect than we are. They seem to take a brutal delight
in making it as unpleasant as possible for their fictitious people. There
is R--b--rt 'lsm--r', for example. External trouble is piled on to the
internal. The characters are in a perpetual soak. There is not a dry rag
on any of them, from the beginning of the book to the end. They are sent
out in all weathers, and are drenched every day. Often their wet clothes
are frozen on them; they are exposed to cutting winds and sleet in their
faces, bedrabbled in damp grass, stood against slippery fences, with hail
and frost lowering their vitality, and expected under these circumstances
to make love and be good Christians. Drenched and wind-blown for years,
that is what they are. It may be that this treatment has excited the
sympathy of the world, but is it legitimate? Has a novelist the right to
subject his creations to tortures that he would not dare to inflict upon
his friends? It is no excuse to say that this is normal English weather;
it is not the office of fiction to intensify and rub in the unavoidable
evils of life. The modern spirit of consideration for fictitious
characters that prevails with regard to dress ought to extend in a
reasonable degree to their weather. This is not a strained corollary to
the demand for an appropriately costumed novel.
THE BROAD A
It cannot for a moment be supposed that the Drawer would discourage
self-culture and refinement of manner and of speech. But it would not
hesitate to give a note of warning if it believed that the present
devotion to literature and the pursuits of the mind were likely, by the
highest authorities, to be considered bad form. In an intellectually
inclined city (not in the northeast) a club of ladies has been formed for
the cultivation of the broad 'a' in speech. Sporadic efforts have
hitherto been made for the proper treatment of this letter of the
alphabet with individual success, especially with those who have been in
England, or have known English men and women of the broad-gauge variety.
Discerning travelers have made the American pronunciation of the letter a
a reproach to the republic, that is to say, a means of distinguishing a
native of this country. The true American aspires to be cosmopolitan, and
does not want to be "spotted"--if that word may be used--in society by
any peculiarity of speech, that is, by any American peculiarity. Why, at
the bottom of the matter, a narrow 'a' should be a disgrace it is not
easy to see, but it needs no reason if fashion or authority condemns it.
This country is so spread out, without any social or literary centre
universally recognized as such, and the narrow 'a' has become so
prevalent, that even fashion finds it difficult to reform it. The best
people, who are determined to broaden all their 'a''s, will forget in
moments of excitement, and fall back into old habits. It requires
constant vigilance to keep the letter 'a' flattened out. It is in vain
that scholars have pointed out that in the use of this letter lies the
main difference between the English and the American speech; either
Americans generally do not care if this is the fact, or fashion can only
work a reform in a limited number of people. It seems, therefore,
necessary that there should be an organized effort to deal with this
pronunciation, and clubs will no doubt be formed all over the country, in
imitation of the one mentioned, until the broad a will become as common
as flies in summer. When this result is attained it will be time to
attack the sound of 'u' with clubs, and make universal the French sound.
In time the American pronunciation will become as superior to all others
as are the American sewing-machines and reapers. In the Broad A Club
every member who misbehaves--that is, mispronounces--is fined a nickel
for each offense. Of course in the beginning there is a good deal of
revenue from this source, but the revenue diminishes as the club
improves, so that we have the anomaly of its failure to be
self-supporting in proportion to its excellence. Just now if these clubs
could suddenly become universal, and the penalty be enforced, we could
have the means of paying off the national debt in a year.
We do not wish to attach too much importance to this movement, but rather
to suggest to a continent yearning for culture in letters and in speech
whether it may not be carried too far. The reader will remember that
there came a time in Athens when culture could mock at itself, and the
rest of the country may be warned in time of a possible departure from
good form in devotion to language and literature by the present attitude
of modern Athens. Probably there is no esoteric depth in literature or
religion, no refinement in intellectual luxury, that this favored city
has not sounded. It is certainly significant, therefore, when the
priestesses and devotees of mental superiority there turn upon it and
rend it, when they are heartily tired of the whole literary business.
There is always this danger when anything is passionately pursued as a
fashion, that it will one day cease to be the fashion. Plato and Buddha
and even Emerson become in time like a last season's fashion plate. Even
a "friend of the spirit" will have to go. Culture is certain to mock
itself in time.
The clubs for the improvement of the mind--the female mind--and of
speech, which no doubt had their origin in modern Athens, should know,
then, that it is the highest mark of female culture now in that beautiful
town to despise culture, to affect the gayest and most joyous ignorance
--ignorance of books, of all forms of so-called intellectual development,
and all literary men, women, and productions whatsoever! This genuine
movement of freedom may be a real emancipation. If it should reach the
metropolis, what a relief it might bring to thousands who are, under a
high sense of duty, struggling to advance the intellectual life. There is
this to be said, however, that it is only the very brightest people,
those who have no need of culture, who have in fact passed beyond all
culture, who can take this position in regard to it, and actually revel
in the delights of ignorance. One must pass into a calm place when he is
beyond the desire to know anything or to do anything.
It is a chilling thought, unless one can rise to the highest philosophy
of life, that even the broad 'a', when it is attained, may not be a
permanence. Let it be common, and what distinction will there be in it?
When devotion to study, to the reading of books, to conversation on
improving topics, becomes a universal fashion, is it not evident that one
can only keep a leadership in fashion by throwing the whole thing
overboard, and going forward into the natural gayety of life, which cares
for none of these things? We suppose the Constitution of the United
States will stand if the day comes--nay, now is--when the women of
Chicago call the women of Boston frivolous, and the women of Boston know
their immense superiority and advancement in being so, but it would be a
blank surprise to the country generally to know that it was on the wrong
track. The fact is that culture in this country is full of surprises, and
so doubles and feints and comes back upon itself that the most diligent
recorder can scarcely note its changes. The Drawer can only warn; it
cannot advise.
CHEWING GUM
No language that is unfortunately understood by the greater portion of
the people who speak English, thousands are saying on the first of
January--in 1890, a far-off date that it is wonderful any one has lived
to see--"Let us have a new deal!" It is a natural exclamation, and does
not necessarily mean any change of purpose. It always seems to a man that
if he could shuffle the cards he could increase his advantages in the
game of life, and, to continue the figure which needs so little
explanation, it usually appears to him that he could play anybody else's
hand better than his own. In all the good resolutions of the new year,
then, it happens that perhaps the most sincere is the determination to
get a better hand. Many mistake this for repentance and an intention to
reform, when generally it is only the desire for a new shuffle of the
cards. Let us have a fresh pack and a new deal, and start fair. It seems
idle, therefore, for the moralist to indulge in a homily about annual
good intentions, and habits that ought to be dropped or acquired, on the
first of January. He can do little more than comment on the passing show.
It will be admitted that if the world at this date is not socially
reformed it is not the fault of the Drawer, and for the reason that it
has been not so much a critic as an explainer and encourager. It is in
the latter character that it undertakes to defend and justify a national
industry that has become very important within the past ten years. A
great deal of capital is invested in it, and millions of people are
actively employed in it. The varieties of chewing gum that are
manufactured would be a matter of surprise to those who have paid no
attention to the subject, and who may suppose that the millions of mouths
they see engaged in its mastication have a common and vulgar taste. From
the fact that it can be obtained at the apothecary's, an impression has
got abroad that it is medicinal. This is not true. The medical profession
do not use it, and what distinguishes it from drugs-that they also do not
use--is the fact that they do not prescribe it. It is neither a narcotic
nor a stimulant. It cannot strictly be said to soothe or to excite. The
habit of using it differs totally from that of the chewing of tobacco or
the dipping of snuff. It might, by a purely mechanical operation, keep a
person awake, but no one could go to sleep chewing gum. It is in itself
neither tonic nor sedative. It is to be noticed also that the gum habit
differs from the tobacco habit in that the aromatic and elastic substance
is masticated, while the tobacco never is, and that the mastication leads
to nothing except more mastication. The task is one that can never be
finished. The amount of energy expended in this process if capitalized or
conserved would produce great results. Of course the individual does
little, but if the power evolved by the practice in a district school
could be utilized, it would suffice to run the kindergarten department.
The writer has seen a railway car--say in the West--filled with young
women, nearly every one of whose jaws and pretty mouths was engaged in
this pleasing occupation; and so much power was generated that it would,
if applied, have kept the car in motion if the steam had been shut
off--at least it would have furnished the motive for illuminating the car
by electricity.
This national industry is the subject of constant detraction, satire, and
ridicule by the newspaper press. This is because it is not understood,
and it may be because it is mainly a female accomplishment: the few men
who chew gum may be supposed to do so by reason of gallantry. There might
be no more sympathy with it in the press if the real reason for the
practice were understood, but it would be treated more respectfully. Some
have said that the practice arises from nervousness--the idle desire to
be busy without doing anything--and because it fills up the pauses of
vacuity in conversation. But this would not fully account for the
practice of it in solitude. Some have regarded it as in obedience to the
feminine instinct for the cultivation of patience and self-denial
--patience in a fruitless activity, and self-denial in the eternal act of
mastication without swallowing. It is no more related to these virtues
than it is to the habit of the reflective cow in chewing her cud. The cow
would never chew gum. The explanation is a more philosophical one, and
relates to a great modern social movement. It is to strengthen and
develop and make more masculine the lower jaw. The critic who says that
this is needless, that the inclination in women to talk would adequately
develop this, misses the point altogether. Even if it could be proved
that women are greater chatterers than men, the critic would gain
nothing. Women have talked freely since creation, but it remains true
that a heavy, strong lower jaw is a distinctively masculine
characteristic. It is remarked that if a woman has a strong lower jaw she
is like a man. Conversation does not create this difference, nor remove
it; for the development of a lower jaw in women constant mechanical
exercise of the muscles is needed. Now, a spirit of emancipation, of
emulation, is abroad, as it ought to be, for the regeneration of the
world. It is sometimes called the coming to the front of woman in every
act and occupation that used to belong almost exclusively to man. It is
not necessary to say a word to justify this. But it is often accompanied
by a misconception, namely, that it is necessary for woman to be like
man, not only in habits, but in certain physical characteristics. No
woman desires a beard, because a beard means care and trouble, and would
detract from feminine beauty, but to have a strong and, in appearance, a
resolute under-jaw may be considered a desirable note of masculinity, and
of masculine power and privilege, in the good time coming. Hence the
cultivation of it by the chewing of gum is a recognizable and reasonable
instinct, and the practice can be defended as neither a whim nor a vain
waste of energy and nervous force. In a generation or two it may be laid
aside as no longer necessary, or men may be compelled to resort to it to
preserve their supremacy.
WOMEN IN CONGRESS
It does not seem to be decided yet whether women are to take the Senate
or the House at Washington in the new development of what is called the
dual government. There are disadvantages in both. The members of the
Senate are so few that the women of the country would not be adequately
represented in it; and the Chamber in which the House meets is too large
for women to make speeches in with any pleasure to themselves or their
hearers. This last objection is, however, frivolous, for the speeches
will be printed in the Record; and it is as easy to count women on a vote
as men. There is nothing in the objection, either, that the Chamber would
need to be remodeled, and the smoking-rooms be turned into Day Nurseries.
The coming woman will not smoke, to be sure; neither will she, in coming
forward to take charge of the government, plead the Baby Act. Only those
women, we are told, would be elected to Congress whose age and position
enable them to devote themselves exclusively to politics. The question,
therefore, of taking to themselves the Senate or the House will be
decided by the women themselves upon other grounds--as to whether they
wish to take the initiative in legislation and hold the power of the
purse, or whether they prefer to act as a check, to exercise the high
treaty-making power, and to have a voice in selecting the women who shall
be sent to represent us abroad. Other things being equal, women will
naturally select the Upper House, and especially as that will give them
an opportunity to reject any but the most competent women for the Supreme
Bench. The irreverent scoffers at our Supreme Court have in the past
complained (though none do now) that there were "old women" in gowns on
the bench. There would be no complaint of the kind in the future. The
judges would be as pretty as those who assisted in the judgment of Paris,
with changed functions; there would be no monotony in the dress, and the
Supreme Bench would be one of the most attractive spectacles in
Washington. When the judges as well as the advocates are Portias, the law
will be an agreeable occupation.
This is, however, mere speculation. We do not understand that it is the
immediate purpose of women to take the whole government, though some
extravagant expectations are raised by the admission of new States that
are ruled by women. They may wish to divide--and conquer. One plan is,
instead of dual Chambers of opposite sexes, to mingle in both the Senate
and the House. And this is more likely to be the plan adopted, because
the revolution is not to be violent, and, indeed, cannot take place
without some readjustment of the home life. We have at present what
Charles Reade would have called only a right-handed civilization. To
speak metaphorically, men cannot use their left hands, or, to drop the
metaphor, before the government can be fully reorganized men must learn
to do women's work. It may be a fair inference from this movement that
women intend to abandon the sacred principle of Home Rule. This
abandonment is foreshadowed in a recent election in a small Western city,
where the female voters made a clean sweep, elected an entire city
council of women and most of the other officers, including the police
judge and the mayor. The latter lady, by one of those intrusions of
nature which reform is not yet able to control, became a mother and a
mayor the same week. Her husband had been city clerk, and held over; but
fortunately an arrangement was made with him to stay at home and take
care of the baby, unofficially, while the mayor attends to her public
duties. Thus the city clerk will gradually be initiated into the duties
of home rule, and when the mayor is elected to Congress he will be ready
to accompany her to Washington and keep house. The imagination likes to
dwell upon this, for the new order is capable of infinite extension. When
the State takes care of all the children in government nurseries, and the
mayor has taken her place in the United States Senate, her husband, if he
has become sufficiently reformed and feminized, may go to the House, and
the reunited family of two, clubbing their salaries, can live in great
comfort.
All this can be easily arranged, whether we are to have a dual government
of sexes or a mixed House and Senate. The real difficulty is about a
single Executive. Neither sex will be willing to yield to the other this
vast power. We might elect a man and wife President and Vice-President,
but the Vice-President, of whatever sex, could not well preside over the
Senate and in the White House at the same time. It is true that the
Constitution provides that the President and Vice-President shall not be
of the same State, but residence can be acquired to get over this as
easily as to obtain a divorce; and a Constitution that insists upon
speaking of the President as "he" is too antiquated to be respected. When
the President is a woman, it can matter little whether her husband or
some other woman presides in the Senate. Even the reformers will hardly
insist upon two Presidents in order to carry out the equality idea, so
that we are probably anticipating difficulties that will not occur in
practice.
The Drawer has only one more practical suggestion. As the right of voting
carries with it the right to hold any elective office, a great change
must take place in Washington life. Now for some years the divergence of
society and politics has been increasing at the capital. With women in
both Houses, and on the Supreme Bench, and at the heads of the
departments, social and political life will become one and the same
thing; receptions and afternoon teas will be held in the Senate and
House, and political caucuses in all the drawing-rooms. And then life
will begin to be interesting.
SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?
The shyness of man--meaning the "other sex" referred to in the woman's
journals--has often been noticed in novels, and sometimes in real life.
This shyness is, however, so exceptional as to be suspicious. The shy
young man may provoke curiosity, but he does not always inspire respect.
Roughly estimated, shyness is not considered a manly quality, while it is
one of the most pleasing and attractive of the feminine traits, and there
is something pathetic in the expression "He is as shy as a girl;" it may
appeal for sympathy and the exercise of the protective instinct in women.
Unfortunately it is a little discredited, so many of the old plays
turning upon its assumption by young blades who are no better than they
should be.
What would be the effect upon the masculine character and comfort if this
shyness should become general, as it may in a contingency that is already
on the horizon? We refer, of course, to the suggestion, coming from
various quarters, that women should propose. The reasonableness of this
suggestion may not lie on the surface; it may not be deduced from the
uniform practice, beginning with the primitive men and women; it may not
be inferred from the open nature of the two sexes (for the sake of
argument two sexes must still be insisted on); but it is found in the
advanced civilization with which we are struggling. Why should not women
propose? Why should they be at a disadvantage in an affair which concerns
the happiness of the whole life? They have as much right to a choice as
men, and to an opportunity to exercise it. Why should they occupy a
negative position, and be restricted, in making the most important part
of their career, wholly to the choice implied in refusals? In fact,
marriage really concerns them more than it does men; they have to bear
the chief of its burdens. A wide and free choice for them would, then,
seem to be only fair. Undeniably a great many men are inattentive,
unobserving, immersed in some absorbing pursuit, undecided, and at times
bashful, and liable to fall into union with women who happen to be near
them, rather than with those who are conscious that they would make them
the better wives. Men, unaided by the finer feminine instincts of choice,
are so apt to be deceived. In fact, man's inability to "match" anything
is notorious. If he cannot be trusted in the matter of worsted-work, why
should he have such distinctive liberty in the most important matter of
his life? Besides, there are many men--and some of the best who get into
a habit of not marrying at all, simply because the right woman has not
presented herself at the right time. Perhaps, if women had the open
privilege of selection, many a good fellow would be rescued from
miserable isolation, and perhaps also many a noble woman whom chance, or
a stationary position, or the inertia of the other sex, has left to bloom
alone, and waste her sweetness on relations, would be the centre of a
charming home, furnishing the finest spectacle seen in this uphill world
--a woman exercising gracious hospitality, and radiating to a circle far
beyond her home the influence of her civilizing personality. For,
notwithstanding all the centrifugal forces of this age, it is probable
that the home will continue to be the fulcrum on which women will move
the world.
It may be objected that it would be unfair to add this opportunity to the
already, overpowering attractions of woman, and that man would be put at
an immense disadvantage, since he might have too much gallantry, or not
enough presence of mind, to refuse a proposal squarely and fascinatingly
made, although his judgment scarcely consented, and his ability to
support a wife were more than doubtful. Women would need to exercise a
great deal of prudence and discretion, or there would be something like a
panic, and a cry along the male line of 'Sauve qui peut'; for it is
matter of record that the bravest men will sometimes run away from danger
on a sudden impulse.
This prospective social revolution suggests many inquiries. What would be
the effect upon the female character and disposition of a possible,
though not probable, refusal, or of several refusals? Would she become
embittered and desperate, and act as foolishly as men often do? Would her
own sex be considerate, and give her a fair field if they saw she was
paying attention to a young man, or an old one? And what effect would
this change in relations have upon men? Would it not render that sporadic
shyness of which we have spoken epidemic? Would it frighten men,
rendering their position less stable in their own eyes, or would it
feminize them--that is, make them retiring, blushing, self-conscious
beings? And would this change be of any injury to them in their necessary
fight for existence in this pushing world? What would be the effect upon
courtship if both the men and the women approached each other as wooers?
In ordinary transactions one is a buyer and one is a seller--to put it
coarsely. If seller met seller and buyer met buyer, trade would languish.
But this figure cannot be continued, for there is no romance in a bargain
of any sort; and what we should most fear in a scientific age is the loss
of romance.
This is, however, mere speculation. The serious aspect of the proposed
change is the effect it will have upon the character of men, who are not
enough considered in any of these discussions. The revolution will be a
radical one in one respect. We may admit that in the future woman can
take care of herself, but how will it be with man, who has had little
disciplinary experience of adversity, simply because he has been
permitted to have his own way? Heretofore his life has had a stimulus.
When he proposes to a woman, he in fact says: "I am able to support you;
I am able to protect you from the rough usage of the world; I am strong
and ambitious, and eager to take upon myself the lovely bondage of this
responsibility. I offer you this love because I feel the courage and
responsibility of my position." That is the manly part of it. What effect
will it have upon his character to be waiting round, unselected and
undecided, until some woman comes to him, and fixes her fascinating eyes
upon him, and says, in effect: "I can support you; I can defend you. Have
no fear of the future; I will be at once your shield and your backbone. I
take the responsibility of my choice." There are a great many men now,
who have sneaked into their positions by a show of courage, who are
supported one way and another by women. It might be humiliating to know
just how many men live by the labors of their wives. And what would be
the effect upon the character of man if the choice, and the
responsibility of it, and the support implied by it in marriage, were
generally transferred to woman?
FROCKS AND THE STAGE
The condescension to literature and to the stage is one of the notable
characteristics of this agreeable time. We have to admit that literature
is rather the fashion, without the violent presumption that the author
and the writer have the same social position that is conferred by money,
or by the mysterious virtue there is in pedigree. A person does not lose
caste by using the pen, or even by taking the not-needed pay for using
it. To publish a book or to have an article accepted by a magazine may
give a sort of social distinction, either as an exhibition of a certain
unexpected capacity or a social eccentricity. It is hardly too much to
say that it has become the fashion to write, as it used to be to dance
the minuet well, or to use the broadsword, or to stand a gentlemanly mill
with a renowned bruiser. Of course one ought not to do this
professionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study and
severe discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to toss
it off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drives
four-in-hand. One does not need to have that interior impulse which
drives a poor devil of an author to express himself, that something to
say which torments the poet into extreme irritability unless he can be
rid of it, that noble hunger for fame which comes from a consciousness of
the possession of vital thought and emotion.
The beauty of this condescension to literature of which we speak is that
it has that quality of spontaneity that does not presuppose either a
capacity or a call. There is no mystery about the craft. One resolves to
write a book, as he might to take a journey or to practice on the piano,
and the thing is done. Everybody can write, at least everybody does
write. It is a wonderful time for literature. The Queen of England writes
for it, the Queen of Roumania writes for it, the Shah of Persia writes
for it, Lady Brassey, the yachtswoman, wrote for it, Congressmen write
for it, peers write for it. The novel is the common recreation of ladies
of rank, and where is the young woman in this country who has not tried
her hand at a romance or made a cast at a popular magazine? The effect of
all this upon literature is expansive and joyous. Superstition about any
mystery in the art has nearly disappeared. It is a common observation
that if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothing
else, they can at least write. It is such an easy occupation, and the
remuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure! Isn't it indeed
the golden era of letters? If only the letters were gold!
If there is any such thing remaining as a guild of authors, somewhere on
the back seats, witnessing this marvelous Kingdom Come of Literature,
there must also be a little bunch of actors, born for the stage, who see
with mixed feelings their arena taken possession of by fairer if not more
competent players. These players are not to be confounded with the
play-actors whom the Puritans denounced, nor with those trained to the
profession in the French capital.
In the United States and in England we are born to enter upon any
avocation, thank Heaven! without training for it. We have not in this
country any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais,
but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, Private
Theatricals (not always so private as they should be), which domesticate
the drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and best
dressed performers the world has ever seen. Whatever they may say of it,
it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, and
all women recognize a talent for clothes. We do not say that there is not
such a thing as dramatic art, and that there are not persons who need as
severe training before they attempt to personate nature in art as the
painter must undergo who attempts to transfer its features to his canvas.
But the taste of the age must be taken into account. The public does not
demand that an actor shall come in at a private door and climb a steep
staircase to get to the stage. When a Star from the Private Theatricals
descends upon the boards, with the arms of Venus and the throat of Juno,
and a wardrobe got out of Paris and through our stingy Custom-house in
forty trunks, the plodding actor, who has depended upon art, finds out,
what he has been all the time telling us, that all the world's a stage,
and men and women merely players. Art is good in its way; but what about
a perfect figure? and is not dressing an art? Can training give one an
elegant form, and study command the services of a man milliner? The stage
is broadened out and re-enforced by a new element. What went ye out for
to see?
A person clad in fine raiment, to be sure. Some of the critics may growl
a little, and hint at the invasion of art by fashionable life, but the
editor, whose motto is that the newspaper is made for man, not man for
the newspaper, understands what is required in this inspiring histrionic
movement, and when a lovely woman condescends to step from the
drawing-room to the stage he confines his descriptions to her person, and
does not bother about her capacity; and instead of wearying us with a
list of her plays and performances, he gives us a column about her
dresses in beautiful language that shows us how closely allied poetry is
to tailoring. Can the lady act? Why, simpleminded, she has nearly a
hundred frocks, each one a dream, a conception of genius, a vaporous
idea, one might say, which will reveal more beauty than it hides, and
teach the spectator that art is simply nature adorned. Rachel in all her
glory was not adorned like one of these. We have changed all that. The
actress used to have a rehearsal. She now has an "opening." Does it
require nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage? No
more, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book. But homely
people and poor people can write books. As yet they cannot act.
ALTRUISM
Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, we
allow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts and
good wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes a
temporary fashion. And we find--do we not?--the indulgence of the feeling
so remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it. We
can even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in being
good on other days besides Sunday. There is a common notion that this
Christmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards the
unfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what is
called a better social position. We are exhorted on this day to remember
the poor. We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely,
not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us. The
Drawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give him
something, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost,
that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lost
sympathetic touch with ordinary humanity. There is a great deal of
sympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in the
social scale. We treat our servants--supposing that we are society
--better than we treat each other. If we did not, they would leave us. We
are kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and we
have more charity for them.
The Drawer is not indulging in any indiscriminate railing at society.
There is society and society. There is that undefined something, more
like a machine than an aggregate of human sensibilities, which is set
going in a "season," or at a watering-place, or permanently selects
itself for certain social manifestations. It is this that needs a
missionary to infuse into it sympathy and charity. If it were indeed a
machine and not made up of sensitive personalities, it would not be to
its members so selfish and cruel. It would be less an ambitious scramble
for place and favor, less remorseless towards the unsuccessful, not so
harsh and hard and supercilious. In short, it would be much more
agreeable if it extended to its own members something of the
consideration and sympathy that it gives to those it regards as its
inferiors. It seems to think that good-breeding and good form are
separable from kindliness and sympathy and helpfulness. Tender-hearted
and charitable enough all the individuals of this "society" are to
persons below them in fortune or position, let us allow, but how are they
to each other? Nothing can be ruder or less considerate of the feelings
of others than much of that which is called good society, and this is why
the Drawer desires to turn the altruistic sentiment of the world upon it
in this season, set apart by common consent for usefulness. Unfortunate
are the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless of
delicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Take
hospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, in
overwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family,
or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, your
successes, your possessions, in simply what interests you? However
delightful all these may be, it is an offense to his individuality to
insist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet. How do
you treat the stranger? Do you adapt yourself and your surroundings to
him, or insist that he shall adapt himself to you? How often does the
stranger, the guest, sit in helpless agony in your circle (all of whom
know each other) at table or in the drawing-room, isolated and separate,
because all the talk is local and personal, about your little world, and
the affairs of your clique, and your petty interests, in which he or she
cannot possibly join? Ah! the Sioux Indian would not be so cruel as that
to a guest. There is no more refined torture to a sensitive person than
that. Is it only thoughtlessness? It is more than that. It is a want of
sympathy of the heart, or it is a lack of intelligence and broad-minded
interest in affairs of the world and in other people. It is this
trait--absorption in self--pervading society more or less, that makes it
so unsatisfactory to most people in it. Just a want of human interest;
people do not come in contact.
Avid pursuit of wealth, or what is called pleasure, perhaps makes people
hard to each other, and infuses into the higher social life, which should
be the most unselfish and enjoyable life, a certain vulgarity, similar to
that noticed in well-bred tourists scrambling for the seats on top of a
mountain coach. A person of refinement and sensibility and intelligence,
cast into the company of the select, the country-house, the radiant,
twelve-button society, has been struck with infinite pity for it, and
asks the Drawer to do something about it. The Drawer cannot do anything
about it. It can only ask the prayers of all good people on Christmas Day
for the rich. As we said, we do not have them with us always--they are
here today, they are gone to Canada tomorrow. But this is, of course,
current facetiousness. The rich are as good as anybody else, according to
their lights, and if what is called society were as good and as kind to
itself as it is to the poor, it would be altogether enviable. We are not
of those who say that in this case, charity would cover a multitude of
sins, but a diffusion in society of the Christmas sentiment of goodwill
and kindliness to itself would tend to make universal the joy on the
return of this season.
SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE
The Drawer would like to emphasize the noble, self-sacrificing spirit of
American women. There are none like them in the world. They take up all
the burdens of artificial foreign usage, where social caste prevails, and
bear them with a heroism worthy of a worse cause. They indeed represent
these usages to be a burden almost intolerable, and yet they submit to
them with a grace and endurance all their own. Probably there is no
harder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington,
where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it does
not reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman's
effort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure of
intellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital in
its peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, the
monument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than that
to the Father of his Country. Merely in the item of keeping an account of
the visits paid and due, a woman needs a bookkeeper. Only to know the
etiquette of how and when and to whom and in what order the visits are to
be paid is to be well educated in a matter that assumes the first
importance in her life. This is, however, only a detail of bookkeeping
and of memory; to pay and receive, or evade, these visits of ceremony is
a work which men can admire without the power to imitate; even on the
supposition that a woman has nothing else to do, it calls for our humble
gratitude and a recognition of the largeness of nature that can put aside
any duties to husband or children in devotion to the public welfare. The
futile round of society life while it lasts admits of no rival. It seems
as important as the affairs of the government. The Drawer is far from
saying that it is not. Perhaps no one can tell what confusion would fall
into all the political relations if the social relations of the capital
were not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesies
among the women; and it may be true that society at large--men are so
apt, when left alone, to relapse--would fall into barbarism if our
pasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice of
woman!
What a beautiful civilization ours is, supposed to be growing in
intelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself this
artificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven must
admire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for any
rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive
formal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish to
see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and
receiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is she
always relieved to find people not in? When she can count upon her ten
fingers the people she wants to see, why should she pretend to want to
see the others? Is any one deceived by it? Does anybody regard it as
anything but a sham and a burden? Much the cynic knows about it! Is it
not necessary to keep up what is called society? Is it not necessary to
have an authentic list of pasteboard acquaintances to invite to the
receptions? And what would become of us without Receptions? Everybody
likes to give them. Everybody flocks to them with much alacrity. When
society calls the roll, we all know the penalty of being left out. Is
there any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming so
many people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them to
a Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard without
screaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country.
It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gathered
together in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shout
like pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges," rasping
their throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.
If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would be
possible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. We
cannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We train
for it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged to
shout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in the
neighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, it
only shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.
But does society--that is, the intercourse of congenial people--depend
upon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people who
are not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter fireside
of rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talk
without a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottage
in the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normal
temperature. We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a real
enjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off this
artificial and wearisome parade, and that if women look back with pride,
as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will also
regard them with astonishment. Women, we read every day, long for the
rights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose in
life of men. And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature,
they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and which
they would speedily cast off if they had. What should we say of men if
they consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each other
merely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they did
not receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society? Have they not
the time? Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spend
it in this Sisyphus task? Would the social machine go to pieces--the
inquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information--if they made
rational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gave
the time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to making
their household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paid
visits from some other motive than "clearing off their list"? If all the
artificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuable
thing would be lost out of anybody's life?
The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment in
sociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season. If
at the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment as
before, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervous
prostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment,
to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should be
delivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced by
experienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody for
propriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now.
DINNER-TABLE TALK
Many people suppose that it is the easiest thing in the world to dine if
you can get plenty to eat. This error is the foundation of much social
misery. The world that never dines, and fancies it has a grievance
justifying anarchy on that account, does not know how much misery it
escapes. A great deal has been written about the art of dining. From time
to time geniuses have appeared who knew how to compose a dinner; indeed,
the art of doing it can be learned, as well as the art of cooking and
serving it. It is often possible, also, under extraordinarily favorable
conditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmonious
enough to dine together successfully. The tact for getting the right
people together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner.
But it exists. And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant company
about it is a common conjunction in this country. Instructions are not
wanting as to the shape of the table and the size of the party; it is
universally admitted that the number must be small. The big
dinner-parties which are commonly made to pay off social debts are
generally of the sort that one would rather contribute to in money than
in personal attendance. When the dinner is treated as a means of
discharging obligations, it loses all character, and becomes one of the
social inflictions. While there is nothing in social intercourse so
agreeable and inspiring as a dinner of the right sort, society has
invented no infliction equal to a large dinner that does not "go," as the
phrase is. Why it does not go when the viands are good and the company is
bright is one of the acknowledged mysteries.
There need be no mystery about it. The social instinct and the social
habit are wanting to a great many people of uncommon intelligence and
cultivation--that sort of flexibility or adaptability that makes
agreeable society. But this even does not account for the failure of so
many promising dinners. The secret of this failure always is that the
conversation is not general. The sole object of the dinner is talk--at
least in the United States, where "good eating" is pretty common, however
it may be in England, whence come rumors occasionally of accomplished men
who decline to be interrupted by the frivolity of talk upon the
appearance of favorite dishes. And private talk at a table is not the
sort that saves a dinner; however good it is, it always kills it. The
chance of arrangement is that the people who would like to talk together
are not neighbors; and if they are, they exhaust each other to weariness
in an hour, at least of topics which can be talked about with the risk of
being overheard. A duet to be agreeable must be to a certain extent
confidential, and the dinner-table duet admits of little except
generalities, and generalities between two have their limits of
entertainment. Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors at
table may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selected
company one may sit beside a stupid man--that is, stupid for the purpose
of a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it. No one can talk well
without an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except by
the attention and questioning and interest of other minds. There is
little inspiration in side talk to one or two. Nobody ought to go to a
dinner who is not a good listener, and, if possible, an intelligent one.
To listen with a show of intelligence is a great accomplishment. It is
not absolutely essential that there should be a great talker or a number
of good talkers at a dinner if all are good listeners, and able to "chip
in" a little to the general talk that springs up. For the success of the
dinner does not necessarily depend upon the talk being brilliant, but it
does depend upon its being general, upon keeping the ball rolling round
the table; the old-fashioned game becomes flat when the balls all
disappear into private pockets. There are dinners where the object seems
to be to pocket all the balls as speedily as possible. We have learned
that that is not the best game; the best game is when you not only depend
on the carom, but in going to the cushion before you carom; that is to
say, including the whole table, and making things lively. The hostess
succeeds who is able to excite this general play of all the forces at the
table, even using the silent but not non-elastic material as cushions, if
one may continue the figure. Is not this, O brothers and sisters, an evil
under the sun, this dinner as it is apt to be conducted? Think of the
weary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest social
pleasure! How often when a topic is started that promises well, and might
come to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some one
begins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a lady
at your side cut in and give you her views on it--views that might be
amusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simply
impertinent as an interruption! How often when you have tried to get a
"rise" out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut in
across you with some private depressing observation to your next
neighbor! Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlor
musicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment. There is a
notion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has gone
out. That is a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. There
must be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement of
good listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to
whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.
Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world is
dumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between
seat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right to
spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilization
has evolved.
NATURALIZATION
Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?--that is, to be
denationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one country
and take up those of another; to give up what may be called the
instinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It is
easy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, and
to take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one's
self from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.
One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, and
as a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or the
dragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, so
strong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, a
sub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachments
he may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag for
it, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, no
doubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is never
naturalized. We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else,
because here meet more different races than anywhere else with the
serious intention of changing their nationality. And we have a notion
that there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or our
government, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than it
has been anywhere else in history. It is always a surprise to us when a
born citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems a
thing of course that a person of any other country should, by an oath,
become a good American, and we expect that the act will work a sudden
change in him equal to that wrought in a man by what used to be called a
conviction of sin. We expect that he will not only come into our family,
but that he will at once assume all its traditions and dislikes, that
whatever may have been his institutions or his race quarrels, the moving
influence of his life hereafter will be the "Spirit of '76."
What is this naturalization, however, but a sort of parable of human
life? Are we not always trying to adjust ourselves to new relations, to
get naturalized into a new family? Does one ever do it entirely? And how
much of the lonesomeness of life comes from the failure to do it! It is a
tremendous experiment, we all admit, to separate a person from his race,
from his country, from his climate, and the habits of his part of the
country, by marriage; it is only an experiment differing in degree to
introduce him by marriage into a new circle of kinsfolk. Is he ever
anything but a sort of tolerated, criticised, or admired alien? Does the
time ever come when the distinction ceases between his family and hers?
They say love is stronger than death. It may also be stronger than
family--while it lasts; but was there ever a woman yet whose most
ineradicable feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort of
base-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?
Does she ever lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest that a
patriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife's relations in
war; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes a
question of office, is it not the wife's relations who get them? To be
sure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest I
will go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time,
and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But is
it true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature to
be? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to many
endurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; but
would she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted from
the associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anything
really take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has in
kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are two
theories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,
that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of human
relations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that in
the long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does the
gate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory than
the other? If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really a
tremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side or
the other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, would
there be so many hasty marriages--slip-knots tied by one justice to be
undone by another? The Drawer did not intend to start such a deep
question as this. Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country,
not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easily
get a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditary
ideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made with
like purpose and like reservations. These reservations do not, however,
make the best citizens or the most happy marriages. Would it be any
better if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of
peoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism or
family, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people think
it should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. But
human nature is the most obstinate thing that the International
Conventions have to deal with.
ART OF GOVERNING
He was saying, when he awoke one morning, "I wish I were governor of a
small island, and had nothing to do but to get up and govern." It was an
observation quite worthy of him, and one of general application, for
there are many men who find it very difficult to get a living on their
own resources, to whom it would be comparatively easy to be a very fair
sort of governor. Everybody who has no official position or routine duty
on a salary knows that the most trying moment in the twenty-four hours is
that in which he emerges from the oblivion of sleep and faces life.
Everything perplexing tumbles in upon him, all the possible vexations of
the day rise up before him, and he is little less than a hero if he gets
up cheerful.
It is not to be wondered at that people crave office, some salaried
position, in order to escape the anxieties, the personal
responsibilities, of a single-handed struggle with the world. It must be
much easier to govern an island than to carry on almost any retail
business. When the governor wakes in the morning he thinks first of his
salary; he has not the least anxiety about his daily bread or the support
of his family. His business is all laid out for him; he has not to create
it. Business comes to him; he does not have to drum for it. His day is
agreeably, even if sympathetically, occupied with the troubles of other
people, and nothing is so easy to bear as the troubles of other people.
After he has had his breakfast, and read over the "Constitution," he has
nothing to do but to "govern" for a few hours, that is, to decide about
things on general principles, and with little personal application, and
perhaps about large concerns which nobody knows anything about, and which
are much easier to dispose of than the perplexing details of private
life. He has to vote several times a day; for giving a decision is really
casting a vote; but that is much easier than to scratch around in all the
anxieties of a retail business. Many men who would make very respectable
Presidents of the United States could not successfully run a retail
grocery store. The anxieties of the grocery would wear them out. For
consider the varied ability that the grocery requires-the foresight about
the markets, to take advantage of an eighth per cent. off or on here and
there; the vigilance required to keep a "full line" and not overstock, to
dispose of goods before they spoil or the popular taste changes; the
suavity and integrity and duplicity and fairness and adaptability needed
to get customers and keep them; the power to bear the daily and hourly
worry; the courage to face the ever-present spectre of "failure," which
is said to come upon ninety merchants in a hundred; the tact needed to
meet the whims and the complaints of patrons, and the difficulty of
getting the patrons who grumble most to pay in order to satisfy the
creditors. When the retail grocer wakens in the morning he feels that his
business is not going to come to him spontaneously; he thinks of his
rivals, of his perilous stock, of his debts and delinquent customers. He
has no "Constitution" to go by, nothing but his wits and energy to set
against the world that day, and every day the struggle and the anxiety
are the same. What a number of details he has to carry in his head
(consider, for instance, how many different kinds of cheese there are,
and how different people hate and love the same kind), and how keen must
be his appreciation of the popular taste. The complexities and annoyances
of his business are excessive, and he cannot afford to make many
mistakes; if he does he will lose his business, and when a man fails in
business (honestly), he loses his nerve, and his career is ended. It is
simply amazing, when you consider it, the amount of talent shown in what
are called the ordinary businesses of life.
It has been often remarked with how little wisdom the world is governed.
That is the reason it is so easy to govern. "Uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown" does not refer to the discomfort of wearing it, but to the
danger of losing it, and of being put back upon one's native resources,
having to run a grocery or to keep school. Nobody is in such a pitiable
plight as a monarch or politician out of business. It is very difficult
for either to get a living. A man who has once enjoyed the blessed
feeling of awaking every morning with the thought that he has a certain
salary despises the idea of having to drum up a business by his own
talents. It does not disturb the waking hour at all to think that a
deputation is waiting in the next room about a post-office in Indiana or
about the codfish in Newfoundland waters--the man can take a second nap
on any such affair; but if he knows that the living of himself and family
that day depends upon his activity and intelligence, uneasy lies his
head. There is something so restful and easy about public business! It is
so simple! Take the average Congressman. The Secretary of the Treasury
sends in an elaborate report--a budget, in fact--involving a complete and
harmonious scheme of revenue and expenditure. Must the Congressman read
it? No; it is not necessary to do that; he only cares for practical
measures. Or a financial bill is brought in. Does he study that bill? He
hears it read, at least by title. Does he take pains to inform himself by
reading and conversation with experts upon its probable effect? Or an
international copyright law is proposed, a measure that will relieve the
people of the United States from the world-wide reputation of sneaking
meanness towards foreign authors. Does he examine the subject, and try to
understand it? That is not necessary. Or it is a question of tariff. He
is to vote "yes" or "no" on these proposals. It is not necessary for him
to master these subjects, but it is necessary for him to know how to
vote. And how does he find out that? In the first place, by inquiring
what effect the measure will have upon the chance of election of the man
he thinks will be nominated for President, and in the second place, what
effect his vote will have on his own reelection. Thus the principles of
legislation become very much simplified, and thus it happens that it is
comparatively so much easier to govern than it is to run a grocery store.
LOVE OF DISPLAY
It is fortunate that a passion for display is implanted in human nature;
and if we owe a debt of gratitude to anybody, it is to those who make the
display for us. It would be such a dull, colorless world without it! We
try in vain to imagine a city without brass bands, and military
marchings, and processions of societies in regalia and banners and
resplendent uniforms, and gayly caparisoned horses, and men clad in red
and yellow and blue and gray and gold and silver and feathers, moving in
beautiful lines, proudly wheeling with step elate upon some responsive
human being as axis, deploying, opening, and closing ranks in exquisite
precision to the strains of martial music, to the thump of the drum and
the scream of the fife, going away down the street with nodding plumes,
heads erect, the very port of heroism. There is scarcely anything in the
world so inspiring as that. And the self-sacrifice of it! What will not
men do and endure to gratify their fellows! And in the heat of summer,
too, when most we need something to cheer us! The Drawer saw, with
feelings that cannot be explained, a noble company of men, the pride of
their city, all large men, all fat men, all dressed alike, but each one
as beautiful as anything that can be seen on the stage, perspiring
through the gala streets of another distant city, the admiration of
crowds of huzzaing men and women and boys, following another company as
resplendent as itself, every man bearing himself like a hero, despising
the heat and the dust, conscious only of doing his duty. We make a great
mistake if we suppose it is a feeling of ferocity that sets these men
tramping about in gorgeous uniform, in mud or dust, in rain or under a
broiling sun. They have no desire to kill anybody. Out of these
resplendent clothes they are much like other people; only they have a
nobler spirit, that which leads them to endure hardships for the sake of
pleasing others. They differ in degree, though not in kind, from those
orders, for keeping secrets, or for encouraging a distaste for strong
drink, which also wear bright and attractive regalia, and go about in
processions, with banners and music, and a pomp that cannot be
distinguished at a distance from real war. It is very fortunate that men
do like to march about in ranks and lines, even without any
distinguishing apparel. The Drawer has seen hundreds of citizens in a
body, going about the country on an excursion, parading through town
after town, with no other distinction of dress than a uniform high white
hat, who carried joy and delight wherever they went. The good of this
display cannot be reckoned in figures. Even a funeral is comparatively
dull without the military band and the four-and-four processions, and the
cities where these resplendent corteges of woes are of daily occurrence
are cheerful cities. The brass band itself, when we consider it
philosophically, is one of the most striking things in our civilization.
We admire its commonly splendid clothes, its drums and cymbals and
braying brass, but it is the impartial spirit with which it lends itself
to our varying wants that distinguishes it. It will not do to say that it
has no principles, for nobody has so many, or is so impartial in
exercising them. It is equally ready to play at a festival or a funeral,
a picnic or an encampment, for the sons of war or the sons of temperance,
and it is equally willing to express the feeling of a Democratic meeting
or a Republican gathering, and impartially blows out "Dixie" or "Marching
through Georgia," "The Girl I Left Behind Me" or "My Country, 'tis of
Thee." It is equally piercing and exciting for St. Patrick or the Fourth
of July.
There are cynics who think it strange that men are willing to dress up in
fantastic uniform and regalia and march about in sun and rain to make a
holiday for their countrymen, but the cynics are ungrateful, and fail to
credit human nature with its trait of self-sacrifice, and they do not at
all comprehend our civilization. It was doubted at one time whether the
freedman and the colored man generally in the republic was capable of the
higher civilization. This doubt has all been removed. No other race takes
more kindly to martial and civic display than it. No one has a greater
passion for societies and uniforms and regalias and banners, and the pomp
of marchings and processions and peaceful war. The negro naturally
inclines to the picturesque, to the flamboyant, to vivid colors and the
trappings of office that give a man distinction. He delights in the drum
and the trumpet, and so willing is he to add to what is spectacular and
pleasing in life that he would spend half his time in parading. His
capacity for a holiday is practically unlimited. He has not yet the means
to indulge his taste, and perhaps his taste is not yet equal to his
means, but there is no question of his adaptability to the sort of
display which is so pleasing to the greater part of the human race, and
which contributes so much to the brightness and cheerfulness of this
world. We cannot all have decorations, and cannot all wear uniforms, or
even regalia, and some of us have little time for going about in military
or civic processions, but we all like to have our streets put on a
holiday appearance; and we cannot express in words our gratitude to those
who so cheerfully spend their time and money in glittering apparel and in
parades for our entertainment.
VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE
The vitality of a fallacy is incalculable. Although the Drawer has been
going many years, there are still remaining people who believe that
"things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." This
mathematical axiom, which is well enough in its place, has been extended
into the field of morals and social life, confused the perception of
human relations, and raised "hob," as the saying is, in political
economy. We theorize and legislate as if people were things. Most of the
schemes of social reorganization are based on this fallacy. It always
breaks down in experience. A has two friends, B and C--to state it
mathematically. A is equal to B, and A is equal to C. A has for B and
also for C the most cordial admiration and affection, and B and C have
reciprocally the same feeling for A. Such is the harmony that A cannot
tell which he is more fond of, B or C. And B and C are sure that A is the
best friend of each. This harmony, however, is not triangular. A makes
the mistake of supposing that it is--having a notion that things which
are equal to the same thing are equal to each other--and he brings B and
C together. The result is disastrous. B and C cannot get on with each
other. Regard for A restrains their animosity, and they hypocritically
pretend to like each other, but both wonder what A finds so congenial in
the other. The truth is that this personal equation, as we call it, in
each cannot be made the subject of mathematical calculation. Human
relations will not bend to it. And yet we keep blundering along as if
they would. We are always sure, in our letter of introduction, that this
friend will be congenial to the other, because we are fond of both.
Sometimes this happens, but half the time we should be more successful in
bringing people into accord if we gave a letter of introduction to a
person we do not know, to be delivered to one we have never seen. On the
face of it this is as absurd as it is for a politician to indorse the
application of a person he does not know for an office the duties of
which he is unacquainted with; but it is scarcely less absurd than the
expectation that men and women can be treated like mathematical units and
equivalents. Upon the theory that they can, rest the present grotesque
schemes of Nationalism.
In saying all this the Drawer is well aware that it subjects itself to
the charge of being commonplace, but it is precisely the commonplace that
this essay seeks to defend. Great is the power of the commonplace. "My
friends," says the preacher, in an impressive manner, "Alexander died;
Napoleon died; you will all die!" This profound remark, so true, so
thoughtful, creates a deep sensation. It is deepened by the statement
that "man is a moral being." The profundity of such startling assertions
cows the spirit; they appeal to the universal consciousness, and we bow
to the genius that delivers them. "How true!" we exclaim, and go away
with an enlarged sense of our own capacity for the comprehension of deep
thought. Our conceit is flattered. Do we not like the books that raise us
to the great level of the commonplace, whereon we move with a sense of
power? Did not Mr. Tupper, that sweet, melodious shepherd of the
undisputed, lead about vast flocks of sheep over the satisfying plain of
mediocrity? Was there ever a greater exhibition of power, while it
lasted? How long did "The Country Parson" feed an eager world with
rhetorical statements of that which it already knew? The thinner this
sort of thing is spread out, the more surface it covers, of course. What
is so captivating and popular as a book of essays which gathers together
and arranges a lot of facts out of histories and cyclopaedias, set forth
in the form of conversations that any one could have taken part in? Is
not this book pleasing because it is commonplace? And is this because we
do not like to be insulted with originality, or because in our experience
it is only the commonly accepted which is true? The statesman or the poet
who launches out unmindful of these conditions will be likely to come to
grief in her generation. Will not the wise novelist seek to encounter the
least intellectual resistance?
Should one take a cynical view of mankind because he perceives this great
power of the commonplace? Not at all. He should recognize and respect
this power. He may even say that it is this power that makes the world go
on as smoothly and contentedly as it does, on the whole. Woe to us, is
the thought of Carlyle, when a thinker is let loose in this world! He
becomes a cause of uneasiness, and a source of rage very often. But his
power is limited. He filters through a few minds, until gradually his
ideas become commonplace enough to be powerful. We draw our supply of
water from reservoirs, not from torrents. Probably the man who first said
that the line of rectitude corresponds with the line of enjoyment was
disliked as well as disbelieved. But how impressive now is the idea that
virtue and happiness are twins!
Perhaps it is true that the commonplace needs no defense, since everybody
takes it in as naturally as milk, and thrives on it. Beloved and read and
followed is the writer or the preacher of commonplace. But is not the
sunshine common, and the bloom of May? Why struggle with these things in
literature and in life? Why not settle down upon the formula that to be
platitudinous is to be happy?
THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS
It would be the pity of the world to destroy it, because it would be next
to impossible to make another holiday as good as Christmas. Perhaps there
is no danger, but the American people have developed an unexpected
capacity for destroying things; they can destroy anything. They have even
invented a phrase for it--running a thing into the ground. They have
perfected the art of making so much of a thing as to kill it; they can
magnify a man or a recreation or an institution to death. And they do it
with such a hearty good-will and enjoyment. Their motto is that you
cannot have too much of a good thing. They have almost made funerals
unpopular by over-elaboration and display, especially what are called
public funerals, in which an effort is made to confer great distinction
on the dead. So far has it been carried often that there has been a
reaction of popular sentiment and people have wished the man were alive.
We prosecute everything so vigorously that we speedily either wear it out
or wear ourselves out on it, whether it is a game, or a festival, or a
holiday. We can use up any sport or game ever invented quicker than any
other people. We can practice anything, like a vegetable diet, for
instance, to an absurd conclusion with more vim than any other nation.
This trait has its advantages; nowhere else will a delusion run so fast,
and so soon run up a tree--another of our happy phrases. There is a
largeness and exuberance about us which run even into our ordinary
phraseology. The sympathetic clergyman, coming from the bedside of a
parishioner dying of dropsy, says, with a heavy sigh, "The poor fellow is
just swelling away."
Is Christmas swelling away? If it is not, it is scarcely our fault. Since
the American nation fairly got hold of the holiday--in some parts of the
country, as in New England, it has been universal only about fifty
years--we have made it hum, as we like to say. We have appropriated the
English conviviality, the German simplicity, the Roman pomp, and we have
added to it an element of expense in keeping with our own greatness. Is
anybody beginning to feel it a burden, this sweet festival of charity and
good-will, and to look forward to it with apprehension? Is the time
approaching when we shall want to get somebody to play it for us, like
base-ball? Anything that interrupts the ordinary flow of life, introduces
into it, in short, a social cyclone that upsets everything for a
fortnight, may in time be as hard to bear as that festival of housewives
called housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear as they do
a panic in business. Taking into account the present preparations for
Christmas, and the time it takes to recover from it, we are
beginning--are we not?--to consider it one of the most serious events of
modern life.
The Drawer is led into these observations out of its love for Christmas.
It is impossible to conceive of any holiday that could take its place,
nor indeed would it seem that human wit could invent another so adapted
to humanity. The obvious intention of it is to bring together, for a
season at least, all men in the exercise of a common charity and a
feeling of good-will, the poor and the rich, the successful and the
unfortunate, that all the world may feel that in the time called the
Truce of God the thing common to all men is the best thing in life. How
will it suit this intention, then, if in our way of exaggerated
ostentation of charity the distinction between rich and poor is made to
appear more marked than on ordinary days? Blessed are those that expect
nothing. But are there not an increasing multitude of persons in the
United States who have the most exaggerated expectations of personal
profit on Christmas Day? Perhaps it is not quite so bad as this, but it
is safe to say that what the children alone expect to receive, in money
value would absorb the national surplus, about which so much fuss is
made. There is really no objection to this--the terror of the surplus is
a sort of nightmare in the country--except that it destroys the
simplicity of the festival, and belittles small offerings that have their
chief value in affection. And it points inevitably to the creation of a
sort of Christmas "Trust"--the modern escape out of ruinous competition.
When the expense of our annual charity becomes so great that the poor are
discouraged from sharing in it, and the rich even feel it a burden, there
would seem to be no way but the establishment of neighborhood "Trusts" in
order to equalize both cost and distribution. Each family could buy a
share according to its means, and the division on Christmas Day would
create a universal satisfaction in profit sharing--that is, the rich
would get as much as the poor, and the rivalry of ostentation would be
quieted. Perhaps with the money question a little subdued, and the female
anxieties of the festival allayed, there would be more room for the
development of that sweet spirit of brotherly kindness, or all-embracing
charity, which we know underlies this best festival of all the ages. Is
this an old sermon? The Drawer trusts that it is, for there can be
nothing new in the preaching of simplicity.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS
It is difficult enough to keep the world straight without the
interposition of fiction. But the conduct of the novelists and the
painters makes the task of the conservators of society doubly perplexing.
Neither the writers nor the artists have a due sense of the
responsibilities of their creations. The trouble appears to arise from
the imitativeness of the race. Nature herself seems readily to fall into
imitation. It was noticed by the friends of nature that when the peculiar
coal-tar colors were discovered, the same faded, aesthetic, and sometimes
sickly colors began to appear in the ornamental flower-beds and masses of
foliage plants. It was hardly fancy that the flowers took the colors of
the ribbons and stuffs of the looms, and that the same instant nature and
art were sicklied o'er with the same pale hues of fashion. If this
relation of nature and art is too subtle for comprehension, there is
nothing fanciful in the influence of the characters in fiction upon
social manners and morals. To convince ourselves of this, we do not need
to recall the effect of Werther, of Childe Harold, and of Don Juan, and
the imitation of their sentimentality, misanthropy, and adventure, down
to the copying of the rakishness of the loosely-knotted necktie and the
broad turn-over collar. In our own generation the heroes and heroines of
fiction begin to appear in real life, in dress and manner, while they are
still warm from the press. The popular heroine appears on the street in a
hundred imitations as soon as the popular mind apprehends her traits in
the story. We did not know the type of woman in the poems of the
aesthetic school and on the canvas of Rossetti--the red-haired, wide-eyed
child of passion and emotion, in lank clothes, enmeshed in spider-webs
--but so quickly was she multiplied in real life that she seemed to have
stepped from the book and the frame, ready-made, into the street and the
drawing-room. And there is nothing wonderful about this. It is a truism
to say that the genuine creations in fiction take their places in general
apprehension with historical characters, and sometimes they live more
vividly on the printed page and on canvas than the others in their pale,
contradictory, and incomplete lives. The characters of history we seldom
agree about, and are always reconstructing on new information; but the
characters of fiction are subject to no such vicissitudes.
The importance of this matter is hardly yet perceived. Indeed, it is
unreasonable that it should be, when parents, as a rule, have so slight a
feeling of responsibility for the sort of children they bring into the
world. In the coming scientific age this may be changed, and society may
visit upon a grandmother the sins of her grandchildren, recognizing her
responsibility to the very end of the line. But it is not strange that in
the apathy on this subject the novelists should be careless and
inconsiderate as to the characters they produce, either as ideals or
examples. They know that the bad example is more likely to be copied than
to be shunned, and that the low ideal, being easy to, follow, is more
likely to be imitated than the high ideal. But the novelists have too
little sense of responsibility in this respect, probably from an
inadequate conception of their power. Perhaps the most harmful sinners
are not those who send into the world of fiction the positively wicked
and immoral, but those who make current the dull, the commonplace, and
the socially vulgar. For most readers the wicked character is repellant;
but the commonplace raises less protest, and is soon deemed harmless,
while it is most demoralizing. An underbred book--that is, a book in
which the underbred characters are the natural outcome of the author's
own, mind and apprehension of life--is worse than any possible epidemic;
for while the epidemic may kill a number of useless or vulgar people, the
book will make a great number. The keen observer must have noticed the
increasing number of commonplace, undiscriminating people of low
intellectual taste in the United States. These are to a degree the result
of the feeble, underbred literature (so called) that is most hawked
about, and most accessible, by cost and exposure, to the greater number
of people. It is easy to distinguish the young ladies--many of them
beautifully dressed, and handsome on first acquaintance--who have been
bred on this kind of book. They are betrayed by their speech, their
taste, their manners. Yet there is a marked public insensibility about
this. We all admit that the scrawny young woman, anaemic and physically
undeveloped, has not had proper nourishing food: But we seldom think that
the mentally-vulgar girl, poverty-stricken in ideas, has been starved by
a thin course of diet on anaemic books. The girls are not to blame if
they are as vapid and uninteresting as the ideal girls they have been
associating with in the books they have read. The responsibility is with
the novelist and the writer of stories, the chief characteristic of which
is vulgar commonplace.
Probably when the Great Assize is held one of the questions asked will
be, "Did you, in America, ever write stories for children?" What a
quaking of knees there will be! For there will stand the victims of this
sort of literature, who began in their tender years to enfeeble their
minds with the wishy-washy flood of commonplace prepared for them by dull
writers and commercial publishers, and continued on in those so-called
domestic stories (as if domestic meant idiotic) until their minds were
diluted to that degree that they could not act upon anything that offered
the least resistance. Beginning with the pepsinized books, they must
continue with them, and the dull appetite by-and-by must be stimulated
with a spice of vulgarity or a little pepper of impropriety. And
fortunately for their nourishment in this kind, the dullest writers can
be indecent.
Unfortunately the world is so ordered that the person of the feeblest
constitution can communicate a contagious disease. And these people, bred
on this pabulum, in turn make books. If one, it is now admitted, can do
nothing else in this world, he can write, and so the evil widens and
widens. No art is required, nor any selection, nor any ideality, only
capacity for increasing the vacuous commonplace in life. A princess born
may have this, or the leader of cotillons. Yet in the judgment the
responsibility will rest upon the writers who set the copy.
THE CAP AND GOWN
One of the burning questions now in the colleges for the higher education
of women is whether the undergraduates shall wear the cap and gown. The
subject is a delicate one, and should not be confused with the broader
one, what is the purpose of the higher education? Some hold that the
purpose is to enable a woman to dispense with marriage, while others
maintain that it is to fit a woman for the higher duties of the married
life. The latter opinion will probably prevail, for it has nature on its
side, and the course of history, and the imagination. But meantime the
point of education is conceded, and whether a girl is to educate herself
into single or double blessedness need not interfere with the
consideration of the habit she is to wear during her college life. That
is to be determined by weighing a variety of reasons.
Not the least of these is the consideration whether the cap-and-gown
habit is becoming. If it is not becoming, it will not go, not even by an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States; for woman's dress
obeys always the higher law. Masculine opinion is of no value on this
point, and the Drawer is aware of the fact that if it thinks the cap and
gown becoming, it may imperil the cap-and-gown cause to say so; but the
cold truth is that the habit gives a plain girl distinction, and a
handsome girl gives the habit distinction. So that, aside from the
mysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law unto
herself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit.
There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learning
with womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. On the
other hand, all this may go for nothing with the girl herself, who is
conscious of the possession of quite other powers and attractions in a
varied and constantly changing toilet, which can reflect her moods from
hour to hour. So that if it is admitted that this habit is almost
universally becoming today, it might, in the inscrutable depths of the
feminine nature--the something that education never can and never should
change--be irksome tomorrow, and we can hardly imagine what a blight to a
young spirit there might be in three hundred and sixty-five days of
uniformity.
The devotees of the higher education will perhaps need to approach the
subject from another point of view--namely, what they are willing to
surrender in order to come into a distinctly scholastic influence. The
cap and gown are scholastic emblems. Primarily they marked the student,
and not alliance with any creed or vows to any religious order. They
belong to the universities of learning, and today they have no more
ecclesiastic meaning than do the gorgeous robes of the Oxford chancellor
and vice-chancellor and the scarlet hood. From the scholarly side, then,
if not from the dress side, there is much to be said for the cap and
gown. They are badges of devotion, for the time being, to an intellectual
life.
They help the mind in its effort to set itself apart to unworldly
pursuits; they are indications of separateness from the prevailing
fashions and frivolities. The girl who puts on the cap and gown devotes
herself to the society which is avowedly in pursuit of a larger
intellectual sympathy and a wider intellectual life. The enduring of this
habit will have a confirming influence on her purposes, and help to keep
her up to them. It is like the uniform to the soldier or the veil to the
nun--a sign of separation and devotion. It is difficult in this age to
keep any historic consciousness, any proper relations to the past. In the
cap and gown the girl will at least feel that she is in the line of the
traditions of pure learning. And there is also something of order and
discipline in the uniforming of a community set apart for an unworldly
purpose. Is it believed that three or four years of the kind of
separateness marked by this habit in the life of a girl will rob her of
any desirable womanly quality?
The cap and gown are only an emphasis of the purpose to devote a certain
period to the higher life, and if they cannot be defended, then we may
begin to be skeptical about the seriousness of the intention of a higher
education. If the school is merely a method of passing the time until a
certain event in the girl's life, she had better dress as if that event
were the only one worth considering. But if she wishes to fit herself for
the best married life, she may not disdain the help of the cap and gown
in devoting herself to the highest culture. Of course education has its
dangers, and the regalia of scholarship may increase them. While our
cap-and-gown divinity is walking in the groves of Academia, apart from
the ways of men, her sisters outside may be dancing and dressing into the
affections of the marriageable men. But this is not the worst of it. The
university girl may be educating herself out of sympathy with the
ordinary possible husband. But this will carry its own cure. The educated
girl will be so much more attractive in the long-run, will have so many
more resources for making a life companionship agreeable, that she will
be more and more in demand. And the young men, even those not expecting
to take up a learned profession, will see the advantage of educating
themselves up to the cap-and-gown level. We know that it is the office of
the university to raise the standard of the college, and of the college
to raise the standard of the high school. It will be the inevitable
result that these young ladies, setting themselves apart for a period to
the intellectual life, will raise the standard of the young men, and of
married life generally. And there is nothing supercilious in the
invitation of the cap-and-gown brigade to the young men to come up
higher.
There is one humiliating objection made to the cap and gown-made by
members of the gentle sex themselves--which cannot be passed by. It is of
such a delicate nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in a
vital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is said
that the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal the
makeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap and
gown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of rich
and poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual level.
Perhaps the sex is not perfect; it may be that there are slovens (it is a
brutal word) in that sex which is our poetic image of purity. But a neat
and self-respecting girl will no more be slovenly under a scholastic gown
than under any outward finery. If it is true that the sex would take
cover in this way, and is liable to run down at the heel when it has a
chance, then to the "examination" will have to be added a periodic
"inspection," such as the West-Pointers submit to in regard to their
uniforms. For the real idea of the cap and gown is to encourage
discipline, order, and neatness. We fancy that it is the mission of woman
in this generation to show the world that the tendency of woman to an
intellectual life is not, as it used to be said it was, to untidy habits.
A TENDENCY OF THE AGE
This ingenious age, when studied, seems not less remarkable for its
division of labor than for the disposition of people to shift labor on to
others' shoulders. Perhaps it is only another aspect of the spirit of
altruism, a sort of backhanded vicariousness. In taking an inventory of
tendencies, this demands some attention.
The notion appears to be spreading that there must be some way by which
one can get a good intellectual outfit without much personal effort.
There are many schemes of education which encourage this idea. If one
could only hit upon the right "electives," he could become a scholar with
very little study, and without grappling with any of the real
difficulties in the way of an education. It is no more a short-cut we
desire, but a road of easy grades, with a locomotive that will pull our
train along while we sit in a palace-car at ease. The discipline to be
obtained by tackling an obstacle and overcoming it we think of small
value. There must be some way of attaining the end of cultivation without
much labor. We take readily to proprietary medicines. It is easier to
dose with these than to exercise ordinary prudence about our health. And
we readily believe the doctors of learning when they assure us that we
can acquire a new language by the same method by which we can restore
bodily vigor: take one small patent-right volume in six easy lessons,
without even the necessity of "shaking," and without a regular doctor,
and we shall know the language. Some one else has done all the work for
us, and we only need to absorb. It is pleasing to see how this theory is
getting to be universally applied. All knowledge can be put into a kind
of pemican, so that we can have it condensed. Everything must be chopped
up, epitomized, put in short sentences, and italicized. And we have
primers for science, for history, so that we can acquire all the
information we need in this world in a few hasty bites. It is an
admirable saving of time-saving of time being more important in this
generation than the saving of ourselves.
And the age is so intellectually active, so eager to know! If we wish to
know anything, instead of digging for it ourselves, it is much easier to
flock all together to some lecturer who has put all the results into an
hour, and perhaps can throw them all upon a screen, so that we can
acquire all we want by merely using the eyes, and bothering ourselves
little about what is said. Reading itself is almost too much of an
effort. We hire people to read for us--to interpret, as we call it
--Browning and Ibsen, even Wagner. Every one is familiar with the
pleasure and profit of "recitations," of "conversations" which are
monologues. There is something fascinating in the scheme of getting
others to do our intellectual labor for us, to attempt to fill up our
minds as if they were jars. The need of the mind for nutriment is like
the need of the body, but our theory is that it can be satisfied in a
different way. There was an old belief that in order that we should enjoy
food, and that it should perform its function of assimilation, we must
work for it, and that the exertion needed to earn it brought the appetite
that made it profitable to the system. We still have the idea that we
must eat for ourselves, and that we cannot delegate this performance, as
we do the filling of the mind, to some one else. We may have ceased to
relish the act of eating, as we have ceased to relish the act of
studying, but we cannot yet delegate it, even although our power of
digesting food for the body has become almost as feeble as the power of
acquiring and digesting food for the mind.
It is beautiful to witness our reliance upon others. The house may be
full of books, the libraries may be as free and as unstrained of
impurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or study
anything we resort to a club. We gather together a number of persons of
like capacity with ourselves. A subject which we might grapple with and
run down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library,
gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by
personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club,
expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity with
it. A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can have
read to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort.
Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas? Oh yes, when there are
ideas to exchange. Is there nothing stimulating in the conflict of mind
with mind? Oh yes, when there is any mind for a conflict. But the mind
does not grow without personal effort and conflict and struggle with
itself. It is a living organism, and not at all like a jar or other
receptacle for fluids. The physiologists say that what we eat will not do
us much good unless we chew it. By analogy we may presume that the mind
is not greatly benefited by what it gets without considerable exercise of
the mind.
Still, it is a beautiful theory that we can get others to do our reading
and thinking, and stuff our minds for us. It may be that psychology will
yet show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way. But just
now the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge--which
every intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate--of being
content with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to others
for our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of a
book for the book itself, or--a refinement on that--with a review of the
reviews. The method is still crude. Perhaps we may expect a further
development of the "slot" machine. By dropping a cent in the slot one can
get his weight, his age, a piece of chewing-gum, a bit of candy, or a
shock that will energize his nervous system. Why not get from a similar
machine a "good business education," or an "interpretation" of Browning,
or a new language, or a knowledge of English literature? But even this
would be crude. We have hopes of something from electricity. There ought
to be somewhere a reservoir of knowledge, connected by wires with every
house, and a professional switch-tender, who, upon the pressure of a
button in any house, could turn on the intellectual stream desired.
--[Prophecy of the Internet of the year 2000 from 110 years ago. D.W.]
--There must be discovered in time a method by which not only information
but intellectual life can be infused into the system by an electric
current. It would save a world of trouble and expense. For some clubs
even are a weariness, and it costs money to hire other people to read and
think for us.
A LOCOED NOVELIST
Either we have been indulging in an expensive mistake, or a great foreign
novelist who preaches the gospel of despair is locoed.
This word, which may be new to most of our readers, has long been current
in the Far West, and is likely to be adopted into the language, and
become as indispensable as the typic words taboo and tabooed, which
Herman Melville gave us some forty years ago. There grows upon the
deserts and the cattle ranges of the Rockies a plant of the leguminosae
family, with a purple blossom, which is called the 'loco'. It is sweet to
the taste; horses and cattle are fond of it, and when they have once
eaten it they prefer it to anything else, and often refuse other food.
But the plant is poisonous, or, rather, to speak exactly, it is a weed of
insanity. Its effect upon the horse seems to be mental quite as much as
physical. He behaves queerly, he is full of whims; one would say he was
"possessed." He takes freaks, he trembles, he will not go in certain
places, he will not pull straight, his mind is evidently affected, he is
mildly insane. In point of fact, he is ruined; that is to say, he is
'locoed'. Further indulgence in the plant results in death, but rarely
does an animal recover from even one eating of the insane weed.
The shepherd on the great sheep ranges leads an absolutely isolated life.
For weeks, sometimes for months together, he does not see a human being.
His only companions are his dogs and the three or four thousand sheep he
is herding. All day long, under the burning sun, he follows the herd over
the rainless prairie, as it nibbles here and there the short grass and
slowly gathers its food. At night he drives the sheep back to the corral,
and lies down alone in his hut. He speaks to no one; he almost forgets
how to speak. Day and night he hears no sound except the melancholy,
monotonous bleat, bleat of the sheep. It becomes intolerable. The animal
stupidity of the herd enters into him. Gradually he loses his mind. They
say that he is locoed. The insane asylums of California contain many
shepherds.
But the word locoed has come to have a wider application than to the poor
shepherds or the horses and cattle that have eaten the loco. Any one who
acts queerly, talks strangely, is visionary without being actually a
lunatic, who is what would be called elsewhere a "crank," is said to be
locoed. It is a term describing a shade of mental obliquity and queerness
something short of irresponsible madness, and something more than
temporarily "rattled" or bewildered for the moment. It is a good word,
and needed to apply to many people who have gone off into strange ways,
and behave as if they had eaten some insane plant--the insane plant being
probably a theory in the mazes of which they have wandered until they are
lost.
Perhaps the loco does not grow in Russia, and the Prophet of
Discouragement may never have eaten of it; perhaps he is only like the
shepherd, mainly withdrawn from human intercourse and sympathy in a
morbid mental isolation, hearing only the bleat, bleat, bleat of the
'muxhiks' in the dullness of the steppes, wandering round in his own
sated mind until he has lost all clew to life. Whatever the cause may be,
clearly he is 'locoed'. All his theories have worked out to the
conclusion that the world is a gigantic mistake, love is nothing but
animality, marriage is immorality; according to astronomical calculations
this teeming globe and all its life must end some time; and why not now?
There shall be no more marriage, no more children; the present population
shall wind up its affairs with decent haste, and one by one quit the
scene of their failure, and avoid all the worry of a useless struggle.
This gospel of the blessedness of extinction has come too late to enable
us to profit by it in our decennial enumeration. How different the census
would have been if taken in the spirit of this new light! How much
bitterness, how much hateful rivalry would have been spared! We should
then have desired a reduction of the population, not an increase of it.
There would have been a pious rivalry among all the towns and cities on
the way to the millennium of extinction to show the least number of
inhabitants; and those towns would have been happiest which could exhibit
not only a marked decline in numbers, but the greater number of old
people. Beautiful St. Paul would have held a thanksgiving service, and
invited the Minneapolis enumerators to the feast, Kansas City and St.
Louis and San Francisco, and a hundred other places, would not have
desired a recount, except, perhaps, for overestimate; they would not have
said that thousands were away at the sea or in the mountains, but, on the
contrary, that thousands who did not belong there, attracted by the
salubrity of the climate, and the desire to injure the town's reputation,
had crowded in there in census time. The newspapers, instead of calling
on people to send in the names of the unenumerated, would have rejoiced
at the small returns, as they would have done if the census had been for
the purpose of levying the federal tax upon each place according to its
population. Chicago--well, perhaps the Prophet of the Steppes would have
made an exception of Chicago, and been cynically delighted to push it on
its way of increase, aggregation, and ruin.
But instead of this, the strain of anxiety was universal and
heart-rending. So much depended upon swelling the figures. The tension
would have been relieved if our faces were all set towards extinction,
and the speedy evacuation of this unsatisfactory globe. The writer met
recently, in the Colorado desert of Arizona, a forlorn census-taker who
had been six weeks in the saddle, roaming over the alkali plains in order
to gratify the vanity of Uncle Sam. He had lost his reckoning, and did
not know the day of the week or of the month. In all the vast territory,
away up to the Utah line, over which he had wandered, he met human beings
(excluding "Indians and others not taxed ") so rarely that he was in
danger of being locoed. He was almost in despair when, two days before,
he had a windfall, which raised his general average in the form of a
woman with twenty-six children, and he was rejoicing that he should be
able to turn in one hundred and fifty people. Alas, the revenue the
government will derive from these half-nomads will never pay the cost of
enumerating them.
And, alas again, whatever good showing we may make, we shall wish it were
larger; the more people we have the more we shall want. In this direction
there is no end, any more than there is to life. If extinction, and not
life and growth, is the better rule, what a costly mistake we have been
making!
AS WE GO
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS: (28 short studies)
OUR PRESIDENT
THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN
INTERESTING GIRLS
GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE
THE ADVENT OF CANDOR
THE AMERICAN MAN
THE ELECTRIC WAY
CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?
A LEISURE CLASS
WEATHER AND CHARACTER
BORN WITH AN "EGO"
JUVENTUS MUNDI
A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE
THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE
GIVING AS A LUXURY
CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS
THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE
REPOSE IN ACTIVITY
WOMEN--IDEAL AND REAL
THE ART OF IDLENESS
IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION
THE TALL GIRL
THE DEADLY DIARY
THE WHISTLING GIRL
BORN OLD AND RICH
THE "OLD SOLDIER"
THE ISLAND OF BIMINI
JUNE
OUR PRESIDENT
We are so much accustomed to kings and queens and other privileged
persons of that sort in this world that it is only on reflection that we
wonder how they became so. The mystery is not their continuance, but how
did they get a start? We take little help from studying the bees
--originally no one could have been born a queen. There must have been
not only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent some
way expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions because
they were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But the
descendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when they
are neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery.
The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs,
and the consent of mankind to be led in government and in fashion by
those to whom none of the original conditions of leadership attach is a
philosophical anomaly. How many of the living occupants of thrones,
dukedoms, earldoms, and such high places are in position on their own
merits, or would be put there by common consent? Referring their origin
to some sort of an election, their continuance seems to rest simply on
forbearance. Here in America we are trying a new experiment; we have
adopted the principle of election, but we have supplemented it with the
equally authoritative right of deposition. And it is interesting to see
how it has worked for a hundred years, for it is human nature to like to
be set up, but not to like to be set down. If in our elections we do not
always get the best--perhaps few elections ever did--we at least do not
perpetuate forever in privilege our mistakes or our good hits.
The celebration in New York, in 1889, of the inauguration of Washington
was an instructive spectacle. How much of privilege had been gathered and
perpetuated in a century? Was it not an occasion that emphasized our
republican democracy? Two things were conspicuous. One was that we did
not honor a family, or a dynasty, or a title, but a character; and the
other was that we did not exalt any living man, but simply the office of
President. It was a demonstration of the power of the people to create
their own royalty, and then to put it aside when they have done with it.
It was difficult to see how greater honors could have been paid to any
man than were given to the President when he embarked at Elizabethport
and advanced, through a harbor crowded with decorated vessels, to the
great city, the wharves and roofs of which were black with human beings
--a holiday city which shook with the tumult of the popular welcome.
Wherever he went he drew the swarms in the streets as the moon draws the
tide. Republican simplicity need not fear comparison with any royal
pageant when the President was received at the Metropolitan, and, in a
scene of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering of a thousand
years instead of a century, stood upon the steps of the "dais" to greet
the devoted Centennial Quadrille, which passed before him with the
courageous five, 'Imperator, morituri te salutamus'. We had done it--we,
the people; that was our royalty. Nobody had imposed it on us. It was not
even selected out of four hundred. We had taken one of the common people
and set him up there, creating for the moment also a sort of royal family
and a court for a background, in a splendor just as imposing for the
passing hour as an imperial spectacle. We like to show that we can do it,
and we like to show also that we can undo it. For at the banquet, where
the Elected ate his dinner, not only in the presence of, but with,
representatives of all the people of all the States, looked down on by
the acknowledged higher power in American life, there sat also with him
two men who had lately been in his great position, the centre only a
little while ago, as he was at the moment, of every eye in the republic,
now only common citizens without a title, without any insignia of rank,
able to transmit to posterity no family privilege. If our hearts swelled
with pride that we could create something just as good as royalty, that
the republic had as many men of distinguished appearance, as much beauty,
and as much brilliance of display as any traditional government, we also
felicitated ourselves that we could sweep it all away by a vote and
reproduce it with new actors next day.
It must be confessed that it was a people's affair. If at any time there
was any idea that it could be controlled only by those who represented
names honored for a hundred years, or conspicuous by any social
privilege, the idea was swamped in popular feeling. The names that had
been elected a hundred years ago did not stay elected unless the present
owners were able to distinguish themselves. There is nothing so to be
coveted in a country as the perpetuity of honorable names, and the
"centennial" showed that we are rich in those that have been honorably
borne, but it also showed that the century has gathered no privilege that
can count upon permanence.
But there is another aspect of the situation that is quite as serious and
satisfactory. Now that the ladies of the present are coming to dress as
ladies dressed a hundred years ago, we can make an adequate comparison of
beauty. Heaven forbid that we should disparage the women of the
Revolutionary period! They looked as well as they could under all the
circumstances of a new country and the hardships of an early settlement.
Some of them looked exceedingly well--there were beauties in those days
as there were giants in Old Testament times. The portraits that have come
down to us of some of them excite our admiration, and indeed we have a
sort of tradition of the loveliness of the women of that remote period.
The gallant men of the time exalted them. Yet it must be admitted by any
one who witnessed the public and private gatherings of April, 1889, in
New York, contributed to as they were by women from every State, and who
is unprejudiced by family associations, that the women of America seem
vastly improved in personal appearance since the days when George
Washington was a lover: that is to say, the number of beautiful women is
greater in proportion to the population, and their beauty and charm are
not inferior to those which have been so much extolled in the
Revolutionary time. There is no doubt that if George Washington could
have been at the Metropolitan ball he would have acknowledged this, and
that while he might have had misgivings about some of our political
methods, he would have been more proud than ever to be still acknowledged
the Father of his Country.
THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN
A fair correspondent--has the phrase an old-time sound?--thinks we should
pay more attention to men. In a revolutionary time, when great questions
are in issue, minor matters, which may nevertheless be very important,
are apt to escape the consideration they deserve. We share our
correspondent's interest in men, but must plead the pressure of
circumstances. When there are so many Woman's Journals devoted to the
wants and aspirations of women alone, it is perhaps time to think of
having a Man's journal, which should try to keep his head above-water in
the struggle for social supremacy. When almost every number of the
leading periodicals has a paper about Woman--written probably by a woman
--Woman Today, Woman Yesterday, Woman Tomorrow; when the inquiry is daily
made in the press as to what is expected of woman, and the new
requirements laid upon her by reason of her opportunities, her entrance
into various occupations, her education--the impartial observer is likely
to be confused, if he is not swept away by the rising tide of femininity
in modern life.
But this very superiority of interest in the future of women is a warning
to man to look about him, and see where in this tide he is going to land,
if he will float or go ashore, and what will be his character and his
position in the new social order. It will not do for him to sit on the
stump of one of his prerogatives that woman has felled, and say with
Brahma, "They reckon ill who leave me out," for in the day of the
Subjection of Man it may be little consolation that he is left in.
It must be confessed that man has had a long inning. Perhaps it is true
that he owed this to his physical strength, and that he will only keep it
hereafter by intellectual superiority, by the dominance of mind. And how
in this generation is he equipping himself for the future? He is the
money-making animal. That is beyond dispute. Never before were there such
business men as this generation can show--Napoleons of finance,
Alexanders of adventure, Shakespeares of speculation, Porsons of
accumulation. He is great in his field, but is he leaving the
intellectual province to woman? Does he read as much as she does? Is he
becoming anything but a newspaper-made person? Is his mind getting to be
like the newspaper? Speaking generally of the mass of business men--and
the mass are business men in this country--have they any habit of reading
books? They have clubs, to be sure, but of what sort? With the exception
of a conversation club here and there, and a literary club, more or less
perfunctory, are they not mostly social clubs for comfort and idle
lounging, many of them known, as other workmen are, by their "chips"?
What sort of a book would a member make out of "Chips from my Workshop"?
Do the young men, to any extent, join in Browning clubs and Shakespeare
clubs and Dante clubs? Do they meet for the study of history, of authors,
of literary periods, for reading, and discussing what they read? Do they
in concert dig in the encyclopaedias, and write papers about the
correlation of forces, and about Savonarola, and about the Three Kings?
In fact, what sort of a hand would the Three Kings suggest to them? In
the large cities the women's clubs, pursuing literature, art, languages,
botany, history, geography, geology, mythology, are innumerable. And
there is hardly a village in the land that has not from one to six clubs
of young girls who meet once a week for some intellectual purpose. What
are the young men of the villages and the cities doing meantime? How are
they preparing to meet socially these young ladies who are cultivating
their minds? Are they adapting themselves to the new conditions? Or are
they counting, as they always have done, on the adaptability of women, on
the facility with which the members of the bright sex can interest
themselves in base-ball and the speed of horses and the chances of the
"street"? Is it comfortable for the young man, when the talk is about the
last notable book, or the philosophy of the popular poet or novelist, to
feel that laughing eyes are sounding his ignorance?
Man is a noble creation, and he has fine and sturdy qualities which
command the admiration of the other sex, but how will it be when that
sex, by reason of superior acquirements, is able to look down on him
intellectually? It used to be said that women are what men wish to have
them, that they endeavored to be the kind of women who would win
masculine admiration. How will it be if women have determined to make
themselves what it pleases them to be, and to cultivate their powers in
the expectation of pleasing men, if they indulge any such expectation, by
their higher qualities only? This is not a fanciful possibility. It is
one that young men will do well to ponder. It is easy to ridicule the
literary and economic and historical societies, and the naive courage
with which young women in them attack the gravest problems, and to say
that they are only a passing fashion, like decorative art and a mode of
dress. But a fashion is not to be underestimated; and when a fashion
continues and spreads like this one, it is significant of a great change
going on in society. And it is to be noticed that this fashion is
accompanied by other phenomena as interesting. There is scarcely an
occupation, once confined almost exclusively to men, in which women are
not now conspicuous. Never before were there so many women who are
superior musicians, performers themselves and organizers of musical
societies; never before so many women who can draw well; never so many
who are successful in literature, who write stories, translate, compile,
and are acceptable workers in magazines and in publishing houses; and
never before were so many women reading good books, and thinking about
them, and talking about them, and trying to apply the lessons in them to
the problems of their own lives, which are seen not to end with marriage.
A great deal of this activity, crude much of it, is on the intellectual
side, and must tell strongly by-and-by in the position of women. And the
young men will take notice that it is the intellectual force that must
dominate in life.
INTERESTING GIRLS
It seems hardly worth while to say that this would be a more interesting
country if there were more interesting people in it. But the remark is
worth consideration in a land where things are so much estimated by what
they cost. It is a very expensive country, especially so in the matter of
education, and one cannot but reflect whether the result is in proportion
to the outlay. It costs a great many thousands of dollars and over four
years of time to produce a really good base-ball player, and the time and
money invested in the production of a society young woman are not less.
No complaint is made of the cost of these schools of the higher
education; the point is whether they produce interesting people. Of
course all women are interesting. It has got pretty well noised about the
world that American women are, on the whole, more interesting than any
others. This statement is not made boastfully, but simply as a market
quotation, as one might say. They are sought for; they rule high. They
have a "way"; they know how to be fascinating, to be agreeable; they
unite freedom of manner with modesty of behavior; they are apt to have
beauty, and if they have not, they know how to make others think they
have. Probably the Greek girls in their highest development under Phidias
were never so attractive as the American girls of this period; and if we
had a Phidias who could put their charms in marble, all the antique
galleries would close up and go out of business.
But it must be understood that in regard to them, as to the dictionaries,
it is necessary to "get the best." Not all women are equally interesting,
and some of those on whom most educational money is lavished are the
least so. It can be said broadly that everybody is interesting up to a
certain point. There is no human being from whom the inquiring mind
cannot learn something. It is so with women. Some are interesting for
five minutes, some for ten, some for an hour; some are not exhausted in a
whole day; and some (and this shows the signal leniency of Providence)
are perennially entertaining, even in the presence of masculine
stupidity. Of course the radical trouble of this world is that there are
not more people who are interesting comrades, day in and day out, for a
lifetime. It is greatly to the credit of American women that so many of
them have this quality, and have developed it, unprotected, in free
competition with all countries which have been pouring in women without
the least duty laid upon their grace or beauty. We, have a tariff upon
knowledge--we try to shut out all of that by a duty on books; we have a
tariff on piety and intelligence in a duty on clergymen; we try to
exclude art by a levy on it; but we have never excluded the raw material
of beauty, and the result is that we can successfully compete in the
markets of the world.
This, however, is a digression. The reader wants to know what this
quality of being interesting has to do with girls' schools. It is
admitted that if one goes into a new place he estimates the agreeableness
of it according to the number of people it contains with whom it is a
pleasure to converse, who have either the ability to talk well or the
intelligence to listen appreciatingly even if deceivingly, whose society
has the beguiling charm that makes even natural scenery satisfactory. It
is admitted also that in our day the burden of this end of life, making
it agreeable, is mainly thrown upon women. Men make their business an
excuse for not being entertaining, or the few who cultivate the mind
(aside from the politicians, who always try to be winning) scarcely think
it worth while to contribute anything to make society bright and
engaging. Now if the girls' schools and colleges, technical and other,
merely add to the number of people who have practical training and
knowledge without personal charm, what becomes of social life? We are
impressed with the excellence of the schools and colleges for women
--impressed also with the co-educating institutions. There is no sight
more inspiring than an assemblage of four or five hundred young women
attacking literature, science, and all the arts. The grace and courage of
the attack alone are worth all it costs. All the arts and science and
literature are benefited, but one of the chief purposes that should be in
view is unattained if the young women are not made more interesting, both
to themselves and to others. Ability to earn an independent living may be
conceded to be important, health is indispensable, and beauty of face and
form are desirable; knowledge is priceless, and unselfish amiability is
above the price of rubies; but how shall we set a value, so far as the
pleasure of living is concerned, upon the power to be interesting? We
hear a good deal about the highly educated young woman with reverence,
about the emancipated young woman with fear and trembling, but what can
take the place of the interesting woman? Anxiety is this moment agitating
the minds of tens of thousands of mothers about the education of their
daughters. Suppose their education should be directed to the purpose of
making them interesting women, what a fascinating country this would be
about the year 1900.
GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE
Give the men a chance. Upon the young women of America lies a great
responsibility. The next generation will be pretty much what they choose
to make it; and what are they doing for the elevation of young men? It is
true that there are the colleges for men, which still perform a good
work--though some of them run a good deal more to a top-dressing of
accomplishments than to a sub-soiling of discipline--but these colleges
reach comparatively few. There remain the great mass who are devoted to
business and pleasure, and only get such intellectual cultivation as
society gives them or they chance to pick up in current publications. The
young women are the leisure class, consequently--so we hear--the
cultivated class. Taking a certain large proportion of our society, the
women in it toil not, neither do they spin; they do little or no domestic
work; they engage in no productive occupation. They are set apart for a
high and ennobling service--the cultivation of the mind and the rescue of
society from materialism. They are the influence that keeps life elevated
and sweet--are they not? For what other purpose are they set apart in
elegant leisure? And nobly do they climb up to the duties of their
position. They associate together in esoteric, intellectual societies.
Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge and
the broadening of the intellectual horizon. Science, languages,
literature, are their daily food. They can speak in tongues; they can
talk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticise
Shakespeare, understand Browning. There is no literature, ancient or
modern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no history
that they do not drag before the club for final judgment. In every little
village there is this intellectual stir and excitement; why, even in New
York, readings interfere with the german;--['Dances', likely referring to
the productions of the Straus family in Vienna. D.W.]--and Boston! Boston
is no longer divided into wards, but into Browning "sections."
All this is mainly the work of women. The men are sometimes admitted, are
even hired to perform and be encouraged and criticised; that is, men who
are already highly cultivated, or who are in sympathy with the noble
feminization of the age. It is a glorious movement. Its professed object
is to give an intellectual lift to society. And no doubt, unless all
reports are exaggerated, it is making our great leisure class of women
highly intellectual beings. But, encouraging as this prospect is, it
gives us pause. Who are these young women to associate with? with whom
are they to hold high converse? For life is a two-fold affair. And
meantime what is being done for the young men who are expected to share
in the high society of the future? Will not the young women by-and-by
find themselves in a lonesome place, cultivated away beyond their natural
comrades? Where will they spend their evenings? This sobering thought
suggests a duty that the young women are neglecting. We refer to the
education of the young men. It is all very well for them to form clubs
for their own advancement, and they ought not to incur the charge of
selfishness in so doing; but how much better would they fulfill their
mission if they would form special societies for the cultivation of young
men!--sort of intellectual mission bands. Bring them into the literary
circle. Make it attractive for them. Women with their attractions, not to
speak of their wiles, can do anything they set out to do. They can
elevate the entire present generation of young men, if they give their
minds to it, to care for the intellectual pursuits they care for. Give
the men a chance, and----
Musing along in this way we are suddenly pulled up by the reflection that
it is impossible to make an unqualified statement that is wholly true
about anything. What chance have I, anyway? inquires the young man who
thinks sometimes and occasionally wants to read. What sort of
leading-strings are these that I am getting into? Look at the drift of
things. Is the feminization of the world a desirable thing for a vigorous
future? Are the women, or are they not, taking all the virility out of
literature? Answer me that. All the novels are written by, for, or about
women--brought to their standard. Even Henry James, who studies the sex
untiringly, speaks about the "feminization of literature." They write
most of the newspaper correspondence--and write it for women. They are
even trying to feminize the colleges. Granted that woman is the superior
being; all the more, what chance is there for man if this sort of thing
goes on? Are you going to make a race of men on feminine fodder? And here
is the still more perplexing part of it. Unless all analysis of the
female heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like most
of all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, a
solid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is some
satisfaction and glory and interest to govern and rule in the right way,
and twist round the feminine finger. If women should succeed in reducing
or raising--of course raising--men to the feminine standard, by
feminizing society, literature, the colleges, and all that, would they
not turn on their creations--for even the Bible intimates that women are
uncertain and go in search of a Man? It is this sort of blind instinct of
the young man for preserving himself in the world that makes him so
inaccessible to the good he might get from the prevailing culture of the
leisure class.
THE ADVENT OF CANDOR
Those who are anxious about the fate of Christmas, whether it is not
becoming too worldly and too expensive a holiday to be indulged in except
by the very poor, mark with pleasure any indications that the true spirit
of the day--brotherhood and self-abnegation and charity--is infusing
itself into modern society. The sentimental Christmas of thirty years ago
could not last; in time the manufactured jollity got to be more tedious
and a greater strain on the feelings than any misfortune happening to
one's neighbor. Even for a day it was very difficult to buzz about in the
cheery manner prescribed, and the reaction put human nature in a bad
light. Nor was it much better when gradually the day became one of Great
Expectations, and the sweet spirit of it was quenched in worry or soured
in disappointment. It began to take on the aspect of a great lottery, in
which one class expected to draw in reverse proportion to what it put in,
and another class knew that it would only reap as it had sowed. The day,
blessed in its origin, and meaningless if there is a grain of selfishness
in it, was thus likely to become a sort of Clearing-house of all
obligations and assume a commercial aspect that took the heart out of
it--like the enormous receptions for paying social debts which take the
place of the old-fashioned hospitality. Everybody knew, meantime, that
the spirit of good-will, the grace of universal sympathy, was really
growing in the world, and that it was only our awkwardness that, by
striving to cram it all for a year into twenty-four hours, made it seem a
little farcical. And everybody knows that when goodness becomes
fashionable, goodness is likely to suffer a little. A virtue overdone
falls on t'other side. And a holiday that takes on such proportions that
the Express companies and the Post-office cannot handle it is in danger
of a collapse. In consideration of these things, and because, as has been
pointed out year after year, Christmas is becoming a burden, the load of
which is looked forward to with apprehension--and back on with nervous
prostration--fear has been expressed that the dearest of all holidays in
Christian lands would have to go again under a sort of Puritan protest,
or into a retreat for rest and purification. We are enabled to announce
for the encouragement of the single-minded in this best of all days, at
the close of a year which it is best not to characterize, that those who
stand upon the social watch-towers in Europe and America begin to see a
light--or, it would be better to say, to perceive a spirit--in society
which is likely to change many things, and; among others, to work a
return of Christian simplicity. As might be expected in these days, the
spirit is exhibited in the sex which is first at the wedding and last in
the hospital ward. And as might have been expected, also, this spirit is
shown by the young woman of the period, in whose hands are the issues of
the future. If she preserve her present mind long enough, Christmas will
become a day that will satisfy every human being, for the purpose of the
young woman will pervade it. The tendency of the young woman generally to
simplicity, of the American young woman to a certain restraint (at least
when abroad), to a deference to her elders, and to tradition, has been
noted. The present phenomenon is quite beyond this, and more radical. It
is, one may venture to say, an attempt to conform the inner being to the
outward simplicity. If one could suspect the young woman of taking up any
line not original, it might be guessed that the present fashion (which is
bewildering the most worldly men with a new and irresistible fascination)
was set by the self-revelations of Marie Bashkirtseff. Very likely,
however, it was a new spirit in the world, of which Marie was the first
publishing example. Its note is self-analysis, searching, unsparing,
leaving no room for the deception of self or of the world. Its leading
feature is extreme candor. It is not enough to tell the truth (that has
been told before); but one must act and tell the whole truth. One does
not put on the shirt front and the standing collar and the knotted cravat
of the other sex as a mere form; it is an act of consecration, of rigid,
simple come-out-ness into the light of truth. This noble candor will
suffer no concealments. She would not have her lover even, still more the
general world of men, think she is better, or rather other, than she is.
Not that she would like to appear a man among men, far from that; but she
wishes to talk with candor and be talked to candidly, without taking
advantage of that false shelter of sex behind which women have been
accused of dodging. If she is nothing else, she is sincere, one might say
wantonly sincere. And this lucid, candid inner life is reflected in her
dress. This is not only simple in its form, in its lines; it is severe.
To go into the shop of a European modiste is almost to put one's self
into a truthful and candid frame of mind. Those leave frivolous ideas
behind who enter here. The 'modiste' will tell the philosopher that it is
now the fashion to be severe; in a word, it is 'fesch'. Nothing can go
beyond that. And it symbolizes the whole life, its self-examination,
earnestness, utmost candor in speech and conduct.
The statesman who is busy about his tariff and his reciprocity, and his
endeavor to raise money like potatoes, may little heed and much
undervalue this advent of candor into the world as a social force. But
the philosopher will make no such mistake. He knows that they who build
without woman build in vain, and that she is the great regenerator, as
she is the great destroyer. He knows too much to disregard the gravity of
any fashionable movement. He knows that there is no power on earth that
can prevent the return of the long skirt. And that if the young woman has
decided to be severe and candid and frank with herself and in her
intercourse with others, we must submit and thank God.
And what a gift to the world is this for the Christmas season! The
clear-eyed young woman of the future, always dear and often an anxiety,
will this year be an object of enthusiasm.
THE AMERICAN MAN
The American man only develops himself and spreads himself and grows "for
all he is worth" in the Great West. He is more free and limber there, and
unfolds those generous peculiarities and largenesses of humanity which
never blossomed before. The "environment" has much to do with it. The
great spaces over which he roams contribute to the enlargement of his
mental horizon. There have been races before who roamed the illimitable
desert, but they traveled on foot or on camelback, and were limited in
their range. There was nothing continental about them, as there is about
our railway desert travelers, who swing along through thousands of miles
of sand and sage-bush with a growing contempt for time and space. But
expansive and great as these people have become under the new conditions,
we have a fancy that the development of the race has only just begun, and
that the future will show us in perfection a kind of man new to the
world. Out somewhere on the Santa Fe route, where the desert of one day
was like the desert of the day before, and the Pullman car rolls and
swings over the wide waste beneath the blue sky day after day, under its
black flag of smoke, in the early gray of morning, when the men were
waiting their turns at the ablution bowls, a slip of a boy, perhaps aged
seven, stood balancing himself on his little legs, clad in
knicker-bockers, biding his time, with all the nonchalance of an old
campaigner. "How did you sleep, cap?" asked a well-meaning elderly
gentleman. "Well, thank you," was the dignified response; "as I always do
on a sleeping-car." Always does? Great horrors! Hardly out of his
swaddling-clothes, and yet he always sleeps well in a sleeper! Was he
born on the wheels? was he cradled in a Pullman? He has always been in
motion, probably; he was started at thirty miles an hour, no doubt, this
marvelous boy of our new era. He was not born in a house at rest, but the
locomotive snatched him along with a shriek and a roar before his eyes
were fairly open, and he was rocked in a "section," and his first
sensation of life was that of moving rapidly over vast arid spaces,
through cattle ranges and along canons. The effect of quick and easy
locomotion on character may have been noted before, but it seems that
here is the production of a new sort of man, the direct product of our
railway era. It is not simply that this boy is mature, but he must be a
different and a nobler sort of boy than one born, say, at home or on a
canal-boat; for, whether he was born on the rail or not, he belongs to
the railway system of civilization. Before he gets into trousers he is
old in experience, and he has discounted many of the novelties that
usually break gradually on the pilgrim in this world. He belongs to the
new expansive race that must live in motion, whose proper home is the
Pullman (which will probably be improved in time into a dustless,
sweet-smelling, well-aired bedroom), and whose domestic life will be on
the wing, so to speak. The Inter-State Commerce Bill will pass him along
without friction from end to end of the Union, and perhaps a uniform
divorce law will enable him to change his marital relations at any place
where he happens to dine. This promising lad is only a faint intimation
of what we are all coming to when we fully acquire the freedom of the
continent, and come into that expansiveness of feeling and of language
which characterizes the Great West. It is a burst of joyous exuberance
that comes from the sense of an illimitable horizon. It shows itself in
the tender words of a local newspaper at Bowie, Arizona, on the death of
a beloved citizen: "'Death loves a shining mark,' and she hit a dandy
when she turned loose on Jim." And also in the closing words of a New
Mexico obituary, which the Kansas Magazine quotes: "Her tired spirit was
released from the pain-racking body and soared aloft to eternal glory at
4.30 Denver time." We die, as it were, in motion, as we sleep, and there
is nowhere any boundary to our expansion. Perhaps we shall never again
know any rest as we now understand the term--rest being only change of
motion--and we shall not be able to sleep except on the cars, and whether
we die by Denver time or by the 90th meridian, we shall only change our
time. Blessed be this slip of a boy who is a man before he is an infant,
and teaches us what rapid transit can do for our race! The only thing
that can possibly hinder us in our progress will be second childhood; we
have abolished first.
THE ELECTRIC WAY
We are quite in the electric way. We boast that we have made electricity
our slave, but the slave whom we do not understand is our master. And
before we know him we shall be transformed. Mr. Edison proposes to send
us over the country at the rate of one hundred miles an hour. This
pleases us, because we fancy we shall save time, and because we are
taught that the chief object in life is to "get there" quickly. We really
have an idea that it is a gain to annihilate distance, forgetting that as
a matter of personal experience we are already too near most people. But
this speed by rail will enable us to live in Philadelphia and do business
in New York. It will make the city of Chicago two hundred miles square.
And the bigger Chicago is, the more important this world becomes. This
pleasing anticipation--that of traveling by lightning, and all being
huddled together--is nothing to the promised universal illumination by a
diffused light that shall make midnight as bright as noonday. We shall
then save all the time there is, and at the age of thirty-five have lived
the allotted seventy years, and long, if not for 'Gotterdammerung', at
least for some world where, by touching a button, we can discharge our
limbs of electricity and take a little repose. The most restless and
ambitious of us can hardly conceive of Chicago as a desirable future
state of existence.
This, however, is only the external or superficial view of the subject;
at the best it is only symbolical. Mr. Edison is wasting his time in
objective experiments, while we are in the deepest ignorance as to our
electric personality or our personal electricity. We begin to apprehend
that we are electric beings, that these outward manifestations of a
subtile form are only hints of our internal state. Mr. Edison should turn
his attention from physics to humanity electrically considered in its
social condition. We have heard a great deal about affinities. We are
told that one person is positive and another negative, and that
representing socially opposite poles they should come together and make
an electric harmony, that two positives or two negatives repel each
other, and if conventionally united end in divorce, and so on. We read
that such a man is magnetic, meaning that he can poll a great many votes;
or that such a woman thrilled her audience, meaning probably that they
were in an electric condition to be shocked by her. Now this is what we
want to find out--to know if persons are really magnetic or sympathetic,
and how to tell whether a person is positive or negative. In politics we
are quite at sea. What is the good of sending a man to Washington at the
rate of a hundred miles an hour if we are uncertain of his electric
state? The ideal House of Representatives ought to be pretty nearly
balanced--half positive, half negative. Some Congresses seem to be made
up pretty much of negatives. The time for the electrician to test the
candidate is before he is put in nomination, not dump him into Congress
as we do now, utterly ignorant of whether his currents run from his heels
to his head or from his head to his heels, uncertain, indeed, as to
whether he has magnetism to run in at all. Nothing could be more
unscientific than the process and the result.
In social life it is infinitely worse. You, an electric unmarried man,
enter a room full of attractive women. How are you to know who is
positive and who is negative, or who is a maiden lady in equilibrium, if
it be true, as scientists affirm, that the genus old maid is one in whom
the positive currents neutralize the negative currents? Your affinity is
perhaps the plainest woman in the room. But beauty is a juggling sprite,
entirely uncontrolled by electricity, and you are quite likely to make a
mistake. It is absurd the way we blunder on in a scientific age. We touch
a button, and are married. The judge touches another button, and we are
divorced. If when we touched the first button it revealed us both
negatives, we should start back in horror, for it is only before
engagement that two negatives make an affirmative. That is the reason
that some clergymen refuse to marry a divorced woman; they see that she
has made one electric mistake, and fear she will make another. It is all
very well for the officiating clergyman to ask the two intending to
commit matrimony if they have a license from the town clerk, if they are
of age or have the consent of parents, and have a million; but the vital
point is omitted. Are they electric affinities? It should be the duty of
the town-clerk, by a battery, or by some means to be discovered by
electricians, to find out the galvanic habit of the parties, their
prevailing electric condition. Temporarily they may seem to be in
harmony, and may deceive themselves into the belief that they are at
opposite poles equidistant from the equator, and certain to meet on that
imaginary line in matrimonial bliss. Dreadful will be the awakening to an
insipid life, if they find they both have the same sort of currents. It
is said that women change their minds and their dispositions, that men
are fickle, and that both give way after marriage to natural inclinations
that were suppressed while they were on the good behavior that the
supposed necessity of getting married imposes. This is so notoriously
true that it ought to create a public panic. But there is hope in the new
light. If we understand it, persons are born in a certain electrical
condition, and substantially continue in it, however much they may
apparently wobble about under the influence of infirm minds and acquired
wickedness. There are, of course, variations of the compass to be
reckoned with, and the magnet may occasionally be bewitched by near and
powerful attracting objects. But, on the whole, the magnet remains the
same, and it is probable that a person's normal electric condition is the
thing in him least liable to dangerous variation. If this be true, the
best basis for matrimony is the electric, and our social life would have
fewer disappointments if men and women went about labeled with their
scientifically ascertained electric qualities.
CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?
Can a husband open his wife's letters? That would depend, many would say,
upon what kind of a husband he is. But it cannot be put aside in that
flippant manner, for it is a legal right that is in question, and it has
recently been decided in a Paris tribunal that the husband has the, right
to open the letters addressed to his wife. Of course in America an appeal
would instantly be taken from this decision, and perhaps by husbands
themselves; for in this world rights are becoming so impartially
distributed that this privilege granted to the husband might at once be
extended to the wife, and she would read all his business correspondence,
and his business is sometimes various and complicated. The Paris decision
must be based upon the familiar formula that man and wife are one, and
that that one is the husband. If a man has the right to read all the
letters written to his wife, being his property by reason of his
ownership of her, why may he not have a legal right to know all that is
said to her? The question is not whether a wife ought to receive letters
that her husband may not read, or listen to talk that he may not hear,
but whether he has a sort of lordship that gives him privileges which she
does not enjoy. In our modern notion of marriage, which is getting itself
expressed in statute law, marriage is supposed to rest on mutual trust
and mutual rights. In theory the husband and wife are still one, and
there can nothing come into the life of one that is not shared by the
other; in fact, if the marriage is perfect and the trust absolute, the
personality of each is respected by the other, and each is freely the
judge of what shall be contributed to the common confidence; and if there
are any concealments, it is well believed that they are for the mutual
good. If every one were as perfect in the marriage relation as those who
are reading these lines, the question of the wife's letters would never
arise. The man, trusting his wife, would not care to pry into any little
secrets his wife might have, or bother himself about her correspondence;
he would know, indeed, that if he had lost her real affection, a
surveillance of her letters could not restore it.
Perhaps it is a modern notion that marriage is a union of trust and not
of suspicion, of expectation of faithfulness the more there is freedom.
At any rate, the tendency, notwithstanding the French decision, is away
from the common-law suspicion and tyranny towards a higher trust in an
enlarged freedom. And it is certain that the rights cannot all be on one
side and the duties on the other. If the husband legally may compel his
wife to show him her letters, the courts will before long grant the same
privilege to the wife. But, without pressing this point, we hold strongly
to the sacredness of correspondence. The letters one receives are in one
sense not his own. They contain the confessions of another soul, the
confidences of another mind, that would be rudely treated if given any
sort of publicity. And while husband and wife are one to each other, they
are two in the eyes of other people, and it may well happen that a friend
will desire to impart something to a discreet woman which she would not
intrust to the babbling husband of that woman. Every life must have its
own privacy and its own place of retirement. The letter is of all things
the most personal and intimate thing. Its bloom is gone when another eye
sees it before the one for which it was intended. Its aroma all escapes
when it is first opened by another person. One might as well wear
second-hand clothing as get a second-hand letter. Here, then, is a sacred
right that ought to be respected, and can be respected without any injury
to domestic life. The habit in some families for the members of it to
show each other's letters is a most disenchanting one. It is just in the
family, between persons most intimate, that these delicacies of
consideration for the privacy of each ought to be most respected. No one
can estimate probably how much of the refinement, of the delicacy of
feeling, has been lost to the world by the introduction of the
postal-card. Anything written on a postal-card has no personality; it is
banal, and has as little power of charming any one who receives it as an
advertisement in the newspaper. It is not simply the cheapness of the
communication that is vulgar, but the publicity of it. One may have
perhaps only a cent's worth of affection to send, but it seems worth much
more when enclosed in an envelope. We have no doubt, then, that on
general principles the French decision is a mistake, and that it tends
rather to vulgarize than to retain the purity and delicacy of the
marriage relation. And the judges, so long even as men only occupy the
bench, will no doubt reverse it when the logical march of events forces
upon them the question whether the wife may open her husband's letters.
A LEISURE CLASS
Foreign critics have apologized for real or imagined social and literary
shortcomings in this country on the ground that the American people have
little leisure. It is supposed that when we have a leisure class we shall
not only make a better showing in these respects, but we shall be as
agreeable--having time to devote to the art of being agreeable--as the
English are. But we already have a considerable and increasing number of
people who can command their own time if we have not a leisure class, and
the sociologist might begin to study the effect of this leisureliness
upon society. Are the people who, by reason of a competence or other
accidents of good-fortune, have most leisure, becoming more agreeable?
and are they devoting themselves to the elevation of the social tone, or
to the improvement of our literature? However this question is answered,
a strong appeal might be made to the people of leisure to do not only
what is expected of them by foreign observers, but to take advantage of
their immense opportunities. In a republic there is no room for a leisure
class that is not useful. Those who use their time merely to kill it, in
imitation of those born to idleness and to no necessity of making an
exertion, may be ornamental, but having no root in any established
privilege to sustain them, they will soon wither away in this atmosphere,
as a flower would which should set up to be an orchid when it does not
belong to the orchid family. It is required here that those who are
emancipated from the daily grind should vindicate their right to their
position not only by setting an example of self-culture, but by
contributing something to the general welfare. It is thought by many that
if society here were established and settled as it is elsewhere, the rich
would be less dominated by their money and less conscious of it, and
having leisure, could devote themselves even more than they do now to
intellectual and spiritual pursuits.
Whether these anticipations will ever be realized, and whether increased
leisure will make us all happy, is a subject of importance; but it is
secondary, and in a manner incidental, to another and deeper matter,
which may be defined as the responsibility of attractiveness. And this
responsibility takes two forms the duty of every one to be attractive,
and the danger of being too attractive. To be winning and agreeable is
sometimes reckoned a gift, but it is a disposition that can be
cultivated; and, in a world so given to grippe and misapprehension as
this is, personal attractiveness becomes a duty, if it is not an art,
that might be taught in the public schools. It used to be charged against
New Englanders that they regarded this gift as of little value, and were
inclined to hide it under a bushel, and it was said of some of their
neighbors in the Union that they exaggerated its importance, and
neglected the weightier things of the law. Indeed, disputes have arisen
as to what attractiveness consisted in--some holding that beauty or charm
of manner (which is almost as good) and sweetness and gayety were
sufficient, while others held that a little intelligence sprinkled in was
essential. But one thing is clear, that while women were held to strict
responsibility in this matter, not stress enough was laid upon the equal
duty of men to be attractive in order to make the world agreeable. Hence
it is, probably, that while no question has been raised as to the effect
of the higher education upon the attractiveness of men, the colleges for
girls have been jealously watched as to the effect they were likely to
have upon the attractiveness of women. Whether the college years of a
young man, during which he knows more than he will ever know again, are
his most attractive period is not considered, for he is expected to
develop what is in him later on; but it is gravely questioned whether
girls who give their minds to the highest studies are not dropping those
graces of personal attractiveness which they will find it difficult to
pick up again. Of course such a question as this could never arise except
in just such a world as this is. For in an ideal world it could be shown
that the highest intelligence and the highest personal charm are twins.
If, therefore, it should turn out, which seems absurd, that
college-educated girls are not as attractive as other women with less
advantages, it will have to be admitted that something is the matter with
the young ladies, which is preposterous, or that the system is still
defective. For the postulate that everybody ought to be attractive cannot
be abandoned for the sake of any system. Decision on this system cannot
be reached without long experience, for it is always to be remembered
that the man's point of view of attractiveness may shift, and he may come
to regard the intellectual graces as supremely attractive; while, on the
other hand, the woman student may find that a winning smile is just as
effective in bringing a man to her feet, where he belongs, as a
logarithm.
The danger of being too attractive, though it has historic illustration,
is thought by many to be more apparent than real. Merely being too
attractive has often been confounded with a love of flirtation and
conquest, unbecoming always in a man, and excused in a woman on the
ground of her helplessness. It could easily be shown that to use personal
attractiveness recklessly to the extent of hopeless beguilement is cruel,
and it may be admitted that woman ought to be held to strict
responsibility for her attractiveness. The lines are indeed hard for her.
The duty is upon her in this poor world of being as attractive as she
can, and yet she is held responsible for all the mischief her
attractiveness produces. As if the blazing sun should be called to
account by people with weak eyes.
WEATHER AND CHARACTER
The month of February in all latitudes in the United States is uncertain.
The birth of George Washington in it has not raised it in public esteem.
In the North, it is a month to flee from; in the South, at best it is a
waiting month--a month of rain and fickle skies. A good deal has been
done for it. It is the month of St. Valentine, it is distinguished by the
leap-year addition of a day, and ought to be a favorite of the gentle
sex; but it remains a sort of off period in the year. Its brevity
recommends it, but no one would take any notice of it were it not for its
effect upon character. A month of rigid weather is supposed to brace up
the moral nature, and a month of gentleness is supposed to soften the
asperities of the disposition, but February contributes to neither of
these ends. It is neither a tonic nor a soother; that is, in most parts
of our inexplicable land. We make no complaint of this. It is probably
well to have a period in the year that tests character to the utmost, and
the person who can enter spring through the gate of February a better man
or woman is likely to adorn society the rest of the year.
February, however, is merely an illustration of the effect of weather
upon the disposition. Persons differ in regard to their sensitiveness to
cloudy, rainy, and gloomy days. We recognize this in a general way, but
the relation of temper and disposition to the weather has never been
scientifically studied. Our observation of the influence of climate is
mostly with regard to physical infirmities. We know the effect of damp
weather upon rheumatics, and of the east wind upon gouty subjects, but
too little allowance is made for the influence of weather upon the
spirits and the conduct of men. We know that a long period of gloomy
weather leads to suicides, and we observe that long-continued clouds and
rain beget "crossness" and ill-temper, and we are all familiar with the
universal exhilaration of sunshine and clear air upon any company of men
and women. But the point we wish to make is that neither society nor the
law makes any allowance for the aberrations of human nature caused by
dull and unpleasant weather. And this is very singular in this
humanitarian age, when excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquency
in heredity or environment, that the greatest factor of discontent and
crookedness, the weather, should be left out of consideration altogether.
The relation of crime to the temperature and the humidity of the
atmosphere is not taken into account. Yet crime and eccentricity of
conduct are very much the result of atmospheric conditions, since they
depend upon the temper and the spirit of the community. Many people are
habitually blue and down-hearted in sour weather; a long spell of cloudy,
damp, cold weather depresses everybody, lowers hope, tends to melancholy;
and people when they are not cheerful are more apt to fall into evil
ways, as a rule, than when they are in a normal state of good-humor. And
aside from crimes, the vexation, the friction, the domestic discontent in
life, are provoked by bad weather. We should like to have some statistics
as to incompatibility between married couples produced by damp and raw
days, and to know whether divorces are more numerous in the States that
suffer from a fickle climate than in those where the climate is more
equable. It is true that in the Sandwich Islands and in Egypt there is
greater mental serenity, less perturbation of spirit, less worry, than in
the changeable United States. Something of this placidity and resignation
to the ills inevitable in human life is due to an even climate, to the
constant sun and the dry air. We cannot hope to prevent crime and
suffering by statistics, any more than we have been able to improve our
climate (which is rather worse now than before the scientists took it in
charge) by observations and telegraphic reports; but we can, by careful
tabulation of the effects of bad weather upon the spirits of a community,
learn what places in the Union are favorable to the production of
cheerfulness and an equal mind. And we should lift a load of reprobation
from some places which now have a reputation for surliness and
unamiability. We find the people of one place hospitable, lighthearted,
and agreeable; the people of another place cold, and morose, and
unpleasant. It would be a satisfaction to know that the weather is
responsible for the difference. Observation of this sort would also teach
us doubtless what places are most conducive to literary production, what
to happy homes and agreeing wives and husbands. All our territory is
mapped out as to its sanitary conditions; why not have it colored as to
its effect upon the spirits and the enjoyment of life? The suggestion
opens a vast field of investigation.
BORN WITH AN "EGO"
There used to be a notion going round that it would be a good thing for
people if they were more "self-centred." Perhaps there was talk of adding
a course to the college curriculum, in addition to that for training the
all-competent "journalist," for the self-centring of the young. To apply
the term to a man or woman was considered highly complimentary. The
advisers of this state of mind probably meant to suggest a desirable
equilibrium and mental balance; but the actual effect of the self-centred
training is illustrated by a story told of Thomas H. Benton, who had been
described as an egotist by some of the newspapers. Meeting Colonel Frank
Blair one day, he said: "Colonel Blair, I see that the newspapers call me
an egotist. I wish you would tell me frankly, as a friend, if you think
the charge is true." "It is a very direct question, Mr. Benton," replied
Colonel Blair, "but if you want my honest opinion, I am compelled to say
that I think there is some foundation for the charge." "Well, sir," said
Mr. Benton, throwing his head back and his chest forward, "the difference
between me and these little fellows is that I have an EGO!" Mr. Benton
was an interesting man, and it is a fair consideration if a certain
amount of egotism does not add to the interest of any character, but at
the same time the self-centred conditions shut a person off from one of
the chief enjoyments to be got out of this world, namely, a recognition
of what is admirable in others in a toleration of peculiarities. It is
odd, almost amusing, to note how in this country people of one section
apply their local standards to the judgment of people in other sections,
very much as an Englishman uses his insular yardstick to measure all the
rest of the world. It never seems to occur to people in one locality that
the manners and speech of those of another may be just as admirable as
their own, and they get a good deal of discomfort out of their
intercourse with strangers by reason of their inability to adapt
themselves to any ways not their own. It helps greatly to make this
country interesting that nearly every State has its peculiarities, and
that the inhabitants of different sections differ in manner and speech.
But next to an interesting person in social value, is an agreeable one,
and it would add vastly to the agreeableness of life if our widely spread
provinces were not so self-centred in their notion that their own way is
the best, to the degree that they criticise any deviation from it as an
eccentricity. It would be a very nice world in these United States if we
could all devote ourselves to finding out in communities what is likable
rather than what is opposed to our experience; that is, in trying to
adapt ourselves to others rather than insisting that our own standard
should measure our opinion and our enjoyment of them.
When the Kentuckian describes a man as a "high-toned gentleman" he means
exactly the same that a Bostonian means when, he says that a man is a
"very good fellow," only the men described have a different culture, a
different personal flavor; and it is fortunate that the Kentuckian is not
like the Bostonian, for each has a quality that makes intercourse with
him pleasant. In the South many people think they have said a severe
thing when they say that a person or manner is thoroughly Yankee; and
many New Englanders intend to express a considerable lack in what is
essential when they say of men and women that they are very Southern.
When the Yankee is produced he may turn out a cosmopolitan person of the
most interesting and agreeable sort; and the Southerner may have traits
and peculiarities, growing out of climate and social life unlike the New
England, which are altogether charming. We talked once with a Western man
of considerable age and experience who had the placid mind that is
sometimes, and may more and more become, the characteristic of those who
live in flat countries of illimitable horizons, who said that New
Yorkers, State and city, all had an assertive sort of smartness that was
very disagreeable to him. And a lady of New York (a city whose dialect
the novelists are beginning to satirize) was much disturbed by the
flatness of speech prevailing in Chicago, and thought something should be
done in the public schools to correct the pronunciation of English. There
doubtless should be a common standard of distinct, rounded, melodious
pronunciation, as there is of good breeding, and it is quite as important
to cultivate the voice in speaking as in singing, but the people of the
United States let themselves be immensely irritated by local differences
and want of toleration of sectional peculiarities. The truth is that the
agreeable people are pretty evenly distributed over the country, and
one's enjoyment of them is heightened not only by their differences of
manner, but by the different, ways in which they look at life, unless he
insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own locality. If
the Boston woman sets her eyeglasses at a critical angle towards the
'laisser faire' flow of social amenity in New Orleans, and the New
Orleans woman seeks out only the prim and conventional in Boston, each
may miss the opportunity to supplement her life by something wanting and
desirable in it, to be gained by the exercise of more openness of mind
and toleration. To some people Yankee thrift is disagreeable; to others,
Southern shiftlessness is intolerable. To some travelers the negro of the
South, with his tropical nature, his capacity for picturesque attitudes,
his abundant trust in Providence, is an element of restfulness; and if
the chief object of life is happiness, the traveler may take a useful
hint from the race whose utmost desire, in a fit climate, would be fully
satisfied by a shirt and a banana-tree. But to another traveler the
dusky, careless race is a continual affront.
If a person is born with an "Ego," and gets the most enjoyment out of the
world by trying to make it revolve about himself, and cannot
make-allowances for differences, we have nothing to say except to express
pity for such a self-centred condition; which shuts him out of the
never-failing pleasure there is in entering into and understanding with
sympathy the almost infinite variety in American life.
JUVENTUS MUNDI
Sometimes the world seems very old. It appeared so to Bernard of Cluny in
the twelfth century, when he wrote:
"The world is very evil,
The times are waning late."
There was a general impression among the Christians of the first century
of our era that the end was near. The world must have seemed very ancient
to the Egyptians fifteen hundred years before Christ, when the Pyramid of
Cheops was a relic of antiquity, when almost the whole circle of arts,
sciences, and literature had been run through, when every nation within
reach had been conquered, when woman had been developed into one of the
most fascinating of beings, and even reigned more absolutely than
Elizabeth or Victoria has reigned since: it was a pretty tired old world
at that time. One might almost say that the further we go back the older
and more "played out" the world appears, notwithstanding that the poets,
who were generally pessimists of the present, kept harping about the
youth of the world and the joyous spontaneity of human life in some
golden age before their time. In fact, the world is old in spots--in
Memphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some of these
places are venerable in traditions, and some of them are actually worn
out and taking a rest from too much civilization--lying fallow, as the
saying is. But age is so entirely relative that to many persons the
landing of the Mayflower seems more remote than the voyage of Jason, and
a Mayflower chest a more antique piece of furniture than the timbers of
the Ark, which some believe can still be seen on top of Mount Ararat.
But, speaking generally, the world is still young and growing, and a
considerable portion of it unfinished. The oldest part, indeed, the
Laurentian Hills, which were first out of water, is still only sparsely
settled; and no one pretends that Florida is anything like finished, or
that the delta of the Mississippi is in anything more than the process of
formation. Men are so young and lively in these days that they cannot
wait for the slow processes of nature, but they fill up and bank up
places, like Holland, where they can live; and they keep on exploring and
discovering incongruous regions, like Alaska, where they can go and
exercise their juvenile exuberance.
In many respects the world has been growing younger ever since the
Christian era. A new spirit came into it then which makes youth
perpetual, a spirit of living in others, which got the name of universal
brotherhood, a spirit that has had a good many discouragements and
set-backs, but which, on the whole, gains ground, and generally works in
harmony with the scientific spirit, breaking down the exclusive character
of the conquests of nature. What used to be the mystery and occultism of
the few is now general knowledge, so that all the playing at occultism by
conceited people now seems jejune and foolish. A little machine called
the instantaneous photograph takes pictures as quickly and accurately as
the human eye does, and besides makes them permanent. Instead of fooling
credulous multitudes with responses from Delphi, we have a Congress which
can enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough to
satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. Instead of loafing
round Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk words
into a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to the
remotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we said
those words in jest or earnest. All these mysteries made common and
diffused certainly increase the feeling of the equality of opportunity in
the world. And day by day such wonderful things are discovered and
scattered abroad that we are warranted in believing that we are only on
the threshold of turning to account the hidden forces of nature. There
would be great danger of human presumption and conceit in this progress
if the conceit were not so widely diffused, and where we are all
conceited there is no one to whom it will appear unpleasant. If there was
only one person who knew about the telephone he would be unbearable.
Probably the Eiffel Tower would be stricken down as a monumental
presumption, like that of Babel, if it had not been raised with the full
knowledge and consent of all the world.
This new spirit, with its multiform manifestations, which came into the
world nearly nineteen hundred years ago, is sometimes called the spirit
of Christmas. And good reasons can be given for supposing that it is. At
any rate, those nations that have the most of it are the most prosperous,
and those people who have the most of it are the most agreeable to
associate with. Know all men by these Presents, is an old legal form
which has come to have a new meaning in this dispensation. It is by the
spirit of brotherhood exhibited in giving presents that we know the
Christmas proper, only we are apt to take it in too narrow a way. The
real spirit of Christmas is the general diffusion of helpfulness and
good-will. If somebody were to discover an elixir which would make every
one truthful, he would not, in this age of the world, patent it. Indeed,
the Patent Office would not let him make a corner on virtue as he does in
wheat; and it is not respectable any more among the real children of
Christmas to make a corner in wheat. The world, to be sure, tolerates
still a great many things that it does not approve of, and, on the whole,
Christmas, as an ameliorating and good-fellowship institution, gains a
little year by year. There is still one hitch about it, and a bad one
just now, namely, that many people think they can buy its spirit by jerks
of liberality, by costly gifts. Whereas the fact is that a great many of
the costliest gifts in this season do not count at all. Crumbs from the
rich man's table don't avail any more to open the pearly gates even of
popular esteem in this world. Let us say, in fine, that a loving,
sympathetic heart is better than a nickel-plated service in this world,
which is surely growing young and sympathetic.
A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE
In Autumn the thoughts lightly turn to Age. If the writer has seemed to
be interested, sometimes to the neglect of other topics, in the American
young woman, it was not because she is interested in herself, but because
she is on the way to be one of the most agreeable objects in this lovely
world. She may struggle against it; she may resist it by all the
legitimate arts of the coquette and the chemist; she may be convinced
that youth and beauty are inseparable allies; but she would have more
patience if she reflected that the sunset is often finer than the
sunrise, commonly finer than noon, especially after a stormy day. The
secret of a beautiful old age is as well worth seeking as that of a
charming young maidenhood. For it is one of the compensations for the
rest of us, in the decay of this mortal life, that women, whose mission
it is to allure in youth and to tinge the beginning of the world with
romance, also make the end of the world more serenely satisfactory and
beautiful than the outset. And this has been done without any amendment
to the Constitution of the United States; in fact, it is possible that
the Sixteenth Amendment would rather hinder than help this gracious
process. We are not speaking now of what is called growing old gracefully
and regretfully, as something to be endured, but as a season to be
desired for itself, at least by those whose privilege it is to be
ennobled and cheered by it. And we are not speaking of wicked old women.
There is a unique fascination--all the novelists recognize it--in a
wicked old woman; not very wicked, but a woman of abundant experience,
who is perfectly frank and a little cynical, and delights in probing
human nature and flashing her wit on its weaknesses, and who knows as
much about life as a club man is credited with knowing. She may not be a
good comrade for the young, but she is immensely more fascinating than a
semi-wicked old man. Why, we do not know; that is one of the unfathomable
mysteries of womanhood. No; we have in mind quite another sort of woman,
of which America has so many that they are a very noticeable element in
all cultivated society. And the world has nothing more lovely. For there
is a loveliness or fascination sometimes in women between the ages of
sixty and eighty that is unlike any other--a charm that woos us to regard
autumn as beautiful as spring.
Perhaps these women were great beauties in their day, but scarcely so
serenely beautiful as now when age has refined all that was most
attractive. Perhaps they were plain; but it does not matter, for the
subtle influence of spiritualized-intelligence has the power of
transforming plainness into the beauty of old age. Physical beauty is
doubtless a great advantage, and it is never lost if mind shines through
it (there is nothing so unlovely as a frivolous old woman fighting to
keep the skin-deep beauty of her youth); the eyes, if the life has not
been one of physical suffering, usually retain their power of moving
appeal; the lines of the face, if changed, may be refined by a certain
spirituality; the gray hair gives dignity and softness and the charm of
contrast; the low sweet voice vibrates to the same note of femininity,
and the graceful and gracious are graceful and gracious still. Even into
the face and bearing of the plain woman whose mind has grown, whose
thoughts have been pure, whose heart has been expanded by good deeds or
by constant affection, comes a beauty winning and satisfactory in the
highest degree.
It is not that the charm of the women of whom we speak is mainly this
physical beauty; that is only incidental, as it were. The delight in
their society has a variety of sources. Their interest in life is broader
than it once was, more sympathetically unselfish; they have a certain
philosophical serenity that is not inconsistent with great liveliness of
mind; they have got rid of so much nonsense; they can afford to be
truthful--and how much there is to be learned from a woman who is
truthful! they have a most delicious courage of opinion, about men, say,
and in politics, and social topics, and creeds even. They have very
little any longer to conceal; that is, in regard to things that should be
thought about and talked about at all. They are not afraid to be gay, and
to have enthusiasms. At sixty and eighty a refined and well-bred woman is
emancipated in the best way, and in the enjoyment of the full play of the
richest qualities of her womanhood. She is as far from prudery as from
the least note of vulgarity. Passion, perhaps, is replaced by a great
capacity for friendliness, and she was never more a real woman than in
these mellow and reflective days. And how interesting she is--adding so
much knowledge of life to the complex interest that inheres in her sex!
Knowledge of life, yes, and of affairs; for it must be said of these
ladies we have in mind that they keep up with the current thought, that
they are readers of books, even of newspapers--for even the newspaper can
be helpful and not harmful in the alembic of their minds.
Let not the purpose of this paper be misunderstood. It is not to urge
young women to become old or to act like old women. The independence and
frankness of age might not be becoming to them. They must stumble along
as best they can, alternately attracting and repelling, until by right of
years they join that serene company which is altogether beautiful. There
is a natural unfolding and maturing to the beauty of old age. The mission
of woman, about which we are pretty weary of hearing, is not accomplished
by any means in her years of vernal bloom and loveliness; she has equal
power to bless and sweeten life in the autumn of her pilgrimage. But here
is an apologue: The peach, from blossom to maturity, is the most
attractive of fruits. Yet the demands of the market, competition, and
fashion often cause it to be plucked and shipped while green. It never
matures, though it may take a deceptive richness of color; it decays
without ripening. And the last end of that peach is worse than the first.
THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE
On one of the most charming of the many wonderfully picturesque little
beaches on the Pacific coast, near Monterey, is the idlest if not the
most disagreeable social group in the world. Just off the shore, farther
than a stone's-throw, lies a mass of broken rocks. The surf comes leaping
and laughing in, sending up, above the curving green breakers and crests
of foam, jets and spirals of water which flash like silver fountains in
the sunlight. These islets of rocks are the homes of the sea-lion. This
loafer of the coast congregates here by the thousand. Sometimes the rocks
are quite covered, the smooth rounded surface of the larger one
presenting the appearance at a distance of a knoll dotted with dirty
sheep. There is generally a select knot of a dozen floating about in the
still water under the lee of the rock, bobbing up their tails and
flippers very much as black driftwood might heave about in the tide.
During certain parts of the day members of this community are off fishing
in deep water; but what they like best to do is to crawl up on the rocks
and grunt and bellow, or go to sleep in the sun. Some of them lie half in
water, their tails floating and their ungainly heads wagging. These
uneasy ones are always wriggling out or plunging in. Some crawl to the
tops of the rocks and lie like gunny bags stuffed with meal, or they
repose on the broken surfaces like masses of jelly. When they are all at
home the rocks have not room for them, and they crawl on and over each
other, and lie like piles of undressed pork. In the water they are black,
but when they are dry in the sun the skin becomes a dirty light brown.
Many of them are huge fellows, with a body as big as an ox. In the water
they are repulsively graceful; on the rocks they are as ungainly as
boneless cows, or hogs that have lost their shape in prosperity. Summer
and winter (and it is almost always summer on this coast) these beasts,
which are well fitted neither for land nor water, spend their time in
absolute indolence, except when they are compelled to cruise around in
the deep water for food. They are of no use to anybody, either for their
skin or their flesh. Nothing could be more thoroughly disgusting and
uncanny than they are, and yet nothing more fascinating. One can watch
them--the irresponsible, formless lumps of intelligent flesh--for hours
without tiring. I scarcely know what the fascination is. A small seal
playing by himself near the shore, floating on and diving under the
breakers, is not so very disagreeable, especially if he comes so near
that you can see his pathetic eyes; but these brutes in this perpetual
summer resort are disgustingly attractive. Nearly everything about them,
including their voice, is repulsive. Perhaps it is the absolute idleness
of the community that makes it so interesting. To fish, to swim, to
snooze on the rocks, that is all, for ever and ever. No past, no future.
A society that lives for the laziest sort of pleasure. If they were rich,
what more could they have? Is not this the ideal of a watering-place
life?
The spectacle of this happy community ought to teach us humility and
charity in judgment. Perhaps the philosophy of its attractiveness lies
deeper than its 'dolce far niente' existence. We may never have
considered the attraction for us of the disagreeable, the positive
fascination of the uncommonly ugly. The repulsive fascination of the
loathly serpent or dragon for women can hardly be explained on
theological grounds. Some cranks have maintained that the theory of
gravitation alone does not explain the universe, that repulsion is as
necessary as attraction in our economy. This may apply to society. We are
all charmed with the luxuriance of a semi-tropical landscape, so
violently charmed that we become in time tired of its overpowering bloom
and color. But what is the charm of the wide, treeless desert, the
leagues of sand and burnt-up chaparral, the distant savage, fantastic
mountains, the dry desolation as of a world burnt out? It is not contrast
altogether. For this illimitable waste has its own charm; and again and
again, when we come to a world of vegetation, where the vision is shut in
by beauty, we shall have an irrepressible longing for these wind-swept
plains as wide as the sea, with the ashy and pink horizons. We shall long
to be weary of it all again--its vast nakedness, its shimmering heat, its
cold, star-studded nights. It seems paradoxical, but it is probably true,
that a society composed altogether of agreeable people would become a
terrible bore. We are a "kittle" lot, and hard to please for long. We
know how it is in the matter of climate. Why is it that the masses of the
human race live in the most disagreeable climates to be found on the
globe, subject to extremes of heat and cold, sudden and unprovoked
changes, frosts, fogs, malarias? In such regions they congregate, and
seem to like the vicissitudes, to like the excitement of the struggle
with the weather and the patent medicines to keep alive. They hate the
agreeable monotony of one genial day following another the year through.
They praise this monotony, all literature is full of it; people always
say they are in search of the equable climate; but they continue to live,
nevertheless, or try to live, in the least equable; and if they can find
one spot more disagreeable than another there they build a big city. If
man could make his ideal climate he would probably be dissatisfied with
it in a month. The effect of climate upon disposition and upon manners
needs to be considered some day; but we are now only trying to understand
the attractiveness of the disagreeable. There must be some reason for it;
and that would explain a social phenomenon, why there are so many
unattractive people, and why the attractive readers of these essays could
not get on without them.
The writer of this once traveled for days with an intelligent curmudgeon,
who made himself at all points as prickly as the porcupine. There was no
getting on with him. And yet when he dropped out of the party he was
sorely missed. He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion. It
was such a luxury to hate him. He was such a counter-irritant, such a
stimulant; such a flavor he gave to life. We are always on the lookout
for the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend that we like the
orderly, the beautiful, the pleasant. We can find them anywhere--the
little bits of scenery that please the eye, the pleasant households, the
group of delightful people. Why travel, then? We want the abnormal, the
strong, the ugly, the unusual at least. We wish to be startled and
stirred up and repelled. And we ought to be more thankful than we are
that there are so many desolate and wearisome and fantastic places, and
so many tiresome and unattractive people in this lovely world.
GIVING AS A LUXURY
There must be something very good in human nature, or people would not
experience so much pleasure in giving; there must be something very bad
in human nature, or more people would try the experiment of giving. Those
who do try it become enamored of it, and get their chief pleasure in life
out of it; and so evident is this that there is some basis for the idea
that it is ignorance rather than badness which keeps so many people from
being generous. Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or more
than that, a devastation, as many men who have what are called "good
wives" have reason to know, in the gradual disappearance of their
wardrobe if they chance to lay aside any of it temporarily. The amount
that a good woman can give away is only measured by her opportunity. Her
mind becomes so trained in the mystery of this pleasure that she
experiences no thrill of delight in giving away only the things her
husband does not want. Her office in life is to teach him the joy of
self-sacrifice. She and all other habitual and irreclaimable givers soon
find out that there is next to no pleasure in a gift unless it involves
some self-denial.
Let one consider seriously whether he ever gets as much satisfaction out
of a gift received as out of one given. It pleases him for the moment,
and if it is useful, for a long time; he turns it over, and admires it;
he may value it as a token of affection, and it flatters his self-esteem
that he is the object of it. But it is a transient feeling compared with
that he has when he has made a gift. That substantially ministers to his
self-esteem. He follows the gift; he dwells upon the delight of the
receiver; his imagination plays about it; it will never wear out or
become stale; having parted with it, it is for him a lasting possession.
It is an investment as lasting as that in the debt of England. Like a
good deed, it grows, and is continually satisfactory. It is something to
think of when he first wakes in the morning--a time when most people are
badly put to it for want of something pleasant to think of. This fact
about giving is so incontestably true that it is a wonder that
enlightened people do not more freely indulge in giving for their own
comfort. It is, above all else, amazing that so many imagine they are
going to get any satisfaction out of what they leave by will. They may be
in a state where they will enjoy it, if the will is not fought over; but
it is shocking how little gratitude there is accorded to a departed giver
compared to a living giver. He couldn't take the property with him, it is
said; he was obliged to leave it to somebody. By this thought his
generosity is always reduced to a minimum. He may build a monument to
himself in some institution, but we do not know enough of the world to
which he has gone to know whether a tiny monument on this earth is any
satisfaction to a person who is free of the universe. Whereas every
giving or deed of real humanity done while he was living would have
entered into his character, and would be of lasting service to him--that
is, in any future which we can conceive.
Of course we are not confining our remarks to what are called Christmas
gifts--commercially so called--nor would we undertake to estimate the
pleasure there is in either receiving or giving these. The shrewd
manufacturers of the world have taken notice of the periodic generosity
of the race, and ingeniously produce articles to serve it, that is, to
anticipate the taste and to thwart all individuality or spontaneity in
it. There is, in short, what is called a "line of holiday goods,"
fitting, it may be supposed, the periodic line of charity. When a person
receives some of these things in the blessed season of such, he is apt to
be puzzled. He wants to know what they are for, what he is to do with
them. If there are no "directions" on the articles, his gratitude is
somewhat tempered. He has seen these nondescripts of ingenuity and
expense in the shop windows, but he never expected to come into personal
relations to them. He is puzzled, and he cannot escape the unpleasant
feeling that commerce has put its profit-making fingers into Christmas.
Such a lot of things seem to be manufactured on purpose that people may
perform a duty that is expected of them in the holidays. The house is
full of these impossible things; they occupy the mantelpieces, they stand
about on the tottering little tables, they are ingenious, they are made
for wants yet undiscovered, they tarnish, they break, they will not
"work," and pretty soon they look "second-hand." Yet there must be more
satisfaction in giving these articles than in receiving them, and maybe a
spice of malice--not that of course, for in the holidays nearly every
gift expresses at least kindly remembrance--but if you give them you do
not have to live with them. But consider how full the world is of holiday
goods--costly goods too--that are of no earthly use, and are not even
artistic, and how short life is, and how many people actually need books
and other indispensable articles, and how starved are many fine
drawing-rooms, not for holiday goods, but for objects of beauty.
Christmas stands for much, and for more and more in a world that is
breaking down its barriers of race and religious intolerance, and one of
its chief offices has been supposed to be the teaching of men the
pleasure there is in getting rid of some of their possessions for the
benefit of others. But this frittering away a good instinct and tendency
in conventional giving of manufactures made to suit an artificial
condition is hardly in the line of developing the spirit that shares the
last crust or gives to the thirsty companion in the desert the first pull
at the canteen. Of course Christmas feeling is the life of trade and all
that, and we will be the last to discourage any sort of giving, for one
can scarcely disencumber himself of anything in his passage through this
world and not be benefited; but the hint may not be thrown away that one
will personally get more satisfaction out of his periodic or continual
benevolence if he gives during his life the things which he wants and
other people need, and reserves for a fine show in his will a collected
but not selected mass of holiday goods.
CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS
The idea of the relation of climate to happiness is modern. It is
probably born of the telegraph and of the possibility of rapid travel,
and it is more disturbing to serenity of mind than any other. Providence
had so ordered it that if we sat still in almost any region of the globe
except the tropics we would have, in course of the year, almost all the
kinds of climate that exist. The ancient societies did not trouble
themselves about the matter; they froze or thawed, were hot or cold, as
it pleased the gods. They did not think of fleeing from winter any more
than from the summer solstice, and consequently they enjoyed a certain
contentment of mind that is absent from modern life. We are more
intelligent, and therefore more discontented and unhappy. We are always
trying to escape winter when we are not trying to escape summer. We are
half the time 'in transitu', flying hither and thither, craving that
exact adaptation of the weather to our whimsical bodies promised only to
the saints who seek a "better country." There are places, to be sure,
where nature is in a sort of equilibrium, but usually those are places
where we can neither make money nor spend it to our satisfaction. They
lack either any stimulus to ambition or a historic association, and we
soon find that the mind insists upon being cared for quite as much as the
body.
How many wanderers in the past winter left comfortable homes in the
United States to seek a mild climate! Did they find it in the sleet and
bone-piercing cold of Paris, or anywhere in France, where the wolves were
forced to come into the villages in the hope of picking up a tender
child? If they traveled farther, were the railway carriages anything but
refrigerators tempered by cans of cooling water? Was there a place in
Europe from Spain to Greece, where the American could once be warm
--really warm without effort--in or out of doors? Was it any better in
divine Florence than on the chill Riviera? Northern Italy was blanketed
with snow, the Apennines were white, and through the clean streets of the
beautiful town a raw wind searched every nook and corner, penetrating
through the thickest of English wraps, and harder to endure than
ingratitude, while a frosty mist enveloped all. The traveler forgot to
bring with him the contented mind of the Italian. Could he go about in a
long cloak and a slouch hat, curl up in doorways out of the blast, and be
content in a feeling of his own picturesqueness? Could he sit all day on
the stone pavement and hold out his chilblained hand for soldi? Could he
even deceive himself, in a palatial apartment with a frescoed ceiling, by
an appearance of warmth in two sticks ignited by a pine cone set in an
aperture in one end of the vast room, and giving out scarcely heat enough
to drive the swallows from the chimney? One must be born to this sort of
thing in order to enjoy it. He needs the poetic temperament which can
feel in January the breath of June. The pampered American is not adapted
to this kind of pleasure. He is very crude, not to say barbarous, yet in
many of his tastes, but he has reached one of the desirable things in
civilization, and that is a thorough appreciation of physical comfort. He
has had the ingenuity to protect himself in his own climate, but when he
travels he is at the mercy of customs and traditions in which the idea of
physical comfort is still rudimentary. He cannot warm himself before a
group of statuary, or extract heat from a canvas by Raphael, nor keep his
teeth from chattering by the exquisite view from the Boboli Gardens. The
cold American is insensible to art, and shivers in the presence of the
warmest historical associations. It is doubtful if there is a spot in
Europe where he can be ordinarily warm in winter. The world, indeed, does
not care whether he is warm or not, but it is a matter of great
importance to him. As he wanders from palace to palace--and he cannot
escape the impression that nothing is good enough for him except a
palace--he cannot think of any cottage in any hamlet in America that is
not more comfortable in winter than any palace he can find. And so he is
driven on in cold and weary stretches of travel to dwell among the French
in Algeria, or with the Jews in Tunis, or the Moslems in Cairo. He longs
for warmth as the Crusader longed for Jerusalem, but not short of Africa
shall he find it. The glacial period is coming back on Europe.
The citizens of the great republic have a reputation for inordinate
self-appreciation, but we are thinking that they undervalue many of the
advantages their ingenuity has won. It is admitted that they are
restless, and must always be seeking something that they have not at
home. But aside from their ability to be warm in any part of their own
country at any time of the year, where else can they travel three
thousand miles on a stretch in a well-heated--too much heated--car,
without change of car, without revision of tickets, without encountering
a customhouse, without the necessity of stepping outdoors either for food
or drink, for a library, for a bath--for any item, in short, that goes to
the comfort of a civilized being? And yet we are always prating of the
superior civilization of Europe. Nay, more, the traveler steps into a
car--which is as comfortable as a house--in Boston, and alights from it
only in the City of Mexico. In what other part of the world can that
achievement in comfort and convenience be approached?
But this is not all as to climate and comfort. We have climates of all
sorts within easy reach, and in quantity, both good and bad, enough to
export more in fact than we need of all sorts. If heat is all we want,
there are only three or four days between the zero of Maine and the 80
deg. of Florida. If New England is inhospitable and New York freezing, it
is only a matter of four days to the sun and the exhilarating air of New
Mexico and Arizona, and only five to the oranges and roses of that
semi-tropical kingdom by the sea, Southern California. And if this does
not content us, a day or two more lands us, without sea-sickness, in the
land of the Aztecs, where we can live in the temperate or the tropic
zone, eat strange fruits, and be reminded of Egypt and Spain and Italy,
and see all the colors that the ingenuity of man has been able to give
his skin. Fruits and flowers and sun in the winter-time, a climate to
lounge and be happy in--all this is within easy reach, with the minimum
of disturbance to our daily habits. We started out, when we turned our
backs on the Old World, with the declaration that all men are free, and
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of an agreeable climate. We
have yet to learn, it seems, that we can indulge in that pursuit best on
our own continent. There is no winter climate elsewhere to compare with
that found in our extreme Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner we put
this fact into poetry and literature, and begin to make a tradition of
it, the better will it be for our peace of mind and for our children. And
if the continent does not satisfy us, there lie the West Indies within a
few hours' sail, with all the luxuriance and geniality of the tropics. We
are only half emancipated yet. We are still apt to see the world through
the imagination of England, whose literature we adopted, or of Germany.
To these bleak lands Italy was a paradise, and was so sung by poets who
had no conception of a winter without frost. We have a winter climate of
another sort from any in Europe; we have easy and comfortable access to
it. The only thing we need to do now is to correct our imagination, which
has been led astray. Our poets can at least do this for us by the help of
a quasi-international copyright.
THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE
In times past there have been expressed desire and fear that there should
be an American aristocracy, and the materials for its formation have been
a good deal canvassed. In a political point of view it is of course
impossible, but it has been hoped by many, and feared by more, that a
social state might be created conforming somewhat to the social order in
European countries. The problem has been exceedingly difficult. An
aristocracy of derived rank and inherited privilege being out of the
question, and an aristocracy of talent never having succeeded anywhere,
because enlightenment of mind tends to liberalism and democracy, there
was only left the experiment of an aristocracy of wealth. This does very
well for a time, but it tends always to disintegration, and it is
impossible to keep it exclusive. It was found, to use the slang of the
dry-goods shops, that it would not wash, for there were liable to crowd
into it at any moment those who had in fact washed for a living. An
aristocracy has a slim tenure that cannot protect itself from this sort
of intrusion. We have to contrive, therefore, another basis for a class
(to use an un-American expression), in a sort of culture or training,
which can be perpetual, and which cannot be ordered for money, like a
ball costume or a livery.
Perhaps the "American Girl" may be the agency to bring this about. This
charming product of the Western world has come into great prominence of
late years in literature and in foreign life, and has attained a
notoriety flattering or otherwise to the national pride. No institution
has been better known or more marked on the Continent and in England, not
excepting the tramway and the Pullman cars. Her enterprise, her daring,
her freedom from conventionality, have been the theme of the novelists
and the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters. Considered
as "stock," the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliances
that she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given her
eclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the world. But the
American Girl has not simply a slender figure and a fine eye and a ready
tongue, she is not simply an engaging and companionable person, she has
excellent common-sense, tact, and adaptability. She has at length seen in
her varied European experience that it is more profitable to have social
good form according to local standards than a reputation for dash and
brilliancy. Consequently the American Girl of a decade ago has effaced
herself. She is no longer the dazzling courageous figure. In England, in
France, in Germany, in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the color of the
land. She has retired behind her mother. She who formerly marched in the
van of the family procession, leading them--including the panting
mother--a whimsical dance, is now the timid and retiring girl, needing
the protection of a chaperon on every occasion. The satirist will find no
more abroad the American Girl of the old type whom he continues to
describe. The knowing and fascinating creature has changed her tactics
altogether. And the change has reacted on American society. The mother
has come once more to the front, and even if she is obliged to own to
forty-five years to the census-taker, she has again the position and the
privileges of the blooming woman of thirty. Her daughters walk meekly and
with downcast (if still expectant) eyes, and wait for a sign.
That this change is the deliberate work of the American Girl, no one who
knows her grace and talent will deny. In foreign travel and residence she
has been quick to learn her lesson. Dazzled at first by her own capacity
and the opportunities of the foreign field, she took the situation by
storm. But she found too often that she had a barren conquest, and that
the social traditions survived her success and became a lifelong
annoyance; that is to say, it was possible to subdue foreign men, but the
foreign women were impregnable in their social order. The American Girl
abroad is now, therefore, with rare exceptions, as carefully chaperoned
and secluded as her foreign sisters.
It is not necessary to lay too much stress upon this phase of American
life abroad, but the careful observer must notice its reflex action at
home. The American freedom and unconventionality in the intercourse of
the young of both sexes, which has been so much commented on as
characteristic of American life, may not disappear, but that small
section which calls itself "society" may attain a sort of aristocratic
distinction by the adoption of this foreign conventionality. It is
sufficient now to note this tendency, and to claim the credit of it for
the wise and intelligent American Girl. It would be a pity if it were to
become nationally universal, for then it would not be the aristocratic
distinction of a few, and the American woman who longs for some sort of
caste would be driven to some other device.
It is impossible to tell yet what form this feminine reserve and
retirement will take. It is not at all likely to go so far as the
Oriental seclusion of women. The American Girl would never even seemingly
give up her right of initiative. If she is to stay in the background and
pretend to surrender her choice to her parents, and with it all the
delights of a matrimonial campaign, she will still maintain a position of
observation. If she seems to be influenced at present by the French and
Italian examples, we may be sure that she is too intelligent and too fond
of freedom to long tolerate any system of chaperonage that she cannot
control. She will find a way to modify the traditional conventionalities
so as not to fetter her own free spirit. It may be her mission to show
the world a social order free from the forward independence and smartness
of which she has been accused, and yet relieved of the dull stiffness of
the older forms. It is enough now to notice that a change is going on,
due to the effect of foreign society upon American women, and to express
the patriotic belief that whatever forms of etiquette she may bow to, the
American Girl will still be on earth the last and best gift of God to
man.
REPOSE IN ACTIVITY
What we want is repose. We take infinite trouble and go to the ends of
the world to get it. That is what makes us all so restless. If we could
only find a spot where we could sit down, content to let the world go by,
away from the Sunday newspapers and the chronicles of an uneasy society,
we think we should be happy. Perhaps such a place is Coronado Beach
--that semi-tropical flower-garden by the sea. Perhaps another is the
Timeo Terrace at Taormina. There, without moving, one has the most
exquisite sea and shore far below him, so far that he has the feeling of
domination without effort; the most picturesque crags and castle peaks;
he has all classic legend under his eye without the trouble of reading,
and mediaeval romance as well; ruins from the time of Theocritus to
Freeman, with no responsibility of describing them; and one of the
loveliest and most majestic of snow mountains, never twice the same in
light and shade, entirely revealed and satisfactory from base to summit,
with no self or otherwise imposed duty of climbing it. Here are most of
the elements of peace and calm spirit. And the town itself is quite dead,
utterly exhausted after a turbulent struggle of twenty-five hundred
years, its poor inhabitants living along only from habit. The only new
things in it--the two caravansaries of the traveler--are a hotel and a
cemetery. One might end his days here in serene retrospection, and more
cheaply than in other places of fewer attractions, for it is all Past and
no Future. Probably, therefore, it would not suit the American, whose
imagination does not work so easily backward as forward, and who prefers
to build his own nest rather than settle in anybody else's rookery.
Perhaps the American deceives himself when he says he wants repose; what
he wants is perpetual activity and change; his peace of mind is postponed
until he can get it in his own way. It is in feeling that he is a part of
growth and not of decay. Foreigners are fond of writing essays upon
American traits and characteristics. They touch mostly on surface
indications. What really distinguishes the American from all others--for
all peoples like more or less to roam, and the English of all others are
globe-trotters--is not so much his restlessness as his entire accord with
the spirit of "go-ahead," the result of his absolute breaking with the
Past. He can repose only in the midst of intense activity. He can sit
down quietly in a town that is growing rapidly; but if it stands still,
he is impelled to move his rocking-chair to one more lively. He wants the
world to move, and to move unencumbered; and Europe seems to him to carry
too much baggage. The American is simply the most modern of men, one who
has thrown away the impedimenta of tradition. The world never saw such a
spectacle before, so vast a territory informed with one uniform spirit of
energy and progress, and people tumbling into it from all the world,
eager for the fair field and free opportunity. The American delights in
it; in Europe he misses the swing and "go" of the new life.
This large explanation may not account for the summer restlessness that
overtakes nearly everybody. We are the annual victims of the delusion
that there exists somewhere the ideal spot where manners are simple, and
milk is pure, and lodging is cheap, where we shall fall at once into
content. We never do. For content consists not in having all we want,
nor, in not wanting everything, nor in being unable to get what we want,
but in not wanting that we can get. In our summer flittings we carry our
wants with us to places where they cannot be gratified. A few people have
discovered that repose can be had at home, but this discovery is too
unfashionable to find favor; we have no rest except in moving about.
Looked at superficially, it seems curious that the American is, as a
rule, the only person who does not emigrate. The fact is that he can go
nowhere else where life is so uneasy, and where, consequently, he would
have so little of his sort of repose. To put him in another country would
be like putting a nineteenth-century man back into the eighteenth
century. The American wants to be at the head of the procession (as he
fancies he is), where he can hear the band play, and be the first to see
the fireworks of the new era. He thinks that he occupies an advanced
station of observation, from which his telescope can sweep the horizon
for anything new. And with some reason he thinks so; for not seldom he
takes up a foreign idea and tires of it before it is current elsewhere.
More than one great writer of England had his first popular recognition
in America. Even this season the Saturday Review is struggling with
Ibsen, while Boston, having had that disease, has probably gone on to
some other fad.
Far be it from us to praise the American for his lack of repose; it is
enough to attempt to account for it. But from the social, or rather
society, point of view, the subject has a disquieting aspect. If the
American young man and young woman get it into their heads that repose,
especially of manner, is the correct thing, they will go in for it in a
way to astonish the world. The late cultivation of idiocy by the American
dude was unique. He carried it to an extreme impossible to the youth of
any nation less "gifted." And if the American girl goes in seriously for
"repose," she will be able to give odds to any modern languidity or to
any ancient marble. If what is wanted in society is cold hauteur and
languid superciliousness or lofty immobility, we are confident that with
a little practice she can sit stiller, and look more impassive, and move
with less motion, than any other created woman. We have that confidence
in her ability and adaptability. It is a question whether it is worth
while to do this; to sacrifice the vivacity and charm native to her, and
the natural impulsiveness and generous gift of herself which belong to a
new race in a new land, which is walking always towards the sunrise.
In fine, although so much is said of the American lack of repose, is it
not best for the American to be content to be himself, and let the
critics adapt themselves or not, as they choose, to a new phenomenon?
Let us stick a philosophic name to it, and call it repose in activity.
The American might take the candid advice given by one friend to another,
who complained that it was so difficult to get into the right frame of
mind. "The best thing you can do," he said, "is to frame your mind and
hang it up."
WOMEN--IDEAL AND REAL
We have not by any means got to the bottom of Realism. It matters very
little what the novelists and critics say about it--what it is and what
it is not; the attitude of society towards it is the important thing.
Even if the critic could prove that nature and art are the same thing,
and that the fiction which is Real is only a copy of nature, or if
another should prove that Reality is only to be found in the Ideal,
little would be gained. Literature is well enough in its place, art is an
agreeable pastime, and it is right that society should take up either in
seasons when lawn-tennis and polo are impracticable and afternoon teas
become flavorless; but the question that society is or should be
interested in is whether the young woman of the future--upon whose
formation all our social hopes depend--is going to shape herself by a
Realistic or an Ideal standard. It should be said in parenthesis that the
young woman of the passing period has inclined towards Realism in manner
and speech, if not in dress, affecting a sort of frank return to the
easy-going ways of nature itself, even to the adoption of the language of
the stock exchange, the race-course, and the clubs--an offering of
herself on the altar of good-fellowship, with the view, no doubt, of
making life more agreeable to the opposite sex, forgetting the fact that
men fall in love always, or used to in the days when they could afford
that luxury, with an ideal woman, or if not with an ideal woman, with one
whom they idealize. And at this same time the world is full of doubts and
questionings as to whether marriage is a failure. Have these questionings
anything to do with the increasing Realism of women, and a consequent
loss of ideals?
Of course the reader sees that the difficulty in considering this subject
is whether woman is to be estimated as a work of nature or of art. And
here comes in the everlasting question of what is the highest beauty, and
what is most to be desired. The Greek artists, it seems to be well
established, never used a model, as our artists almost invariably do, in
their plastic and pictorial creations. The antique Greek statues, or
their copies, which give us the highest conceptions of feminine charm and
manly beauty, were made after no woman, or man born of woman, but were
creations of the ideal raised to the highest conception by the passionate
love and long study of nature, but never by faithful copying of it. The
Romans copied the Greek art. The Greek in his best days created the ideal
figure, which we love to accept as nature. Generation after generation
the Greek learned to draw and learned to observe, until he was able to
transmute his knowledge into the forms of grace and beauty which satisfy
us as nature at her best; just as the novelist trains all his powers by
the observation of life until he is able to transmute all the raw
material into a creation of fiction which satisfies us. We may be sure
that if the Greek artist had employed the service of models in his
studio, his art would have been merely a passing phase in human history.
But as it is, the world has ever since been in love with his ideal woman,
and still believes in her possibility.
Now the young woman of today should not be deceived into the notion of a
preferable Realistic development because the novelist of today gets her
to sit to him as his model. This may be no certain indication that she is
either good art or good nature. Indeed she may be quite drifting away
from the ideal that a woman ought to aim at if we are to have a society
that is not always tending into a realistic vulgarity and commonplace. It
is perfectly true that a woman is her own excuse for being, and in a way
she is doing enough for the world by simply being a woman. It is
difficult to rouse her to any sense of her duty as a standard of
aspiration. And it is difficult to explain exactly what it is that she is
to do. If she asks if she is expected to be a model woman, the reply must
be that the world does not much hanker after what--is called the "model
woman." It seems to be more a matter of tendency than anything else. Is
she sagging towards Realism or rising towards Idealism? Is she content to
be the woman that some of the novelists, and some of the painters also,
say she is, or would she prefer to approach that ideal which all the
world loves? It is a question of standards.
It is natural that in these days, when the approved gospel is that it is
better to be dead than not to be Real, society should try to approach
nature by the way of the materialistically ignoble, and even go such a
pace of Realism as literature finds it difficult to keep up with; but it
is doubtful if the young woman will get around to any desirable state of
nature by this route. We may not be able to explain why servile imitation
of nature degrades art and degrades woman, but both deteriorate without
an ideal so high that there is no earthly model for it. Would you like to
marry, perhaps, a Greek statue? says the justly contemptuous critic.
Not at all, at least not a Roman copy of one. But it would be better to
marry a woman who would rather be like a Greek statue than like some of
these figures, without even an idea for clothing, which are lying about
on green banks in our spring exhibitions.
THE ART OF IDLENESS
Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization. To be idle
gracefully and contentedly and picturesquely is an art. It is one in
which the Americans, who do so many things well, do not excel. They have
made the excuse that they have not time, or, if they have leisure, that
their temperament and nervous organization do not permit it. This excuse
will pass for a while, for we are a new people, and probably we are more
highly and sensitively organized than any other nation--at least the
physiologists say so; but the excuse seems more and more inadequate as we
accumulate wealth, and consequently have leisure. We shall not criticise
the American colonies in Paris and Rome and Florence, and in other
Continental places where they congregate. They know whether they are
restless or contented, and what examples they set to the peoples who get
their ideas of republican simplicity and virtue from the Americans who
sojourn among them. They know whether with all their leisure they get
placidity of mind and the real rest which the older nations have learned
to enjoy. It may not be the most desirable thing for a human being to be
idle, but if he will be, he should be so in a creditable manner, and with
some enjoyment to himself. It is no slander to say that we in America
have not yet found out the secret of this. Perhaps we shall not until our
energies are spent and we are in a state of decay. At present we put as
much energy into our pleasure as into our work, for it is inbred in us
that laziness is a sin. This is the Puritan idea, and it must be said for
it that in our experience virtue and idleness are not commonly
companions. But this does not go to the bottom of the matter.
The Italians are industrious; they are compelled to be in order to pay
their taxes for the army and navy and get macaroni enough to live on. But
see what a long civilization has done for them. They have the manner of
laziness, they have the air of leisure, they have worn off the angular
corners of existence, and unconsciously their life is picturesque and
enjoyable. Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply and
with the least expense of physical energy. Those who have not money do
the same thing. This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; life
is reckoned by centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal place is Venice!
It is not only the most picturesque city in the world, rich in all that
art can invent to please the eye, but how calm it is! The vivacity which
entertains the traveler is all on the surface. The nobleman in his palace
if there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine of
curiosities, or a municipal office--can live on a diet that would make an
American workman strike, simply because he has learned to float through
life; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learned
to wait without much labor. The gliding, easy motion of the gondola
expresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummate
skill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canals
for an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest in
labor which we do not attain. What happiness there is in a dish of
polenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of those
apologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent--the
cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs five
minutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!
Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?
The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva del
Schiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabbering
and singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morning
light begins to make the lagoon opalescent. The traveler who lodges near
cannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn,
wafted by painted sails. In the heat of the day, when the fish will not
bite, comes the siesta. Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?
The shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinkling
lamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youth
and beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; the
electric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams on
towers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here and
there a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing men
and women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every side
the songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entranced
ears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen
with hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.
Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere in
our happy land? Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment? Can
we buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace that comes only with long
civilization? Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art,
even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably have
lost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great works
which excite our admiration. Nothing can be much more meretricious than
its modern art, when anything is produced that is not an exact copy of
something created when there was genius there. But in one respect the
Italians have entered into the fruits of the ages of trial and of
failure, and that, is the capacity of being idle with much money or with
none, and getting day by day their pay for the bother of living in this
world. It seems a difficult lesson for us to learn in country or city.
Alas! when we have learned it shall we not want to emigrate, as so many
of the Italians do? Some philosophers say that men were not created to be
happy. Perhaps they were not intended to be idle.
IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION
Is there any such thing as conversation? It is a delicate subject to
touch, because many people understand conversation to be talk; not the
exchange of ideas, but of words; and we would not like to say anything to
increase the flow of the latter. We read of times and salons in which
real conversation existed, held by men and women. Are they altogether in
the past? We believe that men do sometimes converse. Do women ever?
Perhaps so. In those hours sacred to the relaxation of undress and the
back hair, in the upper penetralia of the household, where two or three
or six are gathered together on and about the cushioned frame intended
for repose, do they converse, or indulge in that sort of chat from which
not one idea is carried away? No one reports, fortunately, and we do not
know. But do all the women like this method of spending hour after hour,
day after day-indeed, a lifetime? Is it invigorating, even restful? Think
of the talk this past summer, the rivers and oceans of it, on piazzas and
galleries in the warm evenings or the fresher mornings, in private
houses, on hotel verandas, in the shade of thousands of cottages by the
sea and in the hills! As you recall it, what was it all about? Was the
mind in a vapid condition after an evening of it? And there is so much to
read, and so much to think about, and the world is so interesting, if you
do think about it, and nearly every person has some peculiarity of mind
that would be worth study if you could only get at it! It is really, we
repeat, such an interesting world, and most people get so little out of
it. Now there is the conversation of hens, when the hens are busy and not
self-conscious; there is something fascinating about it, because the
imagination may invest it with a recondite and spicy meaning; but the
common talk of people! We infer sometimes that the hens are not saying
anything, because they do not read, and consequently their minds are
empty. And perhaps we are right. As to conversation, there is no use in
sending the bucket into the well when the well is dry--it only makes a
rattling of windlass and chain. We do not wish to be understood to be an
enemy of the light traffic of human speech. Deliver us from the didactic
and the everlastingly improving style of thing! Conversation, in order to
be good, and intellectually inspiring, and spiritually restful, need not
always be serious. It must be alert and intelligent, and mean more by its
suggestions and allusions than is said. There is the light touch-and-go
play about topics more or less profound that is as agreeable as
heat-lightning in a sultry evening. Why may not a person express the
whims and vagaries of a lambent mind (if he can get a lambent mind)
without being hauled up short for it, and plunged into a heated dispute?
In the freedom of real conversation the mind throws out half-thoughts,
paradoxes, for which a man is not to be held strictly responsible to the
very roots of his being, and which need to be caught up and played with
in the same tentative spirit. The dispute and the hot argument are
usually the bane of conversation and the death of originality. We like to
express a notion, a fancy, without being called upon to defend it, then
and there, in all its possible consequences, as if it were to be an
article in a creed or a plank in a platform. Must we be always either
vapid or serious?
We have been obliged to take notice of the extraordinary tendency of
American women to cultivation, to the improvement of the mind, by means
of reading, clubs, and other intellectual exercises, and to acknowledge
that they are leaving the men behind; that is, the men not in the
so-called professions. Is this intellectualization beginning to show in
the conversation of women when they are together, say in the hours of
relaxation in the penetralia spoken of, or in general society? Is there
less talk about the fashion of dress, and the dearness or cheapness of
materials, and about servants, and the ways of the inchoate citizen
called the baby, and the infinitely little details of the private life of
other people? Is it true that if a group of men are talking, say about
politics, or robust business, or literature, and they are joined by women
(whose company is always welcome), the conversation is pretty sure to
take a lower mental plane, to become more personal, more frivolous,
accommodating itself to quite a different range? Do the well-read,
thoughtful women, however beautiful and brilliant and capable of the
gayest persiflage, prefer to talk with men, to listen to the conversation
of men, rather than to converse with or listen to their own sex? If this
is true, why is it? Women, as a rule, in "society" at any rate, have more
leisure than men. In the facilities and felicities of speech they
commonly excel men, and usually they have more of that vivacious dramatic
power which is called "setting out a thing to the life." With all these
advantages, and all the world open to them in newspapers and in books,
they ought to be the leaders and stimulators of the best conversation.
With them it should never drop down to the too-common flatness and
banality. Women have made this world one of the most beautiful places of
residence to be conceived. They might make it one of the most
interesting.
THE TALL GIRL
It is the fashion for girls to be tall. This is much more than saying
that tall girls are the fashion. It means not only that the tall girl has
come in, but that girls are tall, and are becoming tall, because it is
the fashion, and because there is a demand for that sort of girl. There
is no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy pattern is preferred, but
neither is leanness suggested; the women of the period have got hold of
the poet's idea, "tall and most divinely fair," and are living up to it.
Perhaps this change in fashion is more noticeable in England and on the
Continent than in America, but that may be because there is less room for
change in America, our girls being always of an aspiring turn. Very
marked the phenomenon is in England; on the street, at any concert or
reception, the number of tall girls is so large as to occasion remark,
especially among the young girls just coming into the conspicuousness of
womanhood. The tendency of the new generation is towards unusual height
and gracious slimness. The situation would be embarrassing to thousands
of men who have been too busy to think about growing upward, were it not
for the fact that the tall girl, who must be looked up to, is almost
invariably benignant, and bears her height with a sweet timidity that
disarms fear. Besides, the tall girl has now come on in such force that
confidence is infused into the growing army, and there is a sense of
support in this survival of the tallest that is very encouraging to the
young.
Many theories have been put forward to account for this phenomenon. It is
known that delicate plants in dark places struggle up towards the light
in a frail slenderness, and it is said that in England, which seems to
have increasing cloudiness, and in the capital more and more months of
deeper darkness and blackness, it is natural that the British girl should
grow towards the light. But this is a fanciful view of the case, for it
cannot be proved that English men have proportionally increased their
stature. The English man has always seemed big to the Continental
peoples, partly because objects generally take on gigantic dimensions
when seen through a fog. Another theory, which has much more to commend
it, is that the increased height of women is due to the aesthetic
movement, which has now spent its force, but has left certain results,
especially in the change of the taste in colors. The woman of the
aesthetic artist was nearly always tall, usually willowy, not to say
undulating and serpentine. These forms of feminine loveliness and
commanding height have been for many years before the eyes of the women
of England in paintings and drawings, and it is unavoidable that this
pattern should not have its effect upon the new and plastic generation.
Never has there been another generation so open to new ideas; and if the
ideal of womanhood held up was that of length and gracious slenderness,
it would be very odd if women should not aspire to it. We know very well
the influence that the heroines of the novelists have had from time to
time upon the women of a given period. The heroine of Scott was, no
doubt, once common in society--the delicate creature who promptly fainted
on the reminiscence of the scent of a rose, but could stand any amount of
dragging by the hair through underground passages, and midnight rides on
lonely moors behind mailed and black-mantled knights, and a run or two of
hair-removing typhoid fever, and come out at the end of the story as
fresh as a daisy. She could not be found now, so changed are the
requirements of fiction. We may assume, too, that the full-blown
aesthetic girl of that recent period--the girl all soul and faded
harmonies--would be hard to find, but the fascination of the height and
slenderness of that girl remains something more than a tradition, and is,
no doubt, to some extent copied by the maiden just coming into her
kingdom.
Those who would belittle this matter may say that the appearance of which
we speak is due largely to the fashion of dress--the long unbroken lines
which add to the height and encourage the appearance of slenderness. But
this argument gives away the case. Why do women wear the present
fascinating gowns, in which the lithe figure is suggested in all its
womanly dignity? In order that they may appear to be tall. That is to
say, because it is the fashion to be tall; women born in the mode are
tall, and those caught in a hereditary shortness endeavor to conform to
the stature of the come and coming woman.
There is another theory, that must be put forward with some hesitation,
for the so-called emancipation of woman is a delicate subject to deal
with, for while all the sex doubtless feel the impulse of the new time,
there are still many who indignantly reject the implication in the
struggle for the rights of women. To say, therefore, that women are
becoming tall as a part of their outfit for taking the place of men in
this world would be to many an affront, so that this theory can only be
suggested. Yet probably physiology would bear us out in saying that the
truly emancipated woman, taking at last the place in affairs which men
have flown in the face of Providence by denying her, would be likely to
expand physically as well as mentally, and that as she is beginning to
look down upon man intellectually, she is likely to have a corresponding
physical standard.
Seriously, however, none of these theories are altogether satisfactory,
and we are inclined to seek, as is best in all cases, the simplest
explanation. Women are tall and becoming tall simply because it is the
fashion, and that statement never needs nor is capable of any
explanation. Awhile ago it was the fashion to be petite and arch; it is
now the fashion to be tall and gracious, and nothing more can be said
about it. Of course the reader, who is usually inclined to find the
facetious side of any grave topic, has already thought of the application
of the self-denying hymn, that man wants but little here below, and wants
that little long; but this may be only a passing sigh of the period. We
are far from expressing any preference for tall women over short women.
There are creative moods of the fancy when each seems the better. We can
only chronicle, but never create.
THE DEADLY DIARY
Many people regard the keeping of a diary as a meritorious occupation.
The young are urged to take up this cross; it is supposed to benefit
girls especially. Whether women should do it is to some minds not an open
question, although there is on record the case of the Frenchman who tried
to shoot himself when he heard that his wife was keeping a diary. This
intention of suicide may have arisen from the fear that his wife was
keeping a record of his own peccadilloes rather than of her own thoughts
and emotions. Or it may have been from the fear that she was putting down
those little conjugal remarks which the husband always dislikes to have
thrown up to him, and which a woman can usually quote accurately, it may
be for years, it may be forever, without the help of a diary. So we can
appreciate without approving the terror of the Frenchman at living on and
on in the same house with a growing diary. For it is not simply that this
little book of judgment is there in black and white, but that the maker
of it is increasing her power of minute observation and analytic
expression. In discussing the question whether a woman should keep a
diary it is understood that it is not a mere memorandum of events and
engagements, such as both men and women of business and affairs
necessarily keep, but the daily record which sets down feelings,
emotions, and impressions, and criticises people and records opinions.
But this is a question that applies to men as well as to women.
It has been assumed that the diary serves two good purposes: it is a
disciplinary exercise for the keeper of it, and perhaps a moral guide;
and it has great historical value. As to the first, it may be helpful to
order, method, discipline, and it may be an indulgence of spleen, whims,
and unwholesome criticism and conceit. The habit of saying right out what
you think of everybody is not a good one, and the record of such opinions
and impressions, while it is not so mischievous to the public as talking
may be, is harmful to the recorder. And when we come to the historical
value of the diary, we confess to a growing suspicion of it. It is such a
deadly weapon when it comes to light after the passage of years. It has
an authority which the spoken words of its keeper never had. It is 'ex
parte', and it cannot be cross-examined. The supposition is that being
contemporaneous with the events spoken of, it must be true, and that it
is an honest record. Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are any
more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; and
rumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat and
haste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right.
Two diaries of the same events rarely agree. And in turning over an old
diary we never know what to allow for the personal equation. The diary is
greatly relied on by the writers of history, but it is doubtful if there
is any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest. It
is certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than a
newspaper, which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity. The
writer happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony of
eye-witnesses, the circumstances of the last hours of Garfield, and they
differ utterly in essential particulars. One of these may turn up fifty
years from now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip
goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a
moment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used to
smirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. Suppose a man in the
Army of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men and
events. Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge of
character and of measures, is it not probable that he would find it a
tissue of misconceptions? Few things are actually what they seem today;
they are colored both by misapprehensions and by moods. If a man writes a
letter or makes report of an occurrence for immediate publication,
subject to universal criticism, there is some restraint on him. In his
private letter, or diary especially, he is apt to set down what comes
into his head at the moment, often without much effort at verification.
We have been led to this disquisition into the fundamental nature of this
private record by the question put to us, whether it is a good plan for a
woman to keep a diary. Speaking generally, the diary has become a sort of
fetich, the authority of which ought to be overthrown. It is fearful to
think how our characters are probably being lied away by innumerable pen
scratches in secret repositories, which may some day come to light as
unimpeachable witnesses. The reader knows that he is not the sort of man
which the diarist jotted him down to be in a single interview. The diary
may be a good thing for self-education, if the keeper could insure its
destruction. The mental habit of diarizing may have some value, even when
it sets undue importance upon trifles. We confess that, never having seen
a woman's private diary (except those that have been published), we do
not share the popular impression as to their tenuity implied in the
question put to us. Taking it for granted that they are full of noble
thoughts and beautiful imaginings, we doubt whether the time spent on
them could not be better employed in acquiring knowledge or taking
exercise. For the diary forgotten and left to the next generation may be
as dangerous as dynamite.
THE WHISTLING GIRL
The wisdom of our ancestors packed away in proverbial sayings may always
be a little suspected. We have a vague respect for a popular proverb, as
embodying folk-experience, and expressing not the wit of one, but the
common thought of a race. We accept the saying unquestioning, as a sort
of inspiration out of the air, true because nobody has challenged it for
ages, and probably for the same reason that we try to see the new moon
over our left shoulder. Very likely the musty saying was the product of
the average ignorance of an unenlightened time, and ought not to have the
respect of a scientific and traveled people. In fact it will be found
that a large proportion of the proverbial sayings which we glibly use are
fallacies based on a very limited experience of the world, and probably
were set afloat by the idiocy or prejudice of one person. To examine one
of them is enough for our present purpose.
"Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to some bad ends."
It would be interesting to know the origin of this proverb, because it is
still much relied on as evincing a deep knowledge of human nature, and as
an argument against change, that is to say, in this case, against
progress. It would seem to have been made by a man, conservative, perhaps
malevolent, who had no appreciation of a hen, and a conservatively poor
opinion of woman. His idea was to keep woman in her place--a good idea
when not carried too far--but he did not know what her place is, and he
wanted to put a sort of restraint upon her emancipation by coupling her
with an emancipated hen. He therefore launched this shaft of ridicule,
and got it to pass as an arrow of wisdom shot out of a popular experience
in remote ages.
In the first place, it is not true, and probably never was true even when
hens were at their lowest. We doubts its Sanscrit antiquity. It is
perhaps of Puritan origin, and rhymed in New England. It is false as to
the hen. A crowing hen was always an object of interest and distinction;
she was pointed out to visitors; the owner was proud of her
accomplishment, he was naturally likely to preserve her life, and
especially if she could lay. A hen that can lay and crow is a 'rara
avis'. And it should be parenthetically said here that the hen who can
crow and cannot lay is not a good example for woman. The crowing hen was
of more value than the silent hen, provided she crowed with discretion;
and she was likely to be a favorite, and not at all to come to some bad
end. Except, indeed, where the proverb tended to work its own
fulfillment. And this is the regrettable side of most proverbs of an
ill-nature, that they do help to work the evil they predict. Some foolish
boy, who had heard this proverb, and was sent out to the hen-coop in the
evening to slay for the Thanksgiving feast, thought he was a justifiable
little providence in wringing the neck of the crowing hen, because it was
proper (according to the saying) that she should come to some bad end.
And as years went on, and that kind of boy increased and got to be a man,
it became a fixed idea to kill the amusing, interesting, spirited,
emancipated hen, and naturally the barn-yard became tamer and tamer, the
production of crowing hens was discouraged (the wise old hens laid no
eggs with a crow in them, according to the well-known principle of
heredity), and the man who had in his youth exterminated the hen of
progress actually went about quoting that false couplet as an argument
against the higher education of woman.
As a matter of fact, also, the couplet is not true about woman; whether
it ought to be true is an ethical question that will not be considered
here. The whistling girl does not commonly come to a bad end. Quite as
often as any other girl she learns to whistle a cradle song, low and
sweet and charming, to the young voter in the cradle. She is a girl of
spirit, of independence of character, of dash and flavor; and as to lips,
why, you must have some sort of presentable lips to whistle; thin ones
will not. The whistling girl does not come to a bad end at all (if
marriage is still considered a good occupation), except a cloud may be
thrown upon her exuberant young life by this rascally proverb. Even if
she walks the lonely road of life, she has this advantage, that she can
whistle to keep her courage up. But in a larger sense, one that this
practical age can understand, it is not true that the whistling girl
comes to a bad end. Whistling pays. It has brought her money; it has
blown her name about the listening world. Scarcely has a non-whistling
woman been more famous. She has set aside the adage. She has done so much
towards the emancipation of her sex from the prejudice created by an
ill-natured proverb which never had root in fact.
But has the whistling woman come to stay? Is it well for woman to
whistle? Are the majority of women likely to be whistlers? These are
serious questions, not to be taken up in a light manner at the end of a
grave paper. Will woman ever learn to throw a stone? There it is. The
future is inscrutable. We only know that whereas they did not whistle
with approval, now they do; the prejudice of generations gradually melts
away. And woman's destiny is not linked with that of the hen, nor to be
controlled by a proverb--perhaps not by anything.
BORN OLD AND RICH
We have been remiss in not proposing a remedy for our present social and
economic condition. Looking backward, we see this. The scheme may not be
practical, any more than the Utopian plans that have been put forward,
but it is radical and interesting, and requires, as the other schemes do,
a total change in human nature (which may be a good thing to bring
about), and a general recasting of the conditions of life. This is and
should be no objection to a socialistic scheme. Surface measures will not
avail. The suggestion for a minor alleviation of inequality, which seems
to have been acted on, namely, that women should propose, has not had the
desired effect if it is true, as reported, that the eligible young men
are taking to the woods. The workings of such a measure are as impossible
to predict in advance as the operation of the McKinley tariff. It might
be well to legislate that people should be born equal (including equal
privileges of the sexes), but the practical difficulty is to keep them
equal. Life is wrong somehow. Some are born rich and some are born poor,
and this inequality makes misery, and then some lose their possessions,
which others get hold of, and that makes more misery. We can put our
fingers on the two great evils of life as it now is: the first is
poverty; and the second is infirmity, which is the accompaniment of
increasing years. Poverty, which is only the unequal distribution of
things desired, makes strife, and is the opportunity of lawyers; and
infirmity is the excuse for doctors. Think what the world would be
without lawyers and doctors!
We are all born young, and most of us are born poor. Youth is delightful,
but we are always getting away from it. How different it would be if we
were always going towards it! Poverty is unpleasant, and the great
struggle of life is to get rid of it; but it is the common fortune that
in proportion as wealth is attained the capacity of enjoying it departs.
It seems, therefore, that our life is wrong end first. The remedy
suggested is that men should be born rich and old. Instead of the
necessity of making a fortune, which is of less and less value as death
approaches, we should have only the privilege of spending it, and it
would have its natural end in the cradle, in which we should be rocked
into eternal sleep. Born old, one would, of course, inherit experience,
so that wealth could be made to contribute to happiness, and each day,
instead of lessening the natural powers and increasing infirmities, would
bring new vigor and capacity of enjoyment. It would be going from winter
to autumn, from autumn to summer, from summer to spring. The joy of a
life without care as to ways and means, and every morning refitted with
the pulsations of increasing youth, it is almost impossible to imagine.
Of course this scheme has difficulties on the face of it. The allotting
of the measure of wealth would not be difficult to the socialists,
because they would insist that every person should be born with an equal
amount of property. What this should be would depend upon the length of
life; and how should this be arrived at? The insurance companies might
agree, but no one else would admit that he belongs in the average.
Naturally the Biblical limit of threescore and ten suggests itself; but
human nature is very queer. With the plain fact before them that the
average life of man is less than thirty-four years, few would be willing,
if the choice were offered, to compromise on seventy. Everybody has a
hope of going beyond that, so that if seventy were proposed as the year
at birth, there would no doubt be as much dissatisfaction as there is at
the present loose arrangement. Science would step in, and demonstrate
that there is no reason why, with proper care of the system, it should
not run a hundred years. It is improbable, then, that the majority could
be induced to vote for the limit of seventy years, or to exchange the
exciting uncertainty of adding a little to the period which must be
accompanied by the weight of the grasshopper, for the certainty of only
seventy years in this much-abused world.
But suppose a limit to be agreed on, and the rich old man and the rich
old woman (never now too old to marry) to start on their career towards
youth and poverty. The imagination kindles at the idea. The money would
hold out just as long as life lasted, and though it would all be going
downhill, as it were, what a charming descent, without struggle, and with
only the lessening infirmities that belong to decreasing age! There would
be no second childhood, only the innocence and elasticity of the first.
It all seems very fair, but we must not forget that this is a mortal
world, and that it is liable to various accidents. Who, for instance,
could be sure that he would grow young gracefully? There would be the
constant need of fighting the hot tempers and impulses of youth, growing
more and more instead of less and less unreasonable. And then, how many
would reach youth? More than half, of course, would be cut off in their
prime, and be more and more liable to go as they fell back into the
pitfalls and errors of childhood. Would people grow young together even
as harmoniously as they grow old together? It would be a pretty sight,
that of the few who descended into the cradle together, but this
inversion of life would not escape the woes of mortality. And there are
other considerations, unless it should turn out that a universal tax on
land should absolutely change human nature. There are some who would be
as idle and spendthrift going towards youth as they now are going away
from it, and perhaps more, so that half the race on coming to immaturity
would be in child asylums. And then others who would be stingy and greedy
and avaricious, and not properly spend their allotted fortune. And we
should have the anomaly, which is so distasteful to the reformer now, of
rich babies. A few babies inordinately rich, and the rest in asylums.
Still, the plan has more to recommend it than most others for removing
poverty and equalizing conditions. We should all start rich, and the
dying off of those who would never attain youth would amply provide
fortunes for those born old. Crime would be less also; for while there
would, doubtless, be some old sinners, the criminal class, which is very
largely under thirty, would be much smaller than it is now. Juvenile
depravity would proportionally disappear, as not more people would reach
non-age than now reach over-age. And the great advantage of the scheme,
one that would indeed transform the world, is that women would always be
growing younger.
THE "OLD SOLDIER"
The "old soldier" is beginning to outline himself upon the public mind as
a distant character in American life. Literature has not yet got hold of
him, and perhaps his evolution is not far enough advanced to make him as
serviceable as the soldier of the Republic and the Empire, the relic of
the Old Guard, was to Hugo and Balzac, the trooper of Italy and Egypt,
the maimed hero of Borodino and Waterloo, who expected again the coming
of the Little Corporal. It takes time to develop a character, and to
throw the glamour of romance over what may be essentially commonplace. A
quarter of a century has not sufficed to separate the great body of the
surviving volunteers in the war for the Union from the body of American
citizens, notwithstanding the organization of the Grand Army of the
Republic, the encampments, the annual reunions, and the distinction of
pensions, and the segregation in Soldiers' Homes. The "old soldier"
slowly eliminates himself from the mass, and begins to take, and to make
us take, a romantic view of his career. There was one event in his life,
and his personality in it looms larger and larger as he recedes from it.
The heroic sacrifice of it does not diminish, as it should not, in our
estimation, and he helps us to keep glowing a lively sense of it. The
past centres about him and his great achievement, and the whole of life
is seen in the light of it. In his retreat in the Home, and in his
wandering from one Home to another, he ruminates on it, he talks of it;
he separates himself from the rest of mankind by a broad distinction, and
his point of view of life becomes as original as it is interesting. In
the Homes the battered veterans speak mainly of one thing; and in the
monotony of their spent lives develop whimseys and rights and wrongs,
patriotic ardors and criticisms on their singular fate, which are
original in their character in our society. It is in human nature to like
rest but not restriction, bounty but not charity, and the tired heroes of
the war grow restless, though every physical want is supplied. They have
a fancy that they would like to see again the homes of their youth, the
farmhouse in the hills, the cottage in the river valley, the lonesome
house on the wide prairie, the street that ran down to the wharf where
the fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends whom they left there,
and perhaps to take up the occupations that were laid down when they
seized the musket in 1861. Alas! it is not their home anymore; the
friends are no longer there; and what chance is there of occupation for a
man who is now feeble in body and who has the habit of campaigning? This
generation has passed on to other things. It looks upon the hero as an
illustration in the story of the war, which it reads like history. The
veteran starts out from the shelter of the Home. One evening, towards
sunset, the comfortable citizen, taking the mild air on his piazza, sees
an interesting figure approach. Its dress is half military, half that of
the wanderer whose attention to his personal appearance is only
spasmodic.
The veteran gives the military salute, he holds himself erect, almost too
erect, and his speech is voluble and florid. It is a delightful evening;
it seems to be a good growing-time; the country looks prosperous. He is
sorry to be any trouble or interruption, but the fact is--yes, he is on
his way to his old home in Vermont; it seems like he would like to taste
some home cooking again, and sit in the old orchard, and perhaps lay his
bones, what is left of them, in the burying-ground on the hill. He pulls
out his well-worn papers as he talks; there is the honorable discharge,
the permit of the Home, and the pension. Yes, Uncle Sam is generous; it
is the most generous government God ever made, and he would willingly
fight for it again. Thirty dollars a month, that is what he has; he is
not a beggar; he wants for nothing. But the pension is not payable till
the end of the month. It is entirely his own obligation, his own fault;
he can fight, but he cannot lie, and nobody is to blame but himself; but
last night he fell in with some old comrades at Southdown, and, well, you
know how it is. He had plenty of money when he left the Home, and he is
not asking for anything now, but if he had a few dollars for his railroad
fare to the next city, he could walk the rest of the way. Wounded? Well,
if I stood out here against the light you could just see through me,
that's all. Bullets? It's no use to try to get 'em out. But, sir, I'm not
complaining. It had to be done; the country had to be saved; and I'd do
it again if it were necessary. Had any hot fights? Sir, I was at
Gettysburg! The veteran straightens up, and his eyes flash as if he saw
again that sanguinary field. Off goes the citizen's hat. Children, come
out here; here is one of the soldiers of Gettysburg! Yes, sir; and this
knee--you see I can't bend it much--got stiffened at Chickamauga; and
this scratch here in the neck was from a bullet at Gaines Mill; and this
here, sir--thumping his chest--you notice I don't dare to cough much
--after the explosion of a shell at Petersburg I found myself lying on
my-back, and the only one of my squad who was not killed outright. Was it
the imagination of the citizen or of the soldier that gave the impression
that the hero had been in the forefront of every important action of the
war? Well, it doesn't matter much. The citizen was sitting there under
his own vine, the comfortable citizen of a free republic, because of the
wounds in this cheerful and imaginative old wanderer. There, that is
enough, sir, quite enough. I am no beggar. I thought perhaps you had
heard of the Ninth Vermont. Woods is my name--Sergeant Woods. I trust
some time, sir, I shall be in a position to return the compliment.
Good-evening, sir; God bless your honor! and accept the blessing of an
old soldier. And the dear old hero goes down the darkening avenue, not so
steady of bearing as when he withstood the charge of Pickett on Cemetery
Hill, and with the independence of the American citizen who deserves well
of his country, makes his way to the nearest hospitable tavern.
THE ISLAND OF BIMINI
To the northward of Hispaniola lies the island of Bimini. It may not be
one of the spice islands, but it grows the best ginger to be found in the
world. In it is a fair city, and beside the city a lofty mountain, at the
foot of which is a noble spring called the 'Fons Juventutis'. This
fountain has a sweet savor, as of all manner of spicery, and every hour
of the day the water changes its savor and its smell. Whoever drinks of
this well will be healed of whatever malady he has, and will seem always
young. It is not reported that women and men who drink of this fountain
will be always young, but that they will seem so, and probably to
themselves, which simply means, in our modern accuracy of language, that
they will feel young. This island has never been found. Many voyages have
been made in search of it in ships and in the imagination, and Liars have
said they have landed on it and drunk of the water, but they never could
guide any one else thither. In the credulous centuries when these voyages
were made, other islands were discovered, and a continent much more
important than Bimini; but these discoveries were a disappointment,
because they were not what the adventurers wanted. They did not
understand that they had found a new land in which the world should renew
its youth and begin a new career. In time the quest was given up, and men
regarded it as one of the delusions which came to an end in the sixteenth
century. In our day no one has tried to reach Bimini except Heine. Our
scientific period has a proper contempt for all such superstitions. We
now know that the 'Fons Juventutis' is in every man, and that if actually
juvenility cannot be renewed, the advance of age can be arrested and the
waste of tissues be prevented, and an uncalculated length of earthly
existence be secured, by the injection of some sort of fluid into the
system. The right fluid has not yet been discovered by science, but
millions of people thought that it had the other day, and now confidently
expect it. This credulity has a scientific basis, and has no relation to
the old absurd belief in Bimini. We thank goodness that we do not live in
a credulous age.
The world would be in a poor case indeed if it had not always before it
some ideal or millennial condition, some panacea, some transmutation of
base metals into gold, some philosopher's stone, some fountain of youth,
some process of turning charcoal into diamonds, some scheme for
eliminating evil. But it is worth mentioning that in the historical
evolution we have always got better things than we sought or imagined,
developments on a much grander scale. History is strewn with the wreck of
popular delusions, but always in place of them have come realizations
more astonishing than the wildest fancies of the dreamers. Florida was a
disappointment as a Bimini, so were the land of the Ohio, the land of the
Mississippi, the Dorado of the Pacific coast. But as the illusions,
pushed always westward, vanished in the light of common day, lo! a
continent gradually emerged, with millions of people animated by
conquering ambition of progress in freedom; an industrial continent,
covered with a network of steel, heated by steam, and lighted by
electricity. What a spectacle of youth on a grand scale is this!
Christopher Columbus had not the slightest conception of what he was
doing when he touched the button. But we are not satisfied. Quite as far
from being so as ever. The popular imagination runs a hard race with any
possible natural development. Being in possession of so much, we now
expect to travel in the air, to read news in the sending mind before it
is sent, to create force without cost, to be transported without time,
and to make everybody equal in fortune and happiness to everybody else by
act of Congress. Such confidence have we in the power of a "resolution"
of the people and by the people that it seems feasible to make women into
men, oblivious of the more important and imperative task that will then
arise of making men into women. Some of these expectations are only
Biminis of the present, but when they have vanished there will be a
social and industrial world quite beyond our present conceptions, no
doubt. In the article of woman, for instance, she may not become the
being that the convention expects, but there may appear a Woman of whom
all the Aspasias and Helens were only the faintest types. And although no
progress will take the conceit out of men, there may appear a Man so
amenable to ordinary reason that he will give up the notion that he can
lift himself up by his bootstraps, or make one grain of wheat two by
calling it two.
One of the Biminis that have always been looked for is an American
Literature. There was an impression that there must be such a thing
somewhere on a continent that has everything else. We gave the world
tobacco and the potato, perhaps the most important contributions to the
content and the fatness of the world made by any new country, and it was
a noble ambition to give it new styles of art and literature also. There
seems to have been an impression that a literature was something
indigenous or ready-made, like any other purely native product, not
needing any special period of cultivation or development, and that a
nation would be in a mortifying position without one, even before it
staked out its cities or built any roads. Captain John Smith, if he had
ever settled here and spread himself over the continent, as he was
capable of doing, might have taken the contract to furnish one, and we
may be sure that he would have left us nothing to desire in that
direction. But the vein of romance he opened was not followed up. Other
prospectings were made. Holes, so to speak, were dug in New England, and
in the middle South, and along the frontier, and such leads were found
that again and again the certainty arose that at last the real American
ore had been discovered. Meantime a certain process called civilization
went on, and certain ideas of breadth entered into our conceptions, and
ideas also of the historical development of the expression of thought in
the world, and with these a comprehension of what American really is, and
the difficulty of putting the contents of a bushel measure into a pint
cup. So, while we have been expecting the American Literature to come out
from some locality, neat and clean, like a nugget, or, to change the
figure, to bloom any day like a century-plant, in one striking, fragrant
expression of American life, behold something else has been preparing and
maturing, larger and more promising than our early anticipations. In
history, in biography, in science, in the essay, in the novel and story,
there are coming forth a hundred expressions of the hundred aspects of
American life; and they are also sung by the poets in notes as varied as
the migrating birds. The birds perhaps have the best of it thus far, but
the bird is limited to a small range of performances while he shifts his
singing-boughs through the climates of the continent, whereas the poet,
though a little inclined to mistake aspiration for inspiration, and
vagueness of longing for subtlety, is experimenting in a most hopeful
manner. And all these writers, while perhaps not consciously American or
consciously seeking to do more than their best in their several ways, are
animated by the free spirit of inquiry and expression that belongs to an
independent nation, and so our literature is coming to have a stamp of
its own that is unlike any other national stamp. And it will have this
stamp more authentically and be clearer and stronger as we drop the
self-consciousness of the necessity of being American.
JUNE
Here is June again! It never was more welcome in these Northern
latitudes. It seems a pity that such a month cannot be twice as long. It
has been the pet of the poets, but it is not spoiled, and is just as full
of enchantment as ever. The secret of this is that it is the month of
both hope and fruition. It is the girl of eighteen, standing with all her
charms on the eve of womanhood, in the dress and temperament of spring.
And the beauty of it is that almost every woman is young, if ever she
were young, in June. For her the roses bloom, and the red clover. It is a
pity the month is so short. It is as full of vigor as of beauty. The
energy of the year is not yet spent; indeed, the world is opening on all
sides; the school-girl is about to graduate into liberty; and the young
man is panting to kick or row his way into female adoration and general
notoriety. The young men have made no mistake about the kind of education
that is popular with women. The women like prowess and the manly virtues
of pluck and endurance. The world has not changed in this respect. It was
so with the Greeks; it was so when youth rode in tournaments and unhorsed
each other for the love of a lady. June is the knightly month. On many a
field of gold and green the heroes will kick their way into fame; and
bands of young women, in white, with their diplomas in their hands,
star-eyed mathematicians and linguists, will come out to smile upon the
victors in that exhibition of strength that women most admire. No, the
world is not decaying or losing its juvenility. The motto still is,
"Love, and may the best man win!" How jocund and immortal is woman! Now,
in a hundred schools and colleges, will stand up the solemn,
well-intentioned man before a row of pretty girls, and tell them about
Womanhood and its Duties, and they will listen just as shyly as if they
were getting news, and needed to be instructed by a man on a subject
which has engaged their entire attention since they were five years old.
In the light of science and experience the conceit of men is something
curious. And in June! the most blossoming, riant, feminine time of the
year. The month itself is a liberal education to him who is not
insensible to beauty and the strong sweet promise of life. The streams
run clear then, as they do not in April; the sky is high and transparent;
the world seems so large and fresh and inviting. Our houses, which six
months in the year in these latitudes are fortifications of defense, are
open now, and the breath of life flows through them. Even over the city
the sky is benign, and all the country is a heavenly exhibition. May was
sweet and capricious. This is the maidenhood deliciousness of the year.
If you were to bisect the heart of a true poet, you would find written
therein JUNE.
NINE SHORT ESSAYS
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS:
A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES
TRUTHFULNESS
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE
THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART
"H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
SIMPLICITY
THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION
NATHAN HALE
A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES
It was in the time of the Second Empire. To be exact, it was the night of
the 18th of June, 1868; I remember the date, because, contrary to the
astronomical theory of short nights at this season, this was the longest
night I ever saw. It was the loveliest time of the year in Paris, when
one was tempted to lounge all day in the gardens and to give to sleep
none of the balmy nights in this gay capital, where the night was
illuminated like the day, and some new pleasure or delight always led
along the sparkling hours. Any day the Garden of the Tuileries was a
microcosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned itself; through it the
promenaders flowed from the Rue de Rivoli gate by the palace to the
entrance on the Place de la Concorde, out to the Champs-Elysees and back
again; here in the north grove gathered thousands to hear the regimental
band in the afternoon; children chased butterflies about the flower-beds
and amid the tubs of orange-trees; travelers, guide-book in hand, stood
resolutely and incredulously before the groups of statuary, wondering
what that Infant was doing with, the snakes and why the recumbent figure
of the Nile should have so many children climbing over him; or watched
the long facade of the palace hour after hour, in the hope of catching at
some window the flutter of a royal robe; and swarthy, turbaned Zouaves,
erect, lithe, insouciant, with the firm, springy step of the tiger,
lounged along the allees.
Napoleon was at home--a fact attested by a reversal of the hospitable
rule of democracy, no visitors being admitted to the palace when he was
at home. The private garden, close to the imperial residence, was also
closed to the public, who in vain looked across the sunken fence to the
parterres, fountains, and statues, in the hope that the mysterious man
would come out there and publicly enjoy himself. But he never came,
though I have no doubt that he looked out of the windows upon the
beautiful garden and his happy Parisians, upon the groves of
horse-chestnuts, the needle-like fountain beyond, the Column of Luxor, up
the famous and shining vista terminated by the Arch of the Star, and
reflected with Christian complacency upon the greatness of a monarch who
was the lord of such splendors and the goodness of a ruler who opened
them all to his children. Especially when the western sunshine streamed
down over it all, turning even the dust of the atmosphere into gold and
emblazoning the windows of the Tuileries with a sort of historic glory,
his heart must have swelled within him in throbs of imperial exaltation.
It is the fashion nowadays not to consider him a great man, but no one
pretends to measure his goodness.
The public garden of the Tuileries was closed at dusk, no one being
permitted to remain in it after dark. I suppose it was not safe to trust
the Parisians in the covert of its shades after nightfall, and no one
could tell what foreign fanatics and assassins might do if they were
permitted to pass the night so near the imperial residence. At any rate,
everybody was drummed out before the twilight fairly began, and at the
most fascinating hour for dreaming in the ancient garden. After sundown
the great door of the Pavilion de l'Horloge swung open and there issued
from it a drum-corps, which marched across the private garden and down
the broad allee of the public garden, drumming as if the judgment-day
were at hand, straight to the great gate of the Place de la Concorde, and
returning by a side allee, beating up every covert and filling all the
air with clamor until it disappeared, still thumping, into the court of
the palace; and all the square seemed to ache with the sound. Never was
there such pounding since Thackeray's old Pierre, who, "just to keep up
his drumming, one day drummed down the Bastile":
At midnight I beat the tattoo,
And woke up the Pikemen of Paris
To follow the bold Barbaroux.
On the waves of this drumming the people poured out from every gate of
the garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed the
portals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue de
Rivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left to
the silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used to
wonder, as I looked through the iron railing at nightfall, what might go
on there and whether historic shades might not flit about in the ghostly
walks.
Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, after a long walk through the
galleries of the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat down to rest on a
secluded bench in the southern grove of the garden; hidden from view by
the tree-trunks. Where I sat I could see the old men and children in that
sunny flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I could see the great
fountain-basin facing the Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard the
evening drumming, which was the signal for me to quit the garden; for I
suppose even the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive to the throb
of the glory-calling drum. But if I did hear it,--it was only like an
echo of the past, and I did not heed it any more than Napoleon in his
tomb at the Invalides heeds, through the drawn curtain, the chanting of
the daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I must have slept soundly.
When I awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into the
broad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of the
fountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from the
windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dotted
the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There were
the steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, but within
was the stillness of death.
What should I do? I am not naturally nervous, but to be caught lurking in
the Tuileries Garden in the night would involve me in the gravest peril.
The simple way would have been to have gone to the gate nearest the
Pavillon de Marsan, and said to the policeman on duty there that I had
inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of
the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would
like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the
policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that
explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are
mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would
either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an
alarm and called out the guards of the palace to hunt me down like a
rabbit.
A man in the Tuileries Garden at night! an assassin! a conspirator! one
of the Carbonari, perhaps a dozen of them--who knows?--Orsini bombs,
gunpowder, Greek-fire, Polish refugees, murder, emeutes, REVOLUTION!
No, I'm not going to speak to that person in the cocked hat and
dress-coat under these circumstances. Conversation with him out of the
best phrase-books would be uninteresting. Diplomatic row between the two
countries would be the least dreaded result of it. A suspected
conspirator against the life of Napoleon, without a chance for
explanation, I saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched (my minute
notes of the Tuileries confiscated), and trundled off to the
Conciergerie, and hung up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, like
Ravaillac.
I drew back into the shade and rapidly walked to the western gate. It was
closed, of course. On the gate-piers stand the winged steeds of Marly,
never less admired than by me at that moment. They interested me less
than a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who lounged outside, guarding the
entrance from the square, and unsuspicious that any assassin was trying
to get out. I could see the gleam of the lamps on their bayonets and hear
their soft tread. Ask them to let me out? How nimbly they would have
scaled the fence and transfixed me! They like to do such things. No,
no--whatever I do, I must keep away from the clutches of these cats of
Africa.
And enough there was to do, if I had been in a mind to do it. All the
seats to sit in, all the statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell.
The southern terrace overlooking the Seine was closed, or I might have
amused myself with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial that ran nearly
the whole length of it, with its switches and turnouts and houses; or I
might have passed delightful hours there watching the lights along the
river and the blazing illumination on the amusement halls. But I ascended
the familiar northern terrace and wandered amid its bowers, in company
with Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I knew only by sight,
smelling the orange-blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the old
riding-school where the National Assembly sat in 1789.
It must have been eleven o'clock when I found myself down by the private
garden next the palace. Many of the lights in the offices of the
household had been extinguished, but the private apartments of the
Emperor in the wing south of the central pavilion were still illuminated.
The Emperor evidently had not so much desire to go to bed as I had. I
knew the windows of his petits appartements--as what good American did
not?--and I wondered if he was just then taking a little supper, if he
had bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was alone in his room, reflecting
upon his grandeur and thinking what suit he should wear on the morrow in
his ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was dictating an editorial for the
official journal; perhaps he was according an interview to the
correspondent of the London Glorifier; perhaps one of the Abbotts was
with him. Or was he composing one of those important love-letters of
state to Madame Blank which have since delighted the lovers of
literature? I am not a spy, and I scorn to look into people's windows
late at night, but I was lonesome and hungry, and all that square round
about swarmed with imperial guards, policemen, keen-scented Zouaves, and
nobody knows what other suspicious folk. If Napoleon had known that there
was a
MAN IN THE GARDEN!
I suppose he would have called up his family, waked the drum-corps, sent
for the Prefect of Police, put on the alert the 'sergents de ville,'
ordered under arms a regiment of the Imperial Guards, and made it
unpleasant for the Man.
All these thoughts passed through my mind, not with the rapidity of
lightning, as is usual in such cases, but with the slowness of
conviction. If I should be discovered, death would only stare me in the
face about a minute. If he waited five minutes, who would believe my
story of going to sleep and not hearing the drums? And if it were true,
why didn't I go at once to the gate, and not lurk round there all night
like another Clement? And then I wondered if it was not the disagreeable
habit of some night-patrol or other to beat round the garden before the
Sire went to bed for good, to find just such characters as I was
gradually getting to feel myself to be.
But nobody came. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock sounded from the tower of
the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whose belfry the signal was
given for the beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--the same
bells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on,
while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre upon
stray fugitives on the quay--bells the reminiscent sound of which, a
legend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine de
Medici from the Tuileries.
One o'clock! The lights were going out in the Tuileries, had nearly all
gone out. I wondered if the suspicious and timid and wasteful Emperor
would keep the gas burning all night in his room. The night-roar of Paris
still went on, sounding always to foreign ears like the beginning of a
revolution. As I stood there, looking at the window that interested me
most, the curtains were drawn, the window was opened, and a form appeared
in a white robe. I had never seen the Emperor before in a night-gown, but
I should have known him among a thousand. The Man of Destiny had on a
white cotton night-cap, with a peaked top and no tassel. It was the most
natural thing in the land; he was taking a last look over his restless
Paris before he turned in. What if he should see me! I respected that
last look and withdrew into the shadow. Tired and hungry, I sat down to
reflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital.
One o'clock and a half! I had presence of mind enough to wind my watch;
indeed, I was not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily on my
hands. It was a gay capital. Would it never put out its lights, and cease
its uproar, and leave me to my reflections? In less than an hour the
country legions would invade the city, the market-wagons would rumble
down the streets, the vegetable-man and the strawberry-woman, the
fishmongers and the greens-venders would begin their melodious cries, and
there would be no repose for a man even in a public garden. It is
secluded enough, with the gates locked, and there is plenty of room to
turn over and change position; but it is a wakeful situation at the best,
a haunting sort of place, and I was not sure it was not haunted.
I had often wondered as I strolled about the place in the daytime or
peered through the iron fence at dusk, if strange things did not go on
here at night, with this crowd of effigies of persons historical and more
or less mythological, in this garden peopled with the representatives of
the dead, and no doubt by the shades of kings and queens and courtiers,
'intrigantes' and panders, priests and soldiers, who live once in this
old pile--real shades, which are always invisible in the sunlight. They
have local attachments, I suppose. Can science tell when they depart
forever from the scenes of their objective intrusion into the affairs of
this world, or how long they are permitted to revisit them? Is it true
that in certain spiritual states, say of isolation or intense nervous
alertness, we can see them as they can see each other? There was I--the
I catalogued in the police description--present in that garden, yet so
earnestly longing to be somewhere else that would it be wonderful if my
'eidolon' was somewhere else and could be seen?--though not by a
policeman, for policemen have no spiritual vision.
There were no policemen in the garden, that I was certain of; but a
little after half-past one I saw a Man, not a man I had ever seen before,
clad in doublet and hose, with a short cloak and a felt cap with a white
plume, come out of the Pavillon de Flore and turn down the quay towards
the house I had seen that afternoon where it stood--of the beautiful
Gabrielle d'Estrees. I might have been mistaken but for the fact that,
just at this moment, a window opened in the wing of the same pavilion,
and an effeminate, boyish face, weak and cruel, with a crown on its head,
appeared and looked down into the shadow of the building as if its owner
saw what I had seen. And there was nothing remarkable in this, except
that nowadays kings do not wear crowns at night. It occurred to me that
there was a masquerade going on in the Tuileries, though I heard no
music, except the tinkle of, it might be, a harp, or "the lascivious
pleasing of a lute," and I walked along down towards the central
pavilion. I was just in time to see two ladies emerge from it and
disappear, whispering together, in the shrubbery; the one old, tall, and
dark, with the Italian complexion, in a black robe, and the other young,
petite, extraordinarily handsome, and clad in light and bridal stuffs,
yet both with the same wily look that set me thinking on poisons, and
with a grace and a subtle carriage of deceit that could be common only to
mother and daughter. I didn't choose to walk any farther in the part of
the garden they had chosen for a night promenade, and turned off
abruptly.
What?
There, on the bench of the marble hemicycle in the north grove, sat a row
of graybeards, old men in the costume of the first Revolution, a sort of
serene and benignant Areopagus. In the cleared space before them were a
crowd of youths and maidens, spectators and participants in the Floral
Games which were about to commence; behind the old men stood attendants
who bore chaplets of flowers, the prizes in the games. The young men wore
short red tunics with copper belts, formerly worn by Roman lads at the
ludi, and the girls tunics of white with loosened girdles, leaving their
limbs unrestrained for dancing, leaping, or running; their hair was
confined only by a fillet about the head. The pipers began to play and
the dancers to move in rhythmic measures, with the slow and languid grace
of those full of sweet wine and the new joy of the Spring, according to
the habits of the Golden Age, which had come again by decree in Paris.
This was the beginning of the classic sports, but it is not possible for
a modern pen to describe particularly the Floral Games. I remember that
the Convention ordered the placing of these hemicycles in the garden, and
they were executed from Robespierre's designs; but I suppose I am the
only person who ever saw the games played that were expected to be played
before them. It was a curious coincidence that the little livid-green man
was also there, leaning against a tree and looking on with a half sneer.
It seemed to me an odd classic revival, but then Paris has spasms of
that, at the old Theatre Francais and elsewhere.
Pipes in the garden, lutes in the palace, paganism, Revolution--the
situation was becoming mixed, and I should not have been surprised at a
ghostly procession from the Place de la Concorde, through the western
gates, of the thousands of headless nobility, victims of the axe and the
basket; but, thank Heaven, nothing of that sort appeared to add to the
wonders of the night; yet, as I turned a moment from the dancers, I
thought I saw something move in the shrubbery. The Laocoon? It could not
be. The arms moving? Yes. As I drew nearer the arms distinctly moved,
putting away at length the coiling serpent, and pushing from the pedestal
the old-men boys, his comrades in agony. Laocoon shut his mouth, which
had been stretched open for about eighteen centuries, untwisted the last
coil of the snake, and stepped down, a free man. After this it did not
surprise me to see Spartacus also step down and approach him, and the two
ancients square off for fisticuffs, as if they had done it often before,
enjoying at night the release from the everlasting pillory of art. It was
the hour of releases, and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a
"classic revival," whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened to
deposit his aged father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the Sylvan
Nymphs; Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bending
over the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzing
about the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles with
the infant Hercules. In this unreal phantasmagoria it was a relief to me
to see walking in the area of the private garden two men: the one a
stately person with a kingly air, a handsome face, his head covered with
a huge wig that fell upon his shoulders; the other a farmer-like man,
stout and ungracious, the counterpart of the pictures of the intendant
Colbert. He was pointing up to the palace, and seemed to be speaking of
some alterations, to which talk the other listened impatiently. I
wondered what Napoleon, who by this time was probably dreaming of Mexico,
would have said if he had looked out and seen, not one man in the garden,
but dozens of men, and all the stir that I saw; if he had known, indeed,
that the Great Monarch was walking under his windows.
I said it was a relief to me to see two real men, but I had no reason to
complain of solitude thereafter till daybreak. That any one saw or
noticed me I doubt, and I soon became so reassured that I had more
delight than fear in watching the coming and going of personages I had
supposed dead a hundred years and more; the appearance at windows of
faces lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the opening of casements
and the dropping of billets into the garden; the flutter of disappearing
robes; the faint sounds of revels from the interior of the palace; the
hurrying of feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, that told
of partings and sudden armings, and the presence of a king that will be
denied at no doors. I saw through the windows of the long Galerie de
Diane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with them a dark,
semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the coolest head in
Europe at a drinking-bout. I saw enter the south pavilion a tall lady in
black, with the air of a royal procuress; and presently crossed the
garden and disappeared in the pavilion a young Parisian girl, and then
another and another, a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly of the
dreadful Parc aux Cerfs at Versailles.
So wrought upon was I by the sight of this infamy that I scarcely noticed
the incoming of a royal train at the southern end of the palace, and
notably in it a lady with light hair and noble mien, and the look in her
face of a hunted lioness at bay. I say scarcely, for hardly had the royal
cortege passed within, when there arose a great clamor in the inner
court, like the roar of an angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet,
firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed by yells of defiance in
mingled French and German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from doorways and
windows, and the flashing of flambeaux that ran hither and thither. "Oh!"
I said, "Paris has come to call upon its sovereign; the pikemen of Paris,
led by the bold Barbaroux."
The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had risen, hushed, I imagined, by
the jarring of cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet I
saw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate--a little man whom
you might mistake for a corporal of the guard--with a wild,
coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disordered
chestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum--a face
selfish and false, but determined as fate. So this was the beginning of
the Napoleon "legend"; and by-and-by this coarse head will be idealized
into the Roman Emperor type, in which I myself might have believed but
for the revelations of the night of strange adventure.
What is history? What is this drama and spectacle, that has been put
forth as history, but a cover for petty intrigue, and deceit, and
selfishness, and cruelty? A man shut into the Tuileries Garden begins to
think that it is all an illusion, the trick of a disordered fancy. Who
was Grand, who was Well-Beloved, who was Desired, who was the Idol of the
French, who was worthy to be called a King of the Citizens? Oh, for the
light of day!
And it came, faint and tremulous, touching the terraces of the palace and
the Column of Luxor. But what procession was that moving along the
southern terrace? A squad of the National Guard on horseback, a score or
so of King's officers, a King on foot, walking with uncertain step, a
Queen leaning on his arm, both habited in black, moved out of the western
gate. The King and the Queen paused a moment on the very spot where Louis
XVI. was beheaded, and then got into a carriage drawn by one horse and
were driven rapidly along the quays in the direction of St. Cloud. And
again Revolution, on the heels of the fugitives, poured into the old
palace and filled it with its tatterdemalions.
Enough for me that daylight began to broaden. "Sleep on," I said, "O real
President, real Emperor (by the grace of coup d'etat) at last, in the
midst of the most virtuous court in Europe, loved of good Americans,
eternally established in the hearts of your devoted Parisians! Peace to
the palace and peace to its lovely garden, of both of which I have had
quite enough for one night!"
The sun came up, and, as I looked about, all the shades and concourse of
the night had vanished. Day had begun in the vast city, with all its roar
and tumult; but the garden gates would not open till seven, and I must
not be seen before the early stragglers should enter and give me a chance
of escape. In my circumstances I would rather be the first to enter than
the first to go out in the morning, past those lynx-eyed gendarmes. From
my covert I eagerly watched for my coming deliverers. The first to appear
was a 'chiffonnier,' who threw his sack and pick down by the basin,
bathed his face, and drank from his hand. It seemed to me almost like an
act of worship, and I would have embraced that rag-picker as a brother.
But I knew that such a proceeding, in the name even of egalite and
fraternite would have been misinterpreted; and I waited till two and
three and a dozen entered by this gate and that, and I was at full
liberty to stretch my limbs and walk out upon the quay as nonchalant as
if I had been taking a morning stroll.
I have reason to believe that the police of Paris never knew where I
spent the night of the 18th of June. It must have mystified them.
TRUTHFULNESS
Truthfulness is as essential in literature as it is in conduct, in
fiction as it is in the report of an actual occurrence. Falsehood
vitiates a poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. Truthfulness is a
quality like simplicity. Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter of
clear vision and lucid expression, however complex the subject-matter may
be; exactly as in life, simplicity does not so much depend upon external
conditions as upon the spirit in which one lives. It may be more
difficult to maintain simplicity of living with a great fortune than in
poverty, but simplicity of spirit--that is, superiority of soul to
circumstance--is possible in any condition. Unfortunately the common
expression that a certain person has wealth is not so true as it would be
to say that wealth has him. The life of one with great possessions and
corresponding responsibilities may be full of complexity; the subject of
literary art may be exceedingly complex; but we do not set complexity
over against simplicity. For simplicity is a quality essential to true
life as it is to literature of the first class; it is opposed to parade,
to artificiality, to obscurity.
The quality of truthfulness is not so easily defined. It also is a matter
of spirit and intuition. We have no difficulty in applying the rules of
common morality to certain functions of writers for the public, for
instance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, or the newspaper
correspondent, or the narrator of any event in life the relation of which
owes its value to its being absolutely true. The same may be said of
hoaxes, literary or scientific, however clear they may be. The person
indulging in them not only discredits his office in the eyes of the
public, but he injures his own moral fibre, and he contracts such a habit
of unveracity that he never can hope for genuine literary success. For
there never was yet any genuine success in letters without integrity. The
clever hoax is no better than the trick of imitation, that is, conscious
imitation of another, which has unveracity to one's self at the bottom of
it. Burlesque is not the highest order of intellectual performance, but
it is legitimate, and if cleverly done it may be both useful and amusing,
but it is not to be confounded with forgery, that is, with a composition
which the author attempts to pass off as the production of somebody else.
The forgery may be amazingly smart, and be even popular, and get the
author, when he is discovered, notoriety, but it is pretty certain that
with his ingrained lack of integrity he will never accomplish any
original work of value, and he will be always personally suspected. There
is nothing so dangerous to a young writer as to begin with hoaxing; or to
begin with the invention, either as reporter or correspondent, of
statements put forward as facts, which are untrue. This sort of facility
and smartness may get a writer employment, unfortunately for him and the
public, but there is no satisfaction in it to one who desires an
honorable career. It is easy to recall the names of brilliant men whose
fine talents have been eaten away by this habit of unveracity. This habit
is the greatest danger of the newspaper press of the United States.
It is easy to define this sort of untruthfulness, and to study the moral
deterioration it works in personal character, and in the quality of
literary work. It was illustrated in the forgeries of the marvelous boy
Chatterton. The talent he expended in deception might have made him an
enviable reputation,--the deception vitiated whatever good there was in
his work. Fraud in literature is no better than fraud in archaeology,
--Chatterton deserves no more credit than Shapiro who forged the Moabite
pottery with its inscriptions. The reporter who invents an incident, or
heightens the horror of a calamity by fictions is in the case of Shapiro.
The habit of this sort of invention is certain to destroy the writer's
quality, and if he attempts a legitimate work of the imagination, he will
carry the same unveracity into that. The quality of truthfulness cannot
be juggled with. Akin to this is the trick which has put under proper
suspicion some very clever writers of our day, and cost them all public
confidence in whatever they do,--the trick of posing for what they are
not. We do not mean only that the reader does not believe their stories
of personal adventure, and regards them personally as "frauds," but that
this quality of deception vitiates all their work, as seen from a
literary point of view. We mean that the writer who hoaxes the public, by
inventions which he publishes as facts, or in regard to his own
personality, not only will lose the confidence of the public but he will
lose the power of doing genuine work, even in the field of fiction. Good
work is always characterized by integrity.
These illustrations help us to understand what is meant by literary
integrity. For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents
"news" is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a
prose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both. The
story of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity in
fiction. It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is an
illusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art: but it has no
moral deception in it. In fact, looked at as literature, we can see that
it is sincere and wholesome.
What is this quality of truthfulness which we all recognize when it
exists in fiction? There is much fiction, and some of it, for various
reasons, that we like and find interesting which is nevertheless
insincere if not artificial. We see that the writer has not been honest
with himself or with us in his views of human life. There may be just as
much lying in novels as anywhere else. The novelist who offers us what he
declares to be a figment of his own brain may be just as untrue as the
reporter who sets forth a figment of his own brain which he declares to
be a real occurrence. That is, just as much faithfulness to life is
required of the novelist as of the reporter, and in a much higher degree.
The novelist must not only tell the truth about life as he sees it,
material and spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own conceptions.
If fortunately he has genius enough to create a character that has
reality to himself and to others, he must be faithful to that character.
He must have conscience about it, and not misrepresent it, any more than
he would misrepresent the sayings and doings of a person in real life. Of
course if his own conception is not clear, he will be as unjust as in
writing about a person in real life whose character he knew only by
rumor. The novelist may be mistaken about his own creations and in his
views of life, but if he have truthfulness in himself, sincerity will
show in his work.
Truthfulness is a quality that needs to be as strongly insisted on in
literature as simplicity. But when we carry the matter a step further, we
see that there cannot be truthfulness about life without knowledge. The
world is full of novels, and their number daily increases, written
without any sense of responsibility, and with very little experience,
which are full of false views of human nature and of society. We can
almost always tell in a fiction when the writer passes the boundary of
his own experience and observation--he becomes unreal, which is another
name for untruthful. And there is an absence of sincerity in such work.
There seems to be a prevailing impression that any one can write a story.
But it scarcely need be said that literature is an art, like painting and
music, and that one may have knowledge of life and perfect sincerity, and
yet be unable to produce a good, truthful piece of literature, or to
compose a piece of music, or to paint a picture.
Truthfulness is in no way opposed to invention or to the exercise of the
imagination. When we say that the writer needs experience, we do not mean
to intimate that his invention of character or plot should be literally
limited to a person he has known, or to an incident that has occurred,
but that they should be true to his experience. The writer may create an
ideally perfect character, or an ideally bad character, and he may try
him by a set of circumstances and events never before combined, and this
creation may be so romantic as to go beyond the experience of any reader,
that is to say, wholly imaginary (like a composed landscape which has no
counterpart in any one view of a natural landscape), and yet it may be so
consistent in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration or a hope, that
it will have the element of truthfulness and subserve a very high
purpose. It may actually be truer to our sense of verity to life than an
array of undeniable, naked facts set down without art and without
imagination.
The difficulty of telling the truth in literature is about as great as it
is in real life. We know how nearly impossible it is for one person to
convey to another a correct impression of a third person. He may describe
the features, the manner, mention certain traits and sayings, all
literally true, but absolutely misleading as to the total impression. And
this is the reason why extreme, unrelieved realism is apt to give a false
impression of persons and scenes. One can hardly help having a whimsical
notion occasionally, seeing the miscarriages even in our own attempts at
truthfulness, that it absolutely exists only in the imagination.
In a piece of fiction, especially romantic fiction, an author is
absolutely free to be truthful, and he will be if he has personal and
literary integrity. He moves freely amid his own creations and
conceptions, and is not subject to the peril of the writer who admittedly
uses facts, but uses them so clumsily or with so little conscience, so
out of their real relations, as to convey a false impression and an
untrue view of life. This quality of truthfulness is equally evident in
"The Three Guardsmen" and in "Midsummer Night's Dream." Dumas is as
conscientious about his world of adventure as Shakespeare is in his
semi-supernatural region. If Shakespeare did not respect the laws of his
imaginary country, and the creatures of his fancy, if Dumas were not true
to the characters he conceived, and the achievements possible to them,
such works would fall into confusion. A recent story called "The
Refugees" set out with a certain promise of veracity, although the reader
understood of course that it was to be a purely romantic invention. But
very soon the author recklessly violated his own conception, and when he
got his "real" characters upon an iceberg, the fantastic position became
ludicrous without being funny, and the performances of the same
characters in the wilderness of the New World showed such lack of
knowledge in the writer that the story became an insult to the
intelligence of the reader. Whereas such a romance as that of "The MS.
Found in a Copper Cylinder," although it is humanly impossible and
visibly a figment of the imagination, is satisfactory to the reader
because the author is true to his conception, and it is interesting as a
curious allegorical and humorous illustration of the ruinous character in
human affairs of extreme unselfishness. There is the same sort of
truthfulness in Hawthorne's allegory of "The Celestial Railway," in
Froude's "On a Siding at a Railway Station," and in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's
Progress."
The habit of lying carried into fiction vitiates the best work, and
perhaps it is easier to avoid it in pure romance than in the so-called
novels of "every-day life." And this is probably the reason why so many
of the novels of "real life" are so much more offensively untruthful to
us than the wildest romances. In the former the author could perhaps
"prove" every incident he narrates, and produce living every character he
has attempted to describe. But the effect is that of a lie, either
because he is not a master of his art, or because he has no literary
conscience. He is like an artist who is more anxious to produce a
meretricious effect than he is to be true to himself or to nature. An
author who creates a character assumes a great responsibility, and if he
has not integrity or knowledge enough to respect his own creation, no one
else will respect it, and, worse than this, he will tell a falsehood to
hosts of undiscriminating readers.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Perhaps the most curious and interesting phrase ever put into a public
document is "the pursuit of happiness." It is declared to be an
inalienable right. It cannot be sold. It cannot be given away. It is
doubtful if it could be left by will.
The right of every man to be six feet high, and of every woman to be five
feet four, was regarded as self-evident until women asserted their
undoubted right to be six feet high also, when some confusion was
introduced into the interpretation of this rhetorical fragment of the
eighteenth century.
But the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness has never been
questioned since it was proclaimed as a new gospel for the New World. The
American people accepted it with enthusiasm, as if it had been the
discovery of a gold-prospector, and started out in the pursuit as if the
devil were after them.
If the proclamation had been that happiness is a common right of the
race, alienable or otherwise, that all men are or may be happy, history
and tradition might have interfered to raise a doubt whether even the new
form of government could so change the ethical condition. But the right
to make a pursuit of happiness, given in a fundamental bill of rights,
had quite a different aspect. Men had been engaged in many pursuits, most
of them disastrous, some of them highly commendable. A sect in Galilee
had set up the pursuit of righteousness as the only or the highest object
of man's immortal powers. The rewards of it, however, were not always
immediate. Here was a political sanction of a pursuit that everybody
acknowledged to be of a good thing.
Given a heart-aching longing in every human being for happiness, here was
high warrant for going in pursuit of it. And the curious effect of this
'mot d'ordre' was that the pursuit arrested the attention as the most
essential, and the happiness was postponed, almost invariably, to some
future season, when leisure or plethora, that is, relaxation or gorged
desire, should induce that physical and moral glow which is commonly
accepted as happiness. This glow of well-being is sometimes called
contentment, but contentment was not in the programme. If it came at all,
it was only to come after strenuous pursuit, that being the inalienable
right.
People, to be sure, have different conceptions of happiness, but whatever
they are, it is the custom, almost universal, to postpone the thing
itself. This, of course, is specially true in our American system, where
we have a chartered right to the thing itself. Other nations who have no
such right may take it out in occasional driblets, odd moments that come,
no doubt, to men and races who have no privilege of voting, or to such
favored places as New York city, whose government is always the same,
however they vote.
We are all authorized to pursue happiness, and we do as a general thing
make a pursuit of it. Instead of simply being happy in the condition
where we are, getting the sweets of life in human intercourse, hour by
hour, as the bees take honey from every flower that opens in the summer
air, finding happiness in the well-filled and orderly mind, in the sane
and enlightened spirit, in the self that has become what the self should
be, we say that tomorrow, next year, in ten or twenty or thirty years,
when we have arrived at certain coveted possessions or situation, we will
be happy. Some philosophers dignify this postponement with the name of
hope.
Sometimes wandering in a primeval forest, in all the witchery of the
woods, besought by the kindliest solicitations of nature, wild flowers in
the trail, the call of the squirrel, the flutter of birds, the great
world-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the flecks of sunlight on the
brown carpet and on the rough bark of immemorial trees, I find myself
unconsciously postponing my enjoyment until I shall reach a hoped-for
open place of full sun and boundless prospect.
The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is the common experience that these
open spots in life, where leisure and space and contentment await us, are
usually grown up with thickets, fuller of obstacles, to say nothing of
labors and duties and difficulties, than any part of the weary path we
have trod.
Why add the pursuit of happiness to our other inalienable worries?
Perhaps there is something wrong in ourselves when we hear the complaint
so often that men are pursued by disaster instead of being pursued by
happiness.
We all believe in happiness as something desirable and attainable, and I
take it that this is the underlying desire when we speak of the pursuit
of wealth, the pursuit of learning, the pursuit of power in office or in
influence, that is, that we shall come into happiness when the objects
last named are attained. No amount of failure seems to lessen this
belief. It is matter of experience that wealth and learning and power are
as likely to bring unhappiness as happiness, and yet this constant lesson
of experience makes not the least impression upon human conduct. I
suppose that the reason of this unheeding of experience is that every
person born into the world is the only one exactly of that kind that ever
was or ever will be created, so that he thinks he may be exempt from the
general rules. At any rate, he goes at the pursuit of happiness in
exactly the old way, as if it were an original undertaking. Perhaps the
most melancholy spectacle offered to us in our short sojourn in this
pilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty and the caravansaries so ill
provided, is the credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not objecting to
the pursuit of wealth, or of learning, or of power, they are all
explainable, if not justifiable,--but to the blindness that does not
perceive their futility as a means of attaining the end sought, which is
happiness, an end that can only be compassed by the right adjustment of
each soul to this and to any coming state of existence. For whether the
great scholar who is stuffed with knowledge is happier than the great
money-getter who is gorged with riches, or the wily politician who is a
Warwick in his realm, depends entirely upon what sort of a man this
pursuit has made him. There is a kind of fallacy current nowadays that a
very rich man, no matter by what unscrupulous means he has gathered an
undue proportion of the world into his possession, can be happy if he can
turn round and make a generous and lavish distribution of it for worthy
purposes. If he has preserved a remnant of conscience, this distribution
may give him much satisfaction, and justly increase his good opinion of
his own deserts; but the fallacy is in leaving out of account the sort of
man he has become in this sort of pursuit. Has he escaped that hardening
of the nature, that drying up of the sweet springs of sympathy, which
usually attend a long-continued selfish undertaking? Has either he or the
great politician or the great scholar cultivated the real sources of
enjoyment?
The pursuit of happiness! It is not strange that men call it an illusion.
But I am well satisfied that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit,
that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix our
thoughts upon the moments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divine
peace, this merriment of body and mind, that can be repeated and perhaps
indefinitely extended by the simplest of all means, namely, a disposition
to make the best of whatever comes to us? Perhaps the Latin poet was
right in saying that no man can count himself happy while in this life,
that is, in a continuous state of happiness; but as there is for the soul
no time save the conscious moment called "now," it is quite possible to
make that "now" a happy state of existence. The point I make is that we
should not habitually postpone that season of happiness to the future.
No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the dreams of youth, or to dispel by
excess of light what are called the illusions of hope. But why should the
boy be nurtured in the current notion that he is to be really happy only
when he has finished school, when he has got a business or profession by
which money can be made, when he has come to manhood? The girl also
dreams that for her happiness lies ahead, in that springtime when she is
crossing the line of womanhood,--all the poets make much of this,--when
she is married and learns the supreme lesson how to rule by obeying. It
is only when the girl and the boy look back upon the years of adolescence
that they realize how happy they might have been then if they had only
known they were happy, and did not need to go in pursuit of happiness.
The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness
is, however, that most men interpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth,
and strive for that always, postponing being happy until they get a
fortune, and if they are lucky in that, find at the end that the
happiness has somehow eluded them, that; in short, they have not
cultivated that in themselves that alone can bring happiness. More than
that, they have lost the power of the enjoyment of the essential
pleasures of life. I think that the woman in the Scriptures who out of
her poverty put her mite into the contribution-box got more happiness out
of that driblet of generosity and self-sacrifice than some men in our day
have experienced in founding a university.
And how fares it with the intellectual man? To be a selfish miner of
learning, for self-gratification only, is no nobler in reality than to be
a miser of money. And even when the scholar is lavish of his knowledge in
helping an ignorant world, he may find that if he has made his studies as
a pursuit of happiness he has missed his object. Much knowledge increases
the possibility of enjoyment, but also the possibility of sorrow. If
intellectual pursuits contribute to an enlightened and altogether
admirable character, then indeed has the student found the inner springs
of happiness. Otherwise one cannot say that the wise man is happier than
the ignorant man.
In fine, and in spite of the political injunction, we need to consider
that happiness is an inner condition, not to be raced after. And what an
advance in our situation it would be if we could get it into our heads
here in this land of inalienable rights that the world would turn round
just the same if we stood still and waited for the daily coming of our
Lord!
LITERATURE AND THE STAGE
Is the divorce of Literature and the Stage complete, or is it still only
partial? As the lawyers say, is it a 'vinculo', or only a 'mensa et
thoro?' And if this divorce is permanent, is it a good thing for
literature or the stage? Is the present condition of the stage a
degeneration, as some say, or is it a natural evolution of an art
independent of literature?
How long is it since a play has been written and accepted and played
which has in it any so-called literary quality or is an addition to
literature? And what is dramatic art as at present understood and
practiced by the purveyors of plays for the public? If any one can answer
these questions, he will contribute something to the discussion about the
tendency of the modern stage.
Every one recognizes in the "good old plays" which are occasionally
"revived" both a quality and an intention different from anything in most
contemporary productions. They are real dramas, the interest of which
depends upon sentiment, upon an exhibition of human nature, upon the
interaction of varied character, and upon plot, and we recognize in them
a certain literary art. They can be read with pleasure. Scenery and
mechanical contrivance may heighten the effects, but they are not
absolute essentials.
In the contemporary play instead of character we have "characters,"
usually exaggerations of some trait, so pushed forward as to become
caricatures. Consistency to human nature is not insisted on in plot, but
there must be startling and unexpected incidents, mechanical devices, and
a great deal of what is called "business," which clearly has as much
relation to literature as have the steps of a farceur in a clog-dance.
The composition of such plays demands literary ability in the least
degree, but ingenuity in inventing situations and surprises; the text is
nothing, the action is everything; but the text is considerably improved
if it have brightness of repartee and a lively apprehension of
contemporary events, including the slang of the hour. These plays appear
to be made up by the writer, the manager, the carpenter, the costumer. If
they are successful with the modern audiences, their success is probably
due to other things than any literary quality they may have, or any truth
to life or to human nature.
We see how this is in the great number of plays adapted from popular
novels. In the "dramatization" of these stories, pretty much everything
is left out of the higher sort that the reader has valued in the story.
The romance of "Monte Cristo" is an illustration of this. The play is
vulgar melodrama, out of which has escaped altogether the refinement and
the romantic idealism of the stirring romance of Dumas. Now and then, to
be sure, we get a different result, as in "Olivia," where all the pathos
and character of the "Vicar of Wakefield" are preserved, and the effect
of the play depends upon passion and sentiment. But as a rule, we get
only the more obvious saliencies, the bones of the novel, fitted in or
clothed with stage "business."
Of course it is true that literary men, even dramatic authors, may write
and always have written dramas not suited to actors, that could not well
be put upon the stage. But it remains true that the greatest dramas,
those that have endured from the Greek times down, have been (for the
audiences of their times) both good reading and good acting plays.
I am not competent to criticise the stage or its tendency. But I am
interested in noticing the increasing non-literary character of modern
plays. It may be explained as a necessary and justifiable evolution of
the stage. The managers may know what the audience wants, just as the
editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make a
newspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, but
it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. An
observer must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York or
Boston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes,
doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Has
the audience been creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have the
managers been educating an audience? Has the divorce of literary art from
the mimic art of the stage anything to do with this condition?
The stage can be amusing, but can it show life as it is without the aid
of idealizing literary art? And if the stage goes on in this
materialistic way, how long will it be before it ceases to amuse
intelligent, not to say intellectual people?
THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART
In the minds of the public there is a mystery about the practice of
medicine. It deals more or less with the unknown, with the occult, it
appeals to the imagination. Doubtless confidence in its practitioners is
still somewhat due to the belief that they are familiar with the secret
processes of nature, if they are not in actual alliance with the
supernatural. Investigation of the ground of the popular faith in the
doctor would lead us into metaphysics. And yet our physical condition has
much to do with this faith. It is apt to be weak when one is in perfect
health; but when one is sick it grows strong. Saint and sinner both warm
up to the doctor when the judgment Day heaves in view.
In the popular apprehension the doctor is still the Medicine Man. We
smile when we hear about his antics in barbarous tribes; he dresses
fantastically, he puts horns on his head, he draws circles on the ground,
he dances about the patient, shaking his rattle and uttering
incantations. There is nothing to laugh at. He is making an appeal to the
imagination. And sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills; in either
case he gets his fee. What right have we to laugh? We live in an
enlightened age, and yet a great proportion of the people, perhaps not a
majority, still believe in incantations, have faith in ignorant
practitioners who advertise a "natural gift," or a secret process or
remedy, and prefer the charlatan who is exactly on the level of the
Indian Medicine Man, to the regular practitioner, and to the scientific
student of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica.
Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protect
the community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and to
require of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, before
he is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers must
pass an examination--though the examiner sometimes does not know as much
as the candidate,--for misguiding the youthful mind; the lawyer cannot
practice without study and a formal admission to the bar; and even the
clergyman is not accepted in any responsible charge until he has given
evidence of some moral and intellectual fitness. But the profession
affecting directly the health and life of every human body, which needs
to avail itself of the accumulated experience, knowledge, and science of
all the ages, is open to every ignorant and stupid practitioner on the
credulity of the public. Why cannot we get a law regulating the
profession which is of most vital interest to all of us, excluding
ignorance and quackery? Because the majority of our legislature,
representing, I suppose, the majority of the public, believe in the
"natural bone-setter," the herb doctor, the root doctor, the old woman
who brews a decoction of swamp medicine, the "natural gift" of some
dabbler in diseases, the magnetic healer, the faith cure, the mind cure,
the Christian Science cure, the efficacy of a prescription rapped out on
a table by some hysterical medium,--in anything but sound knowledge,
education in scientific methods, steadied by a sense of public
responsibility. Not long ago, on a cross-country road, I came across a
woman in a farmhouse, where I am sure the barn-yard drained into the
well, who was sick; she had taken a shop-full of patent medicines. I
advised her to send for a doctor. She had no confidence in doctors, but
said she reckoned she would get along now, for she had sent for the
seventh son of a seventh son, and didn't I think he could certainly cure
her? I said that combination ought to fetch any disease except
agnosticism. That woman probably influenced a vote in the legislature.
The legislature believes in incantations; it ought to have in attendance
an Indian Medicine Man.
We think the world is progressing in enlightenment; I suppose it is--inch
by inch. But it is not easy to name an age that has cherished more
delusions than ours, or been more superstitious, or more credulous, more
eager to run after quackery. Especially is this true in regard to
remedies for diseases, and the faith in healers and quacks outside of the
regular, educated professors of the medical art. Is this an exaggeration?
Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country,
some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of them
injurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignorance
of the nature of the disease or the specific action of the remedy. The
drug-shops are full of them, especially in country towns; and in the far
West and on the Pacific coast I have been astonished at the quantity and
variety displayed. They are found in almost every house; the country is
literally dosed to death with these manufactured nostrums and
panaceas--and that is the most popular medicine which can be used for the
greatest number of internal and external diseases and injuries. Many
newspapers are half supported by advertising them, and millions and
millions of dollars are invested in this popular industry. Needless to
say that the patented remedies most in request are those that profess a
secret and unscientific origin. Those most "purely vegetable" seem most
suitable to the wooden-heads who believe in them, but if one were
sufficiently advertised as not containing a single trace of vegetable
matter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of one organic life with
another organic life, it would be just as popular. The favorites are
those that have been secretly used by an East Indian fakir, or
accidentally discovered as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground by
an American Indian tribe, or steeped in a kettle by an ancient colored
person in a southern plantation, or washed ashore on the person of a
sailor from the South Seas, or invented by a very aged man in New Jersey,
who could not read, but had spent his life roaming in the woods, and
whose capacity for discovering a "universal panacea," besides his
ignorance and isolation, lay in the fact that his sands of life had
nearly run. It is the supposed secrecy or low origin of the remedy that
is its attraction. The basis of the vast proprietary medicine business is
popular ignorance and credulity. And it needs to be pretty broad to
support a traffic of such enormous proportions.
During this generation certain branches of the life-saving and
life-prolonging art have made great advances out of empiricism onto the
solid ground of scientific knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, and
to the discovery of the causes and improvement in the treatment of
contagious and epidemic diseases. The general practice has shared in this
scientific advance, but it is limited and always will be limited within
experimental bounds, by the infinite variations in individual
constitutions, and the almost incalculable element of the interference of
mental with physical conditions. When we get an exact science of man, we
may expect an exact science of medicine. How far we are from this, we see
when we attempt to make criminal anthropology the basis of criminal
legislation. Man is so complex that if we were to eliminate one of his
apparently worse qualities, we might develop others still worse, or throw
the whole machine into inefficiency. By taking away what the
phrenologists call combativeness, we could doubtless stop prize-fight,
but we might have a springless society. The only safe way is that taught
by horticulture, to feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has vigor
enough to throw off its degenerate tendencies and its enemies, or, as the
doctors say in medical practice, bring up the general system. That is to
say, there is more hope for humanity in stimulating the good, than in
directly suppressing the evil. It is on something like this line that the
greatest advance has been made in medical practice; I mean in the
direction of prevention. This involves, of course, the exclusion of the
evil, that is, of suppressing the causes that produce disease, as well as
in cultivating the resistant power of the human system. In sanitation,
diet, and exercise are the great fields of medical enterprise and
advance. I need not say that the physician who, in the case of those
under his charge, or who may possibly require his aid, contents himself
with waiting for developed disease, is like the soldier in a besieged
city who opens the gates and then attempts to repel the invader who has
effected a lodgment. I hope the time will come when the chief practice of
the physician will be, first, in oversight of the sanitary condition of
his neighborhood, and, next, in preventive attendance on people who think
they are well, and are all unconscious of the insidious approach of some
concealed malady.
Another great change in modern practice is specialization. Perhaps it has
not yet reached the delicate particularity of the practice in ancient
Egypt, where every minute part of the human economy had its exclusive
doctor. This is inevitable in a scientific age, and the result has been
on the whole an advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specific
ailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, who
has only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor or
tobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial of
universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of the
centralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in the
state. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in medicine is to
refer all physical trouble to the ill conduct of the organ he presides
over. He can often trace every disease to want of width in the nostrils,
to a defective eye, to a sensitive throat, to shut-up pores, to an
irritated stomach, to auricular defect. I suppose he is generally right,
but I have a perhaps natural fear that if I happened to consult an
amputationist about catarrh he would want to cut off my leg. I confess to
an affection for the old-fashioned, all-round country doctor, who took a
general view of his patient, knew his family, his constitution, all the
gossip about his mental or business troubles, his affairs of the heart,
disappointments in love, incompatibilities of temper, and treated the
patient, as the phrase is, for all he was worth, and gave him visible
medicine out of good old saddle-bags--how much faith we used to have in
those saddle-bags--and not a prescription in a dead language to be put up
by a dead-head clerk who occasionally mistakes arsenic for carbonate of
soda. I do not mean, however, to say there is no sense in the retention
of the hieroglyphics which the doctors use to communicate their ideas to
a druggist, for I had a prescription made in Hartford put up in Naples,
and that could not have happened if it had been written in English. And I
am not sure but the mysterious symbols have some effect on the patient.
The mention of the intimate knowledge of family and constitutional
conditions possessed by the old-fashioned country doctor, whose main
strength lay in this and in his common-sense, reminds me of another great
advance in the modern practice, in the attempt to understand nature
better by the scientific study of psychology and the occult relations of
mind and body. It is in the study of temper, temperament, hereditary
predispositions, that we may expect the most brilliant results in
preventive medicine.
As a layman, I cannot but notice another great advance in the medical
profession. It is not alone in it. It is rather expected that the lawyers
will divide the oyster between them and leave the shell to the
contestants. I suppose that doctors, almost without exception, give more
of their time and skill in the way of charity than almost any other
profession. But somebody must pay, and fees have increased with the
general cost of living and dying. If fees continue to increase as they
have done in the past ten years in the great cities, like New York,
nobody not a millionaire can afford to be sick. The fees will soon be a
prohibitive tax. I cannot say that this will be altogether an evil, for
the cost of calling medical aid may force people to take better care of
themselves. Still, the excessive charges are rather hard on people in
moderate circumstances who are compelled to seek surgical aid. And here
we touch one of the regrettable symptoms of the times, which is not by
any means most conspicuous in the medical profession. I mean the tendency
to subordinate the old notion of professional duty to the greed for
money. The lawyers are almost universally accused of it; even the
clergymen are often suspected of being influenced by it. The young man is
apt to choose a profession on calculation of its profit. It will be a bad
day for science and for the progress of the usefulness of the medical
profession when the love of money in its practice becomes stronger than
professional enthusiasm, than the noble ambition of distinction for
advancing the science, and the devotion to human welfare.
I do not prophesy it. Rather I expect interest in humanity, love of
science for itself, sympathy with suffering, self-sacrifice for others,
to increase in the world, and be stronger in the end than sordid love of
gain and the low ambition of rivalry in materialistic display. To this
higher life the physician is called. I often wonder that there are so
many men, brilliant men, able men, with so many talents for success in
any calling, willing to devote their lives to a profession which demands
so much self-sacrifice, so much hardship, so much contact with suffering,
subject to the call of all the world at any hour of the day or night,
involving so much personal risk, carrying so much heart-breaking
responsibility, responded to by so much constant heroism, a heroism
requiring the risk of life in a service the only glory of which is a good
name and the approval of one's conscience.
To the members of such a profession, in spite of their human infirmities
and limitations and unworthy hangers-on, I bow with admiration and the
respect which we feel for that which is best in this world.
"H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
It seems somehow more nearly an irreparable loss to us than to "H. H."
that she did not live to taste her very substantial fame in Southern
California. We should have had such delight in her unaffected pleasure in
it, and it would have been one of those satisfactions somewhat adequate
to our sense of fitness that are so seldom experienced. It was my good
fortune to see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in New York when she
was writing "Ramona," which was begun and perhaps finished in the
Berkeley House. The theme had complete possession of her, and chapter
after chapter flowed from her pen as easily as one would write a letter
to a friend; and she had an ever fresh and vigorous delight in it. I have
often thought that no one enjoyed the sensation of living more than Mrs.
Jackson, or was more alive to all the influences of nature and the
contact of mind with mind, more responsive to all that was exquisite and
noble either in nature or in society, or more sensitive to the
disagreeable. This is merely saying that she was a poet; but when she
became interested in the Indians, and especially in the harsh fate of the
Mission Indians in California, all her nature was fused for the time in a
lofty enthusiasm of pity and indignation, and all her powers seemed to be
consecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm and sympathy will not make a
novel, but all the same they are necessary to the production of a work
that has in it real vital quality, and in this case all previous
experience and artistic training became the unconscious servants of Mrs.
Jackson's heart. I know she had very little conceit about her
performance, but she had a simple consciousness that she was doing her
best work, and that if the world should care much for anything she had
done, after she was gone, it would be for "Ramona." She had put herself
into it.
And yet I am certain that she could have had no idea what the novel would
be to the people of Southern California, or how it would identify her
name with all that region, and make so many scenes in it places of
pilgrimage and romantic interest for her sake. I do not mean to say that
the people in California knew personally Ramona and Alessandro, or
altogether believe in them, but that in their idealizations they
recognize a verity and the ultimate truth of human nature, while in the
scenery, in the fading sentiment of the old Spanish life, and the romance
and faith of the Missions, the author has done for the region very much
what Scott did for the Highlands. I hope she knows now, I presume she
does, that more than one Indian school in the Territories is called the
Ramona School; that at least two villages in California are contending
for the priority of using the name Ramona; that all the travelers and
tourists (at least in the time they can spare from real-estate
speculations) go about under her guidance, are pilgrims to the shrines
she has described, and eager searchers for the scenes she has made famous
in her novel; that more than one city and more than one town claims the
honor of connection with the story; that the tourist has pointed out to
him in more than one village the very house where Ramona lived, where she
was married--indeed, that a little crop of legends has already grown up
about the story itself. I was myself shown the house in Los Angeles where
the story was written, and so strong is the local impression that I
confess to looking at the rose-embowered cottage with a good deal of
interest, though I had seen the romance growing day by day in the
Berkeley in New York.
The undoubted scene of the loves of Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulos
rancho, on the railway from Newhall to Santa Paula, the route that one
takes now (unless he wants to have a lifelong remembrance of the ground
swells of the Pacific in an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los Angeles
to Santa Barbara. It is almost the only one remaining of the
old-fashioned Spanish haciendas, where the old administration prevails.
The new railway passes it now, and the hospitable owners have been
obliged to yield to the public curiosity and provide entertainment for a
continual stream of visitors. The place is so perfectly described in
"Ramona" that I do not need to draw it over again, and I violate no
confidence and only certify to the extraordinary powers of delineation of
the novelist, when I say that she only spent a few hours there,--not a
quarter of the time we spent in identifying her picture. We knew the
situation before the train stopped by the crosses erected on the
conspicuous peaks of the serrated ashy--or shall I say purple--hills that
enfold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, watered by a swift
river, and sheltered by wonderfully picturesque mountains. The house is
strictly in the old Spanish style, of one story about a large court, with
flowers and a fountain, in which are the most noisy if not musical frogs
in the world, and all the interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The real
front is towards the garden, and here at the end of the gallery is the
elevated room where Father Salvierderra slept when he passed a night at
the hacienda,--a pretty room which has a case of Spanish books, mostly
religious and legal, and some quaint and cheap holy pictures. We had a
letter to Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were welcomed with a sort
of formal extension of hospitality that put us back into the courtly
manners of a hundred years ago. The Signora, who is in no sense the
original of the mistress whom "H. H." describes, is a widow now for seven
years, and is the vigilant administrator of all her large domain, of the
stock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the sheep ranch, and all the
people. Rising very early in the morning, she visits every department,
and no detail is too minute to escape her inspection, and no one in the
great household but feels her authority.
It was a very lovely day on the 17th of March (indeed, I suppose it had
been preceded by 364 days exactly like it) as we sat upon the gallery
looking on the garden, a garden of oranges, roses, citrons, lemons,
peaches--what fruit and flower was not growing there?--acres and acres of
vineyard beyond, with the tall cane and willows by the stream, and the
purple mountains against the sapphire sky. Was there ever anything more
exquisite than the peach-blossoms against that blue sky! Such a place of
peace. A soft south wind was blowing, and all the air was drowsy with the
hum of bees. In the garden is a vine-covered arbor, with seats and
tables, and at the end of it is the opening into a little chapel, a
domestic chapel, carpeted like a parlor, and bearing all the emblems of a
loving devotion. By the garden gate hang three small bells, from some old
mission, all cracked, but serving (each has its office) to summon the
workmen or to call to prayer.
Perfect system reigns in Signora Del Valle's establishment, and even the
least child in it has its duty. At sundown a little slip of a girl went
out to the gate and struck one of the bells. "What is that for?" I asked
as she returned. "It is the Angelus," she said simply. I do not know what
would happen to her if she should neglect to strike it at the hour. At
eight o'clock the largest bell was struck, and the Signora and all her
household, including the house servants, went out to the little chapel in
the garden, which was suddenly lighted with candles, gleaming brilliantly
through the orange groves. The Signora read the service, the household
responding--a twenty minutes' service, which is as much a part of the
administration of the establishment as visiting the granaries and
presses, and the bringing home of the goats. The Signora's apartments,
which she permitted us to see, were quite in the nature of an oratory,
with shrines and sacred pictures and relics of the faith. By the shrine
at the head of her bed hung the rosary carried by Father Junipero,--a
priceless possession. From her presses and armoires, the Signora, seeing
we had a taste for such things, brought out the feminine treasures of
three generations, the silk and embroidered dresses of last century, the
ribosas, the jewelry, the brilliant stuffs of China and Mexico, each
article with a memory and a flavor.
But I must not be betrayed into writing about Ramona's house. How
charming indeed it was the next morning,--though the birds in the garden
were astir a little too early,--with the thermometer set to the exact
degree of warmth without languor, the sky blue, the wind soft, the air
scented with orange and jessamine. The Signora had already visited all
her premises before we were up. We had seen the evening before an
enclosure near the house full of cashmere goats and kids, whose antics
were sufficiently amusing--most of them had now gone afield; workmen were
coming for their orders, plowing was going on in the barley fields,
traders were driving to the plantation store, the fierce eagle in a big
cage by the olive press was raging at his detention. Within the house
enclosure are an olive mill and press, a wine-press and a great
storehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks,--a dusky,
interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes and
oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is a
cornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing are
not far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side of
the mountain.
Peace be with Comulos. It must please the author of "Ramona" to know that
it continues in the old ways; and I trust she is undisturbed by the
knowledge that the rage for change will not long let it be what it now
is.
SIMPLICITY
No doubt one of the most charming creations in all poetry is Nausicaa,
the white-armed daughter of King Alcinous. There is no scene, no picture,
in the heroic times more pleasing than the meeting of Ulysses with this
damsel on the wild seashore of Scheria, where the Wanderer had been
tossed ashore by the tempest. The place of this classic meeting was
probably on the west coast of Corfu, that incomparable island, to whose
beauty the legend of the exquisite maidenhood of the daughter of the king
of the Phaeacians has added an immortal bloom.
We have no difficulty in recalling it in all its distinctness: the bright
morning on which Nausicaa came forth from the palace, where her mother
sat and turned the distaff loaded with a fleece dyed in sea-purple,
mounted the car piled with the robes to be cleansed in the stream, and,
attended by her bright-haired, laughing handmaidens, drove to the banks
of the river, where out of its sweet grasses it flowed over clean sand
into the Adriatic. The team is loosed to browse the grass; the garments
are flung into the dark water, then trampled with hasty feet in frolic
rivalry, and spread upon the gravel to dry. Then the maidens bathe, give
their limbs the delicate oil from the cruse of gold, sit by the stream
and eat their meal, and, refreshed, mistress and maidens lay aside their
veils and play at ball, and Nausicaa begins a song. Though all were fair,
like Diana was this spotless virgin midst her maids. A missed ball and
maidenly screams waken Ulysses from his sleep in the thicket. At the
apparition of the unclad, shipwrecked sailor the maidens flee right and
left. Nausicaa alone keeps her place, secure in her unconscious modesty.
To the astonished Sport of Fortune the vision of this radiant girl, in
shape and stature and in noble air, is more than mortal, yet scarcely
more than woman:
"Like thee, I saw of late,
In Delos, a young palm-tree growing up
Beside Apollo's altar."
When the Wanderer has bathed, and been clad in robes from the pile on the
sand, and refreshed with food and wine which the hospitable maidens put
before him, the train sets out for the town, Ulysses following the
chariot among the bright-haired women. But before that Nausicaa, in the
candor of those early days, says to her attendants:
"I would that I might call
A man like him my husband, dwelling here
And here content to dwell."
Is there any woman in history more to be desired than this sweet,
pure-minded, honest-hearted girl, as she is depicted with a few swift
touches by the great poet?--the dutiful daughter in her father's house,
the joyous companion of girls, the beautiful woman whose modest bearing
commands the instant homage of man. Nothing is more enduring in
literature than this girl and the scene on the--Corfu sands.
The sketch, though distinct, is slight, little more than outlines; no
elaboration, no analysis; just an incident, as real as the blue sky of
Scheria and the waves on the yellow sand. All the elements of the picture
are simple, human, natural, standing in as unconfused relations as any
events in common life. I am not recalling it because it is a conspicuous
instance of the true realism that is touched with the ideality of genius,
which is the immortal element in literature, but as an illustration of
the other necessary quality in all productions of the human mind that
remain age after age, and that is simplicity. This is the stamp of all
enduring work; this is what appeals to the universal understanding from
generation to generation. All the masterpieces that endure and become a
part of our lives are characterized by it. The eye, like the mind, hates
confusion and overcrowding. All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos,
are simple--as simple as the lines in a Nile picture: the strong river,
the yellow desert, the palms, the pyramids; hardly more than a horizontal
line and a perpendicular line; only there is the sky, the atmosphere, the
color-those need genius.
We may test contemporary literature by its confortuity to the canon of
simplicity--that is, if it has not that, we may conclude that it lacks
one essential lasting quality. It may please;--it may be ingenious
--brilliant, even; it may be the fashion of the day, and a fashion that
will hold its power of pleasing for half a century, but it will be a
fashion. Mannerisms of course will not deceive us, nor extravagances,
eccentricities, affectations, nor the straining after effect by the use
of coined or far-fetched words and prodigality in adjectives. But, style?
Yes, there is such a thing as style, good and bad; and the style should
be the writer's own and characteristic of him, as his speech is. But the
moment I admire a style for its own sake, a style that attracts my
attention so constantly that I say, How good that is! I begin to be
suspicious. If it is too good, too pronouncedly good, I fear I shall not
like it so well on a second reading. If it comes to stand between me and
the thought, or the personality behind the thought, I grow more and more
suspicious. Is the book a window, through which I am to see life? Then I
cannot have the glass too clear. Is it to affect me like a strain of
music? Then I am still more disturbed by any affectations. Is it to
produce the effect of a picture? Then I know I want the simplest harmony
of color. And I have learned that the most effective word-painting, as it
is called, is the simplest. This is true if it is a question only of
present enjoyment. But we may be sure that any piece of literature which
attracts only by some trick of style, however it may blaze up for a day
and startle the world with its flash, lacks the element of endurance. We
do not need much experience to tell us the difference between a lamp and
a Roman candle. Even in our day we have seen many reputations flare up,
illuminate the sky, and then go out in utter darkness. When we take a
proper historical perspective, we see that it is the universal, the
simple, that lasts.
I am not sure whether simplicity is a matter of nature or of cultivation.
Barbarous nature likes display, excessive ornament; and when we have
arrived at the nobly simple, the perfect proportion, we are always likely
to relapse into the confused and the complicated. The most cultivated
men, we know, are the simplest in manners, in taste, in their style. It
is a note of some of the purest modern writers that they avoid
comparisons, similes, and even too much use of metaphor. But the mass of
men are always relapsing into the tawdry and the over-ornamented. It is a
characteristic of youth, and it seems also to be a characteristic of
over-development. Literature, in any language, has no sooner arrived at
the highest vigor of simple expression than it begins to run into
prettiness, conceits, over-elaboration. This is a fact which may be
verified by studying different periods, from classic literature to our
own day.
It is the same with architecture. The classic Greek runs into the
excessive elaboration of the Roman period, the Gothic into the
flamboyant, and so on. We, have had several attacks of architectural
measles in this country, which have left the land spotted all over with
houses in bad taste. Instead of developing the colonial simplicity on
lines of dignity and harmony to modern use, we stuck on the
pseudo-classic, we broke out in the Mansard, we broke all up into the
whimsicalities of the so-called Queen Anne, without regard to climate or
comfort. The eye speedily tires of all these things. It is a positive
relief to look at an old colonial mansion, even if it is as plain as a
barn. What the eye demands is simple lines, proportion, harmony in mass,
dignity; above all, adaptation to use. And what we must have also is
individuality in house and in furniture; that makes the city, the
village, picturesque and interesting. The highest thing in architecture,
as in literature, is the development of individuality in simplicity.
Dress is a dangerous topic to meddle with. I myself like the attire of
the maidens of Scheria, though Nausicaa, we must note, was "clad
royally." But climate cannot be disregarded, and the vestment that was so
fitting on a Greek girl whom I saw at the Second Cataract of the Nile
would scarcely be appropriate in New York. If the maidens of one of our
colleges for girls, say Vassar for illustration, habited like the
Phaeacian girls of Scheria, went down to the Hudson to cleanse the rich
robes of the house, and were surprised by the advent of a stranger from
the city, landing from a steamboat--a wandering broker, let us say, clad
in wide trousers, long topcoat, and a tall hat--I fancy that he would be
more astonished than Ulysses was at the bevy of girls that scattered at
his approach. It is not that women must be all things to all men, but
that their simplicity must conform to time and circumstance. What I do
not understand is that simplicity gets banished altogether, and that
fashion, on a dictation that no one can trace the origin of, makes that
lovely in the eyes of women today which will seem utterly abhorrent to
them tomorrow. There appears to be no line of taste running through the
changes. The only consolation to you, the woman of the moment, is that
while the costume your grandmother wore makes her, in the painting, a guy
in your eyes, the costume you wear will give your grandchildren the same
impression of you. And the satisfaction for you is the thought that the
latter raiment will be worse than the other two--that is to say, less
well suited to display the shape, station, and noble air which brought
Ulysses to his knees on the sands of Corfu.
Another reason why I say that I do not know whether simplicity belongs to
nature or art is that fashion is as strong to pervert and disfigure in
savage nations as it is in civilized. It runs to as much eccentricity in
hair-dressing and ornament in the costume of the jingling belles of
Nootka and the maidens of Nubia as in any court or coterie which we
aspire to imitate. The only difference is that remote and unsophisticated
communities are more constant to a style they once adopt. There are
isolated peasant communities in Europe who have kept for centuries the
most uncouth and inconvenient attire, while we have run through a dozen
variations in the art of attraction by dress, from the most puffed and
bulbous ballooning to the extreme of limpness and lankness. I can only
conclude that the civilized human being is a restless creature, whose
motives in regard to costumes are utterly unfathomable.
We need, however, to go a little further in this question of simplicity.
Nausicaa was "clad royally." There was a distinction, then, between her
and her handmaidens. She was clad simply, according to her condition.
Taste does not by any means lead to uniformity. I have read of a commune
in which all the women dressed alike and unbecomingly, so as to
discourage all attempt to please or attract, or to give value to the
different accents of beauty. The end of those women was worse than the
beginning. Simplicity is not ugliness, nor poverty, nor barrenness, nor
necessarily plainness. What is simplicity for another may not be for you,
for your condition, your tastes, especially for your wants. It is a
personal question. You go beyond simplicity when you attempt to
appropriate more than your wants, your aspirations, whatever they are,
demand--that is, to appropriate for show, for ostentation, more than your
life can assimilate, can make thoroughly yours. There is no limit to what
you may have, if it is necessary for you, if it is not a superfluity to
you. What would be simplicity to you may be superfluity to another. The
rich robes that Nausicaa wore she wore like a goddess. The moment your
dress, your house, your house-grounds, your furniture, your scale of
living, are beyond the rational satisfaction of your own desires--that
is, are for ostentation, for imposition upon the public--they are
superfluous, the line of simplicity is passed. Every human being has a
right to whatever can best feed his life, satisfy his legitimate desires,
contribute to the growth of his soul. It is not for me to judge whether
this is luxury or want. There is no merit in riches nor in poverty. There
is merit in that simplicity of life which seeks to grasp no more than is
necessary for the development and enjoyment of the individual. Most of
us, in all conditions; are weighted down with superfluities or worried to
acquire them. Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just
baggage enough.
The needs of every person differ from the needs of every other; we can
make no standard for wants or possessions. But the world would be greatly
transformed and much more easy to live in if everybody limited his
acquisitions to his ability to assimilate them to his life. The
destruction of simplicity is a craving for things, not because we need
them, but because others have them. Because one man who lives in a plain
little house, in all the restrictions of mean surroundings, would be
happier in a mansion suited to his taste and his wants, is no argument
that another man, living in a palace, in useless ostentation, would not
be better off in a dwelling which conforms to his cultivation and habits.
It is so hard to learn the lesson that there is no satisfaction in
gaining more than we personally want.
The matter of simplicity, then, comes into literary style, into building,
into dress, into life, individualized always by one's personality. In
each we aim at the expression of the best that is in us, not at imitation
or ostentation.
The women in history, in legend, in poetry, whom we love, we do not love
because they are "clad royally." In our day, to be clad royally is
scarcely a distinction. To have a superfluity is not a distinction. But
in those moments when we have a clear vision of life, that which seems to
us most admirable and desirable is the simplicity that endears to us the
idyl of Nausicaa.
THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION
The most painful event since the bombardment of Alexandria has been what
is called by an English writer the "invasion" of "American Literature in
England." The hostile forces, with an advanced guard of what was regarded
as an "awkward squad," had been gradually effecting a landing and a
lodgment not unwelcome to the unsuspicious natives. No alarm was taken
when they threw out a skirmish-line of magazines and began to deploy an
occasional wild poet, who advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver in
hand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad in the picturesque robes of
the sunset. Put when the main body of American novelists got fairly
ashore and into position the literary militia of the island rose up as
one man, with the strength of a thousand, to repel the invaders and sweep
them back across the Atlantic. The spectacle had a dramatic interest. The
invaders were not numerous, did not carry their native tomahawks, they
had been careful to wash off the frightful paint with which they usually
go into action, they did not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and even
the militia regarded them as on the whole "amusin' young 'possums" and
yet all the resources of modern and ancient warfare were brought to bear
upon them. There was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, a lively
fusillade of small-arms in the astonished weeklies, a discharge of
point-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavy
quarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not been
charged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, and
poured in raking broadsides. The effect on the island was something
tremendous: it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke of
the conflict. What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon to
determine. If any of them survive, it will be God's mercy to his weak and
innocent children.
It must be said that the American people--such of them as were aware of
this uprising--took the punishment of their presumption in a sweet and
forgiving spirit. If they did not feel that they deserved it, they
regarded it as a valuable contribution to the study of sociology and race
characteristics, in which they have taken a lively interest of late. We
know how it is ourselves, they said; we used to be thin-skinned and
self-conscious and sensitive. We used to wince and cringe under English
criticism, and try to strike back in a blind fury. We have learned that
criticism is good for us, and we are grateful for it from any source. We
have learned that English criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warm
interest in our intellectual development, just as English anxiety about
our revenue laws is based upon a yearning that our down-trodden millions
shall enjoy the benefits of free-trade. We did not understand why a
country that admits our beef and grain and cheese should seem to seek
protection against a literary product which is brought into competition
with one of the great British staples, the modern novel. It seemed
inconsistent. But we are no more consistent ourselves. We cannot
understand the action of our own Congress, which protects the American
author by a round duty on foreign books and refuses to protect him by
granting a foreign copyright; or, to put it in another way, is willing to
steal the brains of the foreign author under the plea of free knowledge,
but taxes free knowledge in another form. We have no defense to make of
the state of international copyright, though we appreciate the
complication of the matter in the conflicting interests of English and
American publishers.
Yes; we must insist that, under the circumstances, the American people
have borne this outburst of English criticism in an admirable spirit. It
was as unexpected as it was sudden. Now, for many years our international
relations have been uncommonly smooth, oiled every few days by
complimentary banquet speeches, and sweetened by abundance of magazine
and newspaper "taffy." Something too much of "taffy" we have thought was
given us at times for, in getting bigger in various ways, we have grown
more modest. Though our English admirers may not believe it, we see our
own faults more clearly than we once did--thanks, partly, to the faithful
castigations of our friends--and we sometimes find it difficult to
conceal our blushes when we are over-praised. We fancied that we were
going on, as an English writer on "Down-Easters" used to say, as "slick
as ile," when this miniature tempest suddenly burst out in a revival of
the language and methods used in the redoubtable old English periodicals
forty years ago. We were interested in seeing how exactly this sort of
criticism that slew our literary fathers was revived now for the
execution of their degenerate children. And yet it was not exactly the
same. We used to call it "slang-whanging." One form of it was a blank
surprise at the pretensions of American authors, and a dismissal with the
formula of previous ignorance of their existence. This is modified now by
a modest expression of "discomfiture" on reading of American authors
"whose very names, much less peculiarities, we never heard of before."
This is a tribunal from which there is no appeal. Not to have been heard
of by an Englishman is next door to annihilation. It is at least
discouraging to an author who may think he has gained some reputation
over what is now conceded to be a considerable portion of the earth's
surface, to be cast into total obscurity by the negative damnation of
English ignorance. There is to us something pathetic in this and in the
surprise of the English critic, that there can be any standard of
respectable achievement outside of a seven-miles radius turning on
Charing Cross.
The pathetic aspect of the case has not, however, we are sorry to say,
struck the American press, which has too often treated with unbecoming
levity this unaccountable exhibition of English sensitiveness. There has
been little reply to it; at most, generally only an amused report of the
war, and now and then a discriminating acceptance of some of the
criticism as just, with a friendly recognition of the fact that on the
whole the critic had done very well considering the limitation of his
knowledge of the subject on which he wrote. What is certainly noticeable
is an entire absence of the irritation that used to be caused by similar
comments on America thirty years ago. Perhaps the Americans are reserving
their fire as their ancestors did at Bunker Hill, conscious, maybe, that
in the end they will be driven out of their slight literary
entrenchments. Perhaps they were disarmed by the fact that the acrid
criticism in the London Quarterly Review was accompanied by a cordial
appreciation of the novels that seemed to the reviewer characteristically
American. The interest in the tatter's review of our poor field must be
languid, however, for nobody has taken the trouble to remind its author
that Brockden Brown--who is cited as a typical American writer, true to
local character, scenery, and color--put no more flavor of American life
and soil in his books than is to be found in "Frankenstein."
It does not, I should suppose, lie in the way of The Century, whose
general audience on both sides of the Atlantic takes only an amused
interest in this singular revival of a traditional literary animosity--an
anachronism in these tolerant days when the reading world cares less and
less about the origin of literature that pleases it--it does not lie in
the way of The Century to do more than report this phenomenal literary
effervescence. And yet it cannot escape a certain responsibility as an
immediate though innocent occasion of this exhibition of international
courtesy, because its last November number contained some papers that
seem to have been irritating. In one of them Mr. Howells let fall some
chance remarks on the tendency of modern fiction, without adequately
developing his theory, which were largely dissented from in this country,
and were like the uncorking of six vials in England. The other was an
essay on England, dictated by admiration for the achievements of the
foremost nation of our time, which, from the awkwardness of the eulogist,
was unfortunately the uncorking of the seventh vial--an uncorking which,
as we happen to know, so prostrated the writer that he resolved never to
attempt to praise England again. His panic was somewhat allayed by the
soothing remark in a kindly paper in Blackwood's Magazine for January,
that the writer had discussed his theme "by no means unfairly or
disrespectfully." But with a shudder he recognized what a peril he had
escaped. Great Scott!--the reference is to a local American deity who is
invoked in war, and not to the Biblical commentator--what would have
happened to him if he had spoken of England "disrespectfully"!
We gratefully acknowledge also the remark of the Blackwood writer in
regard-to the claims of America in literature. "These claims," he says,
"we have hitherto been very charitable to." How our life depends upon a
continual exhibition by the critics of this divine attribute of charity
it would perhaps be unwise in us to confess. We can at least take
courage that it exists--who does not need it in this world of
misunderstandings?--since we know that charity is not puffed up, vaunteth
not itself, hopeth all things, endureth all things, is not easily
provoked; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
knowledge, it shall vanish; but charity never faileth. And when all our
"dialects" on both sides of the water shall vanish, and we shall speak no
more Yorkshire or Cape Cod, or London cockney or "Pike" or "Cracker"
vowel flatness, nor write them any more, but all use the noble simplicity
of the ideal English, and not indulge in such odd-sounding phrases as
this of our critic that "the combatants on both sides were by way of
detesting each other," though we speak with the tongues of men and of
angels--we shall still need charity.
It will occur to the charitable that the Americans are at a disadvantage
in this little international "tiff." For while the offenders have
inconsiderately written over their own names, the others preserve a
privileged anonymity. Any attempt to reply to these voices out of the
dark reminds one of the famous duel between the Englishman and the
Frenchman which took place in a pitch-dark chamber, with the frightful
result that when the tender-hearted Englishman discharged his revolver up
the chimney he brought down his man. One never can tell in a case of this
kind but a charitable shot might bring down a valued friend or even a
peer of the realm.
In all soberness, however, and setting aside the open question, which
country has most diverged from the English as it was at the time of the
separation of the colonies from the motherland, we may be permitted a
word or two in the hope of a better understanding. The offense in The
Century paper on "England" seems to have been in phrases such as these:
"When we began to produce something that was the product of our own soil
and of our own social conditions, it was still judged by the old
standards;" and, we are no longer irritated by "the snobbishness of
English critics of a certain school," "for we see that its criticism is
only the result of ignorance simply of inability to understand."
Upon this the reviewer affects to lose his respiration, and with "a gasp
of incredulity" wants to know what the writer means, "and what standards
he proposes to himself when he has given up the English ones?" The
reviewer makes a more serious case than the writer intended, or than a
fair construction of the context of his phrases warrants. It is the
criticism of "a certain school" only that was said to be the result of
ignorance. It is not the English language nor its body of enduring
literature--the noblest monument of our common civilization--that the
writer objected to as a standard of our performances. The standard
objected to is the narrow insular one (the term "insular" is used purely
as a geographical one) that measures life, social conditions, feeling,
temperament, and national idiosyncrasies expressed in our literature by
certain fixed notions prevalent in England. Probably also the expression
of national peculiarities would diverge somewhat from the "old
standards." All we thought of asking was that allowance should be made
for this expression and these peculiarities, as it would be made in case
of other literatures and peoples. It might have occurred to our critics,
we used to think, to ask themselves whether the English literature is not
elastic enough to permit the play of forces in it which are foreign to
their experience. Genuine literature is the expression, we take it, of
life-and truth to that is the standard of its success. Reference was
intended to this, and not to the common canons of literary art. But we
have given up the expectation that the English critic "of a certain
school" will take this view of it, and this is the plain reason--not
intended to be offensive--why much of the English criticism has ceased to
be highly valued in this country, and why it has ceased to annoy. At the
same time, it ought to be added, English opinion, when it is seen to be
based upon knowledge, is as highly respected as ever. And nobody in
America, so far as we know, entertains, or ever entertained, the idea of
setting aside as standards the master-minds in British literature. In
regard to the "inability to understand," we can, perhaps, make ourselves
more clearly understood, for the Blackwood's reviewer has kindly
furnished us an illustration in this very paper, when he passes in
patronizing review the novels of Mr. Howells. In discussing the character
of Lydia Blood, in "The Lady of the Aroostook," he is exceedingly puzzled
by the fact that a girl from rural New England, brought up amid
surroundings homely in the extreme, should have been considered a lady.
He says:
"The really 'American thing' in it is, we think, quite undiscovered
either by the author or his heroes, and that is the curious confusion of
classes which attributes to a girl brought up on the humblest level all
the prejudices and necessities of the highest society. Granting that
there was anything dreadful in it, the daughter of a homely small farmer
in England is not guarded and accompanied like a young lady on her
journeys from one place to another. Probably her mother at home would be
disturbed, like Lydia's aunt, at the thought that there was no woman on
board, in case her child should be ill or lonely; but, as for any
impropriety, would never think twice on that subject. The difference is
that the English girl would not be a young lady. She would find her
sweetheart among the sailors, and would have nothing to say to the
gentlemen. This difference is far more curious than the misadventure,
which might have happened anywhere, and far more remarkable than the fact
that the gentlemen did behave to her like gentlemen, and did their best
to set her at ease, which we hope would have happened anywhere else. But
it is, we think, exclusively American, and very curious and interesting,
that this young woman, with her antecedents so distinctly set before us,
should be represented as a lady, not at all out of place among her
cultivated companions, and 'ready to become an ornament of society the
moment she lands in Venice."
Reams of writing could not more clearly explain what is meant by
"inability to understand" American conditions and to judge fairly the
literature growing out of them; and reams of writing would be wasted in
the attempt to make our curious critic comprehend the situation. There is
nothing in his experience of "farmers' daughters" to give him the key to
it. We might tell him that his notion of a farmer's daughters in England
does not apply to New England. We might tell him of a sort of society of
which he has no conception and can have none, of farmers' daughters and
farmers' wives in New England--more numerous, let us confess, thirty or
forty years ago than now--who lived in homely conditions, dressed with
plainness, and followed the fashions afar off; did their own household
work, even the menial parts of it; cooked the meals for the "men folks"
and the "hired help," made the butter and cheese, and performed their
half of the labor that wrung an honest but not luxurious living from the
reluctant soil. And yet those women--the sweet and gracious ornaments of
a self-respecting society--were full of spirit, of modest pride in their
position, were familiar with much good literature, could converse with
piquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trained
in the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any company
with that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady.
Such strong native sense had they, such innate refinement and courtesythe
product, it used to be said, of plain living and high thinking--that,
ignorant as they might be of civic ways, they would, upon being
introduced to them, need only a brief space of time to "orient"
themselves to the new circumstances. Much more of this sort might be said
without exaggeration. To us there is nothing incongruous in the
supposition that Lydia Blood was "ready to become an ornament to society
the moment she lands in Venice."
But we lack the missionary spirit necessary to the exertion to make our
interested critic comprehend such a social condition, and we prefer to
leave ourselves to his charity, in the hope of the continuance of which
we rest in serenity.
NATHAN HALE--1887
In a Memorial Day address at New Haven in 1881, the Hon. Richard D.
Hubbard suggested the erection of a statue to Nathan Hale in the State
Capitol. With the exception of the monument in Coventry no memorial of
the young hero existed. The suggestion was acted on by the Hon. E. S.
Cleveland, who introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives in
the session of 1883, appropriating money for the purpose. The propriety
of this was urged before a committee of the Legislature by Governor
Hubbard, in a speech of characteristic grace and eloquence, seconded by
the Hon. Henry C. Robinson and the Hon. Stephen W. Kellogg. The
Legislature appropriated the sum of five thousand dollars for a statue in
bronze, and a committee was appointed to procure it. They opened a public
competition, and, after considerable delay, during which the commission
was changed by death and by absence,--indeed four successive governors,
Hubbard, Waller, Harrison, and Lounsbury have served on it,--the work
was awarded to Karl Gerhardt, a young sculptor who began his career in
this city. It was finished in clay, and accepted in October, 1886, put in
plaster, and immediately sent to the foundry of Melzar Masman in
Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Today in all its artistic perfection and beauty it stands here to be
revealed to the public gaze. It is proper that the citizens of
Connecticut should know how much of this result they owe to the
intelligent zeal of Mr. Cleveland, the mover of the resolution in the
Legislature, who in the commission, and before he became a member of it,
has spared neither time nor effort to procure a memorial worthy of the
hero and of the State. And I am sure that I speak the unanimous sentiment
of the commission in the regret that the originator of this statue could
not have seen the consummation of his idea, and could not have crowned it
with the one thing lacking on this occasion, the silver words of
eloquence we always heard from his lips, that compact, nervous speech,
the perfect union of strength and grace; for who so fitly as the lamented
Hubbard could have portrayed the moral heroism of the Martyr-Spy?
This is not a portrait statue. There is no likeness of Nathan Hale
extant. The only known miniature of his face, in the possession of the
lady to whom he was betrothed at the time of his death, disappeared many
years ago. The artist was obliged, therefore, to create an ideal figure,
aided by a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's personal appearance.
His object has been to represent an American youth of the period, an
American patriot and scholar, whose manly beauty and grace tradition
loves to recall, to represent in face and in bearing the moral elevation
of character that made him conspicuous among his fellows, and to show
forth, if possible, the deed that made him immortal. For it is the deed
and the memorable last words we think of when we think of Hale. I know
that by one of the canons of art it is held that sculpture should rarely
fix a momentary action; but if this can be pardoned in the Laocoon, where
suffering could not otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy of the
spectator, surely it can be justified in this case, where, as one may
say, the immortality of the subject rests upon a single act, upon a
phrase, upon the attitude of the moment. For all the man's life, all his
character, flowered and blossomed into immortal beauty in this one
supreme moment of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The ladder of the
gallows-tree on which the deserted boy stood, amidst the enemies of his
country, when he uttered those last words which all human annals do not
parallel in simple patriotism,--the ladder I am sure ran up to heaven,
and if angels were not seen ascending and descending it in that gray
morning, there stood the embodiment of American courage, unconquerable,
American faith, invincible, American love of country, unquenchable, a new
democratic manhood in the world, visible there for all men to take note
of, crowned already with the halo of victory in the Revolutionary dawn.
Oh, my Lord Howe! it seemed a trifling incident to you and to your
bloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunningham, but those winged last words were
worth ten thousand men to the drooping patriot army. Oh, your Majesty,
King George the Third! here was a spirit, could you but have known it,
that would cost you an empire, here was an ignominious death that would
grow in the estimation of mankind, increasing in nobility above the
fading pageantry of kings.
On the 21st of April, 1775, a messenger, riding express from Boston to
New York with the tidings of Lexington and Concord, reached New London.
The news created intense excitement. A public meeting was called in the
court-house at twilight, and among the speakers who exhorted the people
to take up arms at once, was one, a youth not yet twenty years of age,
who said, "Let us march immediately, and never lay down our arms until we
have obtained our independence,"--one of the first, perhaps the first, of
the public declarations of the purpose of independence. It was Nathan
Hale, already a person of some note in the colony, of a family then not
unknown and destined in various ways to distinction in the Republic. A
kinsman of the same name lost his life in the Louisburg fight. He had
been for a year the preceptor of the Union Grammar School at New London.
The morning after the meeting he was enrolled as a volunteer, and soon
marched away with his company to Cambridge.
Nathan Hale, descended from Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown in
1632, a scion of the Hales of Kent, England, was born in Coventry,
Connecticut, on the 6th of June, 1755, the sixth child of Richard Hale
and his wife Elizabeth Strong, persons of strong intellect and the
highest moral character, and Puritans of the strictest observances.
Brought up in this atmosphere, in which duty and moral rectitude were the
unquestioned obligations in life, he came to manhood with a character
that enabled him to face death or obloquy without flinching, when duty
called, so that his behavior at the last was not an excitement of the
moment, but the result of ancestry, training, and principle. Feeble
physically in infancy, he developed into a robust boy, strong in mind and
body, a lively, sweet-tempered, beautiful youth, and into a young manhood
endowed with every admirable quality. In feats of strength and agility he
recalls the traditions of Washington; he early showed a remarkable
avidity for knowledge, which was so sought that he became before he was
of age one of the best educated young men of his time in the colonies. He
was not only a classical scholar, with the limitations of those days;
but, what was then rare, he made scientific attainments which greatly
impressed those capable of judging, and he had a taste for art and a
remarkable talent as an artist. His father intended him for the ministry.
He received his preparatory education from Dr. Joseph Huntington, a
classical scholar and the pastor of the church in Coventry, entered Yale
College at the age of sixteen, and graduated with high honors in a class
of sixty, in September, 1773. At the time of his graduation his personal
appearance was notable. Dr. Enos Monro of New Haven, who knew him well in
the last year at Yale, said of him
"He was almost six feet in height, perfectly proportioned, and in
figure and deportment he was the most manly man I have ever met.
His chest was broad; his muscles were firm; his face wore a most
benign expression; his complexion was roseate; his eyes were light
blue and beamed with intelligence; his hair was soft and light brown
in color, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and musical. His
personal beauty and grace of manner were most charming. Why, all
the girls in New Haven fell in love with him," said Dr. Munro, "and
wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his sad fate. In dress
he was always neat; he was quick to lend a hand to a being in
distress, brute or human; was overflowing with good humor, and was
the idol of all his acquaintances."
Dr. Jared Sparks, who knew several of Hale's intimate friends, writes of
him:
"Possessing genius, taste, and order, he became distinguished as a
scholar; and endowed in an eminent degree with those graces and
gifts of Nature which add a charm to youthful excellence, he gained
universal esteem and confidence. To high moral worth and
irreproachable habits were joined gentleness of manner, an ingenuous
disposition, and vigor of understanding. No young man of his years
put forth a fairer promise of future usefulness and celebrity; the
fortunes of none were fostered more sincerely by the generous good
wishes of his superiors."
It was remembered at Yale that he was a brilliant debater as well as
scholar. At his graduation he engaged in a debate on the question,
"Whether the education of daughters be not, without any just reason, more
neglected than that of the sons." "In this debate," wrote James
Hillhouse, one of his classmates, "he was the champion of the daughters,
and most ably advocated their cause. You may be sure that he received the
plaudits of the ladies present."
Hale seems to have had an irresistible charm for everybody. He was a
favorite in society; he had the manners and the qualities that made him a
leader among men and gained him the admiration of women. He was always
intelligently busy, and had the Yankee ingenuity,--he "could do anything
but spin," he used to say to the girls of Coventry, laughing over the
spinning wheel. There is a universal testimony to his alert intelligence,
vivacity, manliness, sincerity, and winningness.
It is probable that while still an under-graduate at Yale, he was engaged
to Alice Adams, who was born in Canterbury, a young lady distinguished
then as she was afterwards for great beauty and intelligence. After
Hale's death she married Mr. Eleazer Ripley, and was left a widow at the
age of eighteen, with one child, who survived its father only one year.
She married, the second time, William Lawrence, Esq., of Hartford, and
died in this city, greatly respected and admired, in 1845, aged
eighty-eight. It is a touching note of the hold the memory of her young
hero had upon her admiration that her last words, murmured as life was
ebbing, were, "Write to Nathan."
Hale's short career in the American army need not detain us. After his
flying visit as a volunteer to Cambridge, he returned to New London,
joined a company with the rank of lieutenant, participated in the siege
of Boston, was commissioned a captain in the Nineteenth Connecticut
Regiment in January, 1776, performed the duties of a soldier with
vigilance, bravery, and patience, and was noted for the discipline of his
company. In the last dispiriting days of 1775, when the terms of his men
had expired, he offered to give them his month's pay if they would remain
a month longer. He accompanied the army to New York, and shared its
fortunes in that discouraging spring and summer. Shortly after his
arrival Captain Hale distinguished himself by the brilliant exploit of
cutting out a British sloop, laden with provisions, from under the guns
of the man-of-war "Asia," sixty-four, lying in the East River, and
bringing her triumphantly into slip. During the summer he suffered a
severe illness.
The condition of the American army and cause on the 1st of September,
1776, after the retreat from Long Island, was critical. The army was
demoralized, clamoring in vain for pay, and deserting by companies and
regiments; one-third of the men were without tents, one-fourth of them
were on the sick list. On the 7th, Washington called a council of war,
and anxiously inquired what should be done. On the 12th it was determined
to abandon the city and take possession of Harlem Heights. The British
army, twenty-five thousand strong, admirably equipped, and supported by a
powerful naval force, threatened to envelop our poor force, and finish
the war in a stroke. Washington was unable to penetrate the designs of
the British commander, or to obtain any trusty information of the
intentions or the movements of the British army. Information was
imperatively necessary to save us from destruction, and it could only be
obtained by one skilled in military and scientific knowledge and a good
draughtsman, a man of quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and courage,
and one whose judgment and fidelity could be trusted. Washington applied
to Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who summoned a conference of officers in
the name of the commander-in-chief, and laid the matter before them. No
one was willing to undertake the dangerous and ignominious mission.
Knowlton was in despair, and late in the conference was repeating the
necessity, when a young officer, pale from recent illness, entered the
room and said, "I will undertake it." It was Captain Nathan Hale.
Everybody was astonished. His friends besought him not to attempt it. In
vain. Hale was under no illusion. He silenced all remonstrances by saying
that he thought he owed his country the accomplishment of an object so
important and so much desired by the commander-in-chief, and he knew no
way to obtain the information except by going into the enemy's camp in
disguise. "I wish to be useful," he said; "and every kind of service
necessary for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If
the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to the
performance of that service are imperious."
The tale is well known. Hale crossed over from Norwalk to Huntington Cove
on Long Island. In the disguise of a schoolmaster, he penetrated the
British lines and the city, made accurate drawings of the fortifications,
and memoranda in Latin of all that he observed, which he concealed
between the soles of his shoes, and returned to the point on the shore
where he had first landed. He expected to be met by a boat and to cross
the Sound to Norwalk the next morning. The next morning he was captured,
no doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to Howe's headquarters, the mansion
of James Beekman, situated at (the present) Fiftieth Street and First
Avenue. That was on the 21st of September. Without trial and upon the
evidence found on his person, Howe condemned him to be hanged as a spy
early next morning. Indeed Hale made no attempt at defense. He frankly
owned his mission, and expressed regret that he could not serve his
country better. His open, manly bearing and high spirit commanded the
respect of his captors. Mercy he did not expect, and pity was not shown
him. The British were irritated by a conflagration which had that morning
laid almost a third of the city in ashes, and which they attributed to
incendiary efforts to deprive them of agreeable winter quarters. Hale was
at first locked up in the Beekman greenhouse. Whether he remained there
all night is not known, and the place of his execution has been disputed;
but the best evidence seems to be that it took place on the farm of
Colonel Rutger, on the west side, in the orchard in the vicinity of the
present East Broadway and Market Street, and that he was hanged to the
limb of an apple-tree.
It was a lovely Sunday morning, before the break of day, that he was
marched to the place of execution, September 22d. While awaiting the
necessary preparations, a courteous young officer permitted him to sit in
his tent. He asked for the presence of a chaplain; the request was
refused. He asked for a Bible; it was denied. But at the solicitation of
the young officer he was furnished with writing materials, and wrote
briefly to his mother, his sister, and his betrothed. When the infamous
Cunningham, to whom Howe had delivered him, read what was written, he was
furious at the noble and dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths tore
the letters into shreds, saying afterwards "that the rebels should never
know that they had a man who could die with such firmness." As Hale stood
upon the fatal ladder, Cunningham taunted him, and tauntingly demanded
his "last dying speech and confession." The hero did not heed the words
of the brute, but, looking calmly upon the spectators, said in a clear
voice, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
And the ladder was snatched from under him.
My friends, we are not honoring today a lad who appears for a moment in a
heroic light, but one of the most worthy of the citizens of Connecticut,
who has by his lofty character long honored her, wherever patriotism is
not a mere name, and where Christian manhood is respected. We have had
many heroes, many youths of promise, and men of note, whose names are our
only great and enduring riches; but no one of them all better
illustrated, short as was his career, the virtues we desire for all our
sons. We have long delayed this tribute to his character and his deeds,
but in spite of our neglect his fame has grown year by year, as war and
politics have taught us what is really admirable in a human being; and we
are now sure that we are not erecting a monument to an ephemeral
reputation. It is fit that it should stand here, one of the chief
distinctions of our splendid Capitol, here in the political centre of the
State, here in the city where first in all the world was proclaimed and
put into a political charter the fundamental idea of democracy, that
"government rests upon the consent of the people," here in the city where
by the action of these self existing towns was formed the model, the town
and the commonwealth, the bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutional
federal union. If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in youth in the air
of heaven, can behold today this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midst
of a State whose prosperity the young colonist could not have imagined in
his wildest dreams for his country, he must feel anew the truth that
there is nothing too sacred for a man to give for his native land.
Governor Lounsbury, the labor of the commission is finished. On their
behalf I present this work of art to the State of Connecticut.
Let the statue speak for itself.
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
By Charles Dudley Warner
INTRODUCTION
Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in this
country made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of
"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introduction
than the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputation
has mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seems
superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and
lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and
urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable of
our writers.
It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw him
move and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him the
full flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor or
serenity from his thought. He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis
a harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which make
him a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; one
of those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem always
at their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital of
moral vitality.
Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning of
teachers. He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a word
for the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and his
enforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than by
commandment. There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of the
difficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other hand,
was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a confusion
of ideas touching the nature and functions of art. He saw clearly, he
felt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of his mind,
the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the things
which make for life and art. He used the essay as Addison used it, not
for sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man to deal
with serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that lightness of
touch which conveys influence without employing force. He was as deeply
enamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals of life for
America, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace and
distinction of those ideals.
It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accents
suggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals of
living; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused by
the men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense,
gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate terms
with the highest things in thought and character that the tone of this
really best society has become theirs. Among men of talent there are
plebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, is
sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which it
clothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature. Mr. Warner
was a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the most
fastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations. The
subjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm in
this volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his deep
interest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and natural
grace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it to the
test of the highest standards. In his discussion of "Fashions in
Literature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature and
the signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon considering
some interesting aspects of contemporary writing.
And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition of
qualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity,
knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality. It would be impossible
in briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secret
of his influence and of the pleasure he gives us. It is to suggest this
application of his words to himself that this preparatory comment is
written.
When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who did
not stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bit
of real literature. It was so natural, so informal, so intimate that
readers accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming of
flowers and the flitting of birds. It was simply a report of certain
things which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor,
whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and light
and life of the old-fashioned garden. This easy approach, along natural
lines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with his
reader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion that
until he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind did
not realize how much he had enriched them by the way. This charming
simplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimate
terms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness of
thought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids a
man forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all other
substitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character.
To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner added
natural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men and
women under the stress and strain of experience. His knowledge of human
nature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mind
keen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire. He
cared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved his
country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting
and, at times, sharply critical. There runs through all his work, as a
critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of
wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of
shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between the
manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction
of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women.
The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of a
knowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy and
penetrating.
When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many of
the writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret of
his charm lay in an agreeable personality. At the end of the analysis, if
the work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is the
explanation of the work. This is pre-eminently true of those writers
whose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than in
temperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele,
Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall
Mr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of his
charm, the source of his authority.
He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also a
man of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethical
judgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned that
truth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as when
stated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to live
naturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with due
regard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well as
earnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in the
large resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancient
and well-tested rectitudes of the fathers.
The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests and
the sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and kept
to the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of his
humor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with its
diffused but thoroughly individual humor. This latest collection of his
papers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of the
Negro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on
"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," shows him at the end of
his long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested in
contemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of the
hour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity and
authority of literature. In his interests, his bearing, his relations to
the public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast to
the best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among the
representative American men of Letters.
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of different
generations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of most
of them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your own
decade. They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye, but
they offend your taste. You cannot believe that they were ever thought
beautiful and becoming. If your memory does not fail you, however, and
you retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact that a
costume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval ten
years ago. You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated a
costume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to the
human figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory. You cannot
imagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave your
sweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that you
yourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reached
your heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, were
between your shoulder-blades--you who are now devoted to a female figure
that resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isosceles
triangle.
These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportions
or hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrations
of works of fiction. The artist who collaborates with the contemporary
novelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to the fashions of the day,
he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next
generation. The novel may become a classic, because it represents human
nature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of
the artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely the
unessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological,
not artistic. The genius of the great portrait-painter may to some extent
overcome the disadvantages of contemporary costume, but if the costume of
his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his work
is liable to need the apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and the
Mediaeval painter, when the costumes were really picturesque and made us
forget the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuousness, had never this
posthumous difficulty to contend with.
In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, we
are also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoples
costumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions are
unrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or has
been proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation to
another; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonly
not only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subject
to the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generations
only, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had no
mind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of
tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturers
of novelties. In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic and
becoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly and
inconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization produces
no better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, in
dress than it does in literature. The vagaries in dress of the Western
nations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainly
highly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste and
art as essentials of civilization. But when we speak of civilization, we
cannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longest
permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science,
art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic,
the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered to
that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most
useful and appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modern
conceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not any
fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on
other races and other times.
The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravings
and paintings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in all the
illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality
of Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed
modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable a
radical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks,
we encounter it in one age and another. I mean a style of dress that is
artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that
accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as
perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael.
While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the
human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste,
--except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,--these few
exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are
recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. And we
know, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the public
lack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.
The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, in
our Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and of
literary style have been accompanied by more or less significant
exhibitions of costumes. He will note in the Precieux of France and the
Euphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frank
paganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Roman
apparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and the
Citizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of New
England the grim severity of their theology and morals. These examples
are interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner condition
by the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by an
external drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by red
and yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to kill
men with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry. It is
not possible to say whether these external displays are relics of
barbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature.
The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty and
uncertain taste in literature. A book or a certain fashion in letters
will have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before it
waxes old. It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary history
of the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and moods of
expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased
reasonably cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read and
liked to read! Think of the French, who had once had a Villon,
intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then,
the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels of
Scudery. Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics and
diseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the great
diffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more frequent and
of shorter duration. We need go back no further than a generation to find
abundant examples of eccentricities of style and expression, of crazes
over some author or some book, as unaccountable on principles of art as
many of the fashions in social life.--The more violent the attack, the
sooner it is over. Readers of middle age can recall the furor over
Tupper, the extravagant expectations as to the brilliant essayist
Gilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander Smith. For
the moment the world waited in the belief of the rising of new stars, and
as suddenly realized that it had been deceived. Sometimes we like
ruggedness, and again we like things made easy. Within a few years a
distinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a paragraph
written by Saint Paul. It is in our memory how at one time all the boys
tried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then like
Ruskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would like to
write like Heine.
In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public taste
and in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. We saw the
everlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism. We saw
the realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist,
the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance,
in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for which
can be prescribed by any competent pharmacist. The one essential in the
ingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole by
dropping him into a deeper one, until--the proper serial length being
attained--he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands to
receive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing so
much as of fighting.
The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to be
wondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to the
readers of English during the past twenty-five years. The wonder is that
a new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if the
ability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discrimination
had accompanied the appetite for reading. The critics term these
successes of some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustained
by some desirable qualities--they are cleverly written, and they are for
the moment undoubtedly entertaining. Some of them as undoubtedly appeal
to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. I will call no names,
because that would be to indict the public taste. This recent phenomenon
of sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly due
to quality. Another element has come in since the publishers have
awakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise. To
use their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle" patent
medicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired because
of the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold along with
dry-goods and fancy notions. I am not objecting to this great and wide
distribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to market
their products before they decay. The wary critic will be very careful
about dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary products.
It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is popular, nor is
it any more certain that it is good because it has a very limited sale.
Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are the subject of
crazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many others,
approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and slowly
become standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers and
continually in a limited demand.
The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing
the question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book from
a bad one. Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism
of new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the
latter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of the
nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake
poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet
who has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or second
rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and
bitter detraction. To be original in any degree was to be damned. And
there is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light during
this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary. Nothing
in modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism
in the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concerned
individual writers, both in poetry and prose. The literary rancor shown
rose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.
Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one? Yes. As certainly as
you can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad one.
Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or the
butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not know
the difference.
Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of
garlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilized
in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient
Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and
tainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world a
wholesome taste for things natural and pure.
It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely
to be wrong as right. He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by the
prevailing fashion of his little day. And, worse still, he is apt to make
his own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment. His view is
commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan. In the English period just
referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion was
determined by political or theological animosity and prejudice. The rule
was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under whatever
literary guise he appeared. If the new writer was not orthodox in the
view of his political or theological critic, he was not to be tolerated
as poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could say
against an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig. Macaulay, a
Whig, always consulted his prejudices for his judgment, equally when he
was reviewing Croker's Boswell or the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He
hated Croker,--a hateful man, to be sure,--and when the latter published
his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimed
before he had looked at the book, as you will remember, "Now I will dust
his jacket." The standard of criticism does not lie with the individual
in literature any more than it does in different periods as to fashions
and manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and always has been, as to
the qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when the
vilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied the
English throne,--and that is saying a great deal,--George IV, was
universally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might be
somewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for the
wider fact that no person of English stock has been on the throne since
Saxon Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of England having been
French, Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the
English language, and many of them also of the English middle-class
morality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of
George III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a
smuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated his
tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and a
profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman."
And yet there has always been a standard that excludes George IV from the
rank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from the rank of poet.
The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,--that
is, in the taste and prejudice of the individual,--any more than it is in
the immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and reflux
from one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principles
and qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historic
periods of literary criticism. But how shall we ascertain what these
principles are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and new
creations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporary
tastes; prejudices, and appearances? We all admit that certain pieces of
literature have become classic; by general consent there is no dispute
about them. How they have become so we cannot exactly explain. Some say
by a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of which
cannot be exactly defined. Others say that the highly developed critical
judgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established forever
what we agree to call masterpieces. But this discussion is immaterial,
since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds of
composition,--poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy,
interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into the
spiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind has
exercised itself,--from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the Old
Testament annalist and poet down to our scientific age. These
masterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they all
have qualities in common which have insured their persistence. To
discover what these qualities are that have insured permanence and
promise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with an
approach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature. There is no
thing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty--poem,
story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law of
art. Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximates
perfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law.
To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to the
changing conditions of our progressive life, is the business of the
artist. It is the business of the critic to mark how the performance
conforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in the
long-experience of the race. True criticism, then, is not a matter of
caprice or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to a
prevailing and generally temporary popular judgment. Individual judgment
may be very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacity
of the judge. It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person who
had been moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out of
his safe local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, and
Jerusalem. He assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wide
world of nature and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska.
What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or,
let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections and
local provincialisms?
First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of
expression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words. And this is
true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life
itself. This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's
translation of Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase as
anything done in Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above
all, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the
great text-book of all modern literature.
The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with the
improbable in invention, because the improbable is always happening in
life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling with
the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of
character to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever excursions the
writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human
nature. And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal,
or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to pathologists
and never become classics in literature.
A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a
matter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeable
personality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personality
which gives the final value to every work of art as well as of
literature. It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even accurately,
the incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation through
personality does any work attain the dignity of art. The great works of
architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by mathematical rule,
owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this reason
our imitations of Greek architecture are commonly failures. To speak
technically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized by the same
knowledge of proportion and perspective as the masterpiece in art.
If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of
beauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world
is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it is
certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and
how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. To work
by this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite
for the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It is
true that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifies
its existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, and
entertainment. But to permit the impression to prevail that an
unenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it, is
to be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a
debased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold stater
of Alexander. The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly
literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and
debases our entire intellectual life.
It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has
not ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of the
eternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,
and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh
applications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in an
expectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book with
hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for what
is bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the first
duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fair
chance by coming to his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book you
read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the time
absolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to the
public, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic
himself. It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get
into a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distracted
attention. I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind as
this habit. There is a valuable mental training in closely following a
discourse that is valueless in itself. After the reader has unreservedly
surrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind
settle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to
look at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and of
literature dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance,
tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all the
ages. It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for the moment be
carried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find is false in
ethics and weak in construction. We find this because we have standards
outside ourselves.
I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature. A great
mass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and,
fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as the
various minds that produced it. The main thing to be considered is that
this great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the most
valuable possession of mankind. It is not only that literature is the
source of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what a
national language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being.
Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the application
of natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and a
contribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life. The
controversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectual
is as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion. And
the highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, his
emotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, is
in the enduring literature he creates. He certainly misses half his
opportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what is
called the practical. He is a man only half developed. I can conceive no
more dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period of
business activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness,
draw upon the great reservoir of literature. For what did I come into
this world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like a
tree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?
Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books and
periodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actual
inability to keep up with current literature. They need not worry. If all
that appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the ambition
of experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader would be
under any more obligation to read it than he is to see every individual
flower and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the varieties would suffice.
But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds, and of a
yearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life. There is no more
obligation on the part of the person who would be well informed and
cultivated to read all this than there is to read all the colored
incidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily, with
sameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely circulated
of which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic almanac. A
great deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or another of
communicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising to know that
if you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost nothing
appreciable. Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule never to
read a book until it is from one to five years old, By this simple device
they escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this is only a
part of their gain. Considering the fact that the world is full of books
of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information,
which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations does
not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less than
a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood of
new publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass of
readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects with
ceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to the still
comparatively few who, really read books, the main object of life is not
to keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the main object
of sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of fashion in
dress. When a fashion in literature has passed, we are surprised that it
should ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying or imitating. When
the special craze has passed, we notice another thing, and that is that
the author, not being of the first rank or of the second, has generally
contributed to the world all that he has to give in one book, and our
time has been wasted on his other books; and also that in a special kind
of writing in a given period--let us say, for example, the
historico-romantic--we perceive that it all has a common character, is
constructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type of
hero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or two
stories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or less
mechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercial
book-making. Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor that
makes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused from
attempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked about
for the moment, and generally talked about in a very undiscriminating
manner. We need not in any company be ashamed if we have not read it all,
especially if we are ashamed that, considering the time at our disposal,
we have not made the acquaintance of the great and small masterpieces of
literature. It is said that the fashion of this world passeth away, and
so does the mere fashion in literature, the fashion that does not follow
the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and contribute to the
intellectual and spiritual part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting in
a material existence, like the lovers, in the words of the Arabian
story-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the
Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces and peopleth the
tombs."
Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral in
literature, lest we should miss for the moment something that is
permanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried and
genuine that the ages have given us. Anything that really belongs to
literature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow.
The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination. This is
not generally believed, because it is not generally believed that the
chief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritual
material. Hence it is that what is called a practical education is set
above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possession
of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. But
it should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical and
useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, and
that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. The
notable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the days
of George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in the
entire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history.
Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical training
in the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of the imagination
necessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally disciplined by
the classics that they handled the practical questions upon which they
legislated with clearness and precision. The great masters of finance
were the classically trained orators William Pitt and Charles James Fox.
In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions that
are for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasing
meteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in the
sunshine of the great literatures?
THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
By Charles Dudley Warner
Our theme for the hour is the American Newspaper. It is a subject in
which everybody is interested, and about which it is not polite to say
that anybody is not well informed; for, although there are scattered
through the land many persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for a
newspaper, I have never yet heard of anybody unable to edit one.
The topic has many points of view, and invites various study and comment.
In our limited time we must select one only. We have heard a great deal
about the power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press.
The time has come for a more philosophical treatment of it, for an
inquiry into its relations to our complex civilization, for some ethical
account of it as one of the developments of our day, and for some
discussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on the
education of the people. Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when
we can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow,
self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of the
American newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor an
isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much as
our system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observer
will make, perhaps for this association, a philosophical study of it. My
task here is a much humbler one. I have thought that it may not be
unprofitable to treat the newspaper from a practical and even somewhat
mechanical point of view.
The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its object is to make money for
its owner. Whatever motive may be given out for starting a newspaper,
expectation of profit by it is the real one, whether the newspaper is
religious, political, scientific, or literary. The exceptional cases of
newspapers devoted to ideas or "causes" without regard to profit are so
few as not to affect the rule. Commonly, the cause, the sect, the party,
the trade, the delusion, the idea, gets its newspaper, its organ, its
advocate, only when some individual thinks he can see a pecuniary return
in establishing it.
This motive is not lower than that which leads people into any other
occupation or profession. To make a living, and to have a career, is the
original incentive in all cases. Even in purely philanthropical
enterprises the driving-wheel that keeps them in motion for any length of
time is the salary paid the working members. So powerful is this
incentive that sometimes the wheel will continue to turn round when there
is no grist to grind. It sometimes happens that the friction of the
philanthropic machinery is so great that but very little power is
transmitted to the object for which the machinery was made. I knew a
devoted agent of the American Colonization Society, who, for several
years, collected in Connecticut just enough, for the cause, to buy his
clothes, and pay his board at a good hotel.
It is scarcely necessary to say, except to prevent a possible
misapprehension, that the editor who has no high ideals, no intention of
benefiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, and uses it unscrupulously as
a means of money-making only, sinks to the level of the physician and the
lawyer who have no higher conception of their callings than that they
offer opportunities for getting money by appeals to credulity, and by
assisting in evasions of the law.
If the excellence of a newspaper is not always measured by its
profitableness, it is generally true that, if it does not pay its owner,
it is valueless to the public. Not all newspapers which make money are
good, for some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes of respectable
people, and to the prejudice, ignorance, and passion of the lowest class;
but, as a rule, the successful journal pecuniarily is the best journal.
The reasons for this are on the surface. The impecunious newspaper cannot
give its readers promptly the news, nor able discussion of the news, and,
still worse, it cannot be independent. The political journal that relies
for support upon drippings of party favor or patronage, the general
newspaper that finds it necessary to existence to manipulate stock
reports, the religious weekly that draws precarious support from puffing
doubtful enterprises, the literary paper that depends upon the approval
of publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long run or short run, come
to grief. Some newspapers do succeed by sensationalism, as some preachers
do; by a kind of quackery, as some doctors do; by trimming and shifting
to any momentary popular prejudice, as some politicians do; by becoming
the paid advocate of a personal ambition or a corporate enterprise, as
some lawyers do: but the newspaper only becomes a real power when it is
able, on the basis of pecuniary independence, to free itself from all
such entanglements. An editor who stands with hat in hand has the respect
accorded to any other beggar.
The recognition of the fact that the newspaper is a private and purely
business enterprise will help to define the mutual relations of the
editor and the public. His claim upon the public is exactly that of any
manufacturer or dealer. It is that of the man who makes cloth, or the
grocer who opens a shop--neither has a right to complain if the public
does not buy of him. If the buyer does not like a cloth half shoddy, or
coffee half-chicory, he will go elsewhere. If the subscriber does not
like one newspaper, he takes another, or none. The appeal for newspaper
support on the ground that such a journal ought to be sustained by an
enlightened community, or on any other ground than that it is a good
article that people want,--or would want if they knew its value,--is
purely childish in this age of the world. If any person wants to start a
periodical devoted to decorated teapots, with the noble view of inducing
the people to live up to his idea of a teapot, very good; but he has no
right to complain if he fails.
On the other hand, the public has no rights in the newspaper except what
it pays for; even the "old subscriber" has none, except to drop the paper
if it ceases to please him. The notion that the subscriber has a right to
interfere in the conduct of the paper, or the reader to direct its
opinions, is based on a misconception of what the newspaper is. The claim
of the public to have its communications printed in the paper is equally
baseless. Whether they shall be printed or not rests in the discretion of
the editor, having reference to his own private interest, and to his
apprehension of the public good. Nor is he bound to give any reason for
his refusal. It is purely in his discretion whether he will admit a reply
to any thing that has appeared in his columns. No one has a right to
demand it. Courtesy and policy may grant it; but the right to it does not
exist. If any one is injured, he may seek his remedy at law; and I should
like to see the law of libel such and so administered that any person
injured by a libel in the newspaper, as well as by slander out of it,
could be sure of prompt redress. While the subscribes acquires no right
to dictate to the newspaper, we can imagine an extreme case when he
should have his money back which had been paid in advance, if the
newspaper totally changed its character. If he had contracted with a
dealer to supply him with hard coal during the winter, he might have a
remedy if the dealer delivered only charcoal in the coldest weather; and
so if he paid for a Roman Catholic journal which suddenly became an organ
of the spiritists.
The advertiser acquires no more rights in the newspaper than the
subscriber. He is entitled to use the space for which he pays by the
insertion of such material as is approved by the editor. He gains no
interest in any other part of the paper, and has no more claim to any
space in the editorial columns, than any other one of the public. To give
him such space would be unbusiness-like, and the extension of a
preference which would be unjust to the rest of the public. Nothing more
quickly destroys the character of a journal, begets distrust of it, and
so reduces its value, than the well-founded suspicion that its editorial
columns are the property of advertisers. Even a religious journal will,
after a while, be injured by this.
Yet it must be confessed that here is one of the greatest difficulties of
modern journalism. The newspaper must be cheap. It is, considering the
immense cost to produce it, the cheapest product ever offered to man.
Most newspapers cost more than they sell for; they could not live by
subscriptions; for any profits, they certainly depend upon
advertisements. The advertisements depend upon the circulation; the
circulation is likely to dwindle if too much space is occupied by
advertisements, or if it is evident that the paper belongs to its favored
advertisers. The counting-room desires to conciliate the advertisers; the
editor looks to making a paper satisfactory to his readers. Between this
see-saw of the necessary subscriber and the necessary advertiser, a good
many newspapers go down. This difficulty would be measurably removed by
the admission of the truth that the newspaper is a strictly business
enterprise, depending for success upon a 'quid pro quo' between all
parties connected with it, and upon integrity in its management.
Akin to the false notion that the newspaper is a sort of open channel
that the public may use as it chooses, is the conception of it as a
charitable institution. The newspaper, which is the property of a private
person as much as a drug-shop is, is expected to perform for nothing
services which would be asked of no other private person. There is
scarcely a charitable enterprise to which it is not asked to contribute
of its space, which is money, ten times more than other persons in the
community, who are ten times as able as the owner of the newspaper,
contribute. The journal is considered "mean" if it will not surrender its
columns freely to notices and announcements of this sort. If a manager
has a new hen-coop or a new singer he wishes to introduce to the public,
he comes to the newspaper, expecting to have his enterprise extolled for
nothing, and probably never thinks that it would be just as proper for
him to go to one of the regular advertisers in the paper and ask him to
give up his space. Anything, from a church picnic to a brass-band concert
for the benefit of the widow of the triangles, asks the newspaper to
contribute. The party in politics, whose principles the editor advocates,
has no doubt of its rightful claim upon him, not only upon the editorial
columns, but upon the whole newspaper. It asks without hesitation that
the newspaper should take up its valuable space by printing hundreds and
often thousands of dollars' worth of political announcements in the
course of a protracted campaign, when it never would think of getting its
halls, its speakers, and its brass bands, free of expense. Churches, as
well as parties, expect this sort of charity. I have known rich churches,
to whose members it was a convenience to have their Sunday and other
services announced, withdraw the announcements when the editor declined
any longer to contribute a weekly fifty-cents' worth of space. No private
persons contribute so much to charity, in proportion to ability, as the
newspaper. Perhaps it will get credit for this in the next world: it
certainly never does in this.
The chief function of the newspaper is to collect and print the news.
Upon the kind of news that should be gathered and published, we shall
remark farther on. The second function is to elucidate the news, and
comment on it, and show its relations. A third function is to furnish
reading-matter to the general public.
Nothing is so difficult for the manager as to know what news is: the
instinct for it is a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the mass of
materials collected not only what is most likely to interest the public,
but what phase and aspect of it will attract most attention, and the
relative importance of it; to tell the day before or at midnight what the
world will be talking about in the morning, and what it will want the
fullest details of, and to meet that want in advance,--requires a
peculiar talent. There is always some topic on which the public wants
instant information. It is easy enough when the news is developed, and
everybody is discussing it, for the editor to fall in; but the success of
the news printed depends upon a pre-apprehension of all this. Some
papers, which nevertheless print all the news, are always a day behind,
do not appreciate the popular drift till it has gone to something else,
and err as much by clinging to a subject after it is dead as by not
taking it up before it was fairly born. The public craves eagerly for
only one thing at a time, and soon wearies of that; and it is to the
newspaper's profit to seize the exact point of a debate, the thrilling
moment of an accident, the pith of an important discourse; to throw
itself into it as if life depended on it, and for the hour to flood the
popular curiosity with it as an engine deluges a fire.
Scarcely less important than promptly seizing and printing the news is
the attractive arrangement of it, its effective presentation to the eye.
Two papers may have exactly the same important intelligence, identically
the same despatches: the one will be called bright, attractive, "newsy";
the other, dull and stupid.
We have said nothing yet about that, which, to most people, is the most
important aspect of the newspaper,--the editor's responsibility to the
public for its contents. It is sufficient briefly to say here, that it is
exactly the responsibility of every other person in society,--the full
responsibility of his opportunity. He has voluntarily taken a position in
which he can do a great deal of good or a great deal of evil, and he,
should be held and judged by his opportunity: it is greater than that of
the preacher, the teacher, the congressman, the physician. He occupies
the loftiest pulpit; he is in his teacher's desk seven days in the week;
his voice can be heard farther than that of the most lusty fog-horn
politician; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns outshine the
shelves of the druggist in display of proprietary medicines. Nothing else
ever invented has the public attention as the newspaper has, or is an
influence so constant and universal. It is this large opportunity that
has given the impression that the newspaper is a public rather than a
private enterprise.
It was a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies the
borderland between literature and common sense. Literature it certainly
is not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too erratic and
variable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but it must have
something of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and sagacity of the
other, or it will fail to please. The model editor, I believe, has yet to
appear. Notwithstanding the traditional reputation of certain editors in
the past, they could not be called great editors by our standards; for
the elements of modern journalism did not exist in their time. The old
newspaper was a broadside of stale news, with a moral essay attached.
Perhaps Benjamin Franklin, with our facilities, would have been very near
the ideal editor. There was nothing he did not wish to know; and no one
excelled him in the ability to communicate what he found out to the
average mind. He came as near as anybody ever did to marrying common
sense to literature: he had it in him to make it sufficient for
journalistic purposes. He was what somebody said Carlyle was, and what
the American editor ought to be,--a vernacular man.
The assertion has been made recently, publicly, and with evidence
adduced, that the American newspaper is the best in the world. It is like
the assertion that the American government is the best in the world; no
doubt it is, for the American people.
Judged by broad standards, it may safely be admitted that the American
newspaper is susceptible of some improvement, and that it has something
to learn from the journals of other nations. We shall be better employed
in correcting its weaknesses than in complacently contemplating its
excellences.
Let us examine it in its three departments already named,--its news,
editorials, and miscellaneous reading-matter.
In particularity and comprehensiveness of news-collecting, it may be
admitted that the American newspapers for a time led the world. I mean in
the picking-up of local intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to
make it general. And with this arose the odd notion that news is made
important by the mere fact of its rapid transmission over the wire. The
English journals followed, speedily overtook, and some of the wealthier
ones perhaps surpassed, the American in the use of the telegraph, and in
the presentation of some sorts of local news; not of casualties, and
small city and neighborhood events, and social gossip (until very
recently), but certainly in the business of the law courts, and the
crimes and mishaps that come within police and legal supervision. The
leading papers of the German press, though strong in correspondence and
in discussion of affairs, are far less comprehensive in their news than
the American or the English. The French journals, we are accustomed to
say, are not newspapers at all. And this is true as we use the word.
Until recently, nothing has been of importance to the Frenchman except
himself; and what happened outside of France, not directly affecting his
glory, his profit, or his pleasure, did not interest him: hence, one
could nowhere so securely intrench himself against the news of the world
as behind the barricade of the Paris journals. But let us not make a
mistake in this matter. We may have more to learn from the Paris journals
than from any others. If they do not give what we call news--local news,
events, casualties, the happenings of the day,--they do give ideas,
opinions; they do discuss politics, the social drift; they give the
intellectual ferment of Paris; they supply the material that Paris likes
to talk over, the badinage of the boulevard, the wit of the salon, the
sensation of the stage, the new movement in literature and in politics.
This may be important, or it may be trivial: it is commonly more
interesting than much of that which we call news.
Our very facility and enterprise in news-gathering have overwhelmed our
newspapers, and it may be remarked that editorial discrimination has not
kept pace with the facilities. We are overpowered with a mass of
undigested intelligence, collected for the mast part without regard to
value. The force of the newspaper is expended in extending these
facilities, with little regard to discriminating selection. The burden is
already too heavy for the newspaper, and wearisome to the public.
The publication of the news is the most important function of the paper.
How is it gathered? We must confess that it is gathered very much by
chance. A drag-net is thrown out, and whatever comes is taken. An
examination into the process of collecting shows what sort of news we are
likely to get, and that nine-tenths of that printed is collected without
much intelligence exercised in selection. The alliance of the associated
press with the telegraph company is a fruitful source of news of an
inferior quality. Of course, it is for the interest of the telegraph
company to swell the volume to be transmitted. It is impossible for the
associated press to have an agent in every place to which the telegraph
penetrates: therefore the telegraphic operators often act as its
purveyors. It is for their interest to send something; and their judgment
of what is important is not only biased, but is formed by purely local
standards. Our news, therefore, is largely set in motion by telegraphic
operators, by agents trained to regard only the accidental, the
startling, the abnormal, as news; it is picked up by sharp prowlers about
town, whose pay depends upon finding something, who are looking for
something spicy and sensational, or which may be dressed up and
exaggerated to satisfy an appetite for novelty and high flavor, and who
regard casualties as the chief news. Our newspapers every day are loaded
with accidents, casualties, and crimes concerning people of whom we never
heard before and never shall hear again, the reading of which is of no
earthly use to any human being.
What is news? What is it that an intelligent public should care to hear
of and talk about? Run your eye down the columns of your journal. There
was a drunken squabble last night in a New York groggery; there is a
petty but carefully elaborated village scandal about a foolish girl; a
woman accidentally dropped her baby out of a fourth-story window in
Maine; in Connecticut, a wife, by mistake, got into the same railway
train with another woman's husband; a child fell into a well in New
Jersey; there is a column about a peripatetic horse-race, which exhibits,
like a circus, from city to city; a laborer in a remote town in
Pennsylvania had a sunstroke; there is an edifying dying speech of a
murderer, the love-letter of a suicide, the set-to of a couple of
congressmen; and there are columns about a gigantic war of half a dozen
politicians over the appointment of a sugar-gauger. Granted that this
pabulum is desired by the reader, why not save the expense of
transmission by having several columns of it stereotyped, to be
reproduced at proper intervals? With the date changed, it would always,
have its original value, and perfectly satisfy the demand, if a demand
exists, for this sort of news.
This is not, as you see, a description of your journal: it is a
description of only one portion of it. It is a complex and wonderful
creation. Every morning it is a mirror of the world, more or less
distorted and imperfect, but such a mirror as it never had held up to it
before. But consider how much space is taken up with mere trivialities
and vulgarities under the name of news. And this evil is likely to
continue and increase until news-gatherers learn that more important than
the reports of accidents and casualties is the intelligence of opinions
and thoughts, the moral and intellectual movements of modern life. A
horrible assassination in India is instantly telegraphed; but the
progress of such a vast movement as that of the Wahabee revival in Islam,
which may change the destiny of great provinces, never gets itself put
upon the wires. We hear promptly of a landslide in Switzerland, but only
very slowly of a political agitation that is changing the constitution of
the republic. It should be said, however, that the daily newspaper is not
alone responsible for this: it is what the age and the community where it
is published make it. So far as I have observed, the majority of the
readers in America peruses eagerly three columns about a mill between an
English and a naturalized American prize-fighter, but will only glance at
a column report of a debate in the English parliament which involves a
radical change in the whole policy of England; and devours a page about
the Chantilly races, while it ignores a paragraph concerning the
suppression of the Jesuit schools.
Our newspapers are overwhelmed with material that is of no importance.
The obvious remedy for this would be more intelligent direction in the
collection of news, and more careful sifting and supervision of it when
gathered. It becomes every day more apparent to every manager that such
discrimination is more necessary. There is no limit to the various
intelligence and gossip that our complex life offers--no paper is big
enough to contain it; no reader has time enough to read it. And the
journal must cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end of a telegraph
wire, into which any reporter, telegraph operator, or gossip-monger can
dump whatever he pleases. We must get rid of the superstition that value
is given to an unimportant "item" by sending it a thousand miles over a
wire.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the American newspaper, especially
of the country weekly, is its enormous development of local and
neighborhood news. It is of recent date. Horace Greeley used to advise
the country editors to give small space to the general news of the world,
but to cultivate assiduously the home field, to glean every possible
detail of private life in the circuit of the county, and print it. The
advice was shrewd for a metropolitan editor, and it was not without its
profit to the country editor. It was founded on a deep knowledge of human
nature; namely, upon the fact that people read most eagerly that which
they already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it is
a report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they have
heard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising they
have attended. The result is column after column of short paragraphs of
gossip and trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is contemplating
erecting a new counter in his store; his rival opposite has a new sign;
Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin, Miss Smith of Bozrah; the
sheriff has painted his fence; Farmer Brown has lost his cow; the eminent
member from Neopolis has put an ell on one end of his mansion, and a
mortgage on the other.
On the face of it nothing is so vapid and profitless as column after
column of this reading. These "items" have very little interest, except
to those who already know the facts; but those concerned like to see them
in print, and take the newspaper on that account. This sort of inanity
takes the place of reading-matter that might be of benefit, and its
effect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the
most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It
cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it
develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in life
above the essential.
And this brings me to speak of the mania in this age, and especially in
America, for notoriety in social life as well as in politics. The
newspapers are the vehicle of it, sometimes the occasion, but not the
cause. The newspaper may have fostered--it has not created--this hunger
for publicity. Almost everybody talks about the violation of decency and
the sanctity of private life by the newspaper in the publication of
personalities and the gossip of society; and the very people who make
these strictures are often those who regard the paper as without
enterprise and dull, if it does not report in detail their weddings,
their balls and parties, the distinguished persons present, the dress of
the ladies, the sumptuousness of the entertainment, if it does not
celebrate their church services and festivities, their social meetings,
their new house, their distinguished arrivals at this or that
watering-place. I believe every newspaper manager will bear me out in
saying that there is a constant pressure on him to print much more of
such private matter than his judgment and taste permit or approve, and
that the gossip which is brought to his notice, with the hope that he
will violate the sensitiveness of social life by printing it, is far away
larger in amount than all that he publishes.
To return for a moment to the subject of general news. The characteristic
of our modern civilization is sensitiveness, or, as the doctors say,
nervousness. Perhaps the philanthropist would term it sympathy. No doubt
an exciting cause of it is the adaptation of electricity to the
transmission of facts and ideas. The telegraph, we say, has put us in
sympathy with all the world. And we reckon this enlargement of nerve
contact somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are played upon by a thousand
wires. Nature, no doubt, has a method of hardening or deadening them to
these shocks; but nevertheless, every person who reads is a focus for the
excitements, the ills, the troubles, of all the world. In addition to his
local pleasures and annoyances, he is in a manner compelled to be a
sharer in the universal uneasiness. It might be worth while to inquire
what effect this exciting accumulation of the news of the world upon an
individual or a community has upon happiness and upon character. Is the
New England man any better able to bear or deal with his extraordinary
climate by the daily knowledge of the weather all over the globe? Is a
man happier, or improved in character, by the woful tale of a world's
distress and apprehension that greets him every morning at breakfast?
Knowledge, we know, increases sorrow; but I suppose the offset to that
is, that strength only comes through suffering. But this is a digression.
Not second in importance to any department of the journal is the
reporting; that is, the special reporting as distinguished from the more
general news-gathering. I mean the reports of proceedings in Congress, in
conventions, assemblies, and conferences, public conversations, lectures,
sermons, investigations, law trials, and occurrences of all sorts that
rise into general importance. These reports are the basis of our
knowledge and opinions. If they are false or exaggerated, we are ignorant
of what is taking place, and misled. It is of infinitely more importance
that they should be absolutely trustworthy than that the editorial
comments should be sound and wise. If the reports on affairs can be
depended on, the public can form its own opinion, and act intelligently.
And; if the public has a right to demand anything of a newspaper, it is
that its reports of what occurs shall be faithfully accurate,
unprejudiced, and colorless. They ought not, to be editorials, or the
vehicles of personal opinion and feeling. The interpretation of, the
facts they give should be left to the editor and the public. There should
be a sharp line drawn between the report and the editorial.
I am inclined to think that the reporting department is the weakest in
the American newspaper, and that there is just ground for the admitted
public distrust of it. Too often, if a person would know what has taken
place in a given case, he must read the reports in half a dozen journals,
then strike a general average of probabilities, allowing for the personal
equation, and then--suspend his judgment. Of course, there is much
excellent reporting, and there are many able men engaged in it who
reflect the highest honor upon their occupation. And the press of no
other country shows more occasional brilliant feats in reporting than
ours: these are on occasions when the newspapers make special efforts.
Take the last two national party conventions. The fullness, the accuracy,
the vividness, with which their proceedings were reported in the leading
journals, were marvelous triumphs of knowledge, skill, and expense. The
conventions were so photographed by hundreds of pens, that the public
outside saw them almost as distinctly as the crowd in attendance. This
result was attained because the editors determined that it should be,
sent able men to report, and demanded the best work. But take an opposite
and a daily illustration of reporting, that of the debates and
proceedings in Congress. I do not refer to the specials of various
journals which are good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, and
commonly colored by partisan considerations, but the regular synopsis
sent to the country at large. Now, for some years it has been inadequate,
frequently unintelligible, often grossly misleading, failing wholly to
give the real spirit and meaning of the most important discussions; and
it is as dry as chips besides. To be both stupid and inaccurate is the
unpardonable sin in journalism. Contrast these reports with the lively
and faithful pictures of the French Assembly which are served to the
Paris papers.
Before speaking of the reasons for the public distrust in reports, it is
proper to put in one qualification. The public itself, and not the
newspapers, is the great factory of baseless rumors and untruths.
Although the newspaper unavoidably gives currency to some of these, it is
the great corrector of popular rumors. Concerning any event, a hundred
different versions and conflicting accounts are instantly set afloat.
These would run on, and become settled but unfounded beliefs, as private
whispered scandals do run, if the newspaper did not intervene. It is the
business of the newspaper, on every occurrence of moment, to chase down
the rumors, and to find out the facts and print them, and set the public
mind at rest. The newspaper publishes them under a sense of
responsibility for its statements. It is not by any means always correct;
but I know that it is the aim of most newspapers to discharge this
important public function faithfully. When this country had few
newspapers it was ten times more the prey of false reports and delusions
than it is now.
Reporting requires as high ability as editorial writing; perhaps of a
different kind, though in the history of American journalism the best
reporters have often become the best editors. Talent of this kind must be
adequately paid; and it happens that in America the reporting field is so
vast that few journals can afford to make the reporting department
correspond in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if the importance of
doing so is yet fully realized. An intelligent and representative
synopsis of a lecture or other public performance is rare. The ability to
grasp a speaker's meaning, or to follow a long discourse, and reproduce
either in spirit, and fairly, in a short space, is not common. When the
public which has been present reads the inaccurate report, it loses
confidence in the newspaper.
Its confidence is again undermined when it learns that an "interview"
which it has read with interest was manufactured; that the report of the
movements and sayings of a distinguished stranger was a pure piece of
ingenious invention; that a thrilling adventure alongshore, or in a
balloon, or in a horse-car, was what is called a sensational article,
concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun out by the yard according to
his necessities. These reports are entertaining, and often more readable
than anything else in the newspaper; and, if they were put into a
department with an appropriate heading, the public would be less
suspicious that all the news in the journal was colored and heightened by
a lively imagination.
Intelligent and honest reporting of whatever interests the public is the
sound basis of all journalism. And yet so careless have editors been of
all this that a reporter has been sent to attend the sessions of a
philological convention who had not the least linguistic knowledge,
having always been employed on marine disasters. Another reporter, who
was assigned to inform the public of the results of a difficult
archeological investigation, frankly confessed his inability to
understand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, was
cattle. A story is told of a metropolitan journal, which illustrates
another difficulty the public has in keeping up its confidence in
newspaper infallibility. It may not be true for history, but answers for
an illustration. The annual November meteors were expected on a certain
night. The journal prepared an elaborate article, several columns in
length, on meteoric displays in general, and on the display of that night
in particular, giving in detail the appearance of the heavens from the
metropolitan roofs in various parts of the city, the shooting of the
meteors amid the blazing constellations, the size and times of flight of
the fiery bodies; in short, a most vivid and scientific account of the
lofty fireworks. Unfortunately the night was cloudy. The article was in
type and ready; but the clouds would not break. The last moment for going
to press arrived: there was a probability that the clouds would lift
before daylight and the manager took the risk. The article that appeared
was very interesting; but its scientific value was impaired by the fact
that the heavens were obscured the whole night, and the meteors, if any
arrived, were invisible. The reasonable excuse of the editor would be
that he could not control the elements.
If the reporting department needs strengthening and reduction to order in
the American journal, we may also query whether the department of
correspondence sustains the boast that the American, newspaper is the
best in the world. We have a good deal of excellent correspondence, both
foreign and domestic; and our "specials" have won distinction, at least
for liveliness and enterprise. I cannot dwell upon this feature; but I
suggest a comparison with the correspondence of some of the German, and
with that especially of the London journals, from the various capitals of
Europe, and from the occasional seats of war. How surpassing able much of
it is!
How full of information, of philosophic observation, of accurate
knowledge! It appears to be written by men of trained intellect and of
experience,--educated men of the world, who, by reason of their position
and character, have access to the highest sources of information.
The editorials of our journals seem to me better than formerly, improved
in tone, in courtesy, in self-respect,--though you may not have to go far
or search long for the provincial note and the easy grace of the
frontier,--and they are better written. This is because the newspaper has
become more profitable, and is able to pay for talent, and has attracted
to it educated young men. There is a sort of editorial ability, of
facility, of force, that can only be acquired by practice and in the
newspaper office: no school can ever teach it; but the young editor who
has a broad basis of general education, of information in history,
political economy, the classics, and polite literature, has an immense
advantage over the man who has merely practical experience. For the
editorial, if it is to hold its place, must be more and more the product
of information, culture, and reflection, as well as of sagacity and
alertness. Ignorance of foreign affairs, and of economic science, the
American people have in times past winked at; but they will not always
wink at it.
It is the belief of some shrewd observers that editorials, the long
editorials, are not much read, except by editors themselves. A cynic says
that, if you have a secret you are very anxious to keep from the female
portion of the population, the safest place to put it is in an editorial.
It seems to me that editorials are not conned as attentively as they once
were; and I am sure they have not so much influence as formerly. People
are not so easily or so visibly led; that is to say, the editorial
influence is not so dogmatic and direct. The editor does not expect to
form public opinion so much by arguments and appeals as by the news he
presents and his manner of presenting it, by the iteration of an idea
until it becomes familiar, by the reading-matter selected, and by the
quotations of opinions as news, and not professedly to influence the
reader. And this influence is all the more potent because it is indirect,
and not perceived-by the reader.
There is an editorial tradition--it might almost be termed a
superstition--which I think will have to be abandoned. It is that a
certain space in the journal must be filled with editorial, and that some
of the editorials must be long, without any reference to the news or the
necessity of comment on it, or the capacity of the editor at the moment
to fill the space with original matter that is readable. There is the
sacred space, and it must be filled. The London journals are perfect
types of this custom. The result is often a wearisome page of words and
rhetoric. It may be good rhetoric; but life is too short for so much of
it. The necessity of filling this space causes the writer, instead of
stating his idea in the shortest compass in which it can be made
perspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as much
ground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, which
our journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture to
say that this tradition will be set aside. I think that we may fairly
claim a superiority in our journals over the English dailies in our habit
of making brief, pointed editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the
editorial page. A cultivation of these until they are as finished and
pregnant as the paragraphs of "The London Spectator" and "The New-York
Nation," the printing of long editorials only when the elucidation of a
subject demands length, and the use of the space thus saved for more
interesting reading, is probably the line of our editorial evolution.
To continue the comparison of our journals as a class, with the English
as a class, ours are more lively, also more flippant, and less restrained
by a sense of responsibility or by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and
again, as good editorial writing for its purpose; but it commonly lacks
the dignity, the thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, that
characterizes the best English discussion of political and social topics.
The third department of the newspaper is that of miscellaneous
reading-matter. Whether this is the survival of the period when the paper
contained little else except "selections," and other printed matter was
scarce, or whether it is only the beginning of a development that shall
supply the public nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far as our
newspapers have already gone in this direction, I am inclined to think
that in their evolution they must drop this adjunct, and print simply the
news of the day. Some of the leading journals of the world already do
this.
In America I am sure the papers are printing too much miscellaneous
reading. The perusal of this smattering of everything, these scraps of
information and snatches of literature, this infinite variety and medley,
in which no subject is adequately treated, is distracting and
debilitating to the mind. It prevents the reading of anything in full,
and its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that the majority of
Americans read nothing except the paper. If they read that thoroughly,
they have time for nothing else. What is its reader to do when his
journal thrusts upon him every day the amount contained in a fair-sized
duodecimo volume, and on Sundays the amount of two of them? Granted that
this miscellaneous hodge-podge is the cream of current literature, is it
profitable to the reader? Is it a means of anything but superficial
culture and fragmentary information? Besides, it stimulates an unnatural
appetite, a liking for the striking, the brilliant, the sensational only;
for our selections from current literature are, usually the "plums"; and
plums are not a wholesome-diet for anybody. A person accustomed to this
finds it difficult to sit down patiently to the mastery of a book or a
subject, to the study of history, the perusal of extended biography, or
to acquire that intellectual development and strength which comes from
thorough reading and reflection.
The subject has another aspect. Nobody chooses his own reading; and a
whole community perusing substantially the same material tends to a
mental uniformity. The editor has the more than royal power of selecting
the intellectual food of a large public. It is a responsibility
infinitely greater than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, great as
that is. The taste of the editor, or of some assistant who uses the
scissors, is in a manner forced upon thousands of people, who see little
other printed matter than that which he gives them. Suppose his taste
runs to murders and abnormal crimes, and to the sensational in
literature: what will be the moral effect upon a community of reading
this year after year?
If this excess of daily miscellany is deleterious to the public, I doubt
if it will be, in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, which has a
field broad enough in reporting and commenting upon the movement of the
world, without attempting to absorb the whole reading field.
I should like to say a word, if time permitted, upon the form of the
journal, and about advertisements. I look to see advertisements shorter,
printed with less display, and more numerous. In addition to the use now
made of the newspaper by the classes called "advertisers," I expect it to
become the handy medium of the entire public, the means of ready
communication in regard to all wants and exchanges.
Several years ago, the attention of the publishers of American newspapers
was called to the convenient form of certain daily journals in South
Germany, which were made up in small pages, the number of which varied
from day to day, according to the pressure of news or of advertisements.
The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious,
literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers,
and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than our
big blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read,
unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them.
In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and in
the sudden access of important news, they are too small. To enlarge them
for the occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly-sheet, or, if they
are doubled, there is more space to be filled than is needed. It seems to
me that the inevitable remedy is a newspaper of small pages or forms,
indefinite in number, that can at any hour be increased or diminished
according to necessity, to be folded, stitched, and cut by machinery.
We have thus rapidly run over a prolific field, touching only upon some
of the relations of the newspaper to our civilization, and omitting many
of the more important and grave. The truth is that the development of the
modern journal has been so sudden and marvelous that its conductors find
themselves in possession of a machine that they scarcely know how to
manage or direct. The change in the newspaper caused by the telegraph,
the cable, and by a public demand for news created by wars, by
discoveries, and by a new outburst of the spirit of doubt and inquiry, is
enormous. The public mind is confused about it, and alternately
overestimates and underestimates the press, failing to see how integral
and representative a part it is of modern life.
"The power of the press," as something to be feared or admired, is a
favorite theme of dinner-table orators and clergymen. One would think it
was some compactly wielded energy, like that of an organized religious
order, with a possible danger in it to the public welfare. Discrimination
is not made between the power of the printed word--which is
limitless--and the influence that a newspaper, as such, exerts. The power
of the press is in its facility for making public opinions and events. I
should say it is a medium of force rather than force itself. I confess
that I am oftener impressed with the powerlessness of the press than
otherwise, its slight influence in bringing about any reform, or in
inducing the public to do what is for its own good and what it is
disinclined to do. Talk about the power of the press, say, in a
legislature, when once the members are suspicious that somebody is trying
to influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace it
can, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combination
of the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, is
chimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree with
each other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views of
any topic or event as the ingenious rival journals are certain to
discover. It is impossible, in their nature, for them to combine. I
should as soon expect agreement among doctors in their empirical
profession. And there is scarcely ever a cause, or an opinion, or a man,
that does not get somewhere in the press a hearer and a defender. We will
drop the subject with one remark for the benefit of whom it may concern.
With all its faults, I believe the moral tone of the American newspaper
is higher, as a rule, than that of the community in which it is
published.
CERTAIN DIVERSITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE
By Charles Dudley Warner
This is a very interesting age. Within the memory of men not yet come to
middle life the time of the trotting horse has been reduced from two
minutes forty seconds to two minutes eight and a quarter seconds. During
the past fifteen years a universal and wholesome pastime of boys has been
developed into a great national industry, thoroughly organized and almost
altogether relegated to professional hands, no longer the exercise of the
million but a spectacle for the million, and a game which rivals the
Stock Exchange as a means of winning money on the difference of opinion
as to the skill of contending operators.
The newspapers of the country--pretty accurate and sad indicators of the
popular taste--devote more daily columns in a week's time to chronicling
the news about base-ball than to any other topic that interests the
American mind, and the most skillful player, the pitcher, often college
bred, whose entire prowess is devoted to not doing what he seems to be
doing, and who has become the hero of the American girl as the Olympian
wrestler was of the Greek maiden and as the matador is of the Spanish
senorita, receives a larger salary for a few hours' exertion each week
than any college president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. Such
has been the progress in the interest in education during this period
that the larger bulk of the news, and that most looked for, printed about
the colleges and universities, is that relating to the training, the
prospects and achievements of the boat crews and the teams of base-ball
and foot-ball, and the victory of any crew or team is a better means of
attracting students to its college, a better advertisement, than success
in any scholastic contest. A few years ago a tournament was organized in
the North between several colleges for competition in oratory and
scholarship; it had a couple of contests and then died of inanition and
want of public interest.
During the period I am speaking of there has been an enormous advance in
technical education, resulting in the establishment of splendid special
schools, essential to the development of our national resources; a growth
of the popular idea that education should be practical,--that is, such an
education as can be immediately applied to earning a living and acquiring
wealth speedily,--and an increasing extension of the elective system in
colleges,--based almost solely on the notion, having in view, of course,
the practical education, that the inclinations of a young man of eighteen
are a better guide as to what is best for his mental development and
equipment for life than all the experience of his predecessors.
In this period, which you will note is more distinguished by the desire
for the accumulation of money than far the general production of wealth,
the standard of a fortune has shifted from a fair competence to that of
millions of money, so that he is no longer rich who has a hundred
thousand dollars, but he only who possesses property valued at many
millions, and the men most widely known the country through, most talked
about, whose doings and sayings are most chronicled in the journals,
whose example is most attractive and stimulating to the minds of youth,
are not the scholars, the scientists, the men of, letters, not even the
orators and statesmen, but those who, by any means, have amassed enormous
fortunes. We judge the future of a generation by its ideals.
Regarding education from the point of view of its equipment of a man to
make money, and enjoy the luxury which money can command, it must be more
and more practical, that is, it must be adapted not even to the higher
aim of increasing the general wealth of the world, by increasing
production and diminishing waste both of labor and capital, but to the
lower aim of getting personal possession of it; so that a striking social
feature of the period is that one-half--that is hardly an overestimate
--one-half of the activity in America of which we speak with so much
enthusiasm, is not directed to the production of wealth, to increasing
its volume, but to getting the money of other people away from them. In
barbarous ages this object was accomplished by violence; it is now
attained by skill and adroitness. We still punish those who gain property
by violence; those who get it by smartness and cleverness, we try to
imitate, and sometimes we reward them with public office.
It appears, therefore, that speed,-the ability to move rapidly from place
to place,--a disproportionate reward of physical over intellectual
science, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compel
even education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinate
elevation in public consideration of rich men simply because they are
rich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand.
They are not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view,
the age is distinguished for unexampled achievements, and for
opportunities for the well-being of humanity never before in all history
attainable. But these characteristics are so prominent as to beget the
fear that we are losing the sense of the relative value of things in this
life.
Few persons come to middle life without some conception of these relative
values. It is in the heat and struggle that we fail to appreciate what in
the attainment will be most satisfactory to us. After it is over we are
apt to see that our possessions do not bring the happiness we expected;
or that we have neglected to cultivate the powers and tastes that can
make life enjoyable. We come to know, to use a truism, that a person's
highest satisfaction depends not upon his exterior acquisitions, but upon
what he himself is. There is no escape from this conclusion. The physical
satisfactions are limited and fallacious, the intellectual and moral
satisfactions are unlimited. In the last analysis, a man has to live with
himself, to be his own companion, and in the last resort the question is,
what can he get out of himself. In the end, his life is worth just what
he has become. And I need not say that the mistake commonly made is as to
relative values,--that the things of sense are as important as the things
of the mind. You make that mistake when you devote your best energies to
your possession of material substance, and neglect the enlargement, the
training, the enrichment of the mind. You make the same mistake in a less
degree, when you bend to the popular ignorance and conceit so far as to
direct your college education to sordid ends. The certain end of yielding
to this so-called practical spirit was expressed by a member of a
Northern State legislature who said, "We don't want colleges, we want
workshops." It was expressed in another way by a representative of the
lower house in Washington who said, "The average ignorance of the country
has a right to be represented here." It is not for me to say whether it
is represented there. Naturally, I say, we ought by the time of middle
life to come to a conception of what sort of things are of most value. By
analogy, in the continual growth of the Republic, we ought to have a
perception of what we have accomplished and acquired, and some clear view
of our tendencies. We take justifiable pride in the glittering figures of
our extension of territory, our numerical growth, in the increase of
wealth, and in our rise to the potential position of almost the first
nation in the world. A more pertinent inquiry is, what sort of people
have we become? What are we intellectually and morally? For after all the
man is the thing, the production of the right sort of men and women is
all that gives a nation value. When I read of the establishment of a
great industrial centre in which twenty thousand people are employed in
the increase of the amount of steel in the world, before I decide whether
it would be a good thing for the Republic to create another industrial
city of the same sort, I want to know what sort of people the twenty
thousand are, how they live, what their morals are, what intellectual
life they have, what their enjoyment of life is, what they talk about and
think about, and what chance they have of getting into any higher life.
It does not seem to me a sufficient gain in this situation that we are
immensely increasing the amount of steel in the world, or that twenty
more people are enabled on account of this to indulge in an unexampled,
unintellectual luxury. We want more steel, no doubt, but haven't we wit
enough to get that and at the same time to increase among the producers
of it the number of men and women whose horizons are extended, who are
companionable, intelligent beings, adding something to the intellectual
and moral force upon which the real progress of the Republic depends?
There is no place where I would choose to speak more plainly of our
national situation today than in the South, and at the University of the
South; in the South, because it is more plainly in a transition state,
and at the University of the South, because it is here and in similar
institutions that the question of the higher or lower plane of life in
the South is to be determined.
To a philosophical observer of the Republic, at the end of the hundred
years, I should say that the important facts are not its industrial
energy, its wealth, or its population, but the stability of the federal
power, and the integrity of the individual States. That is to say, that
stress and trial have welded us into an indestructible nation; and not of
less consequence is the fact that the life of the Union is in the life of
the States. The next most encouraging augury for a great future is the
marvelous diversity among the members of this republican body. If nothing
would be more speedily fatal to our plan of government than increasing
centralization, nothing would be more hopeless in our development than
increasing monotony, the certain end of which is mediocrity.
Speaking as one whose highest pride it is to be a citizen of a great and
invincible Republic to those whose minds kindle with a like patriotism, I
can say that I am glad there are East and North and South, and West,
Middle, Northwest, and Southwest, with as many diversities of climate,
temperament, habits, idiosyncrasies, genius, as these names imply. Thank
Heaven we are not all alike; and so long as we have a common purpose in
the Union, and mutual toleration, respect, and sympathy, the greater will
be our achievement and the nobler our total development, if every section
is true to the evolution of its local traits. The superficial foreign
observer finds sameness in our different States, tiresome family likeness
in our cities, hideous monotony in our villages, and a certain common
atmosphere of life, which increasing facility of communication tends to
increase. This is a view from a railway train. But as soon as you observe
closely, you find in each city a peculiar physiognomy, and a peculiar
spirit remarkable considering the freedom of movement and intercourse,
and you find the organized action of each State sui generis to a degree
surprising considering the general similarity of our laws and
institutions. In each section differences of speech, of habits of
thought, of temperament prevail. Massachusetts is unlike Louisiana,
Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia is unlike California, Pennsylvania is
unlike Minnesota, and so on, and the unlikeness is not alone or chiefly
in physical features. By the different style of living I can tell when I
cross the line between Connecticut and New York as certainly as when I
cross the line between Vermont and Canada. The Virginian expanded in
Kentucky is not the same man he was at home, and the New England Yankee
let loose in the West takes on proportions that would astonish his
grandfather. Everywhere there is a variety in local sentiment, action,
and development. Sit down in the seats of the State governments and study
the methods of treatment of essentially the common institutions of
government, of charity and discipline, and you will be impressed with the
variety of local spirit and performance in the Union. And this, diversity
is so important, this contribution of diverse elements is so necessary to
the complex strength and prosperity of the whole, that one must view with
alarm all federal interference and tendency to greater centralization.
And not less to be dreaded than monotony from the governmental point of
view, is the obliteration of variety in social life and in literary
development. It is not enough for a nation to be great and strong, it
must be interesting, and interesting it cannot be without cultivation of
local variety. Better obtrusive peculiarities than universal sameness. It
is out of variety as well as complexity in American life, and not in
homogeneity and imitation, that we are to expect a civilization
noteworthy in the progress of the human race.
Let us come a little closer to our subject in details. For a hundred
years the South was developed on its own lines, with astonishingly little
exterior bias. This comparative isolation was due partly to the
institution of slavery, partly to devotion to the production of two or
three great staples. While its commercial connection with the North was
intimate and vital, its literary relation with the North was slight. With
few exceptions Northern authors were not read in the South, and the
literary movement of its neighbors, such as it was, from 1820 to 1860,
scarcely affected it. With the exception of Louisiana, which was
absolutely ignorant of American literature and drew its inspiration and
assumed its critical point of view almost wholly from the French, the
South was English, but mainly English of the time of Walter Scott and
George the Third. While Scott was read at the North for his knowledge of
human nature, as he always will be read, the chivalric age which moves in
his pages was taken more seriously at the South, as if it were of
continuing importance in life. In any of its rich private libraries you
find yourself in the age of Pope and Dryden, and the classics were
pursued in the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge in the time of Johnson. It
was little disturbed by the intellectual and ethical agitation of modern
England or of modern New England. During this period, while the South
excelled in the production of statesmen, orators, trained politicians,
great judges, and brilliant lawyers, it produced almost no literature,
that is, no indigenous literature, except a few poems and--a few humorous
character-sketches; its general writing was ornately classic, and its
fiction romantic on the lines of the foreign romances.
From this isolation one thing was developed, and another thing might in
due time be expected. The thing developed was a social life, in the
favored class, which has an almost unique charm, a power of being
agreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an impulsive warmth, a frankness in
the expression of emotion, and that delightful quality of manner which
puts the world at ease and makes life pleasant. The Southerners are no
more sincere than the Northerners, but they have less reserve, and in the
social traits that charm all who come in contact with them, they have an
element of immense value in the variety of American life.
The thing that might have been expected in due time, and when the call
came--and it is curious to note that the call and cause of any
renaissance are always from the outside--was a literary expression fresh
and indigenous. This expectation, in a brief period since the war, has
been realized by a remarkable performance and is now stimulated by a
remarkable promise. The acclaim with which the Southern literature has
been received is partly due to its novelty, the new life it exhibited,
but more to the recognition in it of a fresh flavor, a literary quality
distinctly original and of permanent importance. This production, the
first fruits of which are so engaging in quality, cannot grow and broaden
into a stable, varied literature without scholarship and hard work, and
without a sympathetic local audience. But the momentary concern is that
it should develop on its own lines and in its own spirit, and not under
the influence of London or Boston or New York. I do not mean by this that
it should continue to attract attention by peculiarities of dialect-which
is only an incidental, temporary phenomenon, that speedily becomes
wearisome, whether "cracker" or negro or Yankee--but by being true to the
essential spirit and temperament of Southern life.
During this period there was at the North, and especially in the East,
great intellectual activity and agitation, and agitation ethical and
moral as well as intellectual. There was awakening, investigation,
questioning, doubt. There was a great deal of froth thrown to the
surface. In the free action of individual thought and expression grew
eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a crop of so-called "isms,"
more or less temporary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public opinion
attained an astonishing degree of freedom,--I never heard of any
community that was altogether free of its tyranny. At least extraordinary
latitude was permitted in the development of extreme ideas, new,
fantastic, radical, or conservative. For instance, slavery was attacked
and slavery was defended on the same platform, with almost equal freedom.
Indeed, for many years, if there was any exception to the general
toleration it was in the social ostracism of those who held and expressed
extreme opinions in regard to immediate emancipation, and were
stigmatized as abolitionists. There was a general ferment of new ideas,
not always fruitful in the direction taken, but hopeful in view of the
fact that growth and movement are better than stagnation and decay. You
can do something with a ship that has headway; it will drift upon the
rocks if it has not. With much foam and froth, sure to attend agitation,
there was immense vital energy, intense life.
Out of this stir and agitation came the aggressive, conquering spirit
that carried civilization straight across the continent, that built up
cities and States, that developed wealth, and by invention, ingenuity,
and energy performed miracles in the way of the subjugation of nature and
the assimilation of societies. Out of this free agitation sprang a
literary product, great in quantity and to some degree distinguished in
quality, groups of historians, poets, novelists, essayists, biographers,
scientific writers. A conspicuous agency of the period was the lecture
platform, which did something in the spread and popularization of
information, but much more in the stimulation of independent thought and
the awakening of the mind to use its own powers.
Along with this and out of this went on the movement of popular education
and of the high and specialized education. More remarkable than the
achievements of the common schools has been the development of the
colleges, both in the departments of the humanities and of science. If I
were writing of education generally, I might have something to say of the
measurable disappointment of the results of the common schools as at
present conducted, both as to the diffusion of information and as to the
discipline of the mind and the inculcation of ethical principles; which
simply means that they need improvement. But the higher education has
been transformed, and mainly by the application of scientific methods,
and of the philosophic spirit, to the study of history, economics, and
the classics. When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics or
the study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline or
to the enlargement of the mind, we are not called on to defend the
methods of a generation ago. The study of Greek is no longer an exercise
in the study of linguistics or the inspection of specimens of an obsolete
literature, but the acquaintance with historic thought, habits, and
polity, with a portion of the continuous history of the human mind, which
has a vital relation to our own life.
However much or little there may be of permanent value in the vast
production of northern literature, judged by continental or even English
standards, the time has came when American scholarship in science, in
language, in occidental or oriental letters, in philosophic and
historical methods, can court comparison with any other. In some branches
of research the peers of our scholars must be sought not in England but
in Germany. So that in one of the best fruits of a period of intellectual
agitation, scholarship, the restless movement has thoroughly vindicated
itself.
I have called your attention to this movement in order to say that it was
neither accidental nor isolated. It was in the historic line, it was fed
and stimulated by all that had gone before, and by all contemporary
activity everywhere. New England, for instance, was alert and progressive
because it kept its doors and windows open. It was hospitable in its
intellectual freedom, both of trial and debate, to new ideas. It was in
touch with the universal movement of humanity and of human thought and
speculation. You lose some quiet by this attitude, some repose that is
pleasant and even desirable perhaps, you entertain many errors, you may
try many useless experiments, but you gain life and are in the way of
better things. New England, whatever else we may say about it, was in the
world. There was no stir of thought, of investigation, of research, of
the recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, in Germany, in France,
in Italy, in England, anywhere, that did not touch it and to which it did
not respond with the sympathy that common humanity has in the universal
progress. It kept this touch not only in the evolution and expression of
thought and emotion which we call literature (whether original or
imitative), but in the application of philosophic methods to education,
in the attempted regeneration of society and the amelioration of its
conditions by schemes of reform and discipline, relating to the
institutions of benevolence and to the control of the vicious and
criminal. With all these efforts go along always much false
sentimentality and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little gain is made
that could not be made in a state of isolation and stagnation.
In fact there is one historic stream of human thought, aspiration, and
progress; it is practically continuous, and with all its diversity of
local color and movement it is a unit. If you are in it, you move; if you
are out of it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may have a provincial
current, but it is not in the great stream, and when it has gone round
and round for a century, it is still an eddy, and will not carry you
anywhere in particular. The value of the modern method of teaching and
study is that it teaches the solidarity of human history, the continuance
of human thought, in literature, government, philosophy, the unity of the
divine purpose, and that nothing that has anywhere befallen the human
race is alien to us.
I am not undervaluing the part, the important part, played by
conservatism, the conservatism that holds on to what has been gained if
it is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching of
experience, that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over every
flighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply because he proposes
something new and strange--I do not mean the conservatism that refuses to
try anything simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life the
stagnation that inevitably leads to decay. Isolation from the great
historic stream of thought and agitation is stagnation. While this is
true, and always has been true in history, it is also true, in regard to
the beneficent diversity of American life, which is composed of so many
elements and forces, as I have often thought and said, that what has been
called the Southern conservatism in respect to beliefs and certain social
problems, may have a very important part to play in the development of
the life of the Republic.
I shall not be misunderstood here, where the claims of the higher life
are insisted on and the necessity of pure, accurate scholarship is
recognized, in saying that this expectation in regard to the South
depends upon the cultivation and diffusion of the highest scholarship in
all its historic consciousness and critical precision. This sort of
scholarship, of widely apprehending intellectual activity, keeping step
with modern ideas so far as they are historically grounded, is of the
first importance. Everywhere indeed, in our industrial age,--in a society
inclined to materialism, scholarship, pure and simple scholarship for its
own sake, no less in Ohio than in Tennessee, is the thing to be insisted
on. If I may refer to an institution, which used to be midway between the
North and the South, and which I may speak of without suspicion of bias,
an institution where the studies of metaphysics, the philosophy of
history, the classics and pure science are as much insisted on as the
study of applied sciences, the College of New Jersey at Princeton, the
question in regard to a candidate for a professorship or instructorship,
is not whether he was born North or South, whether he served in one army
or another or in neither, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican or a
Mugwump, what religious denomination he belongs to, but is he a scholar
and has he a high character? There is no provincialism in scholarship.
We are not now considering the matter of the agreeableness of one society
or another, whether life is on the whole pleasanter in certain conditions
at the North or at the South, whether there is not a charm sometimes in
isolation and even in provincialism. It is a fair question to ask, what
effect upon individual lives and character is produced by an industrial
and commercial spirit, and by one less restless and more domestic. But
the South is now face to face with certain problems which relate her,
inevitably, to the moving forces of the world. One of these is the
development of her natural resources and the change and diversity of her
industries. On the industrial side there is pressing need of institutions
of technology, of schools of applied science, for the diffusion of
technical information and skill in regard to mining and manufacturing,
and also to agriculture, so that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and good
lands be kept up to the highest point of production. Neither mines,
forests, quarries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be handled to best
advantage without scientific knowledge and skilled labor. The South is
everywhere demanding these aids to her industrial development. But just
in the proportion that she gets them, and because she has them, will be
the need of higher education. The only safety against the influence of a
rolling mill is a college, the only safety against the practical and
materializing tendency of an industrial school is the increased study of
whatever contributes to the higher and non-sordid life of the mind. The
South would make a poor exchange for her former condition in any amount
of industrial success without a corresponding development of the highest
intellectual life.
But, besides the industrial problem, there is the race problem. It is the
most serious in the conditions under which it is presented that ever in
all history confronted a free people. Whichever way you regard it, it is
the nearest insoluble. Under the Constitution it is wisely left to the
action of the individual States. The heavy responsibility is with them.
In the nature of things it is a matter of the deepest concern to the
whole Republic, for the prosperity of every part is vital to the
prosperity of the whole. In working it out you are entitled, from the
outside, to the most impartial attempt to understand its real nature, to
the utmost patience with the facts of human nature, to the most profound
and most helpful sympathy. It is monstrous to me that the situation
should be made on either side a political occasion for private ambition
or for party ends.
I would speak of this subject with the utmost frankness if I knew what to
say. It is not much of a confession to say that I do not. The more I
study it the less I know, and those among you who give it the most
anxious thought are the most perplexed, the subject has so many
conflicting aspects. In the first place there is the evolution of an
undeveloped race. Every race has a right to fair play in the world and to
make the most of its capacities, and to the help of the more favored in
the attempt. If the suggestion recently made of a wholesale migration to
Mexico were carried out, the South would be relieved in many ways, though
the labor problem would be a serious one for a long time, but the
"elevation" would be lost sight of or relegated to a foreign missionary
enterprise; and as for results to the colored people themselves, there is
the example of Hayti. If another suggestion, that of abandoning certain
States to this race, were carried out, there is the example of Hayti
again, and, besides, an anomaly introduced into the Republic foreign to
its traditions, spirit, aspirations, and process of assimilation, alien
to the entire historic movement of the Aryan races, and infinitely more
dangerous to the idea of the Republic than if solid Ireland were dumped
down in the Mississippi valley as an independent State.
On the other hand, there rests upon you the responsibility of maintaining
a civilization--the civilization of America, not of Hayti or of Guatemala
which we have so hardly won. It is neither to be expected nor desired
that you should be ruled by an undeveloped race, ignorant of law,
letters, history, politics, political economy. There is no right anywhere
in numbers or unintelligence to rule intelligence. It is a travesty of
civilization. No Northern State that I know of would submit to be ruled
by an undeveloped race. And human nature is exactly in the South what it
is in the North. That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as the basis
of all our calculations; the whites of the South will not, cannot, be
dominated, as matters now stand, by the colored race.
But, then, there is the suffrage, the universal, unqualified suffrage.
And here is the dilemma. Suffrage once given, cannot be suppressed or
denied, perverted by chicane or bribery without incalculable damage to
the whole political body. Irregular methods once indulged in for one
purpose, and towards one class, so sap the moral sense that they come to
be used for all purposes. The danger is ultimately as great to those who
suppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed and corrupted. It is the
demoralization of all sound political action and life. I know whereof I
speak. In the North, bribery in elections and intimidation are fatal to
public morality. The legislature elected by bribery is a bribable body.
I believe that the fathers were right in making government depend upon
the consent of the governed. I believe there has been as yet discovered
no other basis of government so safe, so stable as popular suffrage, but
the fathers never contemplated a suffrage without intelligence. It is a
contradiction of terms. A proletariat without any political rights in a
republic is no more dangerous than an unintelligent mob which can be used
in elections by demagogues. Universal suffrage is not a universal
panacea; it may be the best device attainable, but it is certain of abuse
without safeguards. One of the absolutely necessary safeguards is an
educational qualification. No one ought anywhere to exercise it who
cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballot
who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test
of intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to
spell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much the State for its
own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a
right belonging to universal humanity regardless of intelligence or of
character.
The charge is, with regard to this universal suffrage, that you take the
fruits of increased representation produced by it, and then deny it to a
portion of the voters whose action was expected to produce a different
political result. I cannot but regard it as a blunder in statesmanship to
give suffrage without an educational qualification, and to deem it
possible to put ignorance over intelligence. You are not, responsible for
the situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position before
the law. Now, would you not gain more in a rectification of your position
than you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon an
educational qualification? I do not mean gain party-wise, but in
political morals and general prosperity. Time would certainly be gained
by this, and it is possible in this shifting world, in the growth of
industries and the flow of populations, that before the question of
supremacy was again upon you, foreign and industrial immigration would
restore the race balance.
We come now to education. The colored race being here, I assume that its
education, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is a
duty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice there
is in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and
increasing his happiness that lies in education--unless our whole theory
of modern life is wrong--and also of the political and social danger
there is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integral
membership in a body politic, education is a necessity. I am aware of the
danger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which only
breeds conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power,
without due responsibility and moral restraint. Education makes a race
more powerful both for evil and for good. I see the danger that many
apprehend. And the outlook, with any amount of education, would be
hopeless, not only as regards the negro and those in neighborhood
relations with him, if education should not bring with it thrift, sense
of responsibility as a citizen, and virtue. What the negro race under the
most favorable conditions is capable of remains to be shown; history does
not help us much to determine thus far. It has always been a long pull
for any race to rise out of primitive conditions; but I am sure for its
own sake, and for the sake of the republic where it dwells, every
thoughtful person must desire the most speedy intellectual and moral
development possible of the African race. And I mean as a race.
Some distinguished English writers have suggested, with approval, that
the solution of the race problem in this country is fusion, and I have
even heard discouraged Southerners accept it as a possibility. The result
of their observation of the amalgamation of races and colors in Egypt, in
Syria, and Mexico, must be very different from mine. When races of
different color mingle there is almost invariably loss of physical
stamina, and the lower moral qualities of each are developed in the
combination. No race that regards its own future would desire it. The
absorption theory as applied to America is, it seems to me, chimerical.
But to return to education. It should always be fitted to the stage of
development. It should always mean discipline, the training of the powers
and capacities. The early pioneers who planted civilization on the
Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, the Cumberland, had not much broad
learning--they would not have been worse if they had had more but they
had courage, they were trained in self-reliance, virile common sense, and
good judgment, they had inherited the instinct and capacity of
self-government, they were religious, with all their coarseness they had
the fundamental elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, and the
public spirit needed in the foundation of states. Their education in all
the manly arts and crafts of the backwoodsman fitted them very well for
the work they had to do. I should say that the education of the colored
race in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in an
ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learning
upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moral
condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends
upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical
perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, so
that work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have self-respect,
which commonly comes from trained capacity, to know how to live, to have
a clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domestic
virtues,--these are the essentials of progress. I suppose that the
education to produce these must be an elemental and practical one, one
that fits for the duties of life and not for some imaginary sphere above
them.
To put it in a word, and not denying that there must be schools for
teaching the teachers, with the understanding that the teachers should be
able to teach what the mass most needs to know--what the race needs for
its own good today, are industrial and manual training schools, with the
varied and practical discipline and arts of life which they impart.
What then? What of the 'modus vivendi' of the two races occupying the
same soil? As I said before, I do not know. Providence works slowly. Time
and patience only solve such enigmas. The impossible is not expected of
man, only that he shall do today the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you
say, for an outsider to preach waiting, patience, forbearance, sympathy,
helpfulness. Well, these are the important lessons we get out of history.
We struggle, and fume, and fret, and accomplish little in our brief hour,
but somehow the world gets on. Fortunately for us, we cannot do today the
work of tomorrow. All the gospel in the world can be boiled down into a
single precept. Do right now. I have observed that the boy who starts in
the morning with a determination to behave himself till bedtime, usually
gets through the day without a thrashing.
But of one thing I am sure. In the rush of industries, in the race
problem, it is more and more incumbent upon such institutions as the
University of the South to maintain the highest standard of pure
scholarship, to increase the number of men and women devoted to the
intellectual life. Long ago, in the middle of the seventeenth century,
John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman and physician, wrote in his
diary: "The wealth of a nation depends upon its populousness, and its
populousness depends upon the liberty of conscience that is granted to
it, for this calls in strangers and promotes trading." Great is the
attraction of a benign climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greater
attraction is an intelligent people, that values the best things in life,
a society hospitable, companionable, instinct with intellectual life,
awake to the great ideas that make life interesting.
As I travel through the South and become acquainted with its magnificent
resources and opportunities, and know better and love more the admirable
qualities of its people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy upon the
brilliant part it is to play in the diversified life and the great future
of the American Republic. But, North and South, we have a hard fight with
materializing tendencies. God bless the University of the South!
THE PILGRIM, AND THE AMERICAN OF TODAY--1892
By Charles Dudley Warner
This December evening, the imagination, by a law of contrast, recalls
another December night two hundred and seventy years ago. The circle of
darkness is drawn about a little group of Pilgrims who have come ashore
on a sandy and inhospitable coast. On one side is a vexed and wintry sea,
three thousand miles of tossing waves and tempest, beyond which lie the
home, the hedgerows and cottages, the church towers, the libraries and
universities, the habits and associations of an old civilization, the
strongest and dearest ties that can entwine around a human heart,
abandoned now definitely and forever by these wanderers; on the other
side a wintry forest of unknown extent, without highways, the lair of
wild beasts, impenetrable except by trails known only to the savages,
whose sudden appearance and disappearance adds mystery and terror to the
impression the imagination has conjured up of the wilderness.
This darkness is symbolic. It stands for a vaster obscurity. This is an
encampment on the edge of a continent, the proportions of which are
unknown, the form of which is only conjectured. Behind this screen of
forest are there hills, great streams, with broad valleys, ranges of
mountains perhaps, vast plains, lakes, other wildernesses of illimitable
extent? The adventurers on the James hoped they could follow the stream
to highlands that looked off upon the South Sea, a new route to India and
the Spice Islands. This unknown continent is attacked, it is true, in
more than one place. The Dutch are at the mouth of the Hudson; there is a
London company on the James; the Spaniards have been long in Florida, and
have carried religion and civilization into the deserts of New Mexico.
Nevertheless, the continent, vaster and more varied than was guessed, is
practically undiscovered, untrodden. How inadequate to the subjection of
any considerable portion of it seems this little band of ill-equipped
adventurers, who cannot without peril of life stray a league from the bay
where the "Mayflower" lies.
It is not to be supposed that the Pilgrims had an adequate conception of
the continent, or of the magnitude of their mission on it, or of the
nation to come of which they were laying the foundations. They did the
duty that lay nearest to them; and the duty done today, perhaps without
prescience of its consequences, becomes a permanent stone in the edifice
of the future. They sought a home in a fresh wilderness, where they might
be undisturbed by superior human authority; they had no doctrinarian
notions of equality, nor of the inequality which is the only possible
condition of liberty; the idea of toleration was not born in their age;
they did not project a republic; they established a theocracy, a church
which assumed all the functions of a state, recognizing one Supreme
Power, whose will in human conduct they were to interpret. Already,
however, in the first moment, with a true instinct of self-government,
they drew together in the cabin of the "Mayflower" in an association--to
carry out the divine will in society. But, behold how speedily their
ideas expanded beyond the Jewish conception, necessarily expanded with
opportunity and the practical self-dependence of colonies cut off from
the aid of tradition, and brought face to face with the problems of
communities left to themselves. Only a few years later, on the banks of
the Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, the first American Democrat, proclaimed
that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the
people," that "the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people,
by God's own allowance," that it is the right of the people not only to
choose but to limit the power of their rulers, and he exhorted, "as God
has given us liberty to take it." There, at that moment, in Hartford,
American democracy was born; and in the republican union of the three
towns of the Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, was
the germ of the American federal system, which was adopted into the
federal constitution and known at the time as the "Connecticut
Compromise."
It were not worth while for me to come a thousand miles to say this, or
to draw over again for the hundredth time the character of the New
England Pilgrim, nor to sketch his achievement on this continent. But it
is pertinent to recall his spirit, his attitude toward life, and to
inquire what he would probably do in the circumstances in which we find
ourselves.
It is another December night, before the dawn of a new year. And this
night still symbolizes the future. You have subdued a continent, and it
stands in the daylight radiant with a material splendor of which the
Pilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent as dark, as unknown, exists. It
is yourselves, your future, your national life. The other continent was
made, you had only to discover it, to uncover it. This you must make
yourselves.
We have finished the outline sketch of a magnificent nation. The
territory is ample; it includes every variety of climate, in the changing
seasons, every variety of physical conformation, every kind of production
suited to the wants, almost everything desired in the imagination, of
man. It comes nearer than any empire in history to being self-sufficient,
physically independent of the rest of the globe. That is to say, if it
were shut off from the rest of the world, it has in itself the material
for great comfort and civilization. And it has the elements of motion, of
agitation, of life, because the vast territory is filling up with a
rapidity unexampled in history. I am not saying that isolated it could
attain the highest civilization, or that if it did touch a high one it
could long hold it in a living growth, cut off from the rest of the
world. I do not believe it. For no state, however large, is sufficient
unto itself. No state is really alive in the highest sense whose
receptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with
which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part
of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of
the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering to
our national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life of
exclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in to
the selfish development of our material wealth and strength, surrounded
by a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on the outside and of
ignorance on the inside. Fortunately it is a conception impossible to be
realized.
There is something captivating to the imagination in being a citizen of a
great nation, one powerful enough to command respect everywhere, and so
just as not to excite fear anywhere. This proud feeling of citizenship is
a substantial part of a man's enjoyment of life; and there is a certain
compensation for hardships, for privations, for self-sacrifice, in the
glory of one's own country. It is not a delusion that one can afford to
die for it. But what in the last analysis is the object of a government?
What is the essential thing, without which even the glory of a nation
passes into shame, and the vastness of empire becomes a mockery? I will
not say that it is the well-being of every individual, because the term
well-being--the 'bien etre' of the philosophers of the eighteenth
century--has mainly a materialistic interpretation, and may be attained
by a compromise of the higher life to comfort, and even of patriotism to
selfish enjoyment.
That is the best government in which the people, and all the people, get
the most out of life; for the object of being in this world is not
primarily to build up a government, a monarchy, an aristocracy, a
democracy, or a republic, or to make a nation, but to live the best sort
of life that can be lived.
We think that our form of government is the one best calculated to attain
this end. It is of all others yet tried in this world the one least felt
by the people, least felt as an interference in the affairs of private
life, in opinion, in conscience, in our freedom to attain position, to
make money, to move from place to place, and to follow any career that is
open to our ability. In order to maintain this freedom of action, this
non-interference, we are bound to resist centralization of power; for a
central power in a republic, grasped and administered by bosses, is no
more tolerable than central power in a despotism, grasped and
administered by a hereditary aristocrat. Let us not be deceived by names.
Government by the consent of the people is the best government, but it is
not government by the people when it is in the hands of political bosses,
who juggle with the theory of majority rule. What republics have most to
fear is the rule of the boss, who is a tyrant without responsibility. He
makes the nominations, he dickers and trades for the elections, and at
the end he divides the spoils. The operation is more uncertain than a
horse race, which is not decided by the speed of the horses, but by the
state of the wagers and the manipulation of the jockeys. We strike
directly at his power for mischief when we organize the entire civil
service of the nation and of the States on capacity, integrity,
experience, and not on political power.
And if we look further, considering the danger of concentration of power
in irresponsible hands, we see a new cause for alarm in undue federal
mastery and interference. This we can only resist by the constant
assertion of the rights, the power, the dignity of the individual State,
all that it has not surrendered in the fundamental constitution of the
Republic. This means the full weight of the State, as a State, as a
political unit, in the election of President; and the full weight of the
State, as a State, as a political unit, without regard to its population,
in the senate of the United States. The senate, as it stands, as it was
meant to be in the Constitution, is the strongest safeguard which the
fundamental law established against centralization, against the tyranny
of mere majorities, against the destruction of liberty, in such a
diversity of climates and conditions as we have in our vast continent. It
is not a mere check upon hasty legislation; like some second chambers in
Europe, it is the representative of powers whose preservation in their
dignity is essential to the preservation of the form of our government
itself.
We pursue the same distribution of power and responsibility when we pass
to the States. The federal government is not to interfere in what the
State can do and ought to do for itself; the State is not to meddle with
what the county can best do for itself; nor the county in the affairs
best administered by the town and the municipality. And so we come to the
individual citizen. He cannot delegate his responsibility. The government
even of the smallest community must be, at least is, run by parties and
by party machinery. But if he wants good government, he must pay as
careful attention to the machinery,--call it caucus, primary, convention,
town-meeting,--as he does to the machinery of his own business. If he
hands it over to bosses, who make politics a trade for their own
livelihood, he will find himself in the condition of stockholders of a
bank whose directors are mere dummies, when some day the cashier packs
the assets and goes on a foreign journey for his health. When the citizen
simply does his duty in the place where he stands, the boss will be
eliminated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, and we shall have,
what by courtesy we say we have now, a government by the people. Then all
the way down from the capital to the city ward, we shall have vital
popular government, free action, discussion, agitation, life. What an
anomaly it is, that a free people, reputed shrewd and intelligent, should
intrust their most vital interests, the making of their laws, the laying
of their taxes, the spending of their money, even their education and the
management of their public institutions, into the keeping of political
bosses, whom they would not trust to manage the least of their business
affairs, nor to arbitrate on what is called a trial of speed at an
agricultural fair.
But a good government, the best government, is only an opportunity.
However vast the country may become in wealth and population, it cannot
rise in quality above the average of the majority of its citizens; and
its goodness will be tested in history by its value to the average man,
not by its bigness, not by its power, but by its adaptability to the
people governed, so as to develop the best that is in them. It is
incidental and imperative that the country should be an agreeable one to
live in; but it must be more than that, it must be favorable to the
growth of the higher life. The Puritan community of Massachusetts Bay,
whose spirit we may happily contrast with that of the Pilgrims whose
anniversary we celebrate, must have been as disagreeable to live in as
any that history records; not only were the physical conditions of life
hard, but its inquisitorial intolerance overmatched that which it escaped
in England. It was a theocratic despotism, untempered by recreation or
amusement, and repressive not only of freedom of expression but of
freedom of thought. But it had an unconquerable will, a mighty sense of
duty, a faith in God, which not only established its grip upon the
continent but carried its influence from one ocean to the other. It did
not conquer by its bigotry, by its intolerance, its cruel persecuting
spirit, but by its higher mental and spiritual stamina. These lower and
baser qualities of the age of the Puritans leave a stain upon a great
achievement; it took Massachusetts almost two centuries to cast them off
and come into a wholesome freedom, but the vital energy and the
recognition of the essential verities inhuman life carried all the
institutions of the Puritans that were life-giving over the continent.
Here in the West you are near the centre of a vast empire, you feel its
mighty pulse, the throb and heartbeat of its immense and growing
strength. Some of you have seen this great civilization actually grow on
the vacant prairies, in the unoccupied wilderness, on the sandy shores of
the inland seas. You have seen the trails of the Indian and the deer
replaced by highways of steel, and upon the spots where the first
immigrants corralled their wagons, and the voyagers dragged their canoes
upon the reedy shore, you have seen arise great cities, centres of
industry, of commerce, of art, attaining in a generation the proportions
and the world-wide fame of cities that were already famous before the
discovery of America.
Naturally the country is proud of this achievement. Naturally we magnify
our material prosperity. But in this age of science and invention this
development may be said to be inevitable, and besides it is the necessary
outlet of the energy of a free people. There must be growth of cities,
extension of railways, improvement of agriculture, development of
manufactures, amassing of wealth, concentration of capital, beautifying
of homes, splendid public buildings, private palaces, luxury, display.
Without reservoirs of wealth there would be no great universities,
schools of science, museums, galleries of art, libraries, solid
institutions of charity, and perhaps not the wide diffusion of culture
which is the avowed aim of modern civilization.
But this in its kind is an old story. It is an experiment that has been
repeated over and over. History is the record of the rise of splendid
civilizations, many of which have flowered into the most glorious
products of learning and of art, and have left monuments of the proudest
material achievements. Except in the rapidity with which steam and
electricity have enabled us to move to our object, and in the discoveries
of science which enable us to relieve suffering and prolong human life,
there is nothing new in our experiment. We are pursuing substantially the
old ends of material success and display. And the ends are not different
because we have more people in a nation, or bigger cities with taller
buildings, or more miles of railway, or grow more corn and cotton, or
make more plows and threshing-machines, or have a greater variety of
products than any nation ever had before. I fancy that a pleased visitor
from another planet the other day at Chicago, who was shown an assembly
much larger than ever before met under one roof, might have been
interested to know that it was also the wisest, the most cultivated, the
most weighty in character of any assembly ever gathered under one roof.
Our experiment on this continent was intended to be something more than
the creation of a nation on the old pattern, that should become big and
strong, and rich and luxurious, divided into classes of the very wealthy
and the very poor, of the enlightened and the illiterate. It was intended
to be a nation in which the welfare of the people is the supreme object,
and whatever its show among nations it fails if it does not become this.
This welfare is an individual matter, and it means many things. It
includes in the first place physical comfort for every person willing and
deserving to be physically comfortable, decent lodging, good food,
sufficient clothing. It means, in the second place, that this shall be an
agreeable country to live in, by reason of its impartial laws, social
amenities, and a fair chance to enjoy the gifts of nature and Providence.
And it means, again, the opportunity to develop talents, aptitudes for
cultivation and enjoyment, in short, freedom to make the most possible
out of our lives. This is what Jefferson meant by the "pursuit of
happiness"; it was what the Constitution meant by the "general welfare,"
and what it tried to secure in States, safe-guarded enough to secure
independence in the play of local ambition and home rule, and in a
federal republic strong enough to protect the whole from foreign
interference. We are in no vain chase of an equality which would
eliminate all individual initiative, and check all progress, by ignoring
differences of capacity and strength, and rating muscles equal to brains.
But we are in pursuit of equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading happy
lives than humanity in general ever had yet. And this fairer chance would
not, for instance, permit any man to become a millionaire by so
manipulating railways that the subscribing towns and private stockholders
should lose their investments; nor would it assume that any Gentile or
Jew has the right to grow rich by the chance of compelling poor women to
make shirts for six cents apiece. The public opinion which sustains these
deeds is as un-American, and as guilty as their doers. While abuses like
these exist, tolerated by the majority that not only make public opinion,
but make the laws, this is not a government for the people, any more than
a government of bosses is a government by the people.
The Pilgrims of Plymouth could see no way of shaping their lives in
accordance with the higher law except by separating themselves from the
world. We have their problem, how to make the most of our lives, but the
conditions have changed. Ours is an age of scientific aggression, fierce
competition, and the widest toleration. The horizon of humanity is
enlarged. To live the life now is to be no more isolated or separate, but
to throw ourselves into the great movement of thought, and feeling, and
achievement. Therefore we are altruists in charity, missionaries of
humanity, patriots at home. Therefore we have a justifiable pride in the
growth, the wealth, the power of the nation, the state, the city. But the
stream cannot rise above its source. The nation is what the majority of
its citizens are. It is to be judged by the condition of its humblest
members. We shall gain nothing over other experiments in government,
although we have money enough to buy peace from the rest of the world, or
arms enough to conquer it, although we rear upon our material prosperity
a structure of scientific achievement, of art, of literature
unparalleled, if the common people are not sharers in this great
prosperity, and are not fuller of hope and of the enjoyment of life than
common people ever were before.
And we are all common people when it comes to that. Whatever the
greatness of the nation, whatever the accumulation of wealth, the worth
of the world to us is exactly the worth of our individual lives. The
magnificent opportunity in this Republic is that we may make the most
possible out of our lives, and it will continue only as we adhere to the
original conception of the Republic. Politics without virtue,
money-making without conscience, may result in great splendor, but as
such an experiment is not new, its end can be predicted. An agreeable
home for a vast, and a free, and a happy people is quite another thing.
It expects thrift, it expects prosperity, but its foundations are in the
moral and spiritual life.
Therefore I say that we are still to make the continent we have
discovered and occupied, and that the scope and quality of our national
life are still to be determined. If they are determined not by the narrow
tenets of the Pilgrims, but by their high sense of duty, and of the value
of the human soul, it will be a nation that will call the world up to a
higher plane of action than it ever attained before, and it will bring in
a new era of humanity. If they are determined by the vulgar successes of
a mere material civilization, it is an experiment not worth making. It
would have been better to have left the Indians in possession, to see if
they could not have evolved out of their barbarism some new line of
action.
The Pilgrims were poor, and they built their huts on a shore which gave
such niggardly returns for labor that the utmost thrift was required to
secure the necessaries of life. Out of this struggle with nature and
savage life was no doubt evolved the hardihood, the endurance, that
builds states and wins the favors of fortune. But poverty is not commonly
a nurse of virtue, long continued, it is a degeneration. It is almost as
difficult for the very poor man to be virtuous as for the very rich man;
and very good and very rich at the same time, says Socrates, a man cannot
be. It is a great people that can withstand great prosperity. The
condition of comfort without extremes is that which makes a happy life. I
know a village of old-fashioned houses and broad elm-shaded streets in
New England, indeed more than one, where no one is inordinately rich, and
no one is very poor, where paupers are so scarce that it is difficult to
find beneficiaries for the small traditionary contribution for the church
poor; where the homes are centres of intelligence, of interest in books,
in the news of the world, in the church, in the school, in politics;
whence go young men and women to the colleges, teachers to the illiterate
parts of the land, missionaries to the city slums. Multiply such villages
all over the country, and we have one of the chief requisites for an
ideal republic.
This has been the longing of humanity. Poets have sung of it; prophets
have had visions of it; statesmen have striven for it; patriots have died
for it. There must be somewhere, some time, a fruitage of so much
suffering, so much sacrifice, a land of equal laws and equal
opportunities, a government of all the people for the benefit of all the
people; where the conditions of living will be so adjusted that every one
can make the most out of his life, neither waste it in hopeless slavery
nor in selfish tyranny, where poverty and crime will not be hereditary
generation after generation, where great fortunes will not be for vulgar
ostentation, but for the service of humanity and the glory of the State,
where the privileges of freemen will be so valued that no one will be
mean enough to sell his vote nor corrupt enough to attempt to buy a vote,
where the truth will at last be recognized, that the society is not
prosperous when half its members are lucky, and half are miserable, and
that that nation can only be truly great that takes its orders from the
Great Teacher of Humanity.
And, lo! at last here is a great continent, virgin, fertile, a land of
sun and shower and bloom, discovered, organized into a great nation, with
a government flexible in a distributed home rule, stiff as steel in a
central power, already rich, already powerful. It is a land of promise.
The materials are all here. Will you repeat the old experiment of a
material success and a moral and spiritual failure? Or will you make it
what humanity has passionately longed for? Only good individual lives can
do that.
SOME CAUSES OF THE PREVAILING DISCONTENT
By Charles Dudley Warner
The Declaration of Independence opens with the statement of a great and
fruitful political truth. But if it had said:--"We hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all men are created unequal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," it would also have stated
the truth; and if it had added, "All men are born in society with certain
duties which cannot be disregarded without danger to the social state,"
it would have laid down a necessary corollary to the first declaration.
No doubt those who signed the document understood that the second clause
limited the first, and that men are created equal only in respect to
certain rights. But the first part of the clause has been taken alone as
the statement of a self-evident truth, and the attempt to make this
unlimited phrase a reality has caused a great deal of misery. In
connection with the neglect of the idea that the recognition of certain
duties is as important as the recognition of rights in the political and
social state--that is, in connection with the doctrine of laissez faire
--this popular notion of equality is one of the most disastrous forces in
modern society.
Doubtless men might have been created equal to each other in every
respect, with the same mental capacity, the same physical ability, with
like inheritances of good or bad qualities, and born into exactly similar
conditions, and not dependent on each other. But men never were so
created and born, so far as we have any record of them, and by analogy we
have no reason to suppose that they ever will be. Inequality is the most
striking fact in life. Absolute equality might be better, but so far as
we can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; and
variety in condition is the essential of what we call progress--it is, in
fact, life. The great doctrine of the Christian era--the brotherhood of
man and the duty of the strong to the weak--is in sharp contrast with
this doctrinarian notion of equality. The Christian religion never
proposed to remove the inequalities of life or its suffering, but by the
incoming of charity and contentment and a high mind to give individual
men a power to be superior to their conditions.
It cannot, however, be denied that the spirit of Christianity has
ameliorated the condition of civilized peoples, cooperating in this with
beneficent inventions. Never were the mass of the people so well fed, so
well clad, so well housed, as today in the United States. Their ordinary
daily comforts and privileges were the luxuries of a former age, often
indeed unknown and unattainable to the most fortunate and privileged
classes. Nowhere else is it or was it so easy for a man to change his
condition, to satisfy his wants, nowhere else has he or had he such
advantages of education, such facilities of travel, such an opportunity
to find an environment to suit himself. As a rule the mass of mankind
have been spot where they were born. A mighty change has taken place in
regard to liberty, freedom of personal action, the possibility of coming
into contact with varied life and an enlarged participation in the
bounties of nature and the inventions of genius. The whole world is in
motion, and at liberty to be so. Everywhere that civilization has gone
there is an immense improvement in material conditions during the last
one hundred years.
And yet men were never so discontented, nor did they ever find so many
ways of expressing their discontent. In view of the general amelioration
of the conditions of life this seems unreasonable and illogical, but it
may seem less so when we reflect that human nature is unchanged, and that
which has to be satisfied in this world is the mind. And there are some
exceptions to this general material prosperity, in its result to the
working classes. Manufacturing England is an exception. There is nothing
so pitiful, so hopeless in the record of man, not in the Middle Ages, not
in rural France just before the Revolution, as the physical and mental
condition of the operators in the great manufacturing cities and in the
vast reeking slums of London. The political economists have made England
the world's great workshop, on the theory that wealth is the greatest
good in life, and that with the golden streams flowing into England from
a tributary world, wages would rise, food be cheap, employment constant.
The horrible result to humanity is one of the exceptions to the general
uplift of the race, not paralleled as yet by anything in this country,
but to be taken note of as a possible outcome of any material
civilization, and fit to set us thinking whether we have not got on a
wrong track. Mr. Froude, fresh from a sight of the misery of industrial
England, and borne straight on toward Australia over a vast ocean,
through calm and storm, by a great steamer,--horses of fire yoked to a
sea-chariot,--exclaims: "What, after all, have these wonderful
achievements done to elevate human nature? Human nature remains as it
was. Science grows, but morality is stationary, and art is vulgarized.
Not here lie the 'things necessary to salvation,' not the things which
can give to human life grace, or beauty, or dignity."
In the United States, with its open opportunities, abundant land, where
the condition of the laboring class is better actually and in possibility
than it ever was in history, and where there is little poverty except
that which is inevitably the accompaniment of human weakness and crime,
the prevailing discontent seems groundless. But of course an agitation so
widespread, so much in earnest, so capable of evoking sacrifice, even to
the verge of starvation and the risk of life, must have some reason in
human nature. Even an illusion--and men are as ready to die for an
illusion as for a reality--cannot exist without a cause.
Now, content does not depend so much upon a man's actual as his relative
condition. Often it is not so much what I need, as what others have that
disturbs me. I should be content to walk from Boston to New York, and be
a fortnight on the way, if everybody else was obliged to walk who made
that journey. It becomes a hardship when my neighbor is whisked over the
route in six hours and I have to walk. It would still be a hardship if he
attained the ability to go in an hour, when I was only able to accomplish
the distance in six hours. While there has been a tremendous uplift all
along the line of material conditions, and the laboring man who is sober
and industrious has comforts and privileges in his daily life which the
rich man who was sober and industrious did not enjoy a hundred years ago,
the relative position of the rich man and the poor man has not greatly
changed. It is true, especially in the United States, that the poor have
become rich and the rich poor, but inequality of condition is about as
marked as it was before the invention of labor-saving machinery, and
though workingmen are better off in many ways, the accumulation of vast
fortunes, acquired often in brutal disregard of humanity, marks the
contrast of conditions perhaps more emphatically than it ever appeared
before. That this inequality should continue in an era of universal
education, universal suffrage, universal locomotion, universal
emancipation from nearly all tradition, is a surprise, and a perfectly
comprehensible cause of discontent. It is axiomatic that all men are
created equal. But, somehow, the problem does not work out in the desired
actual equality of conditions. Perhaps it can be forced to the right
conclusion by violence.
It ought to be said, as to the United States, that a very considerable
part of the discontent is imported, it is not native, nor based on any
actual state of things existing here. Agitation has become a business. A
great many men and some women, to whom work of any sort is distasteful,
live by it. Some of them are refugees from military or political
despotism, some are refugees from justice, some from the lowest
conditions of industrial slavery. When they come here, they assume that
the hardships they have come away to escape exist here, and they begin
agitating against them. Their business is to so mix the real wrongs of
our social life with imaginary hardships, and to heighten the whole with
illusory and often debasing theories, that discontent will be engendered.
For it is by means of that only that they live. It requires usually a
great deal of labor, of organization, of oratory to work up this
discontent so that it is profitable. The solid workingmen of America who
know the value of industry and thrift, and have confidence in the relief
to be obtained from all relievable wrongs by legitimate political or
other sedate action, have no time to give to the leadership of agitations
which require them to quit work, and destroy industries, and attack the
social order upon which they depend. The whole case, you may remember,
was embodied thousands of years ago in a parable, which Jotham, standing
on the top of Mount Gerizim, spoke to the men of Shechem:
"The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said
unto the olive-tree, 'Reign thou over us.'
"But the olive-tree said unto them, 'Should I leave my fatness wherewith
by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'
"And the trees said to the fig-tree, 'Come thou and reign over us.'
"But the fig-tree said unto them, 'Should I forsake my sweetness and my
good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?'
"Then said the trees unto the vine, 'Come thou and reign over us.'
"And the vine said unto them, 'Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God
and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'
"Then said the trees unto the bramble, 'Come thou and reign over us.'
"And the bramble said to the trees, 'If in truth ye anoint me king over
you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come
out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'"
In our day a conflagration of the cedars of Lebanon has been the only
result of the kingship of the bramble.
In the opinion of many, our universal education is one of the chief
causes of the discontent. This might be true and not be an argument
against education, for a certain amount of discontent is essential to
self-development and if, as we believe, the development of the best
powers of every human being is a good in itself, education ought not to
be held responsible for the evils attending a transitional period. Yet we
cannot ignore the danger, in the present stage, of an education that is
necessarily superficial, that engenders conceit of knowledge and power,
rather than real knowledge and power, and that breeds in two-thirds of
those who have it a distaste for useful labor. We believe in education;
but there must be something wrong in an education that sets so many
people at odds with the facts of life, and, above all, does not furnish
them with any protection against the wildest illusions. There is
something wanting in the education that only half educates people.
Whether there is the relation of cause and effect between the two I do
not pretend to say, but universal and superficial education in this
country has been accompanied with the most extraordinary delusions and
the evolution of the wildest theories. It is only necessary to refer, by
way of illustration, to the greenback illusion, and to the whole group of
spiritualistic disturbances and psychological epidemics. It sometimes
seems as if half the American people were losing the power to apply
logical processes to the ordinary affairs of life.
In studying the discontent in this country which takes the form of a
labor movement, one is at first struck by its illogical aspects. So far
as it is an organized attempt to better the condition of men by
association of interests it is consistent. But it seems strange that the
doctrine of individualism should so speedily have an outcome in a
personal slavery, only better in the sense that it is voluntary, than
that which it protested against. The revolt from authority, the assertion
of the right of private judgment, has been pushed forward into a
socialism which destroys individual liberty of action, or to a state of
anarchy in which the weak would have no protection. I do not imagine that
the leaders who preach socialism, who live by agitation and not by labor,
really desire to overturn the social order and bring chaos. If social
chaos came, their occupation would be gone, for if all men were reduced
to a level, they would be compelled to scratch about with the rest for a
living. They live by agitation, and they are confident that government
will be strong enough to hold things together, so that they can continue
agitation.
The strange thing is that their followers who live by labor and expect to
live by it, and believe in the doctrine of individualism, and love
liberty of action, should be willing to surrender their discretion to an
arbitrary committee, and should expect that liberty of action would be
preserved if all property were handed over to the State, which should
undertake to regulate every man's time, occupation, wages, and so on. The
central committee or authority, or whatever it might be called, would be
an extraordinary despotism, tempered only by the idea that it could be
overturned every twenty-four hours. But what security would there be for
any calculations in life in a state of things in expectation of a
revolution any moment? Compared with the freedom of action in such a
government as ours, any form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesome
despotism. In a less degree an association to which a man surrenders the
right to say when, where, and for how much he shall work, is a despotism,
and when it goes further and attempts to put a pressure on all men
outside of the association, so that they are free neither to work nor to
hire the workmen they choose, it is an extraordinary tyranny. It almost
puts in the shade Mexican or Russian personal government. A demand is
made upon a railway company that it shall discharge a certain workman
because and only because he is not a member of the union. The company
refuses. Then a distant committee orders a strike on that road, which
throws business far and wide into confusion, and is the cause of heavy
loss to tens of thousands who have no interest in any association of
capital or labor, many of whom are ruined by this violence. Some of the
results of this surrender of personal liberty are as illegal as
illogical.
The boycott is a conspiracy to injure another person, and as such
indictable at common law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to raise wages
or to reduce hours of labor, may not be indictable, if its object cannot
be shown to be the injury of another, though that may be incidentally its
effect. But in its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, and in some
cases injury to the public welfare, it often becomes an indictable
offense. The law of conspiracy is the most ill-defined branch of
jurisprudence, but it is safe to say of the boycott and the strike that
they both introduce an insupportable element of tyranny, of dictation, of
interference, into private life. If they could be maintained, society
would be at the mercy of an, irresponsible and even secret tribunal.
The strike is illogical. Take the recent experience in this country. We
have had a long season of depression, in which many earned very little
and labor sought employment in vain. In the latter part of winter the
prospect brightened, business revived, orders for goods poured in to all
the factories in the country, and everybody believed that we were on the
eve of a very prosperous season. This was the time taken to order
strikes, and they were enforced in perhaps a majority of cases against
the wishes of those who obeyed the order, and who complained of no
immediate grievance. What men chiefly wanted was the opportunity to work.
The result has been to throw us all back into the condition of stagnation
and depression. Many people are ruined, an immense amount of capital
which ventured into enterprises is lost, but of course the greatest
sufferers are the workingmen themselves.
The methods of violence suggested by the communists and anarchists are
not remedial. Real difficulties exist, but these do not reach them. The
fact is that people in any relations incur mutual obligations, and the
world cannot go on without a recognition of duties as well as rights. We
all agree that every man has a right to work for whom he pleases, and to
quit the work if it does not or the wages do not suit him. On the other
hand, a man has a right to hire whom he pleases, pay such wages as he
thinks he can afford, and discharge men who do not suit him. But when men
come together in the relation of employer and employed, other
considerations arise. A man has capital which, instead of loaning at
interest or locking up in real estate or bonds, he puts into a factory.
In other words, he unlocks it for the benefit partly of men who want
wages. He has the expectation of making money, of making more than he
could by lending his money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, for a common
experience is the loss of capital thus invested. He hires workmen at
certain wages. On the strength of this arrangement, he accepts orders and
makes contracts for the delivery of goods. He may make money one year and
lose the next. It is better for the workman that he should prosper, for
the fund of capital accumulated is that upon which they depend to give
them wages in a dull time. But some day when he is in a corner with
orders, and his rivals are competing for the market, and labor is scarce,
his men strike on him.
Conversely, take the workman settled down to work in the mill, at the
best wages attainable at the time. He has a house and family. He has
given pledges to society. His employer has incurred certain duties in
regard to him by the very nature of their relations. Suppose the workman
and his family cannot live in any comfort on the wages he receives. The
employer is morally bound to increase the wages if he can. But if,
instead of sympathizing with the situation of his workman, he forms a
combination with all the mills of his sort, and reduces wages merely to
increase his gains, he is guilty of an act as worthy of indictment as the
strike. I do not see why a conspiracy against labor is not as illegal as
a conspiracy against capital. The truth is, the possession of power by
men or associations makes them selfish and generally cruel. Few employers
consider anything but the arithmetic of supply and demand in fixing
wages, and workingmen who have the power, tend to act as selfishly as the
male printers used to act in striking in an establishment which dared to
give employment to women typesetters. It is of course sentimental to say
it, but I do not expect we shall ever get on with less friction than we
have now, until men recognize their duties as well as their rights in
their relations with each other.
In running over some of the reasons for the present discontent, and the
often illogical expression of it, I am far from saying anything against
legitimate associations for securing justice and fair play. Disassociated
labor has generally been powerless against accumulated capital. Of
course, organized labor, getting power will use its power (as power is
always used) unjustly and tyrannically. It will make mistakes, it will
often injure itself while inflicting general damage. But with all its
injustice, with all its surrender of personal liberty, it seeks to call
the attention of the world to certain hideous wrongs, to which the world
is likely to continue selfishly indifferent unless rudely shaken out of
its sense of security. Some of the objects proposed by these associations
are chimerical, but the agitation will doubtless go on until another
element is introduced into work and wages than mere supply and demand. I
believe that some time it will be impossible that a woman shall be forced
to make shirts at six cents apiece, with the gaunt figures of starvation
or a life of shame waiting at the door. I talked recently with the driver
of a street-car in a large city. He received a dollar and sixty cents a
day. He went on to his platform at eight in the morning, and left it at
twelve at night, sixteen hours of continuous labor every day in the week.
He had no rest for meals, only snatched what he could eat as he drove
along, or at intervals of five or eight minutes at the end of routes. He
had no Sunday, no holiday in the year.
Between twelve o'clock at night and eight the next morning he must wash
and clean his car. Thus his hours of sleep were abridged. He was obliged
to keep an eye on the passengers to see that they put their fares in the
box, to be always, responsible for them, that they got on and off without
accident, to watch that the rules were enforced, and that collisions and
common street dangers were avoided. This mental and physical strain for
sixteen consecutive hours, with scant sleep, so demoralized him that he
was obliged once in two or three months to hire a substitute and go away
to sleep. This is treating a human being with less consideration than the
horses receive. He is powerless against the great corporation; if he
complains, his place is instantly filled; the public does not care.
Now what I want to say about this case, and that of the woman who makes a
shirt for six cents (and these are only types of disregard of human souls
and bodies that we are all familiar with), is that if society remains
indifferent it must expect that organizations will attempt to right them,
and the like wrongs, by ways violent and destructive of the innocent and
guilty alike. It is human nature, it is the lesson of history, that real
wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like
nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes
a cyclone, a slight break in the levee 'a crevasse with immense
destructive power.
In considering the growth of discontent, and of a natural disregard of
duties between employers and employed, it is to be noted that while wages
in nearly all trades are high, the service rendered deteriorates, less
conscience is put into the work, less care to give a fair day's work for
a fair day's wages, and that pride in good work is vanishing. This may be
in the nature of retaliation for the indifference to humanity taught by a
certain school of political economists, but it is, nevertheless, one of
the most alarming features of these times. How to cultivate the sympathy
of the employers with the employed as men, and how to interest the
employed in their work beyond the mere wages they receive, is the double
problem.
As the intention of this paper was not to suggest remedies, but only to
review some of the causes of discontent, I will only say, as to this
double problem, that I see no remedy so long as the popular notion
prevails that the greatest good of life is to make money rapidly, and
while it is denied that all men who contribute to prosperity ought to
share equitably in it. The employed must recognize the necessity of an
accumulated fund of capital, and on the other hand the employer must be
as anxious to have about him a contented, prosperous community, as to
heap up money beyond any reasonable use for it. The demand seems to be
reasonable that the employer in a prosperous year ought to share with the
workmen the profits beyond a limit that capital, risk, enterprise, and
superior skill can legitimately claim; and that on the other hand the
workmen should stand by the employer in hard times.
Discontent, then, arises from absurd notions of equality, from natural
conditions of inequality, from false notions of education, and from the
very patent fact, in this age, that men have been educated into wants
much more rapidly than social conditions have been adjusted, or perhaps
ever can be adjusted, to satisfy those wants. Beyond all the actual
hardship and suffering, there is an immense mental discontent which has
to be reckoned with.
This leads me to what I chiefly wanted to say in this paper, to the cause
of discontent which seems to me altogether the most serious, altogether
the most difficult to deal with. We may arrive at some conception of it,
if we consider what it is that the well-to-do, the prosperous, the rich,
the educated and cultivated portions of society, most value just now.
If, to take an illustration which is sufficiently remote to give us the
necessary perspective, if the political economists, the manufacturers,
the traders and aristocracy of England had had chiefly in mind the
development of the laboring people of England into a fine type of men and
women, full of health and physical vigor, with minds capable of expansion
and enjoyment, the creation of decent, happy, and contented homes, would
they have reared the industrial fabric we now see there? If they had not
put the accumulation of wealth above the good of individual humanity,
would they have turned England into a grimy and smoky workshop,
commanding the markets of the world by cheap labor, condemning the mass
of the people to unrelieved toil and the most squalid and degraded
conditions of life in towns, while the land is more and more set apart
for the parks and pleasure grounds of the rich? The policy pursued has
made England the richest of countries, a land of the highest refinement
and luxury for the upper classes, and of the most misery for the great
mass of common people. On this point we have but to read the testimony of
English writers themselves. It is not necessary to suppose that the
political economists were inhuman. They no doubt believed that if England
attained this commanding position, the accumulated wealth would raise all
classes into better conditions. Their mistake is that of all peoples who
have made money their first object. Looked at merely on the material
side, you would think that what a philanthropic statesman would desire,
who wished a vigorous, prosperous nation, would be a strong and virile
population, thrifty and industrious, and not mere slaves of mines and
mills, degenerating in their children, year by year, physically and
morally. But apparently they have gone upon the theory that it is money,
not man, that makes a state.
In the United States, under totally different conditions, and under an
economic theory that, whatever its defects on paper, has nevertheless
insisted more upon the worth of the individual man, we have had, all the
same, a distinctly material development. When foreign critics have
commented upon this, upon our superficiality, our commonplaceness, what
they are pleased to call the weary level of our mediocrity, upon the
raging unrest and race for fortune, and upon the tremendous pace of
American life, we have said that this is incident to a new country and
the necessity of controlling physical conditions, and of fitting our
heterogeneous population to their environment. It is hardly to be
expected, we have said, until, we have the leisure that comes from easy
circumstances and accumulated wealth, that we should show the graces of
the highest civilization, in intellectual pursuits. Much of this
criticism is ignorant, and to say the best of it, ungracious, considering
what we have done in the way of substantial appliances for education, in
the field of science, in vast charities, and missionary enterprises, and
what we have to show in the diffused refinements of life.
We are already wealthy; we have greater resources and higher credit than
any other nation; we have more wealth than any save one; we have vast
accumulations of fortune, in private hands and in enormous corporations.
There exists already, what could not be said to exist a quarter of a
century ago, a class who have leisure. Now what is the object in life of
this great, growing class that has money and leisure, what does it
chiefly care for? In your experience of society, what is it that it
pursues and desires? Is it things of the mind or things of the senses?
What is it that interests women, men of fortune, club-men, merchants, and
professional men whose incomes give them leisure to follow their
inclinations, the young men who have inherited money? Is it political
duties, the affairs of state, economic problems, some adjustment of our
relations that shall lighten and relieve the wrongs and misery everywhere
apparent; is the interest in intellectual pursuits and art (except in a
dilettante way dictated for a season by fashion) in books, in the wide
range of mental pleasures which make men superior to the accidents of
fortune? Or is the interest of this class, for the most part, with some
noble exceptions, rather in things grossly material, in what is called
pleasure? To come to somewhat vulgar details, is not the growing desire
for equipages, for epicurean entertainments, for display, either refined
or ostentatious, rivalry in profusion and expense, new methods for
killing time, for every imaginable luxury, which is enjoyed partly
because it pleases the senses, and partly because it satisfies an ignoble
craving for class distinction?
I am not referring to these things as a moralist at all, but simply in
their relation to popular discontent. The astonishing growth of luxury
and the habit of sensual indulgence are seen everywhere in this country,
but are most striking in the city of New York, since the fashion and
wealth of the whole country meet there for display and indulgence,--New
York, which rivals London and outdoes Paris in sumptuousness. There
congregate more than elsewhere idlers, men and women of leisure who have
nothing to do except to observe or to act in the spectacle of Vanity
Fair. Aside from the display of luxury in the shops, in the streets, in
private houses, one is impressed by the number of idle young men and
women of fashion.
It is impossible that a workingman who stands upon a metropolitan street
corner and observes this Bacchanalian revel and prodigality of expense,
should not be embittered by a sense of the inequality of the conditions
of life. But this is not the most mischievous effect of the spectacle. It
is the example of what these people care for. With all their wealth and
opportunities, it seems to him that these select people have no higher
object than the pleasures of the senses, and he is taught daily by
reiterated example that this is the end and aim of life. When he sees the
value the intelligent and the well-to-do set upon material things, and
their small regard for intellectual things and the pleasures of the mind,
why should he not most passionately desire those things which his more
fortunate neighbors put foremost? It is not the sight of a Peter Cooper
and his wealth that discontents him, nor the intellectual pursuits of the
scholar who uses the leisure his fortune gives him for the higher
pleasures of the mind. But when society daily dins upon his senses the
lesson that not manhood and high thinking and a contented spirit are the
most desirable things, whether one is rich or poor, is he to be blamed
for having a wrong notion of what will or should satisfy him? What the
well-to-do, the prosperous, are seen to value most in life will be the
things most desired by the less fortunate in accumulation. It is not so
much the accumulation of money that is mischievous in this country, for
the most stupid can see that fortunes are constantly shifting hands, but
it is the use that is made of the leisure and opportunity that money
brings.
Another observation, which makes men discontented with very slow
accumulation, is that apparently, in the public estimation it does not
make much difference whether a man acquires wealth justly or unjustly. If
he only secures enough, he is a power, he has social position, he grasps
the high honors and places in the state. The fact is that the toleration
of men who secure wealth by well known dishonest and sharp practices is a
chief cause of the demoralization of the public conscience.
However the lines social and political may be drawn, we have to keep in
mind that nothing in one class can be foreign to any other, and that
practically one philosophy underlies all the movements of an age. If our
philosophy is material, resulting in selfish ethics, all our energies
will have a materialistic tendency. It is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that, in a time when making money is the chief object, if it
is not reckoned the chief good, our education should all tend to what is
called practical, that is, to that which can be immediately serviceable
in some profitable occupation of life, to the neglect of those studies
which are only of use in training the intellect and cultivating and
broadening the higher intelligence. To this purely material and
utilitarian idea of life, the higher colleges and universities everywhere
are urged to conform themselves. Thus is the utilitarian spirit eating
away the foundations of a higher intellectual life, applying to
everything a material measure. In proportion as scholars yield to it,
they are lowering the standard of what is most to be desired in human
life, acting in perfect concert with that spirit which exalts money
making as the chief good, which makes science itself the slave of the
avaricious and greedy, and fills all the world with discontented and
ignoble longing. We do not need to be told that if we neglect pure
science for the pursuit of applied science only, applied science will
speedily be degraded and unfruitful; and it is just as true that if we
pursue knowledge only for the sake of gain, and not for its own sake,
knowledge will lose the power it has of satisfying the higher needs of
the human soul. If we are seen to put only a money value on the higher
education, why should not the workingman, who regards it only as a
distinction of class or privilege, estimate it by what he can see of its
practical results in making men richer, or bringing him more pleasure of
the senses?
The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract thought. Society, literature,
art, politics, in any given age are what the prevailing system of
philosophy makes them. We recognize this clearly in studying any past
period. We see, for instance, how all the currents of human life changed
upon the adoption of the inductive method; no science, no literature, no
art, practical or fine, no person, inquiring scholar, day laborer,
trader, sailor, fine lady or humblest housekeeper, escaped the influence.
Even though the prevailing ethics may teach that every man's highest duty
is to himself, we cannot escape community of sympathy and destiny in this
cold-blooded philosophy.
No social or political movement stands by itself. If we inquire, we shall
find one preponderating cause underlying every movement of the age. If
the utilitarian spirit is abroad, it accounts for the devotion to the
production of wealth, and to the consequent separation of classes and the
discontent, and it accounts also for the demand that all education shall
be immediately useful. I was talking the other day with a lady who was
doubting what sort of an education to give her daughter, a young girl of
exceedingly fine mental capacity. If she pursued a classical course, she
would, at the age of twenty-one, know very little of the sciences. And I
said, why not make her an intellectual woman? At twenty-one, with a
trained mind, all knowledges are at one's feet.
If anything can correct the evils of devotion to money, it seems to me
that it is the production of intellectual men and women, who will find
other satisfactions in life than those of the senses. And when labor sees
what it is that is really most to be valued, its discontent will be of a
nobler kind.
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
By Charles Dudley Warner
At the close of the war for the Union about five millions of negroes were
added to the citizenship of the United States. By the census of 1890 this
number had become over seven and a half millions. I use the word negro
because the descriptive term black or colored is not determinative. There
are many varieties of negroes among the African tribes, but all of them
agree in certain physiological if not psychological characteristics,
which separate them from all other races of mankind; whereas there are
many races, black or colored, like the Abyssinian, which have no other
negro traits.
It is also a matter of observation that the negro traits persist in
recognizable manifestations, to the extent of occasional reversions,
whatever may be the mixture of a white race. In a certain degree this
persistence is true of all races not come from an historic common stock.
In the political reconstruction the negro was given the ballot without
any requirements of education or property. This was partly a measure of
party balance of power; and partly from a concern that the negro would
not be secure in his rights as a citizen without it, and also upon the
theory that the ballot is an educating influence.
This sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the South,
resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded. This was due
to a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to a
generous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of them
the historian will judge adequate to produce the result. Indeed, it might
have been foreseen from the beginning. This reconstruction measure was an
attempt to put the superior part of the community under the control of
the inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and by
traditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. I
venture to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in any
community in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece of
philanthropy or of punishment.
A necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was his
education. However limited our idea of a proper common education may be,
it is a fundamental requisite in our form of government that every voter
should be able to read and write. A recognition of this truth led to the
establishment in the South of public schools for the whites and blacks,
in short, of a public school system. We are not to question the sincerity
and generousness of this movement, however it may have halted and lost
enthusiasm in many localities.
This opportunity of education (found also in private schools) was hailed
by the negroes, certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be doubted that at
the close of the war there was a general desire among the freedmen to be
instructed in the rudiments of knowledge at least. Many parents,
especially women, made great sacrifices to obtain for their children this
advantage which had been denied to themselves. Many youths, both boys and
girls, entered into it with a genuine thirst for knowledge which it was
pathetic to see.
But it may be questioned, from developments that speedily followed,
whether the mass of negroes did not really desire this advantage as a
sign of freedom, rather than from a wish for knowledge, and covet it
because it had formerly been the privilege of their masters, and marked a
broad distinction between the races. It was natural that this should be
so, when they had been excluded from this privilege by pains and
penalties, when in some States it was one of the gravest offenses to
teach a negro to read and write. This prohibition was accounted for by
the peculiar sort of property that slavery created, which would become
insecure if intelligent, for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of all
false relations in society.
But the effort at education went further than the common school and the
primary essential instruction. It introduced the higher education.
Colleges usually called universities--for negroes were established in
many Southern States, created and stimulated by the generosity of
Northern men and societies, and often aided by the liberality of the
States where they existed. The curriculum in these was that in colleges
generally,--the classics, the higher mathematics, science, philosophy,
the modern languages, and in some instances a certain technical
instruction, which was being tried in some Northern colleges. The
emphasis, however, was laid on liberal culture. This higher education was
offered to the mass that still lacked the rudiments of intellectual
training, in the belief that education--the education of the moment, the
education of superimposed information, can realize the theory of
universal equality.
This experiment has now been in operation long enough to enable us to
judge something of its results and its promises for the future. These
results are of a nature to lead us seriously to inquire whether our
effort was founded upon an adequate knowledge of the negro, of his
present development, of the requirements for his personal welfare and
evolution in the scale of civilization, and for his training in useful
and honorable citizenship. I am speaking of the majority, the mass to be
considered in any general scheme, and not of the exceptional individuals
--exceptions that will rapidly increase as the mass is lifted--who are
capable of taking advantage to the utmost of all means of cultivation,
and who must always be provided with all the opportunities needed.
Millions of dollars have been invested in the higher education of the
negro, while this primary education has been, taking the whole mass,
wholly inadequate to his needs. This has been upon the supposition that
the higher would compel the rise of the lower with the undeveloped negro
race as it does with the more highly developed white race. An examination
of the soundness of this expectation will not lead us far astray from our
subject.
The evolution of a race, distinguishing it from the formation of a
nation, is a slow process. We recognize a race by certain peculiar
traits, and by characteristics which slowly change. They are acquired
little by little in an evolution which, historically, it is often
difficult to trace. They are due to the environment, to the discipline of
life, and to what is technically called education. These work together to
make what is called character, race character, and it is this which is
transmitted from generation to generation. Acquirements are not
hereditary, like habits and peculiarities, physical or mental. A man does
not transmit to his descendants his learning, though he may transmit the
aptitude for it. This is illustrated in factories where skilled labor is
handed down and fixed in the same families, that is, where the same kind
of labor is continued from one generation to another. The child, put to
work, has not the knowledge of the parent, but a special aptitude in his
skill and dexterity. Both body and mind have acquired certain
transmissible traits. The same thing is seen on a larger scale in a whole
nation, like the Japanese, who have been trained into what seems an art
instinct.
It is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educational
process, which distinguishes one race from another. It is this that the
race transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decade
or an era. The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say that
the departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individual
character, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. It was
perhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes said
there is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest."
It is by this character that we classify civilized and even
semi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slow
accumulation of inherent quality in the evolution of the human being from
lower to higher, that continues to exist notwithstanding the powerful
influence of governments and religions. We are understood when we speak
of the French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, the English, the
German, the Arab race, the Japanese, and so on. It is what a foreign
writer calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. As it is slow in
evolution, it is persistent in enduring.
Further, we recognize it as a stage of progress, historically necessary
in the development of man into a civilized adaptation to his situation in
this world. It is a process that cannot be much hurried, and a result
that cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by any superimposition of
knowledge or even quickly by any change of environment. We may be right
in our modern notion that education has a magical virtue that can work
any kind of transformation; but we are certainly not right in supposing
that it can do this instantly, or that it can work this effect upon a
barbarous race in the same period of time that it can upon one more
developed, one that has acquired at least a race consciousness.
Before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is
proper to say that I have the firmest belief in the ultimate development
of all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now. I should
otherwise be in despair. This faith will never desist in the effort to
bring about the end desired.
But, if we work with Providence, we must work in the reasonable ways of
Providence, and add to our faith patience.
It seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower race
is effected only by contact with one higher in civilization. Both reform
and progress come from exterior influences. This is axiomatic, and
applies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters.
We have been taught to regard Africa as a dark, stolid continent,
unawakened, unvisited by the agencies and influences that have
transformed the world from age to age. Yet it was in northern and
northeastern Africa that within historic periods three of the most
powerful and brilliant civilizations were developed,--the Egyptian, the
Carthaginian, the Saracenic. That these civilizations had more than a
surface contact with the interior, we know. To take the most ancient of
them, and that which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carried
their conquests and their power deep into Africa. In the story of their
invasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on temple
walls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. This contact may
not have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but it
proves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with a
superior civilization. In later days we find little trace of it in the
home of the negro, but in Egypt the negro has left his impress in the
mixed blood of the Nile valley.
The most striking example of the contact of the negro with a higher
civilization is in the powerful medieval empire of Songhay, established
in the heart of the negro country. The vast strip of Africa lying north
of the equator and south of the twentieth parallel and west of the upper
Nile was then, as it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly described
as Negro. The river Niger, running northward from below Jenne to near
Timbuctoo, and then turning west and south to the Gulf of Guinea, flows
through one of the richest valleys in the world. In richness it is
comparable to that of the Nile and, like that of the Nile, its fertility
depends upon the water of the central stream. Here arose in early times
the powerful empire of Songhay, which disintegrated and fell into tribal
confusion about the middle of the seventeenth century. For a long time
the seat of its power was the city of Jenne; in later days it was
Timbuctoo.
This is not the place to enlarge upon this extraordinary piece of
history. The best account of the empire of Songhay is to be found in the
pages of Barth, the German traveler, who had access to what seemed to him
a credible Arab history. Considerable light is thrown upon it by a recent
volume on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French traveler. M. Dubois finds
reason to believe that the founders of the Songhese empire came from
Yemen, and sought refuge from Moslem fanaticism in Central Africa some
hundred and fifty years after the Hejira. The origin of the empire is
obscure, but the development was not indigenous. It seems probable that
the settlers, following traders, penetrated to the Niger valley from the
valley of the Nile as early as the third or fourth century of our era. An
evidence of this early influence, which strengthened from century to
century, Dubois finds in the architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It is
not Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is distinctly Pharaonic. But
whatever the origin of the Songhay empire, it became in time Mohammedan,
and so continued to the end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to have been
imposed. Powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribal
insurrection and internal troubles. The highest mark of negro capacity
developed in this history is, according to the record examined by Barth,
that one of the emperors was a negro.
From all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes,
which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did not
become, except in outward conformity, Mohammedan and did not take the
Moslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that the
disintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where they
were before in point of development. This fact, if it is not overturned
by further search, is open to the explanation that the Moslem
civilization is not fitted to the development of the African negro.
Contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in all
these ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development of
other races, much affected or changed the negro. He is much as he would
be if he had been left to himself. And left to himself, even in such a
favorable environment as America, he is slow to change. In Africa there
has been no progress in organization, government, art.
No negro tribe has ever invented a written language. In his exhaustive
work on the History of Mankind, Professor Frederick Ratzel, having
studied thoroughly the negro belt of Africa, says "of writing properly so
called, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces of
older writing been found in negro countries."
From this outline review we come back to the situation in the United
States, where a great mass of negroes--possibly over nine millions of
many shades of colors--is for the first time brought into contact with
Christian civilization. This mass is here to make or mar our national
life, and the problem of its destiny has to be met with our own. What can
we do, what ought we to do, for his own good and for our peace and
national welfare?
In the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impression
that we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race,
in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development of
character that we would apply to a race more highly organized. Has he
developed the race consciousness, the race soul, as I said before, a
collective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or less
civilized according to our standards? Do we find in him, as a mass
(individuals always excepted), that slow deposit of training and
education called "character," any firm basis of order, initiative of
action, the capacity of going alone, any sure foundation of morality? It
has been said that a race may attain a good degree of standing in the
world without the refinement of culture, but never without virtue, either
in the Roman or the modern meaning of that word.
The African, now the American negro, has come in the United States into a
more favorable position for development than he has ever before had
offered. He has come to it through hardship, and his severe
apprenticeship is not ended. It is possible that the historians centuries
hence, looking back over the rough road that all races have traveled in
their evolution, may reckon slavery and the forced transportation to the
new world a necessary step in the training of the negro. We do not know.
The ways of Providence are not measurable by our foot rules. We see that
slavery was unjust, uneconomic, and the worst training for citizenship in
such a government as ours. It stifled a number of germs that might have
produced a better development, such as individuality, responsibility, and
thrift,--germs absolutely necessary to the well-being of a race. It laid
no foundation of morality, but in place of morality saw cultivated a
superstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. It is true that it taught
a savage race subordination and obedience. Nor did it stifle certain
inherent temperamental virtues, faithfulness, often highly developed, and
frequently cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in a situation that
would have broken the spirit of a more sensitive race. In short, under
all the disadvantages of slavery the race showed certain fine traits,
qualities of humor and good humor, and capacity for devotion, which were
abundantly testified to by southerners during the progress of the Civil
War. It has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from those of the whites,
which are not only interesting, but might be a valuable contribution to a
cosmopolitan civilization; gifts also, such as the love of music, and
temperamental gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in the Hungarians.
But slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in the
development of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, a
race that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature that
supplied its physical needs with little labor. It taught the negro to
work, it transformed him, by compulsion it is true, into an industrial
being, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations.
Perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation. I
am glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by Mr. Booker
Washington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the negro race has
ever had.
But something more was done under this pressure, something more than
creation of a habit of physical exertion to productive ends. Skill was
developed. Skilled labor, which needs brains, was carried to a high
degree of performance. On almost all the Southern plantations, and in the
cities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, good
carpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of high
architectural merit. Everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, and
competent in various mechanical industries.
The opportunity and the disposition to labor make the basis of all our
civilization. The negro was taught to work, to be an agriculturist, a
mechanic, a material producer of something useful. He was taught this
fundamental thing. Our higher education, applied to him in his present
development, operates in exactly the opposite direction.
This is a serious assertion. Its truth or falsehood cannot be established
by statistics, but it is an opinion gradually formed by experience, and
the observation of men competent to judge, who have studied the problem
close at hand. Among the witnesses to the failure of the result expected
from the establishment of colleges and universities for the negro are
heard, from time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, practical
men from the North, railway men, manufacturers, who have initiated
business enterprises at the South. Their testimony coincides with that of
careful students of the economic and social conditions.
There was reason to assume, from our theory and experience of the higher
education in its effect upon white races, that the result would be
different from what it is. When the negro colleges first opened, there
was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility of
acquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. It
seemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, but
would penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. It was my fortune to
see many of these institutions in their early days, and to believe that
they were full of the greatest promise for the race. I have no intention
of criticising the generosity and the noble self-sacrifice that produced
them, nor the aspirations of their inmates. There is no doubt that they
furnish shining examples of emancipation from ignorance, and of useful
lives. But a few years have thrown much light upon the careers and
characters of a great proportion of the graduates, and their effect upon
the communities of which they form a part, I mean, of course, with regard
to the industrial and moral condition of those communities. Have these
colleges, as a whole,--[This sentence should have been further qualified
by acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at Atlanta and
Nashville, which, under exceptionally good management, have sent out
much-needed teachers. I believe that their success, however, is largely
owing to their practical features.--C.D.W.]--stimulated industry,
thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of the
world, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporous
ambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which the
world has already enough? If any one is in doubt about this he can
satisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the South. The
condition of New Orleans and its negro universities is often cited. It is
a favorable example, because the ambition of the negro has been aided
there by influence outside of the schools. The federal government has
imposed upon the intelligent and sensitive population negro officials in
high positions, because they were negroes and not because they were
specially fitted for those positions by character or ability. It is my
belief that the condition of the race in New Orleans is lower than it was
several years ago, and that the influence of the higher education has
been in the wrong direction.
This is not saying that the higher education is responsible for the
present condition of the negro.
Other influences have retarded his elevation and the development of
proper character, and most important means have been neglected. I only
say that we have been disappointed in our extravagant expectations of
what this education could do for a race undeveloped, and so wanting in
certain elements of character, and that the millions of money devoted to
it might have been much better applied.
We face a grave national situation. It cannot be successfully dealt with
sentimentally. It should be faced with knowledge and candor. We must
admit our mistakes, both social and political, and set about the solution
of our problem with intelligent resolution and a large charity. It is not
simply a Southern question. It is a Northern question as well. For the
truth of this I have only to appeal to the consciousness of all Northern
communities in which there are negroes in any considerable numbers. Have
the negroes improved, as a rule (always remembering the exceptions), in
thrift, truthfulness, morality, in the elements of industrious
citizenship, even in States and towns where there has been the least
prejudice against their education? In a paper read at the last session of
this Association, Professor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University showed by
statistics that in proportion to population there were more negro
criminals in the North than in the South. "The negro prisoners in the
Southern States to ten thousand negroes increased between 1880 and 1890
twenty-nine per cent., while the white prisoners to ten thousand whites
increased only eight per cent." "In the States where slavery was never
established, the white prisoners increased seven per cent. faster than
the white population, while the negro prisoners no less than thirty-nine
per cent. faster than the negro population. Thus the increase of negro
criminality, so far as it is reflected in the number of prisoners,
exceeded the increase of white criminality more in the North than it did
in the South."
This statement was surprising. It cannot be accounted for by color
prejudice at the North; it is related to the known shiftlessness and
irresponsibility of a great portion of the negro population. If it could
be believed that this shiftlessness is due to the late state of slavery,
the explanation would not do away with the existing conditions. Schools
at the North have for a long time been open to the negro; though color
prejudice exists, he has not been on the whole in an unfriendly
atmosphere, and willing hands have been stretched out to help him in his
ambition to rise. It is no doubt true, as has been often said lately,
that the negro at the North has been crowded out of many occupations by
more vigorous races, newly come to this country, crowded out not only of
factory industries and agricultural, but of the positions of servants,
waiters, barbers, and other minor ways of earning a living. The general
verdict is that this loss of position is due to lack of stamina and
trustworthiness. Wherever a negro has shown himself able, honest,
attentive to the moral and economic duties of a citizen, either
successful in accumulating property or filling honorably his station in
life, he has gained respect and consideration in the community in which
he is known; and this is as true at the South as at the North,
notwithstanding the race antagonism is more accentuated by reason of the
preponderance of negro population there and the more recent presence of
slavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism it is not necessary to enlarge
here in discussing the problem of education, and I will leave it with the
single observation that I have heard intelligent negroes, who were
honestly at work, accumulating property and disposed to postpone active
politics to a more convenient season, say that they had nothing to fear
from the intelligent white population, but only from the envy of the
ignorant.
The whole situation is much aggravated by the fact that there is a
considerable infusion of white blood in the negro race in the United
States, leading to complications and social aspirations that are
infinitely pathetic. Time only and no present contrivance of ours can
ameliorate this condition.
I have made this outline of our negro problem in no spirit of pessimism
or of prejudice, but in the belief that the only way to remedy an evil or
a difficulty is candidly and fundamentally to understand it. Two things
are evident: First, the negro population is certain to increase in the
United States, in a ratio at least equal to that of the whites. Second,
the South needs its labor. Its deportation is an idle dream. The only
visible solution is for the negro to become an integral and an
intelligent part of the industrial community. The way may be long, but he
must work his way up. Sympathetic aid may do much, but the salvation of
the negro is in his own hands, in the development of individual character
and a race soul. This is fully understood by his wisest leaders. His
worst enemy is the demagogue who flatters him with the delusion that all
he needs for his elevation is freedom and certain privileges that were
denied him in slavery.
In all the Northern cities heroic efforts are made to assimilate the
foreign population by education and instruction in Americanism. In the
South, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary for
the negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental. The common school
must be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the North,
reaching the lowest in the city slums and the most ignorant in the
agricultural districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must be
added moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits of
industry. Only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the mass
of the negro race in the United States be expected to improve in
character and position. A top-dressing of culture on a field with no
depth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, but
no fruit will be produced. It is a gigantic task, and generations may
elapse before it can in any degree be relaxed.
Why attempt it? Why not let things drift as they are? Why attempt to
civilize the race within our doors, while there are so many distant and
alien races to whom we ought to turn our civilizing attention? The answer
is simple and does not need elaboration. A growing ignorant mass in our
body politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of feeling, is an
increasing peril to the public.
In order to remove this peril, by transforming the negro into an
industrial, law-abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity of his
country, the cordial assistance of the Southern white population is
absolutely essential. It can only be accomplished by regarding him as a
man, with the natural right to the development of his capacity and to
contentment in a secure social state. The effort for his elevation must
be fundamental. The opportunity of the common school must be universal,
and attendance in it compulsory. Beyond this, training in the decencies
of life, in conduct, and in all the industries, must be offered in such
industrial institutions as that of Tuskegee. For the exceptional cases a
higher education can be easily provided for those who show themselves
worthy of it, but not offered as an indiscriminate panacea.
The question at once arises as to the kind of teachers for these schools
of various grades. It is one of the most difficult in the whole problem.
As a rule, there is little gain, either in instruction or in elevation of
character, if the teacher is not the superior of the taught. The learners
must respect the attainments and the authority of the teacher. It is a
too frequent fault of our common-school system that, owing to inadequate
pay and ignorant selections, the teachers are not competent to their
responsible task. The highest skill and attainment are needed to evoke
the powers of the common mind, even in a community called enlightened.
Much more are they needed when the community is only slightly developed
mentally and morally. The process of educating teachers of this race, fit
to promote its elevation, must be a slow one. Teachers of various
industries, such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, will be more
readily trained than teachers of the rudiments of learning in the common
schools. It is a very grave question whether, with some exceptions, the
school and moral training of the race should not be for a considerable
time to come in the control of the white race. But it must be kept in
mind that instructors cheap in character, attainments, and breeding will
do more harm than good. If we give ourselves to this work, we must give
of our best.
Without the cordial concurrence in this effort of all parties, black and
white, local and national, it will not be fruitful in fundamental and
permanent good. Each race must accept the present situation and build on
it. To this end it is indispensable that one great evil, which was
inherent in the reconstruction measures and is still persisted in, shall
be eliminated. The party allegiance of the negro was bid for by the
temptation of office and position for which he was in no sense fit. No
permanent, righteous adjustment of relations can come till this policy is
wholly abandoned. Politicians must cease to make the negro a pawn in the
game of politics.
Let us admit that we have made a mistake. We seem to have expected that
we could accomplish suddenly and by artificial Contrivances a development
which historically has always taken a long time. Without abatement of
effort or loss of patience, let us put ourselves in the common-sense, the
scientific, the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only to be
accomplished by long labor in accord with the Divine purpose.
"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him; thou art just.
"Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.
"That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."
THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE--WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE CRIMINAL CLASS?
By Charles Dudley Warner
The problem of dealing with the criminal class seems insolvable, and it
undoubtedly is with present methods. It has never been attempted on a
fully scientific basis, with due regard to the protection of society and
to the interests of the criminal.
It is purely an economic and educational problem, and must rest upon the
same principles that govern in any successful industry, or in education,
and that we recognize in the conduct of life. That little progress has
been made is due to public indifference to a vital question and to the
action of sentimentalists, who, in their philanthropic zeal; fancy that a
radical reform can come without radical discipline. We are largely
wasting our energies in petty contrivances instead of striking at the
root of the evil.
What do we mean by the criminal class? It is necessary to define this
with some precision, in order to discuss intelligently the means of
destroying this class. A criminal is one who violates a statute law, or,
as we say, commits a crime. The human law takes cognizance of crime and
not of sin. But all men who commit crime are not necessarily in the
criminal class. Speaking technically, we put in that class those whose
sole occupation is crime, who live by it as a profession, and who have no
other permanent industry. They prey upon society. They are by their acts
at war upon it, and are outlaws.
The State is to a certain extent responsible for this class, for it has
trained most of them, from youth up, through successive detentions in
lock-ups, city prisons, county jails, and in State prisons, and
penitentiaries on relatively short sentences, under influences which tend
to educate them as criminals and confirm them in a bad life. That is to
say, if a man once violates the law and is caught, he is put into a
machine from which it is very difficult for him to escape without further
deterioration. It is not simply that the State puts a brand on him in the
eyes of the community, but it takes away his self-respect without giving
him an opportunity to recover it. Once recognized as in the criminal
class, he has no further concern about the State than that of evading its
penalties so far as is consistent with pursuing his occupation of crime.
To avoid misunderstanding as to the subject of this paper, it is
necessary to say that it is not dealing with the question of prison
reform in its whole extent. It attempts to consider only a pretty well
defined class. But in doing this it does not say that other aspects of
our public peril from crime are not as important as this. We cannot relax
our efforts in regard to the relations of poverty, drink, and unsanitary
conditions, as leading to crime. We have still to take care of the
exposed children, of those with parentage and surroundings inclining to
crime, of the degenerate and the unfortunate. We have to keep up the
warfare all along the line against the demoralization of society. But we
have hereto deal with a specific manifestation; we have to capture a
stronghold, the possession of which will put us in much better position
to treat in detail the general evil.
Why should we tolerate any longer a professional criminal class? It is
not large. It is contemptibly small compared with our seventy millions of
people. If I am not mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than fifty
thousand persons in our State prisons and penitentiaries. If we add to
them those at large who have served one or two terms, and are generally
known to the police, we shall not have probably more than eighty thousand
of the criminal class. But call it a hundred thousand. It is a body that
seventy millions of people ought to take care of with little difficulty.
And we certainly ought to stop its increase. But we do not. The class
grows every day. Those who watch the criminal reports are alarmed by the
fact that an increasing number of those arrested for felonies are
discharged convicts. This is an unmistakable evidence of the growth of
the outlaw classes.
But this is not all. Our taxes are greatly increased on account of this
class. We require more police to watch those who are at large and preying
on society. We expend more yearly for apprehending and trying those
caught, for the machinery of criminal justice, and for the recurring
farce of imprisoning on short sentences and discharging those felons to
go on with their work of swindling and robbing. It would be good economy
for the public, considered as a taxpayer, to pay for the perpetual keep
of these felons in secure confinement.
And still this is not the worst. We are all living in abject terror of
these licensed robbers. We fear robbery night and day; we live behind
bolts and bars (which should be reserved for the criminal) and we are in
hourly peril of life and property in our homes and on the highways. But
the evil does not stop here. By our conduct we are encouraging the growth
of the criminal class, and we are inviting disregard of law, and
diffusing a spirit of demoralization throughout the country.
I have spoken of the criminal class as very limited; that is, the class
that lives by the industry of crime alone. But it is not isolated, and it
has widespread relations. There is a large portion of our population not
technically criminals, which is interested in maintaining this criminal
class. Every felon is a part of a vast network of criminality. He has his
dependents, his allies, his society of vice, all the various machinery of
temptation and indulgence.
It happens, therefore, that there is great sympathy with the career of
the lawbreakers, many people are hanging on them for support, and among
them the so-called criminal lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfere
seriously with the occupation of the criminal class or with its increase
is certain to meet with the opposition of a large body of voters. With
this active opposition of those interested, and the astonishing
indifference of the general public, it is easy to see why so little is
done to relieve us of this intolerable burden. The fact is, we go on
increasing our expenses for police, for criminal procedure, for jails and
prisons, and we go on increasing the criminal class and those affiliated
with it.
And what do we gain by our present method? We do not gain the protection
of society, and we do not gain the reformation of the criminal. These two
statements do not admit of contradiction. Even those who cling to the
antiquated notion that the business of society is to punish the offender
must confess that in this game society is getting the worst of it.
Society suffers all the time, and the professional criminal goes on with
his occupation, interrupted only by periods of seclusion, during which he
is comfortably housed and fed. The punishment he most fears is being
compelled to relinquish his criminal career. The object of punishment for
violation of statute law is not vengeance, it is not to inflict injury
for injury. Only a few persons now hold to that. They say now that if it
does little good to the offender, it is deterrent as to others. Now, is
our present system deterrent? The statute law, no doubt, prevents many
persons from committing crime, but our method of administering it
certainly does not lessen the criminal class, and it does not adequately
protect society. Is it not time we tried, radically, a scientific, a
disciplinary, a really humanitarian method?
The proposed method is the indeterminate sentence. This strikes directly
at the criminal class. It puts that class beyond the power of continuing
its depredations upon society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a
notification to any one intending to enter upon that method of living
that his career ends with his first felony. As to the general effects of
the indeterminate sentence, I will repeat here what I recently wrote for
the Yale Law Journal:
It is unnecessary to say in a law journal that the indeterminate
sentence is a measure as yet untried. The phrase has passed into
current speech, and a considerable portion of the public is under
the impression that an experiment of the indeterminate sentence is
actually being made. It is, however, still a theory, not adopted in
any legislation or in practice anywhere in the world.
The misconception in regard to this has arisen from the fact that
under certain regulations paroles are granted before the expiration
of the statutory sentence.
An indeterminate sentence is a commitment to prison without any
limit. It is exactly such a commitment as the court makes to an
asylum of a man who is proved to be insane, and it is paralleled by
the practice of sending a sick man to the hospital until he is
cured.
The introduction of the indeterminate sentence into our criminal
procedure would be a radical change in our criminal legislation and
practice. The original conception was that the offender against the
law should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to
fit the crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned
in reasoning though not in practice. Under this conception the
criminal code was arbitrarily constructed, so much punishment being
set down opposite each criminal offense, without the least regard to
the actual guilt of the man as an individual sinner.
Within the present century considerable advance has been made in
regard to prison reform, especially with reference to the sanitary
condition of places of confinement. And besides this, efforts of
various kinds have been made with regard to the treatment of
convicts, which show that the idea was gaining ground that criminals
should be treated as individuals. The application of the English
ticket-of-leave system was one of these efforts; it was based upon
the notion that, if any criminal showed sufficient evidence of a
wish to lead a different life, he should be conditionally released
before the expiration of his sentence. The parole system in the
United States was an attempt to carry out the same experiment, and
with it went along the practice which enabled the prisoner to
shorten the time of his confinement by good behavior. In some of
the States reformatories have been established to which convicts
have been sent under a sort of sliding sentence; that is, with the
privilege given to the authorities of the reformatory to retain the
offender to the full statutory term for which he might have been
sentenced to State prison, unless he had evidently reformed before
the expiration of that period. That is to say, if a penal offense
entitled the judge to sentence the prisoner for any period from two
to fifteen years, he could be kept in the reformatory at the
discretion of the authorities for the full statutory term. It is
from this law that the public notion of an indeterminate sentence is
derived. It is, in fact, determinate, because the statute
prescribes its limit.
The introduction of the ticket-of-leave and the parole systems, and
the earning of time by good behavior were philanthropic suggestions
and promising experiments which have not been justified by the
results. It is not necessary at this time to argue that no human
discretion is adequate to mete out just punishment for crimes; and
it has come to be admitted generally, by men enlightened on this
subject, that the real basis for dealing with the criminal rests,
firstly, upon the right of society to secure itself against the
attacks of the vicious, and secondly, upon the duty imposed upon
society, to reform the criminal if that is possible. It is patent
to the most superficial observation that our present method does not
protect society, and does not lessen the number of the criminal
class, either by deterrent methods or by reformatory processes,
except in a very limited way.
Our present method is neither economic nor scientific nor
philanthropic. If we consider the well-defined criminal class
alone, it can be said that our taxes and expenses for police and the
whole criminal court machinery, for dealing with those who are
apprehended, and watching those who are preying upon society, yearly
increase, while all private citizens in their own houses or in the
streets live inconstant terror of the depredations of this class.
Considered from the scientific point of view, our method is
absolutely crude, and but little advance upon mediaeval conditions;
and while it has its sentimental aspects, it is not real
philanthropy, because comparatively few of the criminal class are
permanently rescued.
The indeterminate sentence has two distinct objects: one is the
absolute protection of society from the outlaws whose only business
in life is to prey upon society; and the second is the placing of
these offenders in a position where they can be kept long enough for
scientific treatment as decadent human beings, in the belief that
their lives can be changed in their purpose. No specific time can
be predicted in which a man by discipline can be expected to lay
aside his bad habits and put on good habits, because no two human
beings are alike, and it is therefore necessary that an indefinite
time in each case should be allowed for the experiment of
reformation.
We have now gone far enough to see that the ticket-of-leave system,
the parole system as we administer it in the State prisons (I except
now some of the reformatories), and the good conduct method are
substantially failures, and must continue to be so until they rest
upon the absolute indeterminate sentence. They are worse than
failures now, because the public mind is lulled into a false
security by them, and efforts at genuine prison reform are defeated.
It is very significant that the criminal class adapted itself
readily to the parole system with its sliding scale. It was natural
that this should be so, for it fits in perfectly well with their
scheme of life. This is to them a sort of business career,
interrupted now and then only by occasional limited periods of
seclusion. Any device that shall shorten those periods is welcome
to them. As a matter of fact, we see in the State prisons that the
men most likely to shorten their time by good behavior, and to get
released on parole before the expiration of their sentence, are the
men who make crime their career. They accept this discipline as a
part of their lot in life, and it does not interfere with their
business any more than the occasional bankruptcy of a merchant
interferes with his pursuits.
It follows, therefore, that society is not likely to get security
for itself, and the criminal class is not likely to be reduced
essentially or reformed, without such a radical measure as the
indeterminate sentence, which, accompanied, of course, by scientific
treatment, would compel the convict to change his course of life, or
to stay perpetually in confinement.
Of course, the indeterminate sentence would radically change our
criminal jurisprudence and our statutory provisions in regard to
criminals. It goes without saying that it is opposed by the entire
criminal class, and by that very considerable portion of the
population which is dependent on or affiliated with the criminal
class, which seeks to evade the law and escape its penalties. It is
also opposed by a small portion of the legal profession which gets
its living out of the criminal class, and it is sure to meet the
objection of the sentimentalists who have peculiar notions about
depriving a man of his liberty, and it also has to overcome the
objections of many who are guided by precedents, and who think the
indeterminate sentence would be an infringement of the judicial
prerogative.
It is well to consider this latter a little further. Our criminal
code, artificial and indiscriminating as it is, is the growth of
ages and is the result of the notion that society ought to take
vengeance upon the criminal, at least that it ought to punish him,
and that the judge, the interpreter of the criminal law, was not
only the proper person to determine the guilt of the accused, by the
aid of the jury, but was the sole person to judge of the amount of
punishment he should receive for his crime. Now two functions are
involved here: one is the determination that the accused has broken
the law, the other is gauging within the rules of the code the
punishment that, each individual should receive. It is a
theological notion that the divine punishment for sin is somehow
delegated to man for the punishment of crime, but it does not need
any argument to show that no tribunal is able with justice to mete
out punishment in any individual case, for probably the same degree
of guilt does not attach to two men in the violation of the same
statute, and while, in the rough view of the criminal law, even, one
ought to have a severe penalty, the other should be treated with
more leniency. All that the judge can do under the indiscriminating
provisions of the statute is to make a fair guess at what the man
should suffer.
Under the present enlightened opinion which sees that not punishment
but the protection of society and the good of the criminal are the
things to be aimed at, the judge's office would naturally be reduced
to the task of determining the guilt of the man on trial, and then
the care of him would be turned over to expert treatment, exactly as
in a case when the judge determines the fact of a man's insanity.
If objection is made to the indeterminate sentence on the ground
that it is an unusual or cruel punishment, it may be admitted that
it is unusual, but that commitment to detention cannot be called
cruel when the convict is given the key to the house in which he is
confined. It is for him to choose whether he will become a decent
man and go back into society, or whether he will remain a bad man
and stay in confinement. For the criminal who is, as we might say,
an accidental criminal, or for the criminal who is susceptible to
good influences, the term of imprisonment under the indeterminate
sentence would be shorter than it would be safe to make it for
criminals under the statute. The incorrigible offender, however,
would be cut off at once and forever from his occupation, which is,
as we said, varied by periodic residence in the comfortable houses
belonging to the State.
A necessary corollary of the indeterminate sentence is that every
State prison and penitentiary should be a reformatory, in the modern
meaning of that term. It would be against the interest of society,
all its instincts of justice, and the height of cruelty to an
individual criminal to put him in prison without limit unless all
the opportunities were afforded him for changing his habits
radically. It may be said in passing that the indeterminate
sentence would be in itself to any man a great stimulus to reform,
because his reformation would be the only means of his terminating
that sentence. At the same time a man left to himself, even in the
best ordered of our State prisons which is not a reformatory, would
be scarcely likely to make much improvement.
I have not space in this article to consider the character of the
reformatory; that subject is fortunately engaging the attention of
scientific people as one of the most interesting of our modern
problems. To take a decadent human being, a wreck physically and
morally, and try to make a man of him, that is an attempt worthy of
a people who claim to be civilized. An illustration of what can be
done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira Reformatory, where
the experiment is being made with most encouraging results, which,
of course, would be still better if the indeterminate sentence were
brought to its aid.
When the indeterminate sentence has been spoken of with a view to
legislation, the question has been raised whether it should be
applied to prisoners on the first, second, or third conviction of a
penal offense. Legislation in regard to the parole system has also
considered whether a man should be considered in the criminal class
on his first conviction for a penal offense. Without entering upon
this question at length, I will suggest that the convict should, for
his own sake, have the indeterminate sentence applied to him upon
conviction of his first penal offense. He is much more likely to
reform then than he would be after he had had a term in the State
prison and was again convicted, and the chance of his reformation
would be lessened by each subsequent experience of this kind. The
great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far as the security
of society is concerned, is to diminish the number of the criminal
class, and this will be done when it is seen that the first felony a
man commits is likely to be his last, and that for a young criminal
contemplating this career there is in this direction
"no thoroughfare."
By his very first violation of the statute he walks into
confinement, to stay there until he has given up the purpose of such
a career.
In the limits of this paper I have been obliged to confine myself to
remarks upon the indeterminate sentence itself, without going into
the question of the proper organization of reformatory agencies to
be applied to the convict, and without consideration of the means of
testing the reformation of a man in any given case. I will only add
that the methods at Elmira have passed far beyond the experimental
stage in this matter.
The necessary effect of the adoption of the indeterminate sentence for
felonies is that every State prison and penitentiary must be a
reformatory. The convict goes into it for the term of a year at least
(since the criminal law, according to ancient precedent, might require
that, and because the discipline of the reformatory would require it as a
practical rule), and he stays there until, in the judgment of competent
authority, he is fit to be trusted at large.
If he is incapable of reform, he must stay there for his natural life. He
is a free agent. He can decide to lead an honest life and have his
liberty, or he can elect to work for the State all his life in criminal
confinement.
When I say that every State prison is to be a reformatory, I except, of
course, from its operation, those sentenced for life for murder, or other
capital offenses, and those who have proved themselves incorrigible by
repeated violations of their parole.
It is necessary now to consider the treatment in the reformatory. Only a
brief outline of it can be given here, with a general statement of the
underlying principles. The practical application of these principles can
be studied in the Elmira Reformatory of New York, the only prison for
felons where the proposed system is carried out with the needed
disciplinary severity. In studying Elmira, however, it must be borne in
mind that the best effects cannot be obtained there, owing to the lack of
the indeterminate sentence. In this institution the convict can only be
detained for the maximum term provided in the statute for his offense.
When that is reached, the prisoner is released, whether he is reformed or
not.
The system of reform under the indeterminate sentence, which for
convenience may be called the Elmira system, is scientific, and it must
be administered entirely by trained men and by specialists; the same sort
of training for the educational and industrial work as is required in a
college or an industrial school, and the special fitness required for an
alienist in an insane asylum. The discipline of the establishment must be
equal to that of a military school.
We have so far advanced in civilization that we no longer think of
turning the insane, the sick, the feebleminded, over to the care of men
without training chosen by the chance of politics. They are put under
specialists for treatment. It is as necessary that convicts should be
under the care of specialists, for they are the most difficult and
interesting subjects for scientific treatment. If not criminals by
heredity, they are largely made so by environment; they are either
physical degenerates or they are brutalized by vice. They have lost the
power of distinguishing right from wrong; they commonly lack will-power,
and so are incapable of changing their habits without external influence.
In short, the ordinary criminal is unsound and diseased in mind and body.
To deal with this sort of human decadent is, therefore, the most
interesting problem that can be offered to the psychologist, to the
physiologist, to the educator, to the believer in the immortality of the
soul. He is still a man, not altogether a mere animal, and there is
always a possibility that he may be made a decent man, and a law-abiding,
productive member of society.
Here, indeed, is a problem worthy of the application of all our knowledge
of mind and of matter, of our highest scientific attainments. But it is
the same problem that we have in all our education, be it the training of
the mind, the development of the body, or the use of both to good ends.
And it goes without saying that its successful solution, in a reformatory
for criminals, depends upon the character of the man who administers the
institution. There must be at the head of it a man of character, of
intellectual force, of administrative ability, and all his subordinate
officers must be fitted for their special task, exactly as they should be
for a hospital, or a military establishment, for a college, or for a
school of practical industries. And when such men are demanded, they will
be forthcoming, just as they are in any department in life, when a
business is to be developed, a great engineering project to be
undertaken, or an army to be organized and disciplined.
The development of our railroad system produced a race of great railroad
men. The protection of society by the removal and reform of the criminal
class, when the public determines upon it, will call into the service a
class of men fitted for the great work. We know this is so because
already, since the discussion of this question has been current, and has
passed into actual experiment, a race of workers and prison
superintendents all over the country have come to the front who are
entirely capable of administering the reform system under the
indeterminate sentence. It is in this respect, and not in the erection of
model prisons, that the great advance in penology has been made in the
last twenty years. Men of scientific attainment are more and more giving
their attention to this problem as the most important in our
civilization. And science is ready to take up this problem when the
public is tired and ashamed of being any longer harried and bullied and
terrorized over by the criminal class.
The note of this reform is discipline, and its success rests upon the law
of habit. We are all creatures of habit, physical and mental. Habit is
formed by repetition of any action. Many of our physical habits have
become automatic. Without entering into a physiological argument, we know
that repetition produces habit, and that, if this is long continued, the
habit becomes inveterate. We know also that there is a habit, physical
and moral, of doing right as well as doing wrong. The criminal has the
habit of doing wrong. We propose to submit him to influences that will
change that habit. We also know that this is not accomplished by
suppressing that habit, but by putting a good one in its place.
It is true in this case that nature does not like a vacuum. The thoughts
of men are not changed by leaving them to themselves, they are changed by
substituting other thoughts.
The whole theory of the Elmira system is to keep men long enough under a
strict discipline to change their habits. This discipline is administered
in three ways. They are put to school; they are put at work; they are
prescribed minute and severe rules of conduct, and in the latter training
is included military drill.
The school and the workshop are both primarily for discipline and the
formation of new habits. Only incidentally are the school and the
workshop intended to fit a man for an occupation outside of the prison.
The whole discipline is to put a man in possession of his faculties, to
give him self-respect, to get him in the way of leading a normal and
natural life. But it is true that what he acquires by the discipline of
study and the discipline of work will be available in his earning an
honest living. Keep a man long enough in this three-ply discipline, and
he will form permanent habits of well-doing. If he cannot and will not
form such habits, his place is in confinement, where he cannot prey upon
society.
There is not space here to give the details of the practices at Elmira.
They are easily attainable. But I will notice one or two objections that
have been made. One is that in the congregate system men necessarily
learn evil from each other. This is, of course, an evil. It is here,
however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so busy
in the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or no
time for anything else. They study hard, and are under constant
supervision as to conduct. And then their prospect of parole depends
entirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical change
of intention. At night they are separated in their cells. During the day
they are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and this
association is absolutely necessary to their training. In separation from
their fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is expressed that men will
deceive their keepers and the board which is to pass upon them, and
obtain parole when they do not deserve it. As a matter of fact, men under
this discipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite to the experts who
watch them. It is only in the ordinary prison where the parole is in use
with no adequate discipline, and without the indefinite sentence, that
deception can be practiced. But suppose a man does play the hypocrite so
as to deceive the officers, who know him as well as any employer knows
his workmen or any teacher knows his scholars, and deceives the
independent board so as to get a parole. If he violates that parole, he
can be remanded to the reformatory, and it will be exceedingly difficult
for him to get another parole. And, if he should again violate his
parole, he would be considered incorrigible and be placed in a life
prison.
We have tried all other means of protecting society, of lessening the
criminal class, of reforming the criminal. The proposed indeterminate
sentence, with reformatory discipline, is the only one that promises to
relieve society of the insolent domination and the terrorism of the
criminal class; is the only one that can deter men from making a career
of crime; is the only one that offers a fair prospect for the reformation
of the criminal offender.
Why not try it? Why not put the whole system of criminal jurisprudence
and procedure for the suppression of crime upon a sensible and scientific
basis?
LITERARY COPYRIGHT
By Charles Dudley Warner
This is the first public meeting of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters. The original members were selected by an invitation from the
American Social Science Association, which acted under the power of its
charter from the Congress of the United States. The members thus
selected, who joined the Social Science Association, were given the
alternative of organizing as an independent institute or as a branch of
the Social Science Association.
At the annual meeting of the Social Science Association on September 4,
1899, at Saratoga Springs, the members of the Institute voted to organize
independently. They formally adopted the revised constitution, which had
been agreed upon at the first meeting, in New York in the preceding
January, and elected officers as prescribed by the constitution.
The object is declared to be the advancement of art and literature, and
the qualification shall be notable achievements in art or letters. The
number of active members will probably be ultimately fixed at one
hundred. The society may elect honorary and associate members without
limit. By the terms of agreement between the American Social Science
Association and the National Institute, the members of each are 'ipso
facto' associate members of the other.
It is believed that the advancement of art and literature in this country
will be promoted by the organization of the producers of literature and
art. This is in strict analogy with the action of other professions and
of almost all the industries. No one doubts that literature and art are
or should be leading interests in our civilization, and their dignity
will be enhanced in the public estimation by a visible organization of
their representatives, who are seriously determined upon raising the
standards by which the work of writers and artists is judged. The
association of persons having this common aim cannot but stimulate
effort, soften unworthy rivalry into generous competition, and promote
enthusiasm and good fellowship in their work. The mere coming together to
compare views and discuss interests and tendencies and problems which
concern both the workers and the great public, cannot fail to be of
benefit to both.
In no other way so well as by association of this sort can be created the
feeling of solidarity in our literature, and the recognition of its
power. It is not expected to raise any standard of perfection, or in any
way to hamper individual development, but a body of concentrated opinion
may raise the standard by promoting healthful and helpful criticism, by
discouraging mediocrity and meretricious smartness, by keeping alive the
traditions of good literature, while it is hospitable to all discoverers
of new worlds. A safe motto for any such society would be Tradition and
Freedom--'Traditio et Libertas'.
It is generally conceded that what literature in America needs at this
moment is honest, competent, sound criticism. This is not likely to be
attained by sporadic efforts, especially in a democracy of letters where
the critics are not always superior to the criticised, where the man in
front of the book is not always a better marksman than the man behind the
book. It may not be attained even by an organization of men united upon
certain standards of excellence. I do not like to use the word authority,
but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the public will be influenced
by a body devoted to the advancement of art and literature, whose
sincerity and discernment it has learned to respect, and admission into
whose ranks will, I hope, be considered a distinction to be sought for by
good work. The fashion of the day is rarely the judgment of posterity.
You will recall what Byron wrote to Coleridge: "I trust you do not permit
yourself to be depressed by the temporary partiality of what is called
'the public' for the favorites of the moment; all experience is against
the permanency of such impressions. You must have lived to see many of
these pass away, and will survive many more."
The chief concern of the National Institute is with the production of
works of art and of literature, and with their distribution. In the
remarks following I shall confine myself to the production and
distribution of literature. In the limits of this brief address I can
only in outline speak of certain tendencies and practices which are
affecting this production and this distribution. The interests involved
are, first, those of the author; second, those of the publisher; third,
those of the public. As to all good literature, the interests of these
three are identical if the relations of the three are on the proper
basis. For the author, a good book is of more pecuniary value than a poor
one, setting aside the question of fame; to the publisher, the right of
publishing a good book is solid capital,--an established house, in the
long run, makes more money on "Standards" than on "Catchpennies"; and to
the public the possession of the best literature is the breath of life,
as that of the bad and mediocre is moral and intellectual decadence. But
in practice the interests of the three do not harmonize. The author, even
supposing his efforts are stimulated by the highest aspirations for
excellence and not by any commercial instinct, is compelled by his
circumstances to get the best price for his production; the publisher
wishes to get the utmost return for his capital and his energy; and the
public wants the best going for the least money.
Consider first the author, and I mean the author, and not the mere
craftsman who manufactures books for a recognized market. His sole
capital is his talent. His brain may be likened to a mine, gold, silver,
copper, iron, or tin, which looks like silver when new. Whatever it is,
the vein of valuable ore is limited, in most cases it is slight. When it
is worked out, the man is at the end of his resources. Has he expended or
produced capital? I say he has produced it, and contributed to the wealth
of the world, and that he is as truly entitled to the usufruct of it as
the miner who takes gold or silver out of the earth. For how long? I will
speak of that later on. The copyright of a book is not analogous to the
patent right of an invention, which may become of universal necessity to
the world. Nor should the greater share of this usufruct be absorbed by
the manufacturer and publisher of the book. The publisher has a clear
right to guard himself against risks, as he has the right of refusal to
assume them. But there is an injustice somewhere, when for many a book,
valued and even profitable to somebody, the author does not receive the
price of a laborer's day wages for the time spent on it--to say nothing
of the long years of its gestation.
The relation between author and publisher ought to be neither complicated
nor peculiar. The author may sell his product outright, or he may sell
himself by an agreement similar to that which an employee in a
manufacturing establishment makes with his master to give to the
establishment all his inventions. Either of these methods is fair and
businesslike, though it may not be wise. A method that prevailed in the
early years of this century was both fair and wise. The author agreed
that the publisher should have the exclusive right to publish his book
for a certain term, or to make and sell a certain number of copies. When
those conditions were fulfilled, the control of the property reverted to
the author. The continuance of these relations between the two depended,
as it should depend, upon mutual advantage and mutual good-will. By the
present common method the author makes over the use of his property to
the will of the publisher. It is true that he parts with the use only of
the property and not with the property itself, and the publisher in law
acquires no other title, nor does he acquire any sort of interest in the
future products of the author's brain. But the author loses all control
of his property, and its profit to him may depend upon his continuing to
make over his books to the same publisher. In this continuance he is
liable to the temptation to work for a market, instead of following the
free impulses of his own genius. As to any special book, the publisher is
the sole judge whether to push it or to let it sink into the stagnation
of unadvertised goods.
The situation is full of complications. Theoretically it is the interest
of both parties to sell as many books as possible. But the author has an
interest in one book, the publisher in a hundred. And it is natural and
reasonable that the man who risks his money should be the judge of the
policy best for his whole establishment. I cannot but think that this
situation would be on a juster footing all round if the author returned
to the old practice of limiting the use of his property by the publisher.
I say this in full recognition of the fact that the publishers might be
unwilling to make temporary investments, or to take risks. What then?
Fewer books might be published. Less vanity might be gratified. Less
money might be risked in experiments upon the public, and more might be
made by distributing good literature. Would the public be injured? It is
an idea already discredited that the world owes a living to everybody who
thinks he can write, and it is a superstition already fading that capital
which exploits literature as a trade acquires any special privileges.
The present international copyright, which primarily concerns itself with
the manufacture of books, rests upon an unintelligible protective tariff
basis. It should rest primarily upon an acknowledgment of the author's
right of property in his own work, the same universal right that he has
in any other personal property. The author's international copyright
should be no more hampered by restrictions and encumbrances than his
national copyright. Whatever regulations the government may make for the
protection of manufactures, or trade industries, or for purposes of
revenue on importations, they should not be confounded with the author's
right of property. They have no business in an international copyright
act, agreement, or treaty. The United States copyright for native authors
contains no manufacturing restrictions. All we ask is that foreign
authors shall enjoy the same privileges we have under our law, and that
foreign nations shall give our authors the privileges of their local
copyright laws. I do not know any American author of any standing who has
ever asked or desired protection against foreign authors.
This subject is so important that I may be permitted to enlarge upon it,
in order to make clear suggestions already made, and to array again
arguments more or less familiar. I do this in the view of bringing before
the institute work worthy of its best efforts, which if successful will
entitle this body to the gratitude and respect of the country. I refer to
the speedy revision of our confused and wholly inadequate American
copyright laws, and later on to a readjustment of our international
relations.
In the first place let me bring to your attention what is, to the vast
body of authors, a subject of vital interest, which it is not too much to
say has never received that treatment from authors themselves which its
importance demands. I refer to the property of authors in their
productions. In this brief space and time I cannot enter fully upon this
great subject, but must be content to offer certain suggestions for your
consideration.
The property of an author in the product of his mental labor ought to be
as absolute and unlimited as his property in the product of his physical
labor. It seems to me idle to say that the two kinds of labor products
are so dissimilar that the ownership cannot be protected by like laws. In
this age of enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. The history of
copyright law seems to show that the treatment of property in brain
product has been based on this erroneous idea. To steal the paper on
which an author has put his brain work into visible, tangible form is in
all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal the brain work is not a crime.
The utmost extent to which our enlightened American legislators, at
almost the end of the nineteenth century, have gone in protecting
products of the brain has been to give the author power to sue in civil
courts, at large expense, the offender who has taken and sold his
property.
And what gross absurdity is the copyright law which limits even this poor
defense of author's property to a brief term of years, after the
expiration of which he or his children and heirs have no defense, no
recognized property whatever in his products.
And for some inexplicable reason this term of years in which he may be
said to own his property is divided into two terms, so that at the end of
the first he is compelled to re-assert his ownership by renewing his
copyright, or he must lose all ownership at the end of the short term.
It is manifest to all honest minds that if an author is entitled to own
his work for a term of years, it is equally the duty of his government to
make that ownership perpetual. He can own and protect and leave to his
children and his children's children by will the manuscript paper on
which he has written, and he should have equal right to leave to them
that mental product which constitutes the true money value of his labor.
It is unnecessary to say that the mental product is always as easy to be
identified as the physical product. Its identification is absolutely
certain to the intelligence of judges and juries. And it is apparent that
the interests of assignees, who are commonly publishers, are equal with
those of authors, in making absolute and perpetual this property in which
both are dealers.
Another consideration follows here. Why should the ownership of a bushel
of wheat, a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handkerchief in the
possession of an American carried or sent to England, or brought thence
to this country, be absolute and unlimited, while the ownership of his
own products as an author or as a purchaser from an author is made
dependent on his nationality? Why should the property of the manufacturer
of cloths, carpets, satins, and any and every description of goods, be
able to send his products all over the world, subject only to the tariff
laws of the various countries, while the author (alone of all known
producers) is forbidden to do so? The existing law of our country says to
the foreign author, "You can have property in your book only if you
manufacture it into salable form in this country." What would be said of
the wisdom or wild folly of a law which sought to protect other American
industries by forbidding the importation of all foreign manufactures?
No question of tariff protection is here involved. What duty shall be
imposed upon foreign products or foreign manufactures is a question of
political economy. The wrong against which authors should protest is in
annexing to their terms of ownership of their property a protective
tariff revision. For, be it observed, this is a subject of abstract
justice, moral right, and it matters nothing whether the author be
American, English, German, French, Hindoo, or Chinese,--and it is very
certain that when America shall enact a simple, just, copyright law,
giving to every human being the same protection of law to his property in
his mental products as in the work of his hands, every civilized nation
on earth will follow the noble example.
As it now stands, authors who annually produce the raw material for
manufacturing purposes to an amount in value of millions, supporting vast
populations of people, authors whose mental produce rivals and exceeds in
commercial value many of the great staple products of our fields, are the
only producers who have no distinct property in their products, who are
not protected in holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives them, and
whose quasi-property in their works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a few
years, and cannot with certainty be handed down to their children. It
will be said, it is said, that it is impossible for the author to obtain
an acknowledgment of absolute right of property in his brain work. In our
civilization we have not yet arrived at this state of justice. It may be
so. Indeed some authors have declared that this justice would be against
public policy. I trust they are sustained by the lofty thought that in
this view they are rising above the petty realm of literature into the
broad field of statesmanship.
But I think there will be a general agreement that in the needed revisal
of our local copyright law we can attain some measure of justice. Some of
the most obvious hardships can be removed. There is no reason why an
author should pay for the privilege of a long life by the loss of his
copyrights, and that his old age should be embittered by poverty because
he cannot have the results of the labor of his vigorous years. There is
no reason why if he dies young he should leave those dependent on him
without support, for the public has really no more right to appropriate
his book than it would have to take his house from his widow and
children. His income at best is small after he has divided with the
publishers.
No, there can certainly be no valid argument against extending the
copyright of the author to his own lifetime, with the addition of forty
or fifty years for the benefit of his heirs. I will not leave this
portion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relation
between authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, nor
without the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in the
present experience, many of the most noble friendships and the most
generous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always to
subsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature,
especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the author
is a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about the
publishing business.
One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly
prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it is
certain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality,
and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a product
out of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made in
cotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money been
invested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplying
the market with manufactured goods. Never before has there been such an
appeal to the reading public, or such a study of its tastes, or supposed
tastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled also with the same shrewd
anxiety to ascertain a future demand that governs the purveyors of spring
and fall styles in millinery and dressmaking. Not only the contents of
the books and periodicals, but the covers, must be made to catch the
fleeting fancy. Will the public next season wear its hose dotted or
striped?
Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of the
author's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work and
inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in
common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its
effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the
writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for a
certain kind of work, produces as good quality as when he works
independently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The question
is a serious one for the future of literature.
The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its
advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output
of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and
machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The
capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and
usable material is not forthcoming, the "standards" and the best
literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best
literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even
the leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness of
competition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harm
and not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral and
intellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in the
phrase it has invented--"the spawn of the press." The author who writes
simply to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certain
to deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied if
he can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Is
it extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely an
adjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publications
in books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war. How
many of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how many of them
were the spontaneous and natural productions of writers who had something
to say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the newspapers who do this
sort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of what we have been
accustomed to call literature to take on the transient and hasty
character of the newspaper.
In another respect, in method if not in quality, this literature
approaches the newspaper. It is the habit of some publishing houses, not
of all, let me distinctly say, to seek always notoriety, not to nurse and
keep before the public mind the best that has been evolved from time to
time, but to offer always something new. The year's flooring is threshed
off and the floor swept to make room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually
ceases for the old and approved, and is concentrated on experiments. This
is like the conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that the public must be
startled all the time.
I speak of this freely because I think it as bad policy for the publisher
as it is harmful to the public of readers. The same effort used to
introduce a novelty will be much better remunerated by pushing the sale
of an acknowledged good piece of literature.
Literature depends, like every other product bought by the people, upon
advertising, and it needs much effort usually to arrest the attention of
our hurrying public upon what it would most enjoy if it were brought to
its knowledge.
It would not be easy to fix the limit in this vast country to the
circulation of a good book if it were properly kept before the public.
Day by day, year by year, new readers are coming forward with curiosity
and intellectual wants. The generation that now is should not be deprived
of the best in the last generation. Nay more, one publication, in any
form, reaches only a comparatively small portion of the public that would
be interested in it. A novel, for instance, may have a large circulation
in a magazine; it may then appear in a book; it may reach other readers
serially again in the columns of a newspaper; it may be offered again in
all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not nearly exhaust its
legitimate running power. This is not a supposition but a fact proved by
trial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when we consider that we have an
unequaled homogeneous population with a similar common-school education.
In looking over publishers' lists I am constantly coming across good
books out of print, which are practically unknown to this generation, and
yet are more profitable, truer to life and character, more entertaining
and amusing, than most of those fresh from the press month by month.
Of the effect upon the literary product of writing to order, in obedience
to a merely commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a company of
authors, any more than to a company of artists I need to enlarge upon the
effect of a like commercial instinct upon art.
I am aware that the evolution of literature or art in any period, in
relation to the literature and art of the world, cannot be accurately
judged by contemporaries and participants, nor can it be predicted. But I
have great expectations of the product of both in this country, and I am
sure that both will be affected by the conduct of persons now living. It
is for this reason that I have spoken.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS:
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The county of Franklin in Northwestern Massachusetts, if not rivaling in
certain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of its
own. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population was
largely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not under
altogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded the
region either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villages
were small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and from
many of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was that
of stones.
The character of the people conformed in many ways to that of the soil.
The houses which lined the opposite sides of the single street, of which
the petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dotted
the country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of the
features, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to which
they belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these rural
communities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must be
confessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than of
high thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. By
the dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;
Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked upon
with a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs of
these men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, if
unconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in that
list. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly to
gambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized the
conduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction was
not absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a great
waste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale was
under the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion of the haymow.
But however rigid and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was there
always charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildest
winter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of these
communities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds of
the best of them an ideal of devotion to duty, an earnest all-pervading
moral purpose which implanted the feeling that neither personal success
nor pleasure of any sort could ever afford even remotely compensation for
the neglect of the least obligation which their situation imposed. It was
no misfortune for any one, who was later to be transported to a broader
horizon and more genial air, to have struck the roots of his being in a
soil where men felt the full sense of moral responsibility for everything
said or done, and where the conscience was almost as sensitive to the
suggestion of sin as to its actual accomplishment.
It was amidst such surroundings that Charles Dudley Warner was born on
the 12th of September, 1829. His birthplace was the hill town of
Plainfield, over two thousand feet above the level of the sea. His
father, a farmer, was a man of cultivation, though not college-bred. He
died when his eldest son had reached the age of five, leaving to his
widow the care of two children. Three years longer the family continued
to remain on the farm. But however delightful the scenery of the country
might be, its aesthetic attractions did not sufficiently counterbalance
its agricultural disadvantages. Furthermore, while the summers were
beautiful on this high table land, the winters were long and dreary in
the enforced solitude of a thinly settled region. In consequence, the
farm was sold after the death of the grandfather, and the home broken up.
The mother with her two children, went to the neighboring village of
Charlemont on the banks of the Deerfield. There the elder son took up his
residence with his guardian and relative, a man of position and influence
in the community, who was the owner of a large farm. With him he stayed
until he was twelve years old, enjoying all the pleasures and doing all
the miscellaneous jobs of the kind which fall to the lot of a boy brought
up in an agricultural community.
The story of this particular period of his life was given by Warner in a
work which was published about forty years later. It is the volume
entitled "Being a Boy." Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or more
vivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found such
a portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life on
a farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them all
graphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after;
the driving of cows to and from the pasture; the clearing up of fields
where vegetation struggled with difficulty against the prevailing stones;
the climbing of lofty trees and the swaying back and forth in the wind on
their topmost boughs; the hunting of woodchucks; the nutting excursions
of November days, culminating in the glories of Thanksgiving; the romance
of school life, over which vacations, far from being welcomed with
delight, cast a gloom as involving extra work; the cold days of winter
with its deep or drifting snows, the mercury of the thermometer clinging
with fondness to zero, even when the sun was shining brilliantly; the
long chilling nights in which the frost carved fantastic structures on
the window-panes; the eager watching for the time when the sap would
begin to run in the sugar-maples; the evenings given up to reading, with
the inevitable inward discontent at being sent to bed too early; the
longing for the mild days of spring to come, when the heavy cowhide boots
could be discarded, and the boy could rejoice at last in the covering for
his feet which the Lord had provided. These and scores of similar
descriptions fill up the picture of the life furnished here. It was
nature's own school wherein was to be gained the fullest intimacy with
her spirit. While there was much which she could not teach, there was
also much which she alone could teach. From his communion with her the
boy learned lessons which the streets of crowded cities could never have
imparted.
At the age of twelve this portion of his education came to an end. The
family then moved to Cazenovia in Madison county in Central New York,
from which place Warner's mother had come, and where her immediate
relatives then resided. Until he went to college this was his home. There
he attended a preparatory school under the direction of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, which was styled the Oneida Conference Seminary. It was
at this institution that he fitted mainly for college; for to college it
had been his father's dying wish that he should go, and the boy himself
did not need the spur of this parting injunction. A college near his home
was the excellent one of Hamilton in the not distant town of Clinton in
the adjoining county of Oneida. Thither he repaired in 1848, and as he
had made the best use of his advantages, he was enabled to enter the
sophomore class. He was graduated in 1851.
But while fond of study he had all these years been doing something
besides studying. The means of the family were limited, and to secure the
education he desired, not only was it necessary to husband the resources
he possessed, but to increase them in every possible way. Warner had all
the American boy's willingness to undertake any occupation not in itself
discreditable. Hence to him fell a full share of those experiences which
have diversified the early years of so many men who have achieved
success. He set up type in a printing office; he acted as an assistant in
a bookstore; he served as clerk in a post-office. He was thus early
brought into direct contact with persons of all classes and conditions of
life.
The experience gave to his keenly observant mind an insight into the
nature of men which was to be of special service to him in later years.
Further, it imparted to him a familiarity with their opinions and hopes
and aspirations which enabled him to understand and sympathize with
feelings in which he did not always share.
During the years which immediately followed his departure from college,
Warner led the somewhat desultory and apparently aimless life of many
American graduates whose future depends upon their own exertions and
whose choice of a career is mainly determined by circumstances. From the
very earliest period of his life he had been fond of reading. It was an
inherited taste. The few books he found in his childhood's home would
have been almost swept out of sight in the torrent, largely of trash,
which pours now in a steady stream into the humblest household. But the
books, though few, were of a high quality; and because they were few they
were read much, and their contents became an integral part of his
intellectual equipment. Furthermore, these works of the great masters,
with which he became familiar, set for him a standard by which to test
the value of whatever he read, and saved him even in his earliest years
from having his taste impaired and his judgment misled by the vogue of
meretricious productions which every now and then gain popularity for the
time. They gave him also a distinct bent towards making literature his
profession. But literature, however pleasant and occasionally profitable
as an avocation, was not to be thought of as a vocation. Few there are at
any period who have succeeded in finding it a substantial and permanent
support; at that time and in this country such a prospect was practically
hopeless for any one. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that
Warner, though often deviating from the direct path, steadily gravitated
toward the profession of law.
Still, even in those early days his natural inclination manifested
itself. The Knickerbocker Magazine was then the chosen organ to which all
young literary aspirants sent their productions. To it even in his
college days Warner contributed to some extent, though it would doubtless
be possible now to gather out of this collection but few pieces which,
lacking his own identification, could be assigned to him positively. At a
later period he contributed articles to Putnam's Magazine, which began
its existence in 1853. Warner himself at one time, in that period of
struggle and uncertainty, expected to become an editor of a monthly which
was to be started in Detroit. But before the magazine was actually set on
foot the inability of the person who projected it to supply the necessary
means for carrying it on prevented the failure which would inevitably
have befallen a venture of that sort, undertaken at that time and in that
place. Yet he showed in a way the native bent of his mind by bringing out
two years after his graduation from college a volume of selections from
English and American authors entitled "The Book of Eloquence." This work
a publisher many years afterward took advantage of his later reputation
to reprint.
This unsettled period of his life lasted for several years. He was
resident for a while in various places. Part of the time he seems to have
been in Cazenovia; part of the time in New York; part of the time in the
West. One thing in particular there was which stood in the way of fixing
definitely his choice of a profession. This was the precarious state of
his health, far poorer then than it was in subsequent years. Warner,
however, was never at any period of his life what is called robust. It
was his exceeding temperance in all things which enabled him to venture
upon the assumption and succeed in the accomplishment of tasks which men,
physically far stronger than he, would have shrunk from under-taking,
even had they been possessed of the same abilities. But his condition,
part of that time, was such that it led him to take a course of treatment
at the sanatorium in Clifton Springs. It became apparent, however, that
life in the open air, for a while at least, was the one thing essential.
Under the pressure of this necessity he secured a position as one of an
engineering party engaged in the survey of a railway in Missouri. In that
occupation he spent a large part of 1853 and 1854. He came back from this
expedition restored to health. With that result accomplished, the duty of
settling definitely upon what he was to do became more urgent. Among
other things he did, while living for a while with his uncle in
Binghamton, N. Y., he studied law in the office of Daniel S. Dickinson.
In the Christmas season of 1854 he went with a friend on a visit to
Philadelphia and stayed at the house of Philip M. Price, a prominent
citizen of that place who was engaged, among other things, in the
conveyancing of real estate. It will not be surprising to any one who
knew the charm of his society in later life to be told that he became at
once a favorite with the older man. The latter was advanced in years, he
was anxious to retire from active business. Acting under his advice,
Warner was induced to come to Philadelphia in 1855 and join him, and to
form subsequently a partnership in legal conveyancing with another young
man who had been employed in Mr. Price's office. Thus came into being the
firm of Barton and Warner. Their headquarters were first in Spring Garden
Street and later in Walnut Street. The future soon became sufficiently
assured to justify Warner in marriage, and in October, 1856, he was
wedded to Susan Lee, daughter of William Elliott Lee of New York City.
But though in a business allied to the law, Warner was not yet a lawyer.
His occupation indeed was only in his eyes a temporary makeshift while he
was preparing himself for what was to be his real work in life.
Therefore, while supporting himself by carrying on the business of
conveyancing, he attended the courses of study at the law department of
the University of Pennsylvania, during the academic years of 1856-57 and
1857-58. From that institution he received the degree of bachelor of law
in 1858--often misstated 1856--and was ready to begin the practice of
his, profession.
In those days every young man of ability and ambition was counseled to go
West and grow up with the country, and was not unfrequently disposed to
take that course of his own accord. Warner felt the general impulse. He
had contemplated entering, in fact had pretty definitely made up his mind
to enter, into a law partnership with a friend in one of the smaller
places in that region. But on a tour, somewhat of exploration, he stopped
at Chicago. There he met another friend, and after talking over the
situation with him he decided to take up his residence in that city. So
in 1858 the law-firm of Davenport and Warner came into being. It lasted
until 1860. It was not exactly a favorable time for young men to enter
upon the practice of this profession. The country was just beginning to
recover from the depression which had followed the disastrous panic of
1857; but confidence was as yet far from being restored. The new firm did
a fairly good business; but while there was sufficient work to do, there
was but little money to pay for it. Still Warner would doubtless have
continued in the profession had he not received an offer, the acceptance
of which determined his future and changed entirely his career.
Hawley, now United States Senator from Connecticut, was Warner's senior
by a few years. He had preceded him as a student at the Oneida Conference
Seminary and at Hamilton College. Practicing law in Hartford, he had
started in 1857, in conjunction with other leading citizens, a paper
called the Evening Press. It was devoted to the advocacy of the
principles of the Republican party, which was at that time still in what
may be called the formative state of its existence. This was a period in
which for some years the dissolution had been going on of the two old
parties which had divided the country. Men were changing sides and were
aligning themselves anew according to their views on questions which were
every day assuming greater prominence in the minds of all. There was
really but one great subject talked about or thought about. It split into
opposing sections the whole land over which was lowering the grim, though
as yet unrecognizable, shadow of civil war. The Republican party had been
in existence but a very few years, but in that short time it had
attracted to its ranks the young and enthusiastic spirits of the North,
just as to the other side were impelled the members of the same class in
the South. The intellectual contest which preceded the physical was
stirring the hearts of all men. Hawley, who was well aware of Warner's
peculiar ability, was anxious to secure his co-operation and assistance.
He urged him to come East and join him in the conduct of the new
enterprise he had undertaken.
Warner always considered that he derived great benefit from his
comparatively limited study and practice of law; and that the little time
he had given up to it had been far from being misspent. But the opening
which now presented itself introduced him to a field of activity much
more suited to his talents and his tastes. He liked the study of law
better than its practice; for his early training had not been of a kind
to reconcile him to standing up strongly for clients and causes that he
honestly believed to be in the wrong. Furthermore, his heart, as has been
said, had always been in literature; and though journalism could hardly
be called much more than a half-sister, the one could provide the support
which the other could never promise with certainty. So in 1860 Warner
removed to Hartford and joined his friend as associate editor of the
newspaper he had founded. The next year the war broke out. Hawley at once
entered the army and took part in the four years' struggle. His departure
left Warner in editorial charge of the paper, into the conduct of which
he threw himself with all the earnestness and energy of his nature, and
the ability, both political and literary, displayed in its columns gave
it at once a high position which it never lost.
At this point it may be well to give briefly the few further salient
facts of Warner's connection with journalism proper. In 1867 the owners
of the Press purchased the Courant, the well-known morning paper which
had been founded more than a century before, and consolidated the Press
with it. Of this journal, Hawley and Warner, now in part proprietors,
were the editorial writers. The former, who had been mustered out of the
army with the rank of brevet Major-General, was soon diverted from
journalism by other employments. He was elected Governor, he became a
member of Congress, serving successively in both branches. The main
editorial responsibility for the conduct of the paper devolved in
consequence upon Warner, and to it he gave up for years nearly all his
thought and attention. Once only during that early period was his labor
interrupted for any considerable length of time. In May, 1868, he set out
on the first of his five trips across the Atlantic. He was absent nearly
a year. Yet even then he cannot be said to have neglected his special
work. Articles were sent weekly from the other side, describing what he
saw and experienced abroad. His active connection with the paper he never
gave up absolutely, nor did his interest in it ever cease. But after he
became connected with the editorial staff of Harpers Magazine the
contributions he made to his journal were only occasional and what may be
called accidental.
When 1870 came, forty years of Warner's life had gone by, and nearly
twenty years since he had left college. During the latter ten years of
this period he had been a most effective and forcible leader-writer on
political and social questions, never more so than during the storm and
stress of the Civil War. Outside of these topics he had devoted a great
deal of attention to matters connected with literature and art. His
varied abilities were fully recognized by the readers of the journal he
edited.
But as yet there was little or no recognition outside. It is no easy
matter to tell what are the influences, what the circumstances, which
determine the success of a particular writer or of a particular work.
Hitherto Warner's repute was mainly confined to the inhabitants of a
provincial capital and its outlying and dependent towns. However
cultivated the class to which his writings appealed--and as a class it
was distinctly cultivated--their number was necessarily not great. To the
country at large what he did or what he was capable of doing was not
known at all. Some slight efforts he had occasionally put forth to secure
the publication of matter he had prepared. He experienced the usual fate
of authors who seek to introduce into the market literary wares of a new
and better sort. His productions did not follow conventional lines.
Publishers were ready to examine what he offered, and were just as ready
to declare that these new wares were of a nature in which they were not
inclined to deal.
But during 1870 a series of humorous articles appeared in the Hartford
Courant, detailing his experiences in the cultivation of a garden. Warner
had become the owner of a small place then almost on the outskirts of the
city. With the dwelling-house went the possession of three acres of land.
The opportunity thus presented itself of turning into a blessing the
primeval curse of tilling the soil, in this instance not with a hoe, but
with a pen. These articles detailing his experiences excited so much
amusement and so much admiration that a general desire was manifested
that they should receive a more permanent life than that accorded to
articles appearing in the columns of newspapers, and should reach a
circle larger than that to be found in the society of the Connecticut
capital. Warner's previous experience had not disposed him to try his
fortunes with the members of the publishing fraternity. In fact he did
not lay so much stress upon the articles as did his readers and friends.
He always insisted that he had previously written other articles which in
his eyes certainly were just as good as they, if not better.
It so chanced that about this time Henry Ward Beecher came to Hartford to
visit his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Warner was invited to meet him.
In the course of the conversation the articles just mentioned were
referred to by some one of those present. Beecher's curiosity was aroused
and he expressed a desire to see them. To him they were accordingly sent
for perusal. No sooner had he run through them than he recognized in them
the presence of a rare and delicate humor which struck a distinctly new
note in American literature. It was something he felt which should not be
confined to the knowledge of any limited circle. He wrote at once to the
publisher James T. Fields, urging the production of these articles in
book form. Beecher's recommendation in those days was sufficient to
insure the acceptance of any book by any publisher. Mr. Fields agreed to
bring out the work, provided the great preacher would prefix an
introduction. This he promised to do and did; though in place of the
somewhat more formal piece he was asked to write, he sent what he called
an introductory letter.
The series of papers published under the title of "My Summer in a Garden"
came out at the very end of 1870, with the date of 1871 on the
title-page. The volume met with instantaneous success. It was the subject
of comment and conversation everywhere and passed rapidly through several
editions. There was a general feeling that a new writer had suddenly
appeared, with a wit and wisdom peculiarly his own, precisely like which
nothing had previously existed in our literature. To the later editions
of the work was added an account of a cat which had been presented to the
author by the Stowes. For that reason it was given from the Christian
name of the husband of the novelist the title of Calvin. To this John was
sometimes prefixed, as betokening from the purely animal point of view a
certain resemblance to the imputed grimness and earnestness of the great
reformer. There was nothing in the least exaggerated in the account which
Warner gave of the character and conduct of this really remarkable member
of the feline race. No biography was ever truer; no appreciation was ever
more sympathetic; and in the long line of cats none was ever more worthy
to have his story truly and sympathetically told. All who had the fortune
to see Calvin in the flesh will recognize the accuracy with which his
portrait was drawn. All who read the account of him, though not having
seen him, will find it one of the most charming of descriptions. It has
the fullest right to be termed a cat classic.
With the publication of "My Summer in a Garden" Warner was launched upon
a career of authorship which lasted without cessation during the thirty
years that remained of his life. It covered a wide field. His interests
were varied and his activity was unremitting. Literature, art, and that
vast diversity of topics which are loosely embraced under the general
name of social science--upon all these he had something fresh to say, and
he said it invariably with attractiveness and effect. It mattered little
what he set out to talk about, the talk was sure to be full both of
instruction and entertainment. No sooner had the unequivocal success of
his first published work brought his name before the public than he was
besieged for contributions by conductors of periodicals of all sorts; and
as he had ideas of his own upon all sorts of subjects, he was constantly
furnishing matter of the most diverse kind for the most diverse
audiences.
As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limited
portion of the work he accomplished. All his life, indeed, Warner was not
only an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constant
producer. The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known to
but few. It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper he
wrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he never
expected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widely
known and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores of
articles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which he
made no account whatever. One looking through the pages of contemporary
periodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, and
sometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble to
collect. Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longer
be identified with any approach to certainty. About the preservation of
much that he did--and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and most
characteristic work--he was singularly careless, or it may be better to
say, singularly indifferent.
If I may be permitted to indulge in the recital of a personal experience,
there is one incident I recall which will bring out this trait in a
marked manner. Once on a visit to him I accompanied him to the office of
his paper. While waiting for him to discharge certain duties there, and
employing myself in looking over the exchanges, I chanced to light upon a
leading article on the editorial page of one of the most prominent of the
New York dailies. It was devoted to the consideration of some recent
utterances of a noted orator who, after the actual mission of his life
had been accomplished, was employing the decline of it in the
exploitation of every political and economic vagary which it had entered
into the addled brains of men to evolve. The article struck me as one of
the most brilliant and entertaining of its kind I had ever read; it was
not long indeed before it appeared that the same view of it was taken by
many others throughout the country. The peculiar wit of the comment, the
keenness of the satire made so much of an impression upon me that I
called Warner away from his work to look at it. At my request he hastily
glanced over it, but somewhat to my chagrin failed to evince any
enthusiasm about it. On our way home I again spoke of it and was a good
deal nettled at the indifference towards it which he manifested. It
seemed to imply that my critical judgment was of little value; and
however true might be his conclusion on that point, one does not enjoy
having the fact thrust too forcibly upon the attention in the familiarity
of conversation. Resenting therefore the tone he had assumed, I took
occasion not only to reiterate my previously expressed opinion somewhat
more aggressively, but also went on to insinuate that he was himself
distinctly lacking in any real appreciation of what was excellent. He
bore with me patiently for a while. "Well, sonny," he said at last,
"since you seem to take the matter so much to heart, I will tell you in
confidence that I wrote the piece myself." I found that this was not only
true in the case just specified, but that while engaged in preparing
articles for his own paper he occasionally prepared them for other
journals. No one besides himself and those immediately concerned, ever
knew anything about the matter. He never asserted any right to these
pieces, he never sought to collect them, though some of them exhibited
his happiest vein of humor. Unclaimed, unidentified, they are swept into
that wallet of oblivion in which time stows the best as well as the worst
of newspaper production.
The next volume of Warner's writings that made its appearance was
entitled "Saunterings." It was the first and, though good of its kind,
was by no means the best of a class of productions in which he was to
exhibit signal excellence. It will be observed that of the various works
comprised in this collective edition, no small number consist of what by
a wide extension of the phrase may be termed books of travel. There are
two or three which fall strictly under that designation. Most of them,
however, can be more properly called records of personal experience and
adventure in different places and regions, with the comments on life and
character to which they gave rise.
Books of travel, if they are expected to live, are peculiarly hard to
write. If they come out at a period when curiosity about the region
described is predominant, they are fairly certain, no matter how
wretched, to achieve temporary success. But there is no kind of literary
production to which, by the very law of its being, it is more difficult
to impart vitality. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is perfectly true that
the greatest hinderance to their permanent interest is the information
they furnish. The more full, specific and even accurate that is, the more
rapidly does the work containing it lose its value. The fresher knowledge
conveyed by a new, and it may be much inferior book, crowds out of
circulation those which have gone before. The changed or changing
conditions in the region traversed renders the information previously
furnished out of date and even misleading. Hence the older works come in
time to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted only
by that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what has
been and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something of
this transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the one
great reason why so very few of the countless number of such works,
written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardly
heard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species of
literary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare.
From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of such
works, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method of
procedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts but
impressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated to
gratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker for
purely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously or
unconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followed
his own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything but
what he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men and
manners made by an acute observer on the spot, and put down at the moment
when the impression created was most vivid, not deferred till familiarity
had dulled the sense of it or custom had caused it to be disregarded.
Take as an illustration the little book entitled "Baddeck," one of the
slightest of his productions in this field. It purports to be and is
nothing more than an account of a two weeks' tour made to a Cape Breton
locality in company with the delightful companion to whom it was
dedicated. You take it up with the notion that you are going to acquire
information about the whole country journeyed over, you are beguiled at
times with the fancy that you are getting it. In the best sense it may be
said that you do get it; for it is the general impression of the various
scenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left upon
the mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which the
lapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the work
therefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its place
are the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters of
the men that are met, upon the nature of the sights that are seen.
This is what constitutes the enduring charm of the best of these pictures
of travel which Warner produced. It is perhaps misleading to assert that
they do not furnish a good deal of information. Still it is not the sort
of information which the ordinary tourist gives and which the cultivated
reader resents and is careful not to remember. Their dominant note is
rather the quiet humor of a delightful story-teller, who cannot fail to
say something of interest because he has seen so much; and who out of his
wide and varied observation selects for recital certain sights he has
witnessed, certain experiences he has gone through, and so relates them
that the way the thing is told is even more interesting than the thing
told. The chief value of these works does not accordingly depend upon the
accidental, which passes. Inns change and become better or worse.
Facilities for transportation increase or decrease. Scenery itself alters
to some extent under the operation of agencies brought to bear upon it
for its own improvement or for the improvement of something else. But
man's nature remains a constant quantity. Traits seen here and now are
sure to be met with somewhere else, and even in ages to come. Hence works
of this nature, embodying descriptions of men and manners, always retain
something of the freshness which characterized them on the day of their
appearance.
Of these productions in which the personal element predominates, and
where the necessity of intruding information is not felt as a burden,
those of Warner's works which deal with the Orient take the first rank.
The two--"My Winter on the Nile" and "In the Levant"--constitute the
record of a visit to the East during the years 1875 and 1876.
They would naturally have of themselves the most permanent value,
inasmuch as the countries described have for most educated men an abiding
interest. The lifelike representation and graphic characterization which
Warner was apt to display in his traveling sketches were here seen at
their best, because nowhere else did he find the task of description more
congenial. Alike the gorgeousness and the squalor of the Orient appealed
to his artistic sympathies. Egypt in particular had for him always a
special fascination. Twice he visited it--at the time just mentioned and
again in the winter of 1881-82. He rejoiced in every effort made to
dispel the obscurity which hung over its early history. No one, outside
of the men most immediately concerned, took a deeper interest than he in
the work of the Egyptian Exploration Society, of which he was one of the
American vice-presidents. To promoting its success he gave no small share
of time and attention. Everything connected with either the past or the
present of the country had for him an attraction. A civilization which
had been flourishing for centuries, when the founder of Israel was a
wandering sheik on the Syrian plains or in the hill-country of Canaan;
the slow unraveling of records of dynasties of forgotten kings; the
memorials of Egypt's vanished greatness and the vision of her future
prosperity these and things similar to these made this country, so
peculiarly the gift of the Nile, of fascinating interest to the modern
traveler who saw the same sights which had met the eyes of Herodotus
nearly twenty-five hundred years before.
To the general public the volume which followed--"In the Levant"--was
perhaps of even deeper interest. At all events it dealt with scenes and
memories with which every reader, educated or uneducated, had
associations. The region through which the founder of Christianity
wandered, the places he visited, the words he said in them, the acts he
did, have never lost their hold over the hearts of men, not even during
the periods when the precepts of Christianity have had the least
influence over the conduct of those who professed to it their allegiance.
In the Levant, too, were seen the beginnings of commerce, of art, of
letters, in the forms in which the modern world best knows them. These,
therefore, have always made the lands about the eastern Mediterranean an
attraction to cultivated men and the interest of the subject accordingly
reinforced the skill of the writer.
There are two or three of these works which can not be included in the
class just described. They were written for the specific purpose of
giving exact information at the time. Of these the most noticeable are
the volumes entitled "South and West" and the account of Southern
California which goes under the name of "Our Italy." They are the outcome
of journeys made expressly with the intent of investigating and reporting
upon the actual situation and apparent prospects of the places and
regions described. As they were written to serve an immediate purpose,
much of the information contained in them tends to grow more and more out
of date as time goes on; and though of value to the student of history,
these volumes must necessarily become of steadily diminishing interest to
the ordinary reader. Yet it is to be said of them that while the pill of
useful information is there, it has at least been sugar-coated. Nor can
we afford to lose sight of the fact that the widely-circulated articles,
collected under the title of "South and West," by the spirit pervading
them as well as by the information they gave, had a marked effect in
bringing the various sections of the country into a better understanding
of one another, and in imparting to all a fuller sense of the community
they possessed in profit and loss, in honor and dishonor.
It is a somewhat singular fact that these sketches of travel led Warner
incidentally to enter into an entirely new field of literary exertion.
This was novel-writing. Something of this nature he had attempted in
conjunction with Mark Twain in the composition of "The Gilded Age," which
appeared in 1873. The result, however, was unsatisfactory to both the
collaborators. Each had humor, but the humor of each was fundamentally
different. But the magazine with which Warner had become connected was
desirous that he should prepare for it an account of some of the
principal watering-places and summer resorts of the country. Each was to
be visited in turn and its salient features were to be described. It was
finally suggested that this could be done most effectively by weaving
into a love story occurrences that might happen at a number of these
places which were made the subjects of description. The principal
characters were to take their tours under the personal conduct of the
novelist. They were to go to the particular spots selected North and
South, according to the varying seasons of the year. It was a somewhat
novel way of, visiting resorts of this nature; there are those to whom it
will seem altogether more agreeable than would be the visiting of them in
person. Hence appeared in 1886 the articles which were collected later in
the volume entitled "Their Pilgrimage."
Warner executed the task which had been assigned him with his wonted
skill. The completed work met with success--with so much success indeed
that he was led later to try his fortune further in the same field and
bring out the trilogy of novels which go under the names respectively of
"A Little Journey in the World," "The Golden House," and "That Fortune."
Each of these is complete in itself, each can be read by itself; but the
effect of each and of the whole series can be best secured by reading
them in succession. In the first it is the story of how a great fortune
was made in the stock market; in the second, how it was fraudulently
diverted from the object for which it was intended; and in the third, how
it was most beneficially and satisfactorily lost. The scene of the last
novel was laid in part in Warner's early home in Charlemont. These works
were produced with considerable intervals of time between their
respective appearances, the first coming out in 1889 and the third ten
years later. This detracted to some extent from the popularity which they
would have attained had the different members followed one another
rapidly. Still, they met with distinct success, though it has always been
a question whether this success was due so much to the story as to the
shrewd observation and caustic wit which were brought to bear upon what
was essentially a serious study of one side of American social life.
The work with which Warner himself was least satisfied was his life of
Captain John Smith, which came out in 18881. It was originally intended
to be one of a series of biographies of noted men, which were to give the
facts accurately but to treat them humorously. History and comedy,
however, have never been blended successfully, though desperate attempts
have occasionally been made to achieve that result. Warner had not long
been engaged in the task before he recognized its hopelessness. For its
preparation it required a special study of the man and the period, and
the more time he spent upon the preliminary work, the more the humorous
element tended to recede. Thus acted on by two impulses, one of a light
and one of a grave nature, he moved for a while in a sort of diagonal
between the two to nowhere in particular; but finally ended in treating
the subject seriously.
In giving himself up to a biography in which he had no special interest,
Warner felt conscious that he could not interest others. His forebodings
were realized. The work, though made from a careful study of original
sources, did not please him, nor did it attract the public. The attempt
was all the more unfortunate because the time and toil he spent upon it
diverted him from carrying out a scheme which had then taken full
possession of his thoughts. This was the production of a series of essays
to be entitled "Conversations on Horseback." Had it been worked up as he
sketched it in his mind, it would have been the outdoor counterpart of
his "Backlog Studies." Though in a measure based upon a horseback ride
which he took in Pennsylvania in 1880, the incidents of travel as he
outlined its intended treatment would have barely furnished the slightest
of backgrounds. Captain John Smith, however, interfered with a project
specially suited to his abilities and congenial to his tastes. That he
did so possibly led the author of his life to exhibit a somewhat hostile
attitude towards his hero. When the biography was finished, other
engagements were pressing upon his attention. The opportunity of taking
up and completing the projected series of essays never presented itself,
though the subject lay in his mind for a long time and he himself
believed that it would have turned out one of the best pieces of work he
ever did.
It was unfortunate. For to me--and very likely to many others if not to
most--Warner's strength lay above all in essay-writing. What he
accomplished in this line was almost invariably pervaded by that genial
grace which makes work of the kind attractive, and he exhibited
everywhere in it the delicate but sure touch which preserves the just
mean between saying too much and too little. The essay was in his nature,
and his occupation as a journalist had developed the tendency towards
this form of literary activity, as well as skill in its manipulation.
Whether he wrote sketches of travel, or whether he wrote fiction, the
scene depicted was from the point of view of the essayist rather than
from that of the tourist or of the novelist. It is this characteristic
which gives to his work in the former field its enduring interest. Again
in his novels, it was not so much the story that was in his thoughts as
the opportunity the varying scenes afforded for amusing observations upon
manners, for comments upon life, sometimes good-natured, sometimes
severe, but always entertaining, and above all, for serious study of the
social problems which present themselves on every side for examination.
This is distinctly the province of the essayist, and in it Warner always
displayed his fullest strength.
We have seen that his first purely humorous publication of this nature
was the one which made him known to the general public. It was speedily
followed, however, by one of a somewhat graver character, which became at
the time and has since remained a special favorite of cultivated readers.
This is the volume entitled "Backlog Studies." The attractiveness of this
work is as much due to the suggestive social and literary discussions
with which it abounds as to the delicate and refined humor with which the
ideas are expressed. Something of the same characteristics was displayed
in the two little volumes of short pieces dealing with social topics,
which came out later under the respective titles of "As We Were Saying,"
and "As We Go." But there was a deeper and more serious side of his
nature which found utterance in several of his essays, particularly in
some which were given in the form of addresses delivered at various
institutions of learning. They exhibit the charm which belongs to all his
writings; but his feelings were too profoundly interested in the subjects
considered to allow him to give more than occasional play to his humor.
Essays contained in such a volume, for instance, as "The Relation of
Literature to Life" will not appeal to him whose main object in reading
is amusement. Into them Warner put his deepest and most earnest
convictions. The subject from which the book just mentioned derived its
title lay near to his heart. No one felt more strongly than he the
importance of art of all kinds, but especially of literary art, for the
uplifting of a nation. No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessity
of its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-making
land, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to be
prevented. The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up,
the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and act
which, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit--all
these were enforced by him again and again with clearness and
effectiveness. His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sense
in which are his other writings. But no thoughtful man will rise up from
reading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part which
literature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeper
conviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the character
of a people.
During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion of
Warner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published in
the Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he became
closely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892,
he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month following
this last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor of
the Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope of
this department was largely expanded after the death of George William
Curtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of the
Editor's Easy Chair. Comments upon other topics than those to which his
department was originally devoted, especially upon social questions, were
made a distinct feature. His editorial connection with the magazine
naturally led to his contributing to it numerous articles besides those
which were demanded by the requirements of the position he held. Nearly
all these, as well as those which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, are
indicated in the bibliographical notes prefixed to the separate works.
There were, however, other literary enterprises in which he was
concerned; for the calls upon him were numerous, his own appetite for
work was insatiable, and his activity was indefatigable. In 1881 he
assumed the editorship of the American Men of Letters series. This he
opened with his own biography of Washington Irving, the resemblance
between whom and himself has been made the subject of frequent remark.
Later he became the editor-in-chief of the thirty odd volumes which make
up the collection entitled "The World's Best Literature." To this he
contributed several articles of his own and carefully allotted and
supervised the preparation of a large number of others. The labor he put
upon the editing of this collection occupied him a great deal of the time
from 1895 to 1898.
But literature, though in it lay his chief interest, was but one of the
subjects which employed his many-sided activity. He was constantly called
upon for the discharge of civic duties. The confidence felt by his
fellow-citizens in his judgment and taste was almost equal to the
absolute trust reposed in his integrity. The man who establishes a
reputation for the possession of these qualities can never escape from
bearing the burdens which a good character always imposes. If any work of
art was ordered by the state, Warner was fairly certain to be chosen a
member of the commission selected to decide upon the person who was to do
it and upon the way it was to be done. By his fellow-townsmen he was made
a member of the Park Commission. Such were some of the duties imposed;
there were others voluntarily undertaken. During the latter years of his
life he became increasingly interested in social questions, some of which
partook of a semi-political character. One of the subjects which engaged
his attention was the best method to be adopted for elevating the
character and conduct of the negro population of the country. He
recognized the gravity of the problem with which the nation had to deal
and the difficulties attending its solution. One essay on the subject was
prepared for the meeting held at Washington in May, 1900, of the American
Social Science Association, of which he was president. He was not able to
be there in person. The disease which was ultimately to strike him down
had already made its preliminary attack. His address was accordingly read
for him. It was a subject of special regret that he could not be present
to set forth more fully his views; for the debate, which followed the
presentation of his paper, was by no means confined to the meeting, but
extended to the press of the whole country. Whether the conclusions he
reached were right or wrong, they were in no case adopted hastily nor
indeed without the fullest consideration.
But a more special interest of his lay in prison reform. The subject had
engaged his attention long before he published anything in connection
with it. Later one of the earliest articles he wrote for Harper's
Magazine was devoted to it. It was in his thoughts just before his death.
He was a member of the Connecticut commission on prisons, of the National
Prison Association, and a vice-president of the New York Association for
Prison Reform. A strong advocate of the doctrine of the indeterminate
sentence, he had little patience with many of the judicial outgivings on
that subject. To him they seemed opinions inherited, not formed, and in
most cases were nothing more than the result of prejudice working upon
ignorance. This particular question was one which he purposed to make the
subject of his address as president of the Social Science Association, at
its annual meeting in 1901. He never lived to complete what he had in
mind.
During his later years the rigor of the Northern winter had been too
severe for Warner's health. He had accordingly found it advisable to
spend as much of this season as he could in warmer regions. He visited at
various times parts of the South, Mexico, and California. He passed the
winter of 1892-93 at Florence; but he found the air of the valley of the
Arno no perceptible improvement upon that of the valley of the
Connecticut. In truth, neither disease nor death entertains a prejudice
against any particular locality. This fact he was to learn by personal
experience. In the spring of 1899, while at New Orleans, he was stricken
by pneumonia which nearly brought him to the grave. He recovered, but it
is probable that the strength of his system was permanently impaired, and
with it his power of resisting disease. Still his condition was not such
as to prevent him from going on with various projects he had been
contemplating or from forming new ones. The first distinct warning of the
approaching end was the facial paralysis which suddenly attacked him in
April, 1900, while on a visit to Norfolk, Va. Yet even from that he
seemed to be apparently on the full road to recovery during the following
summer.
It was in the second week of October, 1900, that Warner paid me a visit
of two or three days. He was purposing to spend the winter in Southern
California, coming back to the East in ample time to attend the annual
meeting of the Social Science Association. His thoughts were even then
busy with the subject of the address which, as president, he was to
deliver on that occasion. It seemed to me that I had never seen him when
his mind was more active or more vigorous. I was not only struck by the
clearness of his views--some of which were distinctly novel, at least to
me--but by the felicity and effectiveness with which they were put.
Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, the
agreeableness, the general charm of his manner. He had determined during
the coming winter to learn to ride the wheel, and we then and there
planned to take a bicycle trip during the following summer, as we had
previously made excursions together on horseback. When we parted, it was
with the agreement that we should meet the next spring in Washington and
fix definitely upon the time and region of our intended ride. It was on a
Saturday morning that I bade him good-by, apparently in the best of
health and spirits. It was on the evening of the following Saturday
--October 20th--that the condensed, passionless, relentless message which
the telegraph transmits, informed me that he had died that afternoon.
That very day he had lunched at a friend's, where were gathered several
of his special associates who had chanced to come together at the same
house, and then had gone to the office of the Hartford Courant. There was
not the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. After
the company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the city
parks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling a
certain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants he
knew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintness
increased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The few
minutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of the
words, he had fallen asleep. From one point of view it was an ideal way
to die. To the individual, death coming so gently, so suddenly, is shorn
of all its terrors. It is only those who live to remember and to lament
that the suffering comes which has been spared the victim. Even to them,
however, is the consolation that though they may have been fully prepared
for the coming of the inevitable event, it would have been none the less
painful when it actually came.
Warner as a writer we all know. The various and varying opinions
entertained about the quality and value of his work do not require notice
here. Future times will assign him his exact position in the roll of
American authors, and we need not trouble ourselves to anticipate, as we
shall certainly not be able to influence, its verdict. But to only a
comparatively few of those who knew him as a writer was it given to know
him as a man; to still fewer to know him in that familiarity of intimacy
which reveals all that is fine or ignoble in a man's personality. Scanty
is the number of those who will come out of that severest of ordeals so
successfully as he. The same conclusion would be reached, whether we were
to consider him in his private relations or in his career as a man of
letters. Among the irritable race of authors no one was freer from petty
envy or jealousy. During many years of close intercourse, in which he
constantly gave utterance to his views both of men and things with
absolute unreserve, I recall no disparaging opinion ever expressed of any
writer with whom he had been compared either for praise or blame. He had
unquestionably definite and decided opinions. He would point out that
such or such a work was above or below its author's ordinary level; but
there was never any ill-nature in his comment, no depreciation for
depreciation's sake. Never in truth was any one more loyal to his
friends. If his literary conscience would not permit him to say anything
in favor of something which they had done, he usually contented himself
with saying nothing. Whatever failing there was on his critical side was
due to this somewhat uncritical attitude; for it is from his particular
friends that the writer is apt to get the most dispassionate
consideration and sometimes the coldest commendation. It was a part of
Warner's generous recognition of others that he was in all sincerity
disposed to attribute to those he admired and to whom he was attached an
ability of which some of them at least were much inclined to doubt their
own possession.
Were I indeed compelled to select any one word which would best give the
impression, both social and literary, of Warner's personality, I should
be disposed to designate it as urbanity. That seems to indicate best the
one trait which most distinguished him either in conversation or writing.
Whatever it was, it was innate, not assumed. It was the genuine outcome
of the kindliness and broad-mindedness of his nature and led him to
sympathize with men of all positions in life and of all kinds of ability.
It manifested itself in his attitude towards every one with whom he came
in contact. It led him to treat with fullest consideration all who were
in the least degree under his direction, and converted in consequence the
toil of subordinates into a pleasure. It impelled him to do unsought
everything which lay in his power for the success of those in whom he
felt interest. Many a young writer will recall his words of encouragement
at some period in his own career when the quiet appreciation of one meant
more to him than did later the loud applause of many. As it was in
public, so it was in private life. The generosity of his spirit, the
geniality and high-bred courtesy of his manner, rendered a visit to his
home as much a social delight as his wide knowledge of literature and his
appreciation of what was best in it made it an intellectual
entertainment.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
PRELIMINARY
This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities as
introductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value of
literature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggerated
emphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduring
literature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive to
the general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human life
insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature;
and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a
literature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrations
of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English
literatures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning
of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader
unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with
which he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up his
Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and
popular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is true
that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of
the time and place where it originated.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream of
time flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up in
succession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-they
lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations
appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--the
sequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itself
forever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers on
the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of
various size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs,
boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which
each builder launched his venture, and watched its performance and
progress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that should
float on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builder
and the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these puny
efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new
venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at
all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for a
time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and
disappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the
bufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on
their sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only a
few floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by the
generation succeeding that which launched them. The shores of the stream
were strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of many
a once gallant craft.
Innumerable were the devices of the builders to keep their inventions
afloat. Some paid great attention to the form of the hull, others to the
kind of cargo and the loading of it, while others--and these seemed the
majority--trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new fashion of
rudder, or new application of propelling power. And it was wonderful to
see what these new ingenuities did for a time, and how each generation
was deceived into the belief that its products would sail on forever. But
one fate practically came to the most of them. They were too heavy, they
were too light, they were built of old material, and they went to the
bottom, they went ashore, they broke up and floated in fragments. And
especially did the crafts built in imitation of something that had
floated down from a previous generation come to quick disaster. I saw
only here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and blackened by time
--so old, perhaps, that the name of the maker was no longer legible; or
some fragments of antique wood that had evidently come from far up the
stream. When such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise great dispute
about it, and from time to time expeditions were organized to ascend the
river and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along the
banks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore,
and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet.
Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloat
again, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a
better chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I saw that a large
part of the commerce of this river was, in fact, the old hulks and
stranded wrecks that each generation had set afloat again. As I saw it in
this foolish vision, how pathetic this labor was from generation to
generation; so many vessels launched; so few making a voyage even for a
lifetime; so many builders confident of immortality; so many lives
outlasting this coveted reputation! And still the generations, each with
touching hopefulness, busied themselves with this child's play on the
banks of the stream; and still the river flowed on, whelming and wrecking
the most of that so confidently committed to it, and bearing only here
and there, on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shingle.
These hosts of men whom I saw thus occupied since history began were
authors; these vessels were books; these heaps of refuse in the bays were
great libraries. The allegory admits of any amount of ingenious
parallelism. It is nevertheless misleading; it is the illusion of an idle
fancy. I have introduced it because it expresses, with some whimsical
exaggeration--not much more than that of "The Vision of Mirza"--the
popular notion about literature and its relation to human life. In the
popular conception, literature is as much a thing apart from life as
these boats on the stream of time were from the existence, the struggle,
the decay of the generations along the shore. I say in the popular
conception, for literature is wholly different from this, not only in its
effect upon individual lives, but upon the procession of lives upon this
earth; it is not only an integral part of all of them, but, with its
sister arts, it is the one unceasing continuity in history. Literature
and art are not only the records and monuments made by the successive
races of men, not only the local expressions of thought and emotion, but
they are, to change the figure, the streams that flow on, enduring, amid
the passing show of men, reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleeting
generations. Without this continuity of thought and emotion, history
would present us only a succession of meaningless experiments. The
experiments fail, the experiments succeed--at any rate, they end--and
what remains for transmission, for the sustenance of succeeding peoples?
Nothing but the thought and emotion evolved and expressed. It is true
that every era, each generation, seems to have its peculiar work to do;
it is to subdue the intractable earth, to repel or to civilize the
barbarians, to settle society in order, to build cities, to amass wealth
in centres, to make deserts bloom, to construct edifices such as were
never made before, to bring all men within speaking distance of each
other--lucky if they have anything to say when that is accomplished--to
extend the information of the few among the many, or to multiply the
means of easy and luxurious living. Age after age the world labors for
these things with the busy absorption of a colony of ants in its castle
of sand. And we must confess that the process, such, for instance, as
that now going on here--this onset of many peoples, which is transforming
the continent of America--is a spectacle to excite the imagination in the
highest degree. If there were any poet capable of putting into an epic
the spirit of this achievement, what an epic would be his! Can it be that
there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in
hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say,
it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our
destination sooner--getting there quickly being a supreme object. It is
well to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men in
masses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food to
themselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal from the bowels
of the earth, cover its surface with rails for swift-running carriages,
to build ever larger palaces, warehouses, ships. This gigantic
achievement strikes the imagination.
If the world in which you live happens to be the world of books, if your
pursuit is to know what has been done and said in the world, to the end
that your own conception of the value of life may be enlarged, and that
better things may be done and said hereafter, this world and this pursuit
assume supreme importance in your mind. But you can in a moment place
yourself in relations--you have not to go far, perhaps only to speak to
your next neighbor--where the very existence of your world is scarcely
recognized. All that has seemed to you of supreme importance is ignored.
You have entered a world that is called practical, where the things that
we have been speaking of are done; you have interest in it and sympathy
with it, because your scheme of life embraces the development of ideas
into actions; but these men of realities have only the smallest
conception of the world that seems to you of the highest importance; and,
further, they have no idea that they owe anything to it, that it has ever
influenced their lives or can add anything to them. And it may chance
that you have, for the moment, a sense of insignificance in the small
part you are playing in the drama going forward. Go out of your library,
out of the small circle of people who talk of books, who are engaged in
research, whose liveliest interest is in the progress of ideas, in the
expression of thought and emotion that is in literature; go out of this
atmosphere into a region where it does not exist, it may be into a place
given up to commerce and exchange, or to manufacturing, or to the
development of certain other industries, such as mining, or the pursuit
of office--which is sometimes called politics. You will speedily be aware
how completely apart from human life literature is held to be, how few
people regard it seriously as a necessary element in life, as anything
more than an amusement or a vexation. I have in mind a mountain district,
stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruthless lumbermen, ravished of
its forest wealth; divested of its beauty, which has recently become the
field of vast coal-mining operations. Remote from communication, it was
yesterday an exhausted, wounded, deserted country. Today audacious
railways are entering it, crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding its
dizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron cobwebs, piercing its
hills with tunnels. Drifts are opened in its coal seams, to which iron
tracks shoot away from the main line; in the woods is seen the gleam of
the engineer's level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden wagons on the
newly-made roads; tents are pitched, uncouth shanties have sprung up,
great stables, boarding-houses, stores, workshops; the miner, the
blacksmith, the mason, the carpenter have arrived; households have been
set up in temporary barracks, children are already there who need a
school, women who must have a church and society; the stagnation has
given place to excitement, money has flowed in, and everywhere are the
hum of industry and the swish of the goad of American life. On this
hillside, which in June was covered with oaks, is already in October a
town; the stately trees have been felled; streets are laid out and graded
and named; there are a hundred dwellings, there are a store, a
post-office, an inn; the telegraph has reached it, and the telephone and
the electric light; in a few weeks more it will be in size a city, with
thousands of people--a town made out of hand by drawing men and women
from other towns, civilized men and women, who have voluntarily put
themselves in a position where they must be civilized over again.
This is a marvelous exhibition of what energy and capital can do. You
acknowledge as much to the creators of it. You remember that not far back
in history such a transformation as this could not have been wrought in a
hundred years. This is really life, this is doing something in the world,
and in the presence of it you can see why the creators of it regard your
world, which seemed to you so important, the world whose business is the
evolution and expression of thought and emotion, as insignificant. Here
is a material addition to the business and wealth of the race, here
employment for men who need it, here is industry replacing stagnation,
here is the pleasure of overcoming difficulties and conquering obstacles.
Why encounter these difficulties? In order that more coal may be procured
to operate more railway trains at higher speed, to supply more factories,
to add to the industrial stir of modern life. The men who projected and
are pushing on this enterprise, with an executive ability that would
maintain and manoeuvre an army in a campaign, are not, however,
consciously philanthropists, moved by the charitable purpose of giving
employment to men, or finding satisfaction in making two blades of grass
grow where one grew before. They enjoy no doubt the sense of power in
bringing things to pass, the feeling of leadership and the consequence
derived from its recognition; but they embark in this enterprise in order
that they may have the position and the luxury that increased wealth will
bring, the object being, in most cases, simply material
advantages--sumptuous houses, furnished with all the luxuries which are
the signs of wealth, including, of course, libraries and pictures and
statuary and curiosities, the most showy equipages and troops of
servants; the object being that their wives shall dress magnificently,
glitter in diamonds and velvets, and never need to put their feet to the
ground; that they may command the best stalls in the church, the best
pews in the theatre, the choicest rooms in the inn, and--a consideration
that Plato does not mention, because his world was not our world--that
they may impress and reduce to obsequious deference the hotel clerk.
This life--for this enterprise and its objects are types of a
considerable portion of life--is not without its ideal, its hero, its
highest expression, its consummate flower. It is expressed in a word
which I use without any sense of its personality, as the French use the
word Barnum--for our crude young nation has the distinction of adding a
verb to the French language, the verb to barnum--it is expressed in the
well-known name Croesus. This is a standard--impossible to be reached
perhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, the country is sown with
seeds of Croesus, and the crop is forward and promising. The interest to
us now in the observation of this phase of modern life is not in the
least for purposes of satire or of reform. We are inquiring how wholly
this conception of life is divorced from the desire to learn what has
been done and said to the end that better things may be done and said
hereafter, in order that we may understand the popular conception of the
insignificant value of literature in human affairs. But it is not aside
from our subject, rather right in its path, to take heed of what the
philosophers say of the effect in other respects of the pursuit of
wealth.
One cause of the decay of the power of defense in a state, says the
Athenian Stranger in Plato's Laws--one cause is the love of wealth, which
wholly absorbs men and never for a moment allows them to think of
anything but their private possessions; on this the soul of every citizen
hangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain; mankind
are ready to learn any branch of knowledge and to follow any pursuit
which tends to this end, and they laugh at any other; that is the reason
why a city will not be in earnest about war or any other good and
honorable pursuit.
The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals, says
Socrates, in the Republic, is the ruin of democracy. They invent illegal
modes of expenditure; and what do they or their wives care about the law?
"And then one, seeing another's display, proposes to rival him, and thus
the whole body of citizens acquires a similar character.
"After that they get on in a trade, and the more they think of making a
fortune, the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are
placed together in the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.
"And in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the state,
virtue and the virtuous are dishonored.
"And what is honored is cultivated, and that which has no honor is
neglected.
"And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become
lovers of trade and money, and they honor and reverence the rich man and
make a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man.
"They do so."
The object of a reasonable statesman (it is Plato who is really speaking
in the Laws) is not that the state should be as great and rich as
possible, should possess gold and silver, and have the greatest empire by
sea and land.
The citizen must, indeed, be happy and good, and the legislator will seek
to make him so; but very rich and very good at the same time he cannot
be; not at least in the sense in which many speak of riches. For they
describe by the term "rich" the few who have the most valuable
possessions, though the owner of them be a rogue. And if this is true, I
can never assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be happy: he must
be good as well as rich. And good in a high degree and rich in a high
degree at the same time he cannot be. Some one will ask, Why not? And we
shall answer, Because acquisitions which come from sources which are just
and unjust indifferently are more than double those which come from just
sources only; and the sums which are expended neither honorably nor
disgracefully are only half as great as those which are expended
honorably and on honorable purposes. Thus if one acquires double and
spends half, the other, who is in the opposite case and is a good man,
cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first (I am speaking of the
saver, and not of the spender) is not always bad; he may indeed in some
cases be utterly bad, but as I was saying, a good man he never is. For he
who receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither justly
nor unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the other
hand, the utterly bad man is generally profligate, and therefore poor;
while he who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just means
only, can hardly be remarkable for riches any more than he can be very
poor. The argument, then, is right in declaring that the very rich are
not good, and if they are not good they are not happy.
And the conclusion of Plato is that we ought not to pursue any occupation
to the neglect of that for which riches exist--"I mean," he says, "soul
and body, which without gymnastics and without education will never be
worth anything; and therefore, as we have said not once but many times,
the care of riches should have the last place in our thoughts."
Men cannot be happy unless they are good, and they cannot be good unless
the care of the soul occupies the first place in their thoughts. That is
the first interest of man; the interest in the body is midway; and last
of all, when rightly regarded, is the interest about money.
The majority of mankind reverses this order of interests, and therefore
it sets literature to one side as of no practical account in human life.
More than this, it not only drops it out of mind, but it has no
conception of its influence and power in the very affairs from which it
seems to be excluded. It is my purpose to show not only the close
relation of literature to ordinary life, but its eminent position in
life, and its saving power in lives which do not suspect its influence or
value. Just as it is virtue that saves the state, if it be saved,
although the majority do not recognize it and attribute the salvation of
the state to energy, and to obedience to the laws of political economy,
and to discoveries in science, and to financial contrivances; so it is
that in the life of generations of men, considered from an ethical and
not from a religious point of view, the most potent and lasting influence
for a civilization that is worth anything, a civilization that does not
by its own nature work its decay, is that which I call literature. It is
time to define what we mean by literature. We may arrive at the meaning
by the definition of exclusion. We do not mean all books, but some books;
not all that is written and published, but only a small part of it. We do
not mean books of law, of theology, of politics, of science, of medicine,
and not necessarily books of travel, or adventure, or biography, or
fiction even. These may all be ephemeral in their nature. The term
belles-lettres does not fully express it, for it is too narrow. In books
of law, theology, politics, medicine, science, travel, adventure,
biography, philosophy, and fiction there may be passages that possess, or
the whole contents may possess, that quality which comes within our
meaning of literature. It must have in it something of the enduring and
the universal. When we use the term art, we do not mean the arts; we are
indicating a quality that may be in any of the arts. In art and
literature we require not only an expression of the facts in nature and
in human life, but of feeling, thought, emotion. There must be an appeal
to the universal in the race. It is, for example, impossible for a
Christian today to understand what the religious system of the Egyptians
of three thousand years ago was to the Egyptian mind, or to grasp the
idea conveyed to a Chinaman's thought in the phrase, "the worship of the
principle of heaven"; but the Christian of today comprehends perfectly
the letters of an Egyptian scribe in the time of Thotmes III., who
described the comical miseries of his campaign with as clear an appeal to
universal human nature as Horace used in his 'Iter Brundusium;' and the
maxims of Confucius are as comprehensible as the bitter-sweetness of
Thomas a Kempis. De Quincey distinguishes between the literature of
knowledge and the literature of power. The definition is not exact; but
we may say that the one is a statement of what is known, the other is an
emanation from the man himself; or that one may add to the sum of human
knowledge, and the other addresses itself to a higher want in human
nature than the want of knowledge. We select and set aside as literature
that which is original, the product of what we call genius. As I have
said, the subject of a production does not always determine the desired
quality which makes it literature. A biography may contain all the facts
in regard to a man and his character, arranged in an orderly and
comprehensible manner, and yet not be literature; but it may be so
written, like Plutarch's Lives or Defoe's account of Robinson Crusoe,
that it is literature, and of imperishable value as a picture of human
life, as a satisfaction to the want of the human mind which is higher
than the want of knowledge. And this contribution, which I desire to be
understood to mean when I speak of literature, is precisely the thing of
most value in the lives of the majority of men, whether they are aware of
it or not. It may be weighty and profound; it may be light, as light as
the fall of a leaf or a bird's song on the shore; it may be the thought
of Plato when he discourses of the character necessary in a perfect
state, or of Socrates, who, out of the theorem of an absolute beauty,
goodness, greatness, and the like, deduces the immortality of the soul;
or it may be the lovesong of a Scotch plowman: but it has this one
quality of answering to a need in human nature higher than a need for
facts, for knowledge, for wealth.
In noticing the remoteness in the popular conception of the relation of
literature to life, we must not neglect to take into account what may be
called the arrogance of culture, an arrogance that has been emphasized,
in these days of reaction from the old attitude of literary
obsequiousness, by harsh distinctions and hard words, which are paid back
by equally emphasized contempt. The apostles of light regard the rest of
mankind as barbarians and Philistines, and the world retorts that these
self-constituted apostles are idle word-mongers, without any sympathy
with humanity, critics and jeerers who do nothing to make the conditions
of life easier. It is natural that every man should magnify the circle of
the world in which he is active and imagine that all outside of it is
comparatively unimportant. Everybody who is not a drone has his
sufficient world. To the lawyer it is his cases and the body of law, it
is the legal relation of men that is of supreme importance; to the
merchant and manufacturer all the world consists in buying and selling,
in the production and exchange of products; to the physician all the
world is diseased and in need of remedies; to the clergyman speculation
and the discussion of dogmas and historical theology assume immense
importance; the politician has his world, the artist his also, and the
man of books and letters a realm still apart from all others. And to each
of these persons what is outside of his world seems of secondary
importance; he is absorbed in his own, which seems to him all-embracing.
To the lawyer everybody is or ought to be a litigant; to the grocer the
world is that which eats, and pays--with more or less regularity; to the
scholar the world is in books and ideas. One realizes how possessed he is
with his own little world only when by chance he changes his profession
or occupation and looks back upon the law, or politics, or journalism,
and sees in its true proportion what it was that once absorbed him and
seemed to him so large. When Socrates discusses with Gorgias the value of
rhetoric, the use of which, the latter asserts, relates to the greatest
and best of human things, Socrates says: I dare say you have heard men
singing--at feasts the old drinking-song, in which the singers enumerate
the goods of life-first, health; beauty next; thirdly, wealth honestly
acquired. The producers of these things--the physician, the trainer, the
money-maker--each in turn contends that his art produces the greatest
good. Surely, says the physician, health is the greatest good; there is
more good in my art, says the trainer, for my business is to make men
beautiful and strong in body; and consider, says the money-maker, whether
any one can produce a greater good than wealth. But, insists Gorgias, the
greatest good of men, of which I am the creator, is that which gives men
freedom in their persons, and the power of ruling over others in their
several states--that is, the word which persuades the judge in the court,
or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly: if you
have the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician your
slave, and the trainer your slave, and the moneymaker of whom you talk
will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for those who are
able to speak and persuade the multitude.
What we call life is divided into occupations and interest, and the
horizons of mankind are bounded by them. It happens naturally enough,
therefore, that there should be a want of sympathy in regard to these
pursuits among men, the politician despising the scholar, and the scholar
looking down upon the politician, and the man of affairs, the man of
industries, not caring to conceal his contempt for both the others. And
still more reasonable does the division appear between all the world
which is devoted to material life, and the few who live in and for the
expression of thought and emotion. It is a pity that this should be so,
for it can be shown that life would not be worth living divorced from the
gracious and ennobling influence of literature, and that literature
suffers atrophy when it does not concern itself with the facts and
feelings of men.
If the poet lives in a world apart from the vulgar, the most lenient
apprehension of him is that his is a sort of fool's paradise. One of the
most curious features in the relation of literature to life is this, that
while poetry, the production of the poet, is as necessary to universal
man as the atmosphere, and as acceptable, the poet is regarded with that
mingling of compassion and undervaluation, and perhaps awe, which once
attached to the weak-minded and insane, and which is sometimes expressed
by the term "inspired idiot." However the poet may have been petted and
crowned, however his name may have been diffused among peoples, I doubt
not that the popular estimate of him has always been substantially what
it is today. And we all know that it is true, true in our individual
consciousness, that if a man be known as a poet and nothing else, if his
character is sustained by no other achievement than the production of
poetry, he suffers in our opinion a loss of respect. And this is only
recovered for him after he is dead, and his poetry is left alone to speak
for his name. However fond my lord and lady were of the ballad, the place
of the minstrel was at the lower end of the hall. If we are pushed to say
why this is, why this happens to the poet and not to the producers of
anything else that excites the admiration of mankind, we are forced to
admit that there is something in the poet to sustain the popular judgment
of his in utility. In all the occupations and professions of life there
is a sign put up, invisible--but none the less real, and expressing an
almost universal feeling--"No poet need apply." And this is not because
there are so many poor poets; for there are poor lawyers, poor soldiers,
poor statesmen, incompetent business men; but none of the personal
disparagement attaches to them that is affixed to the poet. This popular
estimate of the poet extends also, possibly in less degree, to all the
producers of the literature that does not concern itself with knowledge.
It is not our care to inquire further why this is so, but to repeat that
it is strange that it should be so when poetry is, and has been at all
times, the universal solace of all peoples who have emerged out of
barbarism, the one thing not supernatural and yet akin to the
supernatural, that makes the world, in its hard and sordid conditions,
tolerable to the race. For poetry is not merely the comfort of the
refined and the delight of the educated; it is the alleviator of poverty,
the pleasure-ground of the ignorant, the bright spot in the most dreary
pilgrimage. We cannot conceive the abject animal condition of our race
were poetry abstracted; and we do not wonder that this should be so when
we reflect that it supplies a want higher than the need for food, for
raiment, or ease of living, and that the mind needs support as much as
the body. The majority of mankind live largely in the imagination, the
office or use of which is to lift them in spirit out of the bare physical
conditions in which the majority exist. There are races, which we may
call the poetical races, in which this is strikingly exemplified. It
would be difficult to find poverty more complete, physical wants less
gratified, the conditions of life more bare than among the Oriental
peoples from the Nile to the Ganges and from the Indian Ocean to the
steppes of Siberia. But there are perhaps none among the more favored
races who live so much in the world of imagination fed by poetry and
romance. Watch the throng seated about an Arab or Indian or Persian
story-teller and poet, men and women with all the marks of want, hungry,
almost naked, without any prospect in life of ever bettering their sordid
condition; see their eyes kindle, their breathing suspended, their tense
absorption; see their tears, hear their laughter, note their excitement
as the magician unfolds to them a realm of the imagination in which they
are free for the hour to wander, tasting a keen and deep enjoyment that
all the wealth of Croesus cannot purchase for his disciples. Measure, if
you can, what poetry is to them, what their lives would be without it. To
the millions and millions of men who are in this condition, the bard, the
story-teller, the creator of what we are considering as literature, comes
with the one thing that can lift them out of poverty, suffering--all the
woe of which nature is so heedless.
It is not alone of the poetical nations of the East that this is true,
nor is this desire for the higher enjoyment always wanting in the savage
tribes of the West. When the Jesuit Fathers in 1768 landed upon the
almost untouched and unexplored southern Pacific coast, they found in the
San Gabriel Valley in Lower California that the Indians had games and
feasts at which they decked themselves in flower garlands that reached to
their feet, and that at these games there were song contests which
sometimes lasted for three days. This contest of the poets was an old
custom with them. And we remember how the ignorant Icelanders, who had
never seen a written character, created the splendid Saga, and handed it
down from father to son. We shall scarcely find in Europe a peasantry
whose abject poverty is not in some measure alleviated by this power
which literature gives them to live outside it. Through our sacred
Scriptures, through the ancient storytellers, through the tradition which
in literature made, as I said, the chief continuity in the stream of
time, we all live a considerable, perhaps the better, portion of our
lives in the Orient. But I am not sure that the Scotch peasant, the
crofter in his Highland cabin, the operative in his squalid
tenement-house, in the hopelessness of poverty, in the grime of a life
made twice as hard as that of the Arab by an inimical climate, does not
owe more to literature than the man of culture, whose material
surroundings are heaven in the imagination of the poor. Think what his
wretched life would be, in its naked deformity, without the popular
ballads, without the romances of Scott, which have invested his land for
him, as for us, with enduring charm; and especially without the songs of
Burns, which keep alive in him the feeling that he is a man, which impart
to his blunted sensibility the delicious throb of spring-songs that
enable him to hear the birds, to see the bits of blue sky-songs that make
him tender of the wee bit daisy at his feet--songs that hearten him when
his heart is fit to break with misery. Perhaps the English peasant, the
English operative, is less susceptible to such influences than the Scotch
or the Irish; but over him, sordid as his conditions are, close kin as he
is to the clod, the light of poetry is diffused; there filters into his
life, also, something of that divine stream of which we have spoken, a
dialect poem that touches him, the leaf of a psalm, some bit of
imagination, some tale of pathos, set afloat by a poor writer so long ago
that it has become the common stock of human tradition-maybe from
Palestine, maybe from the Ganges, perhaps from Athens--some expression of
real emotion, some creation, we say, that makes for him a world, vague
and dimly apprehended, that is not at all the actual world in which he
sins and suffers. The poor woman, in a hut with an earth floor, a reeking
roof, a smoky chimney, barren of comfort, so indecent that a gentleman
would not stable his horse in it, sits and sews upon a coarse garment,
while she rocks the cradle of an infant about whom she cherishes no
illusions that his lot will be other than that of his father before him.
As she sits forlorn, it is not the wretched hovel that she sees, nor
other hovels like it--rows of tenements of hopeless poverty, the
ale-house, the gin-shop, the coal-pit, and the choking factory--but:
"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green"
for her, thanks to the poet. But, alas for the poet there is not a
peasant nor a wretched operative of them all who will not shake his head
and tap his forehead with his forefinger when the poor poet chap passes
by. The peasant has the same opinion of him that the physician, the
trainer, and the money-lender had of the rhetorician.
The hard conditions of the lonely New England life, with its religious
theories as sombre as its forests, its rigid notions of duty as difficult
to make bloom into sweetness and beauty as the stony soil, would have
been unendurable if they had not been touched with the ideal created by
the poet. There was in creed and purpose the virility that creates a
state, and, as Menander says, the country which is cultivated with
difficulty produces brave men; but we leave out an important element in
the lives of the Pilgrims if we overlook the means they had of living
above their barren circumstances. I do not speak only of the culture
which many of them brought from the universities, of the Greek and Roman
classics, and what unworldly literature they could glean from the
productive age of Elizabeth and James, but of another source, more
universally resorted to, and more powerful in exciting imagination and
emotion, and filling the want in human nature of which we have spoken.
They had the Bible, and it was more to them, much more, than a book of
religion, than a revelation of religious truth, a rule for the conduct of
life, or a guide to heaven. It supplied the place to them of the
Mahabharata to the Hindoo, of the story-teller to the Arab. It opened to
them a boundless realm of poetry and imagination.
What is the Bible? It might have sufficed, accepted as a book of
revelation, for all the purposes of moral guidance, spiritual
consolation, and systematized authority, if it had been a collection of
precepts, a dry code of morals, an arsenal of judgments, and a treasury
of promises. We are accustomed to think of the Pilgrims as training their
intellectual faculties in the knottiest problems of human responsibility
and destiny, toughening their mental fibre in wrestling with dogmas and
the decrees of Providence, forgetting what else they drew out of the
Bible: what else it was to them in a degree it has been to few peoples
many age. For the Bible is the unequaled record of thought and emotion,
the reservoir of poetry, traditions, stories, parables, exaltations,
consolations, great imaginative adventure, for which the spirit of man is
always longing. It might have been, in warning examples and commands,
all-sufficient to enable men to make a decent pilgrimage on earth and
reach a better country; but it would have been a very different book to
mankind if it had been only a volume of statutes, and if it lacked its
wonderful literary quality. It might have enabled men to reach a better
country, but not, while on earth, to rise into and live in that better
country, or to live in a region above the sordidness of actual life. For,
apart from its religious intention and sacred character, the book is so
written that it has supremely in its history, poetry, prophecies,
promises, stories, that clear literary quality that supplies, as
certainly no other single book does, the want in the human mind which is
higher than the want of facts or knowledge.
The Bible is the best illustration of the literature of power, for it
always concerns itself with life, it touches it at all points. And this
is the test of any piece of literature--its universal appeal to human
nature. When I consider the narrow limitations of the Pilgrim households,
the absence of luxury, the presence of danger and hardship, the harsh
laws--only less severe than the contemporary laws of England and
Virginia--the weary drudgery, the few pleasures, the curb upon the
expression of emotion and of tenderness, the ascetic repression of
worldly thought, the absence of poetry in the routine occupations and
conditions, I can feel what the Bible must have been to them. It was an
open door into a world where emotion is expressed, where imagination can
range, where love and longing find a language, where imagery is given to
every noble and suppressed passion of the soul, where every aspiration
finds wings. It was history, or, as Thucydides said, philosophy teaching
by example; it was the romance of real life; it was entertainment
unfailing; the wonder-book of childhood, the volume of sweet sentiment to
the shy maiden, the sword to the soldier, the inciter of the youth to
heroic enduring of hardness, it was the refuge of the aged in failing
activity. Perhaps we can nowhere find a better illustration of the true
relation of literature to life than in this example.
Let us consider the comparative value of literature to mankind. By
comparative value I mean its worth to men in comparison with other things
of acknowledged importance, such as the creation of industries, the
government of States, the manipulation of the politics of an age, the
achievements in war and discovery, and the lives of admirable men. It
needs a certain perspective to judge of this aright, for the near and the
immediate always assume importance. The work that an age has on hand,
whether it be discovery, conquest, the wars that determine boundaries or
are fought for policies, the industries that develop a country or affect
the character of a people, the wielding of power, the accumulation of
fortunes, the various activities of any given civilization or period,
assume such enormous proportions to those engaged in them that such a
modest thing as the literary product seems insignificant in comparison;
and hence it is that the man of action always holds in slight esteem the
man of thought, and especially the expresser of feeling and emotion, the
poet and the humorist. It is only when we look back over the ages, when
civilizations have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, the
ambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds that
make up history, that we are enabled to see what remains, what is
permanent. Perhaps the chief result left to the world out of a period of
heroic exertion, of passion and struggle and accumulation, is a sheaf of
poems, or the record by a man of letters of some admirable character.
Spain filled a large place in the world in the sixteenth century, and its
influence upon history is by no means spent yet; but we have inherited
out of that period nothing, I dare say, that is of more value than the
romance of Don Quixote. It is true that the best heritage of generation
from generation is the character of great men; but we always owe its
transmission to the poet and the writer. Without Plato there would be no
Socrates. There is no influence comparable in human life to the
personality of a powerful man, so long as he is present to his
generation, or lives in the memory of those who felt his influence. But
after time has passed, will the world, will human life, that is
essentially the same in all changing conditions, be more affected by what
Bismarck did or by what Goethe said?
We may without impropriety take for an illustration of the comparative
value of literature to human needs the career of a man now living. In the
opinion of many, Mr. Gladstone is the greatest Englishman of this age.
What would be the position of the British empire, what would be the
tendency of English politics and society without him, is a matter for
speculation. He has not played such a role for England and its neighbors
as Bismarck has played for Germany and the Continent, but he has been one
of the most powerful influences in molding English action. He is the
foremost teacher. Rarely in history has a nation depended more upon a
single man, at times, than the English upon Gladstone, upon his will, his
ability, and especially his character. In certain recent crises the
thought of losing him produced something like a panic in the English
mind, justifying in regard to him, the hyperbole of Choate upon the death
of Webster, that the sailor on the distant sea would feel less safe--as
if a protecting providence had been withdrawn from the world. His mastery
of finance and of economic problems, his skill in debate, his marvelous
achievements in oratory, have extorted the admiration of his enemies.
There is scarcely a province in government, letters, art, or research in
which the mind can win triumphs that he has not invaded and displayed his
power in; scarcely a question in politics, reform, letters, religion,
archaeology, sociology, which he has not discussed with ability. He is a
scholar, critic, parliamentarian, orator, voluminous writer. He seems
equally at home in every field of human activity--a man of prodigious
capacity and enormous acquirements. He can take up, with a turn of the
hand, and always with vigor, the cause of the Greeks, Papal power,
education, theology, the influence of Egypt on Homer, the effect of
English legislation on King O'Brien, contributing something noteworthy to
all the discussions of the day. But I am not aware that he has ever
produced a single page of literature. Whatever space he has filled in his
own country, whatever and however enduring the impression he has made
upon English life and society, does it seem likely that the sum total of
his immense activity in so many fields, after the passage of so many
years, will be worth to the world as much as the simple story of Rab and
his Friends? Already in America I doubt if it is. The illustration might
have more weight with some minds if I contrasted the work of this great
man--as to its answering to a deep want in human nature--with a novel
like 'Henry Esmond' or a poem like 'In Memoriam'; but I think it is
sufficient to rest it upon so slight a performance as the sketch by Dr.
John Brown, of Edinburgh. For the truth is that a little page of
literature, nothing more than a sheet of paper with a poem written on it,
may have that vitality, that enduring quality, that adaptation to life,
that make it of more consequence to all who inherit it than every
material achievement of the age that produced it. It was nothing but a
sheet of paper with a poem on it, carried to the door of his London
patron, for which the poet received a guinea, and perhaps a seat at the
foot of my lord's table. What was that scrap compared to my lord's
business, his great establishment, his equipages in the Park, his
position in society, his weight in the House of Lords, his influence in
Europe? And yet that scrap of paper has gone the world over; it has been
sung in the camp, wept over in the lonely cottage; it has gone with the
marching regiments, with the explorers--with mankind, in short, on its
way down the ages, brightening, consoling, elevating life; and my lord,
who regarded as scarcely above a menial the poet to whom he tossed the
guinea--my lord, with all his pageantry and power, has utterly gone and
left no witness.
"EQUALITY"
By Charles Dudley Warner
In accordance with the advice of Diogenes of Apollonia in the beginning
of his treatise on Natural Philosophy--"It appears to me to be well for
every one who commences any sort of philosophical treatise to lay down
some undeniable principle to start with"--we offer this:
All men are created unequal.
It would be a most interesting study to trace the growth in the world of
the doctrine of "equality." That is not the purpose of this essay, any
further than is necessary for definition. We use the term in its popular
sense, in the meaning, somewhat vague, it is true, which it has had since
the middle of the eighteenth century. In the popular apprehension it is
apt to be confounded with uniformity; and this not without reason, since
in many applications of the theory the tendency is to produce likeness or
uniformity. Nature, with equal laws, tends always to diversity; and
doubtless the just notion of equality in human affairs consists with
unlikeness. Our purpose is to note some of the tendencies of the dogma as
it is at present understood by a considerable portion of mankind.
We regard the formulated doctrine as modern. It would be too much to say
that some notion of the "equality of men" did not underlie the
socialistic and communistic ideas which prevailed from time to time in
the ancient world, and broke out with volcanic violence in the Grecian
and Roman communities. But those popular movements seem to us rather
blind struggles against physical evils, and to be distinguished from
those more intelligent actions based upon the theory which began to stir
Europe prior to the Reformation.
It is sufficient for our purpose to take the well-defined theory of
modern times. Whether the ideal republic of Plato was merely a convenient
form for philosophical speculation, or whether, as the greatest authority
on political economy in Germany, Dr. William Roscher, thinks, it "was no
mere fancy"; whether Plato's notion of the identity of man and the State
is compatible with the theory of equality, or whether it is, as many
communists say, indispensable to it, we need not here discuss. It is true
that in his Republic almost all the social theories which have been
deduced from the modern proclamation of equality are elaborated. There
was to be a community of property, and also a community of wives and
children. The equality of the sexes was insisted on to the extent of
living in common, identical education and pursuits, equal share in all
labors, in occupations, and in government. Between the sexes there was
allowed only one ultimate difference. The Greeks, as Professor Jowett
says, had noble conceptions of womanhood; but Plato's ideal for the sexes
had no counterpart in their actual life, nor could they have understood
the sort of equality upon which he insisted. The same is true of the
Romans throughout their history.
More than any other Oriental peoples the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire
entertained the idea of the equality of the sexes; but the equality of
man was not conceived by them. Still less did any notion of it exist in
the Jewish state. It was the fashion with the socialists of 1793, as it
has been with the international assemblages at Geneva in our own day, to
trace the genesis of their notions back to the first Christian age. The
far-reaching influence of the new gospel in the liberation of the human
mind and in promoting just and divinely-ordered relations among men is
admitted; its origination of the social and political dogma we are
considering is denied. We do not find that Christ himself anywhere
expressed it or acted on it. He associated with the lowly, the vile, the
outcast; he taught that all men, irrespective of rank or possessions, are
sinners, and in equal need of help. But he attempted no change in the
conditions of society. The "communism" of the early Christians was the
temporary relation of a persecuted and isolated sect, drawn together by
common necessities and dangers, and by the new enthusiasm of
self-surrender. ["The community of goods of the first Christians at
Jerusalem, so frequently cited and extolled, was only a community of use,
not of ownership (Acts iv. 32), and throughout a voluntary act of love,
not a duty (v. 4); least of all, a right which the poorer might assert.
Spite of all this, that community of goods produced a chronic state of
poverty in the church of Jerusalem." (Principles of Political Economy. By
William Roscher. Note to Section LXXXI. English translation. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. 1878.)]--Paul announced the universal brotherhood of
man, but he as clearly recognized the subordination of society, in the
duties of ruler and subject, master and slave, and in all the domestic
relations; and although his gospel may be interpreted to contain the
elements of revolution, it is not probable that he undertook to
inculcate, by the proclamation of "universal brotherhood," anything more
than the duty of universal sympathy between all peoples and classes as
society then existed.
If Christianity has been and is the force in promoting and shaping
civilization that we regard it, we may be sure that it is not as a
political agent, or an annuller of the inequalities of life, that we are
to expect aid from it. Its office, or rather one of its chief offices on
earth, is to diffuse through the world, regardless of condition or
possessions or talent or opportunity, sympathy and a recognition of the
value of manhood underlying every lot and every diversity--a value not
measured by earthly accidents, but by heavenly standards. This we
understand to be "Christian equality." Of course it consists with
inequalities of condition, with subordination, discipline, obedience; to
obey and serve is as honorable as to command and to be served.
If the religion of Christ should ever be acclimated on earth, the result
would not be the removal of hardships and suffering, or of the necessity
of self-sacrifice; but the bitterness and discontent at unequal
conditions would measurably disappear. At the bar of Christianity the
poor man is the equal of the rich, and the learned of the unlearned,
since intellectual acquisition is no guarantee of moral worth. The
content that Christianity would bring to our perturbed society would come
from the practical recognition of the truth that all conditions may be
equally honorable. The assertion of the dignity of man and of labor is,
we imagine, the sum and substance of the equality and communism of the
New Testament. But we are to remember that this is not merely a "gospel
for the poor."
Whatever the theories of the ancient world were, the development of
democratic ideas is sufficiently marked in the fifteenth century, and
even in the fourteenth, to rob the eighteenth of the credit of
originating the doctrine of equality. To mention only one of the early
writers,--[For copious references to authorities on the spread of
communistic and socialistic ideas and libertine community of goods and
women in four periods of the world's history--namely, at the time of the
decline of Greece, in the degeneration of the Roman republic, among the
moderns in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own day--see
Roscher's Political Economy, notes to Section LXXIX., et seq.]
--Marsilio, a physician of Padua, in 1324, said that the laws ought to be
made by all the citizens; and he based this sovereignty of the people
upon the greater likelihood of laws being better obeyed, and also being
good laws, when they were made by the whole body of the persons affected.
In 1750 and 1753, J. J. Rousseau published his two discourses on
questions proposed by the Academy of Dijon: "Has the Restoration of
Sciences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt Manners?" and "What is the
Origin of Inequality among Men, and is it Authorized by Natural Law?"
These questions show the direction and the advance of thinking on social
topics in the middle of the eighteenth century. Rousseau's Contrat-Social
and the novel Emile were published in 1761.
But almost three-quarters of a century before, in 1690, John Locke
published his two treatises on government. Rousseau was familiar with
them. Mr. John Morley, in his admirable study of Rousseau, [Rousseau. By
John Morley. London: Chapman & Hall. 1873--I have used it freely in the
glance at this period.]--fully discusses the latter's obligation to
Locke; and the exposition leaves Rousseau little credit for originality,
but considerable for illogical misconception. He was, in fact, the most
illogical of great men, and the most inconsistent even of geniuses. The
Contrat-Social is a reaction in many things from the discourses, and
Emile is almost an entire reaction, especially in the theory of
education, from both.
His central doctrine of popular sovereignty was taken from Locke. The
English philosopher said, in his second treatise, "To understand
political power aright and derive it from its original, we must consider
what state all men are naturally in; and that is a state of perfect
freedom to order their actions and dispose of their persons and
possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,
without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man--a state
also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal,
no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than
that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all
the advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also
be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless
the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of His
will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear
appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty." But a state
of liberty is not a state of license. We cannot exceed our own rights
without assailing the rights of others. There is no such subordination as
authorizes us to destroy one another. As every one is bound to preserve
himself, so he is bound to preserve the rest of mankind, and except to do
justice upon an offender we may not impair the life, liberty, health, or
goods of another. Here Locke deduces the power that one man may have over
another; community could not exist if transgressors were not punished.
Every wrongdoer places himself in "a state of war." Here is the
difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which men,
says Locke, have confounded--alluding probably to Hobbes's notion of the
lawlessness of human society in the original condition.
The portion of Locke's treatise which was not accepted by the French
theorists was that relating to property. Property in lands or goods is
due wholly and only to the labor man has put into it. By labor he has
removed it from the common state in which nature has placed it, and
annexed something to it that excludes the common rights of other men.
Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes as well as from Locke in his conception of
popular sovereignty; but this was not his only lack of originality. His
discourse on primitive society, his unscientific and unhistoric notions
about the original condition of man, were those common in the middle of
the eighteenth century. All the thinkers and philosophers and fine ladies
and gentlemen assumed a certain state of nature, and built upon it, out
of words and phrases, an airy and easy reconstruction of society, without
a thought of investigating the past, or inquiring into the development of
mankind. Every one talked of "the state of nature" as if he knew all
about it. "The conditions of primitive man," says Mr. Morley, "were
discussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at convivial
supper-parties, and settled with complete assurance." That was the age
when solitary Frenchmen plunged into the wilderness of North America,
confidently expecting to recover the golden age under the shelter of a
wigwam and in the society of a squaw.
The state of nature of Rousseau was a state in which inequality did not
exist, and with a fervid rhetoric he tried to persuade his readers that
it was the happier state. He recognized inequality, it is true, as a word
of two different meanings: first, physical inequality, difference of age,
strength, health, and of intelligence and character; second, moral and
political inequality, difference of privileges which some enjoy to the
detriment of others-such as riches, honor, power. The first difference is
established by nature, the second by man. So long, however, as the state
of nature endures, no disadvantages flow from the natural inequalities.
In Rousseau's account of the means by which equality was lost, the
incoming of the ideas of property is prominent. From property arose civil
society. With property came in inequality. His exposition of inequality
is confused, and it is not possible always to tell whether he means
inequality of possessions or of political rights. His contemporary,
Morelly, who published the Basileade in 1753, was troubled by no such
ambiguity. He accepts the doctrine that men are formed by laws, but holds
that they are by nature good, and that laws, by establishing a division
of the products of nature, broke up the sociability of men, and that all
political and moral evils are the result of private property. Political
inequality is an accident of inequality of possessions, and the
renovation of the latter lies in the abolition of the former.
The opening sentence of the Contrat-Social is, "Man is born free, and
everywhere he is a slave," a statement which it is difficult to reconcile
with the fact that every human being is born helpless, dependent, and
into conditions of subjection, conditions that we have no reason to
suppose were ever absent from the race. But Rousseau never said, "All men
are born equal." He recognized, as we have seen, natural inequality. What
he held was that the artificial differences springing from the social
union were disproportionate to the capacities springing from the original
constitution; and that society, as now organized, tends to make the gulf
wider between those who have privileges and those who have none.
The well-known theory upon which Rousseau's superstructure rests is that
society is the result of a compact, a partnership between men. They have
not made an agreement to submit their individual sovereignty to some
superior power, but they have made a covenant of brotherhood. It is a
contract of association. Men were, and ought to be, equal cooperators,
not only in politics, but in industries and all the affairs of life. All
the citizens are participants in the sovereign authority. Their
sovereignty is inalienable; power may be transmitted, but not will; if
the people promise to obey, it dissolves itself by the very act--if there
is a master, there is no longer a people. Sovereignty is also
indivisible; it cannot be split up into legislative, judiciary, and
executive power.
Society being the result of a compact made by men, it followed that the
partners could at any time remake it, their sovereignty being
inalienable. And this the French socialists, misled by a priori notions,
attempted to do, on the theory of the Contrat-Social, as if they had a
tabula rasa, without regarding the existing constituents of society, or
traditions, or historical growths.
Equality, as a phrase, having done duty as a dissolvent, was pressed into
service as a constructor. As this is not so much an essay on the nature
of equality is an attempt to indicate some of the modern tendencies to
carry out what is illusory in the dogma, perhaps enough has been said of
this period. Mr. Morley very well remarks that the doctrine of equality
as a demand for a fair chance in the world is unanswerable; but that it
is false when it puts him who uses his chance well on the same level with
him who uses it ill. There is no doubt that when Condorcet said, "Not
only equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the social
art," he uttered the sentiments of the socialists of the Revolution.
The next authoritative announcement of equality, to which it is necessary
to refer, is in the American Declaration of Independence, in these words:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just power from the consent of the governed." And the Declaration goes
on, in temperate and guarded language, to assert the right of a people to
change their form of government when it becomes destructive of the ends
named.
Although the genesis of these sentiments seems to be French rather than
English, and equality is not defined, and critics have differed as to
whether the equality clause is independent or qualified by what follows,
it is not necessary to suppose that Thomas Jefferson meant anything
inconsistent with the admitted facts of nature and of history. It is
important to bear in mind that the statesmen of our Revolution were
inaugurating a political and not a social revolution, and that the
gravamen of their protest was against the authority of a distant crown.
Nevertheless, these dogmas, independent of the circumstances in which
they were uttered, have exercised and do exercise a very powerful
influence upon the thinking of mankind on social and political topics,
and are being applied without limitations, and without recognition of the
fact that if they are true, in the sense meant by their originators, they
are not the whole truth. It is to be noticed that rights are mentioned,
but not duties, and that if political rights only are meant, political
duties are not inculcated as of equal moment. It is not announced that
political power is a function to be discharged for the good of the whole
body, and not a mere right to be enjoyed for the advantage of the
possessor; and it is to be noted also that this idea did not enter into
the conception of Rousseau.
The dogma that "government derives its just power from the consent of the
governed" is entirely consonant with the book theories of the eighteenth
century, and needs to be confronted, and practically is confronted, with
the equally good dogma that "governments derive their just power from
conformity with the principles of justice." We are not to imagine, for
instance, that the framers of the Declaration really contemplated the
exclusion from political organization of all higher law than that in the
"consent of the governed," or the application of the theory, let us say,
to a colony composed for the most part of outcasts, murderers, thieves,
and prostitutes, or to such states as today exist in the Orient. The
Declaration was framed for a highly intelligent and virtuous society.
Many writers, and some of them English, have expressed curiosity, if not
wonder, at the different fortunes which attended the doctrine of equality
in America and in France. The explanation is on the surface, and need not
be sought in the fact of a difference of social and political level in
the two countries at the start, nor even in the further fact that the
colonies were already accustomed to self-government.
The simple truth is that the dogmas of the Declaration were not put into
the fundamental law. The Constitution is the most practical state
document ever made. It announces no dogmas, proclaims no theories. It
accepted society as it was, with its habits and traditions; raising no
abstract questions whether men are born free or equal, or how society
ought to be organized. It is simply a working compact, made by "the
people," to promote union, establish justice, and secure the blessings of
liberty; and the equality is in the assumption of the right of "the
people of the United States" to do this. And yet, in a recent number of
Blackwood's Magazine, a writer makes the amusing statement, "I have never
met an American who could deny that, while firmly maintaining that the
theory was sound which, in the beautiful language of the Constitution,
proclaims that all men were born equal, he was," etc.
An enlightening commentary on the meaning of the Declaration, in the
minds of the American statesmen of the period, is furnished by the
opinions which some of them expressed upon the French Revolution while it
was in progress. Gouverneur Morris, minister to France in 1789, was a
conservative republican; Thomas Jefferson was a radical democrat. Both of
them had a warm sympathy with the French "people" in the Revolution; both
hoped for a republic; both recognized, we may reasonably infer, the
sufficient cause of the Revolution in the long-continued corruption of
court and nobility, and the intolerable sufferings of the lower orders;
and both, we have equal reason to believe, thought that a fair
accommodation, short of a dissolution of society, was defeated by the
imbecility of the king and the treachery and malignity of a considerable
portion of the nobility. The Revolution was not caused by theories,
however much it may have been excited or guided by them. But both Morris
and Jefferson saw the futility of the application of the abstract dogma
of equality and the theories of the Social Contract to the reconstruction
of government and the reorganization of society in France.
If the aristocracy were malignant--though numbers of them were far from
being so--there was also a malignant prejudice aroused against them, and
M. Taine is not far wrong when he says of this prejudice, "Its hard, dry
kernel consists of the abstract idea of equality."--[The French
Revolution. By H. A. Taine. Vol. i., bk. ii., chap. ii., sec. iii.
Translation. New York: Henry Holt & Co.]--Taine's French Revolution is
cynical, and, with all its accumulation of material, omits some facts
necessary to a philosophical history; but a passage following that quoted
is worth reproducing in this connection: "The treatment of the nobles of
the Assembly is the same as the treatment of the Protestants by Louis
XIV. . . . One hundred thousand Frenchmen driven out at the end of the
seventeenth century, and one hundred thousand driven out at the end of
the eighteenth! Mark how an intolerant democracy completes the work of an
intolerant monarchy! The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the name of
uniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of equality.
For the second time an abstract principle, and with the same effect,
buries its blade in the heart of a living society."
Notwithstanding the world-wide advertisement of the French experiment, it
has taken almost a century for the dogma of equality, at least outside of
France, to filter down from the speculative thinkers into a general
popular acceptance, as an active principle to be used in the shaping of
affairs, and to become more potent in the popular mind than tradition or
habit. The attempt is made to apply it to society with a brutal logic;
and we might despair as to the result, if we did not know that the world
is not ruled by logic. Nothing is so fascinating in the hands of the
half-informed as a neat dogma; it seems the perfect key to all
difficulties. The formula is applied in contempt and ignorance of the
past, as if building up were as easy as pulling down, and as if society
were a machine to be moved by mechanical appliances, and not a living
organism composed of distinct and sensitive beings. Along with the spread
of a belief in the uniformity of natural law has unfortunately gone a
suggestion of parallelism of the moral law to it, and a notion that if we
can discover the right formula, human society and government can be
organized with a mathematical justice to all the parts. By many the dogma
of equality is held to be that formula, and relief from the greater evils
of the social state is expected from its logical extension.
Let us now consider some of the present movements and tendencies that are
related, more or less, to this belief:
I. Absolute equality is seen to depend upon absolute supremacy of the
state. Professor Henry Fawcett says, "Excessive dependence on the state
is the most prominent characteristic of modern socialism." "These
proposals to prohibit inheritance, to abolish private property, and to
make the state the owner of all the capital and the administrator of the
entire industry of the country are put forward as representing socialism
in its ultimate and highest development."--["Socialism in Germany and the
United States," Fortnightly Review, November, 1878.]
Society and government should be recast till they conform to the theory,
or, let us say, to its exaggerations. Men can unmake what they have made.
There is no higher authority anywhere than the will of the majority, no
matter what the majority is in intellect and morals. Fifty-one ignorant
men have a natural right to legislate for the one hundred, as against
forty-nine intelligent men.
All men being equal, one man is as fit to legislate and execute as
another. A recently elected Congressman from Maine vehemently repudiated
in a public address, as a slander, the accusation that he was educated.
The theory was that, uneducated, he was the proper representative of the
average ignorance of his district, and that ignorance ought to be
represented in the legislature in kind. The ignorant know better what
they want than the educated know for them. "Their education [that of
college men] destroys natural perception and judgment; so that cultivated
people are one-sided, and their judgment is often inferior to that of the
working people." "Cultured people have made up their minds, and are hard
to move." "No lawyer should be elected to a place in any legislative
body."--[Opinions of working-men, reported in "The Nationals, their
Origin and their Aims," The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1878.]
Experience is of no account, neither is history, nor tradition, nor the
accumulated wisdom of ages. On all questions of political economy,
finance, morals, the ignorant man stands on a par with the best informed
as a legislator. We might cite any number of the results of these
illusions. A member of a recent House of Representatives declared that we
"can repair the losses of the war by the issue of a sufficient amount of
paper money." An intelligent mechanic of our acquaintance, a leader among
the Nationals, urging the theory of his party, that banks should be
destroyed, and that the government should issue to the people as much
"paper money" as they need, denied the right of banks or of any
individuals to charge interest on money. Yet he would take rent for the
house he owns.
Laws must be the direct expression of the will of the majority, and be
altered solely on its will. It would be well, therefore, to have a
continuous election, so that, any day, the electors can change their
representative for a new man. "If my caprice be the source of law, then
my enjoyment may be the source of the division of the nation's
resources."--[Stahl's Rechtsphilosophie, quoted by Roscher.]
Property is the creator of inequality, and this factor in our artificial
state can be eliminated only by absorption. It is the duty of the
government to provide for all the people, and the sovereign people will
see to it that it does. The election franchise is a natural right--a
man's weapon to protect himself. It may be asked, If it is just this, and
not a sacred trust accorded to be exercised for the benefit of society,
why may not a man sell it, if it is for his interest to do so?
What is there illogical in these positions from the premise given?
"Communism," says Roscher, [Political Economy, bk. i., ch. v., 78.]--is
the logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the principle of equality.
Men who hear themselves designated as the sovereign people, and their
welfare as the supreme law of the state, are more apt than others to feel
more keenly the distance which separates their own misery from the
superabundance of others. And, indeed, to what an extent our physical
wants are determined by our intellectual mold!"
The tendency of the exaggeration of man's will as the foundation of
government is distinctly materialistic; it is a self-sufficiency that
shuts out God and the higher law.--["And, indeed, if the will of man is
all-powerful, if states are to be distinguished from one another only by
their boundaries, if everything may be changed like the scenery in a play
by a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may arbitrarily make
the right, if nations can be put through evolutions like regiments of
troops, what a field would the world present for attempts at the
realizations of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would be
offered to take possession, by main force, of the government of human
affairs, to destroy the rights of property and the rights of capital, to
gratify ardent longings without trouble, and to provide the much-coveted
means of enjoyment! The Titans have tried to scale the heavens, and have
fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely speculative dogmatism
sinks into materialism." (M. Wolowski's Essay on the Historical Method,
prefixed to his translation of Roscher's Political Economy.)]--We need to
remember that the Creator of man, and not man himself, formed society and
instituted government; that God is always behind human society and
sustains it; that marriage and the family and all social relations are
divinely established; that man's duty, coinciding with his right, is, by
the light of history, by experience, by observation of men, and by the
aid of revelation, to find out and make operative, as well as he can, the
divine law in human affairs. And it may be added that the sovereignty of
the people, as a divine trust, may be as logically deduced from the
divine institution of government as the old divine right of kings.
Government, by whatever name it is called, is a matter of experience and
expediency. If we submit to the will of the majority, it is because it is
more convenient to do so; and if the republic or the democracy vindicate
itself, it is because it works best, on the whole, for a particular
people. But it needs no prophet to say that it will not work long if God
is shut out from it, and man, in a full-blown socialism, is considered
the ultimate authority.
II. Equality of education. In our American system there is, not only
theoretically but practically, an equality of opportunity in the public
schools, which are free to all children, and rise by gradations from the
primaries to the high-schools, in which the curriculum in most respects
equals, and in variety exceeds, that of many third-class "colleges." In
these schools nearly the whole round of learning, in languages, science,
and art, is touched. The system has seemed to be the best that could be
devised for a free society, where all take part in the government, and
where so much depends upon the intelligence of the electors. Certain
objections, however, have been made to it. As this essay is intended only
to be tentative, we shall state some of them, without indulging in
lengthy comments.
( 1. ) The first charge is superficiality--a necessary consequence of
attempting too much--and a want of adequate preparation for special
pursuits in life.
( 2. ) A uniformity in mediocrity is alleged from the use of the same
text-books and methods in all schools, for all grades and capacities.
This is one of the most common criticisms on our social state by a
certain class of writers in England, who take an unflagging interest in
our development. One answer to it is this: There is more reason to expect
variety of development and character in a generally educated than in an
ignorant community; there is no such uniformity as the dull level of
ignorance.
( 3. ) It is said that secular education--and the general schools open to
all in a community of mixed religions must be secular--is training the
rising generation to be materialists and socialists.
( 4. ) Perhaps a better-founded charge is that a system of equal
education, with its superficiality, creates discontent with the condition
in which a majority of men must be--that of labor--a distaste for trades
and for hand-work, an idea that what is called intellectual labor (let us
say, casting up accounts in a shop, or writing trashy stories for a
sensational newspaper) is more honorable than physical labor; and
encourages the false notion that "the elevation of the working classes"
implies the removal of men and women from those classes.
We should hesitate to draw adverse conclusions in regard to a system yet
so young that its results cannot be fairly estimated. Only after two or
three generations can its effects upon the character of a great people be
measured: Observations differ, and testimony is difficult to obtain. We
think it safe to say that those states are most prosperous which have the
best free schools. But if the philosopher inquires as to the general
effect upon the national character in respect to the objections named, he
must wait for a reply.
III. The pursuit of the chimera of social equality, from the belief that
it should logically follow political equality; resulting in extravagance,
misapplication of natural capacities, a notion that physical labor is
dishonorable, or that the state should compel all to labor alike, and in
efforts to remove inequalities of condition by legislation.
IV. The equality of the sexes. The stir in the middle of the eighteenth
century gave a great impetus to the emancipation of woman; though,
curiously enough, Rousseau, in unfolding his plan of education for
Sophie, in Emile, inculcates an almost Oriental subjection of woman--her
education simply that she may please man. The true enfranchisement of
woman--that is, the recognition (by herself as well as by man) of her
real place in the economy of the world, in the full development of her
capacities--is the greatest gain to civilization since the Christian era.
The movement has its excesses, and the gain has not been without loss.
"When we turn to modern literature," writes Mr. Money, "from the pages in
which Fenelon speaks of the education of girls, who does not feel that
the world has lost a sacred accent--that some ineffable essence has
passed out from our hearts?"
How far the expectation has been realized that women, in fiction, for
instance, would be more accurately described, better understood, and
appear as nobler and lovelier beings when women wrote the novels, this is
not the place to inquire. The movement has results which are unavoidable
in a period of transition, and probably only temporary. The education of
woman and the development of her powers hold the greatest promise for the
regeneration of society. But this development, yet in its infancy, and
pursued with much crudeness and misconception of the end, is not enough.
Woman would not only be equal with man, but would be like him; that is,
perform in society the functions he now performs. Here, again, the notion
of equality is pushed towards uniformity. The reformers admit structural
differences in the sexes, though these, they say, are greatly exaggerated
by subjection; but the functional differences are mainly to be
eliminated. Women ought to mingle in all the occupations of men, as if
the physical differences did not exist. The movement goes to obliterate,
as far as possible, the distinction between sexes. Nature is, no doubt,
amused at this attempt. A recent writer--["Biology and Woman's Rights,"
Quarterly Journal of Science, November, 1878.]--, says: "The 'femme
libre' [free woman] of the new social order may, indeed, escape the
charge of neglecting her family and her household by contending that it
is not her vocation to become a wife and a mother! Why, then, we ask, is
she constituted a woman at all? Merely that she may become a sort of
second-rate man?"
The truth is that this movement, based always upon a misconception of
equality, so far as it would change the duties of the sexes, is a
retrograde.--["It has been frequently observed that among declining
nations the social differences between the two sexes are first
obliterated, and afterwards even the intellectual differences. The more
masculine the women become, the more effeminate become the men. It is no
good symptom when there are almost as many female writers and female
rulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, in the
Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Caesars. What today is called
by many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the dissolution
of the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the majority
of women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the same level, and if
in the competition between the two sexes nothing but an actual
superiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would soon be
relegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found among all
barbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher civilization
that have emancipated woman. Those theorizers who, led astray by the dark
side of higher civilization, preach a community of goods, generally
contemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation of
woman a more or less developed form of a community of wives. The grounds
of the two institutions are very similar." (Roscher's Political Economy,
p. 250.) Note also that difference in costumes of the sexes is least
apparent among lowly civilized peoples.]--One of the most striking
features in our progress from barbarism to civilization is the proper
adjustment of the work for men and women. One test of a civilization is
the difference of this work. This is a question not merely of division of
labor, but of differentiation with regard to sex. It not only takes into
account structural differences and physiological disadvantages, but it
recognizes the finer and higher use of woman in society.
The attainable, not to say the ideal, society requires an increase rather
than a decrease of the differences between the sexes. The differences may
be due to physical organization, but the structural divergence is but a
faint type of deeper separation in mental and spiritual constitution.
That which makes the charm and power of woman, that for which she is
created, is as distinctly feminine as that which makes the charm and
power of men is masculine. Progress requires constant differentiation,
and the line of this is the development of each sex in its special
functions, each being true to the highest ideal for itself, which is not
that the woman should be a man, or the man a woman. The enjoyment of
social life rests very largely upon the encounter and play of the subtle
peculiarities which mark the two sexes; and society, in the limited sense
of the word, not less than the whole structure of our civilization,
requires the development of these peculiarities. It is in diversity, and
not in an equality tending to uniformity, that we are to expect the best
results from the race.
V. Equality of races; or rather a removal of the inequalities, social and
political, arising in the contact of different races by intermarriage.
Perhaps equality is hardly the word to use here, since uniformity is the
thing aimed at; but the root of the proposal is in the dogma we are
considering. The tendency of the age is to uniformity. The facilities of
travel and communication, the new inventions and the use of machinery in
manufacturing, bring men into close and uniform relations, and induce the
disappearance of national characteristics and of race peculiarities. Men,
the world over, are getting to dress alike, eat alike, and disbelieve in
the same things: It is the sentimental complaint of the traveler that his
search for the picturesque is ever more difficult, that race distinctions
and habits are in a way to be improved off the face of the earth, and
that a most uninteresting monotony is supervening. The complaint is not
wholly sentimental, and has a deeper philosophical reason than the mere
pleasure in variety on this planet.
We find a striking illustration of the equalizing, not to say leveling,
tendency of the age in an able paper by Canon George Rawlinson, of the
University of Oxford, contributed recently to an American periodical of a
high class and conservative character.--["Duties of Higher towards Lower
Races." By George Rawlinson. Princeton Re-view. November, 1878. New
York.]--This paper proposes, as a remedy for the social and political
evils caused by the negro element in our population, the miscegenation of
the white and black races, to the end that the black race may be wholly
absorbed in the white--an absorption of four millions by thirty-six
millions, which he thinks might reasonably be expected in about a
century, when the lower type would disappear altogether.
Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is not equal to the pleasure of
absorbing, and we cannot say how this proposal will commend itself to the
victims of the euthanasia. The results of miscegenation on this
continent--black with red, and white with black--the results morally,
intellectually, and physically, are not such as to make it attractive to
the American people.
It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose this
extension of the exaggerated dogma of equality. Our objection is deeper.
Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the best
development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reaction
and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highest
development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that
differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either
benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an
assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome
homogeneity.
Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the
relations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only different
races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.
A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper
destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a
recent colored writer,--["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W. Blyden.
Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]--an official in the government of
Liberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regarding
Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in confounding the
tribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and negroes. "The
numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be
regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or
Europe can be so regarded;" and we are not to expect the civilization of
Africa to be under one government, but in a great variety of States,
developed according to tribal and race affinities. A still greater
mistake is this:
"The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negro
improvement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro is
the European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when,
by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he
will become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on the
same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but
infinitely in the rear . . . . This view proceeds upon the assumption
that the two races are called to the same work, and are alike in
potentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the element
of time, under certain circumstances, to become European. But to our mind
it is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority.
There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, or
absolute or essential inferiority on the other side. It is a question of
difference of endowment and difference of destiny. No amount of training
or culture will make the negro a European. On the other hand, no lack of
training or deficiency of culture will make the European a negro. The two
races are not moving in the same groove, with an immeasurable distance
between them, but on parallel lines. They will never meet in the plane of
their activities so as to coincide in capacity or performance. They are
not identical, as some think, but unequal; they are distinct, but
equal--an idea that is in no way incompatible with the Scripture truth
that God hath made of one blood all nations of men."
The writer goes on, in a strain that is not mere fancy, but that involves
one of the truths of inequality, to say that each race is endowed with
peculiar talents; that the negro has aptitudes and capacities which the
world needs, and will lack until he is normally trained. In the grand
symphony of the universe, "there are several sounds not yet brought out,
and the feeblest of all is that hitherto produced by the negro; but he
alone can furnish it."--"When the African shall come forward with his
peculiar gifts, they will fill a place never before occupied." In short,
the African must be civilized in the line of his capacities. "The present
practice of the friends of Africa is to frame laws according to their own
notions for the government and improvement of this people, whereas God
has already enacted the laws for the government of their affairs, which
laws should be carefully ascertained, interpreted, and applied; for until
they are found out and conformed to, all labor will be ineffective and
resultless."
We have thus passed in review some of the tendencies of the age. We have
only touched the edges of a vast subject, and shall be quite satisfied if
we have suggested thought in the direction indicated. But in this limited
view of our complex human problem it is time to ask if we have not pushed
the dogma of equality far enough. Is it not time to look the facts
squarely in the face, and conform to them in our efforts for social and
political amelioration?
Inequality appears to be the divine order; it always has existed;
undoubtedly it will continue; all our theories and 'a priori'
speculations will not change the nature of things. Even inequality of
condition is the basis of progress, the incentive to exertion.
Fortunately, if today we could make every man white, every woman as like
man as nature permits, give to every human being the same opportunity of
education, and divide equally among all the accumulated wealth of the
world, tomorrow differences, unequal possession, and differentiation
would begin again. We are attempting the regeneration of society with a
misleading phrase; we are wasting our time with a theory that does not
fit the facts.
There is an equality, but it is not of outward show; it is independent of
condition; it does not destroy property, nor ignore the difference of
sex, nor obliterate race traits. It is the equality of men before God, of
men before the law; it is the equal honor of all honorable labor. No more
pernicious notion ever obtained lodgment in society than the common one
that to "rise in the world" is necessarily to change the "condition." Let
there be content with condition; discontent with individual ignorance and
imperfection. "We want," says Emerson, "not a farmer, but a man on a
farm." What a mischievous idea is that which has grown, even in the
United States, that manual labor is discreditable! There is surely some
defect in the theory of equality in our society which makes domestic
service to be shunned as if it were a disgrace.
It must be observed, further, that the dogma of equality is not satisfied
by the usual admission that one is in favor of an equality of rights and
opportunities, but is against the sweeping application of the theory made
by the socialists and communists. The obvious reply is that equal rights
and a fair chance are not possible without equality of condition, and
that property and the whole artificial constitution of society
necessitate inequality of condition. The damage from the current
exaggeration of equality is that the attempt to realize the dogma in
fact--and the attempt is everywhere on foot--can lead only to mischief
and disappointment.
It would be considered a humorous suggestion to advocate inequality as a
theory or as a working dogma. Let us recognize it, however, as a fact,
and shape the efforts for the improvement of the race in accordance with
it, encouraging it in some directions, restraining it from injustice in
others. Working by this recognition, we shall save the race from many
failures and bitter disappointments, and spare the world the spectacle of
republics ending in despotism and experiments in government ending in
anarchy.
WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?
By Charles Dudley Warner
Delivered before the Alumni of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y.,
Wednesday, June 26, 1872
Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascend
the platform, and there to stand and deliver. The voice was the voice of
President North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used by
Cicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitation--it is the
classic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten the
gender of the nouns that end in 'um--orator proximus', the grateful voice
said, 'ascendat, videlicet,' and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator,
and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of a
world waiting for orators, stirred one's blood like the herald's trumpet
when the lists are thrown open. Alas! for most of us, who crowded so
eagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on any
stage.
The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company after
company of educated young men, has been remarked. But it is almost
incredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathies
and its many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the world
so soon and so silently, causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothly
flowing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twenty
years. Do the young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on their
ordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacation
correspondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope they
are more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twenty
years ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so far
from any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the young
graduate is not long in learning that there is an indifference in the
public mind with regard to the first aorist that amounts nearly to
apathy, and that millions of his fellow-creatures will probably live and
die without the consolations of the second aorist. It is a melancholy
fact that, after a thousand years of missionary effort, the vast majority
of civilized men do not know that gerunds are found only in the singular
number.
I confess that this failure of the annual graduating class to make its
expected impression on the world has its pathetic side. Youth is
credulous--as it always ought to be--and full of hope--else the world
were dead already--and the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuous
self-confidence in his resources. It is to him an event, this
turning-point in the career of what he feels to be an important and
immortal being. His entrance is public and with some dignity of display.
For a day the world stops to see it; the newspapers spread abroad a
report of it, and the modest scholar feels that the eyes of mankind are
fixed on him in expectation and desire. Though modest, he is not
insensible to the responsibility of his position. He has only packed away
in his mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not intend to be stingy
about communicating it to the world which is awaiting his graduation.
Fresh from the communion with great thoughts in great literatures, he is
in haste to give mankind the benefit of them, and lead it on into new
enthusiasm and new conquests.
The world, however, is not very much excited. The birth of a child is in
itself marvelous, but it is so common. Over and over again, for hundreds
of years, these young gentlemen have been coming forward with their
specimens of learning, tied up in neat little parcels, all ready to
administer, and warranted to be of the purest materials. The world is not
unkind, it is not even indifferent, but it must be confessed that it does
not act any longer as if it expected to be enlightened. It is generally
so busy that it does not even ask the young gentlemen what they can do,
but leaves them standing with their little parcels, wondering when the
person will pass by who requires one of them, and when there will happen
a little opening in the procession into which they can fall. They
expected that way would be made for them with shouts of welcome, but they
find themselves before long struggling to get even a standing-place in
the crowd--it is only kings, and the nobility, and those fortunates who
dwell in the tropics, where bread grows on trees and clothing is
unnecessary, who have reserved seats in this world.
To the majority of men I fancy that literature is very much the same that
history is; and history is presented as a museum of antiquities and
curiosities, classified, arranged, and labeled. One may walk through it
as he does through the Hotel de Cluny; he feels that he ought to be
interested in it, but it is very tiresome. Learning is regarded in like
manner as an accumulation of literature, gathered into great storehouses
called libraries--the thought of which excites great respect in most
minds, but is ineffably tedious. Year after year and age after age it
accumulates--this evidence and monument of intellectual activity--piling
itself up in vast collections, which it needs a lifetime even to
catalogue, and through which the uncultured walk as the idle do through
the British Museum, with no very strong indignation against Omar who
burned the library at Alexandria.
To the popular mind this vast accumulation of learning in libraries, or
in brains that do not visibly apply it, is much the same thing. The
business of the scholar appears to be this sort of accumulation; and the
young student, who comes to the world with a little portion of this
treasure dug out of some classic tomb or mediaeval museum, is received
with little more enthusiasm than is the miraculous handkerchief of St.
Veronica by the crowd of Protestants to whom it is exhibited on Holy Week
in St. Peter's. The historian must make his museum live again; the
scholar must vivify his learning with a present purpose.
It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from the
unsympathetic and worldly side. I should think myself a criminal if I
said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dash
with any skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest.
His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the light of life. Without his
fresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, to
culture, the world would be dreary enough. Through him comes the
ever-springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn and driven
defeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongs
to a great and immortal army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparent
little influence, even though every sally of every young life may seem
like a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It must
needs be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, and
high with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into the
smoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, one
after the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorseless
trumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain, for some day, and every
day, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the whole
army advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where it
never waved before. And, even if you never see this, better than
inglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; to
carry the colors up the slope of the enemy's works, though the next
moment you fall and find a grave at the foot of the glacis.
What are the relations of culture to common life, of the scholar to the
day-laborer? What is the value of this vast accumulation of higher
learning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, that
toils and eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generation
after generation, in an unvarying round, on an unvarying level? We have
had discussed lately the relation of culture to religion. Mr. Froude,
with a singular, reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that the
progress of the century, so-called, with all its material alleviations,
has done little in regard to a happy life, to the pleasure of existence,
for the average individual Englishman. Into neither of these inquiries do
I purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our attention to a
subject closely connected with both of them.
It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhere
of what may be called a ground-swell. There is not simply an inquiry as
to the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools where
it is obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, a
failure to see any connection between the first aorist and the rolling of
steel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditions
of a life which make one free of the serene heights of thought and give
him range of all intellectual countries, and keep another at the spade
and the loom, year after year, that he may earn food for the day and
lodging for the night. In our day the demand here hinted at has taken
more definite form and determinate aim, and goes on, visible to all men,
to unsettle society and change social and political relations. The great
movement of labor, extravagant and preposterous as are some of its
demands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as are many of
its theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certain
primeval force, and with a certain justice in it that never sleeps in
human affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, a
movement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, and
revenging itself on friends and foes alike. Its strength is in the fact
that it is natural and human; it might have been predicted from a mere
knowledge of human nature, which is always restless in any relations it
is possible to establish, which is always like the sea, seeking a level,
and never so discontented as when anything like a level is approximated.
What is the relation of the scholar to the present phase of this
movement? What is the relation of culture to it? By scholar I mean the
man who has had the advantages of such an institution as this. By culture
I mean that fine product of opportunity and scholarship which is to mere
knowledge what manners are to the gentleman. The world has a growing
belief in the profit of knowledge, of information, but it has a suspicion
of culture. There is a lingering notion in matters religious that
something is lost by refinement--at least, that there is danger that the
plain, blunt, essential truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. The
laborer is getting to consent that his son shall go to school, and learn
how to build an undershot wheel or to assay metals; but why plant in his
mind those principles of taste which will make him as sensitive to beauty
as to pain, why open to him those realms of imagination with the
illimitable horizons, the contours and colors of which can but fill him
with indefinite longing?
It is not necessary for me in this presence to dwell upon the value of
culture. I wish rather to have you notice the gulf that exists between
what the majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledge
concerning which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid a
minister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the ability to read Chaucer
assist a shop-keeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness and
light" of his lovely career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs and
the Mice" in the original? What has the farmer to do with the "Rose
Garden of Saadi"?
I suppose it is not altogether the fault of the majority that the true
relation of culture to common life is so misunderstood. The scholar is
largely responsible for it; he is largely responsible for the isolation
of his position, and the want of sympathy it begets. No man can influence
his fellows with any power who retires into his own selfishness, and
gives himself to a self-culture which has no further object. What is he
that he should absorb the sweets of the universe, that he should hold all
the claims of humanity second to the perfecting of himself? This effort
to save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; under
different manifestations it was the same regard for self. And where it is
an intellectual and not a spiritual greediness, I suppose it is what an
old writer calls "laying up treasures in hell."
It is not an unreasonable demand of the majority that the few who have
the advantages of the training of college and university should exhibit
the breadth and sweetness of a generous culture, and should shed
everywhere that light which ennobles common things, and without which
life is like one of the old landscapes in which the artist forgot to put
sunlight. One of the reasons why the college-bred man does not meet this
reasonable expectation is that his training, too often, has not been
thorough and conscientious, it has not been of himself; he has acquired,
but he is not educated. Another is that, if he is educated, he is not
impressed with the intimacy of his relation to that which is below him as
well as that which is above him, and his culture is out of sympathy with
the great mass that needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blind
force in the world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy and
misname it progress. There is no culture so high, no taste so fastidious,
no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, that
it cannot at this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fields
of humanity; since it is all needed to soften the attritions of common
life, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influences
of our restless society.
One reason, as I said, for the gulf between the majority and the select
few to be educated is, that the college does not seldom disappoint the
reasonable expectation concerning it. The graduate of the carpenter's
shop knows how to use his tools--or used to in days before superficial
training in trades became the rule. Does the college graduate know how to
use his tools? Or has he to set about fitting himself for some
employment, and gaining that culture, that training of himself, that
utilization of his information which will make him necessary in the
world? There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should be
trained in the classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages. I
feel like saying "yes" to all the various propositions. For Heaven's sake
train him in something, so that he can handle himself, and have free and
confident use of his powers. There isn't a more helpless creature in the
universe than a scholar with a vast amount of information over which he
has no control. He is like a man with a load of hay so badly put upon his
cart that it all slides off before he can get to market. The influence of
a man on the world is generally proportioned to his ability to do
something. When Abraham Lincoln was running for the Legislature the first
time, on the platform of the improvement of the navigation of the
Sangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who were
cradling a wheat field. They asked no questions about internal
improvements, but only seemed curious whether Abraham had muscle enough
to represent them in the Legislature. The obliging man took up a cradle
and led the gang round the field. The whole thirty voted for him.
What is scholarship? The learned Hindu can repeat I do not know how many
thousands of lines from the Vedas, and perhaps backwards as well as
forwards. I heard of an excellent old lady who had counted how many times
the letter A occurs in the Holy Scriptures. The Chinese students who
aspire to honors spend years in verbally memorizing the classics
--Confucius and Mencius--and receive degrees and public advancement upon
ability to transcribe from memory without the error of a point, or
misplacement of a single tea-chest character, the whole of some books of
morals. You do not wonder that China is today more like an herbarium than
anything else. Learning is a kind of fetish, and it has no influence
whatever upon the great inert mass of Chinese humanity.
I suppose it is possible for a young gentleman to be able to read--just
think of it, after ten years of grammar and lexicon, not to know Greek
literature and have flexible command of all its richness and beauty, but
to read it!--it is possible, I suppose, for the graduate of college to be
able to read all the Greek authors, and yet to have gone, in regard to
his own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; to
know very little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; nor
of that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of its immortal beauty;
nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud and
bloom under the blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; nor
of that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the life of that
polished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it and the far-reaching,
still unexpended effects of it.
Yet as surely as that nothing perishes, that the Providence of God is not
a patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surely
as the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of
Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored man
permission to ride in a public conveyance and to be buried in a public
cemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new State
capitol at Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser of the
Peloponnesus some lesson for the American day-laborer. The scholar is
said to be the torch-bearer, transmitting the increasing light from
generation to generation, so that the feet of all, the humblest and the
loveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very often
carries a dark lantern.
Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, but
what is the good to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest question of
the ditch-digger to the scholar--what better off am I for your learning?
And the question, in view of the interdependence of all members of
society, is one that cannot be put away as idle. One reason why the
scholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real to
his fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself,
but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dallies
some years before he begins his task in life. And another reason is that,
while it may be real to him, while he is actually cultured and trained,
he fails to see or to feel that his culture is not a thing apart, and
that all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing to
see this, he is isolated, and, wanting his sympathy, the untutored world
mocks at his super-fineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends.
Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphael
painted his immortal frescoes where throngs could be lifted in thought
and feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter's so
that the far-off peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maiden
kneeling by the shrine in the Alban hills. Do we often stop to think what
influence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of high culture, has
today upon the great mass of our people? Why do they ask, what is the use
of your learning and your art?
The artist, in the retirement of his studio, finishes a charming,
suggestive, historical picture. The rich man buys it and hangs it in his
library, where the privileged few can see it. I do not deny that the
average rich man needs all the refining influence the picture can exert
on him, and that the picture is doing missionary work in his house; but
it is nevertheless an example of an educating influence withdrawn and
appropriated to narrow uses. But the engraver comes, and, by his
mediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its sweet
influence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, its
sordidness, pauses a moment to look on it--that gray seacoast, the
receding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regarding
it, with tender thoughts of the far home--all the world looks on it
perhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tearfully, and is touched with
the sentiment of it, is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the sight of
that faith and love and resolute devotion which have tinged our early
history with the faint light of romance. So art is no longer the
enjoyment of the few, but the help and solace of the many.
The scholar who is cultured by books, reflection, travel, by a refined
society, consorts with his kind, and more and more removes himself from
the sympathies of common life. I know how almost inevitable this is, how
almost impossible it is to resist the segregation of classes according to
the affinities of taste. But by what mediation shall the culture that is
now the possession of the few be made to leaven the world and to elevate
and sweeten ordinary life? By books? Yes. By the newspaper? Yes. By the
diffusion of works of art? Yes. But when all is done that can be done by
such letters-missive from one class to another, there remains the need of
more personal contact, of a human sympathy, diffused and living. The
world has had enough of charities. It wants respect and consideration. We
desire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be legislated
with. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asks
the sensitive and poor seamstress. Do you always give some charity to
your friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I want to be
treated like a human being who has nerves and feelings, and tears too,
and as much interest in the sunset, and in the birth of Christ, perhaps
as you. And the mass of uncared-for ignorance and brutality, finding a
voice at length, bitterly repels the condescensions of charity; you have
your culture, your libraries, your fine houses, your church, your
religion, and your God, too; let us alone, we want none of them. In the
bear-pit at Berne, the occupants, who are the wards of the city, have had
meat thrown to them daily for I know not how long, but they are not tamed
by this charity, and would probably eat up any careless person who fell
into their clutches, without apology.
Do not impute to me quixotic notions with regard to the duties of men and
women of culture, or think that I undervalue the difficulties in the way,
the fastidiousness on the one side, or the jealousies on the other. It is
by no means easy to an active participant to define the drift of his own
age; but I seem to see plainly that unless the culture of the age finds
means to diffuse itself, working downward and reconciling antagonisms by
a commonness of thought and feeling and aim in life, society must more
and more separate itself into jarring classes, with mutual
misunderstandings and hatred and war. To suggest remedies is much more
difficult than to see evils; but the comprehension of dangers is the
first step towards mastering them. The problem of our own time--the
reconciliation of the interests of classes--is as yet very ill defined.
This great movement of labor, for instance, does not know definitely what
it wants, and those who are spectators do not know what their relations
are to it. The first thing to be done is for them to try to understand
each other. One class sees that the other has lighter or at least
different labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of the
luxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of the
beautiful, the immaterial. Looking only at external conditions, it
concludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, and
so it organizes war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom from
toil and of compensation which it is in no man's power to give it, and
which would not, if granted over and over again, lift it into that
condition it desires. It is a tale in the Gulistan, that a king placed
his son with a preceptor, and said, "This is your son; educate him in the
same manner as your own." The preceptor took pains with him for a year,
but without success, whilst his own sons were completed in learning and
accomplishments. The king reproved the preceptor, and said, "You have
broken your promise, and not acted faithfully."
He replied, "O king, the education was the same, but the capacities are
different. Although silver and gold are produced from a stone, yet these
metals are not to be found in every stone. The star Canopus shines all
over the world, but the scented leather comes only from Yemen." "'Tis an
absolute, and, as it were, a divine perfection," says Montaigne, "for a
man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, by
reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves,
because we know not how there to reside."
But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishes
of those who demand a change of condition, and it is necessary that they
should understand the compensations as well as the limitations of every
condition. The dervish congratulated himself that although the only
monument of his grave would be a brick, he should at the last day arrive
at and enter the gate of Paradise before the king had got from under the
heavy stones of his costly tomb. Nothing will bring us into this
desirable mutual understanding except sympathy and personal contact. Laws
will not do it; institutions of charity and relief will not do it.
We must believe, for one thing, that the graces of culture will not be
thrown away if exercised among the humblest and the least cultured; it is
found out that flowers are often more welcome in the squalid
tenement-houses of Boston than loaves of bread. It is difficult to say
exactly how culture can extend its influence into places uncongenial and
to people indifferent to it, but I will try and illustrate what I mean by
an example or two.
Criminals in this country, when the law took hold of them, used to be
turned over to the care of men who often had more sympathy with the crime
than with the criminal, or at least to those who were almost as coarse in
feeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. There have been some
changes of late years in the care of criminals, but does public opinion
yet everywhere demand that jailers and prison-keepers and executioners of
the penal law should be men of refinement, of high character, of any
degree of culture? I do not know any class more needing the best direct
personal influence of the best civilization than the criminal. The
problem of its proper treatment and reformation is one of the most
pressing, and it needs practically the aid of our best men and women. I
should have great hope of any prison establishment at the head of which
was a gentleman of fine education, the purest tastes, the most elevated
morality and lively sympathy with men as such, provided he had also will
and the power of command. I do not know what might not be done for the
viciously inclined and the transgressors, if they could come under the
influence of refined men and women. And yet you know that a boy or a girl
may be arrested for crime, and pass from officer to keeper, and jailer to
warden, and spend years in a career of vice and imprisonment, and never
once see any man or woman, officially, who has tastes, or sympathies, or
aspirations much above that vulgar level whence the criminals came.
Anybody who is honest and vigilant is considered good enough to take
charge of prison birds.
The age is merciful and abounds in charities-houses of refuge for poor
women, societies for the conservation of the exposed and the reclamation
of the lost. It is willing to pay liberally for their support, and to
hire ministers and distributors of its benefactions. But it is beginning
to see that it cannot hire the distribution of love, nor buy brotherly
feeling. The most encouraging thing I have seen lately is an experiment
in one of our cities. In the thick of the town the ladies of the city
have furnished and opened a reading-room, sewing-room, conversation-room,
or what not, where young girls, who work for a living and have no
opportunity for any culture, at home or elsewhere, may spend their
evenings. They meet there always some of the ladies I have spoken of,
whose unostentatious duty and pleasure it is to pass the evening with
them, in reading or music or the use of the needle, and the exchange of
the courtesies of life in conversation. Whatever grace and kindness and
refinement of manner they carry there, I do not suppose are wasted. These
are some of the ways in which culture can serve men. And I take it that
one of the chief evidences of our progress in this century is the
recognition of the truth that there is no selfishness so supreme--not
even that in the possession of wealth--as that which retires into itself
with all the accomplishments of liberal learning and rare opportunities,
and looks upon the intellectual poverty of the world without a wish to
relieve it. "As often as I have been among men," says Seneca, "I have
returned less a man." And Thomas a Kempis declared that "the greatest
saints avoided the company of men as much as they could, and chose to
live to God in secret." The Christian philosophy was no improvement upon
the pagan in this respect, and was exactly at variance with the teaching
and practice of Jesus of Nazareth.
The American scholar cannot afford to live for himself, nor merely for
scholarship and the delights of learning. He must make himself more felt
in the material life of this country. I am aware that it is said that the
culture of the age is itself materialistic, and that its refinements are
sensual; that there is little to choose between the coarse excesses of
poverty and the polished and more decorous animality of the more
fortunate. Without entering directly upon the consideration of this
much-talked-of tendency, I should like to notice the influence upon our
present and probable future of the bounty, fertility, and extraordinary
opportunities of this still new land.
The American grows and develops himself with few restraints. Foreigners
used to describe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, gaunt,
inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physical
inferiority in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. This
apprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his achievements the
continent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in the
most difficult explorations, his resistance of the influence of great
cities towards effeminacy and loss of physical vigor. If ever man took
large and eager hold of earthly things and appropriated them to his own
use, it is the American. We are gross eaters, we are great drinkers. We
shall excel the English when we have as long practice as they. I am
filled with a kind of dismay when I see the great stock-yards of Chicago
and Cincinnati, through which flow the vast herds and droves of the
prairies, marching straight down the throats of Eastern people. Thousands
are always sowing and reaping and brewing and distilling, to slake the
immortal thirst of the country. We take, indeed, strong hold of the
earth; we absorb its fatness. When Leicester entertained Elizabeth at
Kenilworth, the clock in the great tower was set perpetually at twelve,
the hour of feasting. It is always dinner-time in America. I do not know
how much land it takes to raise an average citizen, but I should say a
quarter section. He spreads himself abroad, he riots in abundance; above
all things he must have profusion, and he wants things that are solid and
strong. On the Sorrentine promontory, and on the island of Capri, the
hardy husbandman and fisherman draws his subsistence from the sea and
from a scant patch of ground. One may feast on a fish and a handful of
olives. The dinner of the laborer is a dish of polenta, a few figs, some
cheese, a glass of thin wine. His wants are few and easily supplied. He
is not overfed, his diet is not stimulating; I should say that he would
pay little to the physician, that familiar of other countries whose
family office is to counteract the effects of over-eating. He is
temperate, frugal, content, and apparently draws not more of his life
from the earth or the sea than from the genial sky. He would never build
a Pacific Railway, nor write a hundred volumes of commentary on the
Scriptures; but he is an example of how little a man actually needs of
the gross products of the earth.
I suppose that life was never fuller in certain ways than it is here in
America. If a civilization is judged by its wants, we are certainly
highly civilized. We cannot get land enough, nor clothes enough, nor
houses enough, nor food enough. A Bedouin tribe would fare sumptuously on
what one American family consumes and wastes. The revenue required for
the wardrobe of one woman of fashion would suffice to convert the
inhabitants of I know not how many square miles in Africa. It absorbs the
income of a province to bring up a baby. We riot in prodigality, we vie
with each other in material accumulation and expense. Our thoughts are
mainly on how to increase the products of the world; and get them into
our own possession.
I think this gross material tendency is strong in America, and more
likely to get the mastery over the spiritual and the intellectual here
than elsewhere, because of our exhaustless resources. Let us not mistake
the nature of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it because we can
convert crude iron into the most delicate mechanism, or transport
ourselves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall refine our carnal
tastes so as to be satisfied at dinner with the tongues of ortolans and
the breasts of singing-birds.
Plato banished the musicians from his feasts because he would not have
the charms of conversation interfered with. By comparison, music was to
him a sensuous enjoyment. In any society the ideal must be the banishment
of the more sensuous; the refinement of it will only repeat the continued
experiment of history--the end of a civilization in a polished
materialism, and its speedy fall from that into grossness.
I am sure that the scholar, trained to "plain living and high thinking,"
knows that the prosperous life consists in the culture of the man, and
not in the refinement and accumulation of the material. The word culture
is often used to signify that dainty intellectualism which is merely a
sensuous pampering of the mind, as distinguishable from the healthy
training of the mind as is the education of the body in athletic
exercises from the petting of it by luxurious baths and unguents. Culture
is the blossom of knowledge, but it is a fruit blossom, the ornament of
the age but the seed of the future. The so-called culture, a mere
fastidiousness of taste, is a barren flower.
You would expect spurious culture to stand aloof from common life, as it
does, to extend its charities at the end of a pole, to make of religion a
mere 'cultus,' to construct for its heaven a sort of Paris, where all the
inhabitants dress becomingly, and where there are no Communists. Culture,
like fine manners, is not always the result of wealth or position. When
monseigneur the archbishop makes his rare tour through the Swiss
mountains, the simple peasants do not crowd upon him with boorish
impudence, but strew his stony path with flowers, and receive him with
joyous but modest sincerity. When the Russian prince made his landing in
America the determined staring of a bevy of accomplished American women
nearly swept the young man off the deck of the vessel. One cannot but
respect that tremulous sensitiveness which caused the maiden lady to
shrink from staring at the moon when she heard there was a man in it.
The materialistic drift of this age--that is, its devotion to material
development--is frequently deplored. I suppose it is like all other ages
in that respect, but there appears to be a more determined demand for
change of condition than ever before, and a deeper movement for
equalization. Here in America this is, in great part, a movement for
merely physical or material equalization. The idea seems to be well-nigh
universal that the millennium is to come by a great deal less work and a
great deal more pay. It seems to me that the millennium is to come by an
infusion into all society of a truer culture, which is neither of poverty
nor of wealth, but is the beautiful fruit of the development of the
higher part of man's nature.
And the thought I wish to leave with you, as scholars and men who can
command the best culture, is that it is all needed to shape and control
the strong growth of material development here, to guide the blind
instincts of the mass of men who are struggling for a freer place and a
breath of fresh air; that you cannot stand aloof in a class isolation;
that your power is in a personal sympathy with the humanity which is
ignorant but discontented; and that the question which the man with the
spade asks about the use of your culture to him is a menace.
MODERN FICTION
By Charles Dudley Warner
One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truth
to nature. For fiction is an art, as painting is, as sculpture is, as
acting is. A photograph of a natural object is not art; nor is the
plaster cast of a man's face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of an
actual occurrence. Art requires an idealization of nature. The amateur,
though she may be a lady, who attempts to represent upon the stage the
lady of the drawing-room, usually fails to convey to the spectators the
impression of a lady. She lacks the art by which the trained actress, who
may not be a lady, succeeds. The actual transfer to the stage of the
drawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bred
society, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and the
spectators would declare the representation unnatural.
However our jargon of criticism may confound terms, we do not need to be
reminded that art and nature are distinct; that art, though dependent on
nature, is a separate creation; that art is selection and idealization,
with a view to impressing the mind with human, or even higher than human,
sentiments and ideas. We may not agree whether the perfect man and woman
ever existed, but we do know that the highest representations of them in
form--that in the old Greek sculptures--were the result of artistic
selection of parts of many living figures.
When we praise our recent fiction for its photographic fidelity to nature
we condemn it, for we deny to it the art which would give it value. We
forget that the creation of the novel should be, to a certain extent, a
synthetic process, and impart to human actions that ideal quality which
we demand in painting. Heine regards Cervantes as the originator of the
modern novel. The older novels sprang from the poetry of the Middle Ages;
their themes were knightly adventure, their personages were the nobility;
the common people did not figure in them. These romances, which had
degenerated into absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by "Don Quixote." But
in putting an end to the old romances he created a new school of fiction,
called the modern novel, by introducing into his romance of
pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, and
intermingling the phases of popular life. But he had no one-sided
tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and
the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic
element was as prominent as the popular. This noble and chivalrous
element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes.
"These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "are
prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy
descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see
on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein the
petty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted." But Scott
appeared, and effected a restoration of the balance in fiction. As
Cervantes had introduced the democratic element into romances, so Scott
replaced the aristocratic element, when it had disappeared, and only a
prosaic, bourgeoisie fiction existed. He restored to romances the
symmetry which we admire in "Don Quixote." The characteristic feature of
Scott's historical romances, in the opinion of the great German critic,
is the harmony between the artistocratic and democratic elements.
This is true, but is it the last analysis of the subject? Is it a
sufficient account of the genius of Cervantes and Scott that they
combined in their romances a representation of the higher and lower
classes? Is it not of more importance how they represented them? It is
only a part of the achievement of Cervantes that he introduced the common
people into fiction; it is his higher glory that he idealized his
material; and it is Scott's distinction also that he elevated into
artistic creations both nobility and commonalty. In short, the essential
of fiction is not diversity of social life, but artistic treatment of
whatever is depicted. The novel may deal wholly with an aristocracy, or
wholly with another class, but it must idealize the nature it touches
into art. The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, of which Heine complains,
is not that they treated of one class only, and excluded a higher social
range, but that they treated it without art and without ideality. In
nature there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in human life there is
nothing uninteresting to the artist; but nature and human life, for the
purposes of fiction, need a creative genius. The importation into the
novel of the vulgar, sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbearable,
unless genius first fuses the raw material in its alembic.
When, therefore, we say that one of the worst characteristics of modern
fiction is its so-called truth to nature, we mean that it disregards the
higher laws of art, and attempts to give us unidealized pictures of life.
The failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, but that the treatment
is vulgar; not that common life is treated, but that the treatment is
common; not that care is taken with details, but that no selection is
made, and everything is photographed regardless of its artistic value. I
am sure that no one ever felt any repugnance on being introduced by
Cervantes to the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and serving-maids,
and idle vagabonds of Spain, any more than to an acquaintance with the
beggar-boys and street gamins on the canvases of Murillo. And I believe
that the philosophic reason of the disgust of Heine and of every critic
with the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum life
of the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; the
failure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poor
stuff in literature. We do not need to go back to Richardson's time for
illustrations of that truth. Every week the English press--which is even
a greater sinner in this respect than the American--turns out a score of
novels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utter
lack of the artistic quality. It matters not whether they treat of
middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lords
and ladies; they are equally flat and dreary. Perhaps the most inane
thing ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domestic
novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named the
doughnut of fiction. The usual apology for it is that it depicts family
life with fidelity. Its characters are supposed to act and talk as people
act and talk at home and in society. I trust this is a libel, but, for
the sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was ever produced so insipid a
result? They are called moral; in the higher sense they are immoral, for
they tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every reader. It needs
genius to import into literature ordinary conversation, petty domestic
details, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life. A report of
ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels, may be true
to nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth reading. I cannot
see that it serves any good purpose whatever. Fortunately, we have in our
day illustrations of a different treatment of the vulgar. I do not know
any more truly realistic pictures of certain aspects of New England life
than are to be found in Judd's "Margaret," wherein are depicted
exceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions. Yet the characters and
the life are drawn with the artistic purity of Flaxman's illustrations of
Homer. Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd."
Every character in it is of the lower class in England. But what an
exquisite creation it is! You have to turn back to Shakespeare for any
talk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare with the
conversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and yet so
touched with the finest art, the enduring art. Here is not the realism of
the photograph, but of the artist; that is to say, it is nature
idealized.
When we criticise our recent fiction it is obvious that we ought to
remember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, our
prevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time. Literature is
never in any age an isolated product. It is closely related to the
development or retrogression of the time in all departments of life. The
literary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various than
that of any other, and it is not easy to fix upon its leading tendency.
It is claimed for its fiction, however, that it is analytic and
realistic, and that much of it has certain other qualities that make it a
new school in art. These aspects of it I wish to consider in this paper.
It is scarcely possible to touch upon our recent fiction, any more than
upon our recent poetry, without taking into account what is called the
Esthetic movement--a movement more prominent in England than elsewhere. A
slight contemplation of this reveals its resemblance to the Romantic
movement in Germany, of which the brothers Schlegel were apostles, in the
latter part of the last century. The movements are alike in this: that
they both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in feudalism, in the
symbols of a Christianity that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictly
pre-Raphael art which was supposed to be the result of a simple faith. In
the one case, the artless and childlike remains of old German pictures
and statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in the
other, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life, so
far as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as
"stained-glass attitudes." With all its peculiar vagaries, the English
school is essentially a copy of the German, in its return to
mediaevalism. The two movements have a further likeness, in that they are
found accompanied by a highly symbolized religious revival. English
aestheticism would probably disown any religious intention, although it
has been accused of a refined interest in Pan and Venus; but in all its
feudal sympathies it goes along with the religious art and vestment
revival, the return to symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, and
sisterhoods. Years ago, an acute writer in the Catholic World claimed
Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a Catholic writer, from the internal evidence
of his poems. The German Romanticism, which was fostered by the Romish
priesthood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bosom of the Roman
Catholic Church. It will be interesting to note in what ritualistic
harbor the aestheticism of our day will finally moor. That two similar
revivals should come so near together in time makes us feel that the
world moves onward--if it does move onward--in circular figures of very
short radii. There seems to be only one thing certain in our Christian
era, and that is a periodic return to classic models; the only stable
standards of resort seem to be Greek art and literature.
The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recent
fiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has got
the name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of social
life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action
to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for
anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is
untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and
especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,
politics, and the whole drift of modern life. Judged by our fiction, we
are in an irredeemably bad way. There is little beauty, joy, or
light-heartedness in living; the spontaneity and charm of life are
analyzed out of existence; sweet girls, made to love and be loved, are
extinct; melancholy Jaques never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden,
and if he sees her in the drawing-room he poisons his pleasure with the
thought that she is scheming and artificial; there are no happy marriages
--indeed, marriage itself is almost too inartistic to be permitted by our
novelists, unless it can be supplemented by a divorce, and art is
supposed to deny any happy consummation of true love. In short, modern
society is going to the dogs, notwithstanding money is only three and a
half per cent. It is a gloomy business life, at the best. Two learned but
despondent university professors met, not long ago, at an afternoon
"coffee," and drew sympathetically together in a corner. "What a world
this would be," said one, "without coffee!" "Yes," replied the other,
stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect "yes; but what a hell of a
world it is with coffee!"
The analytic method in fiction is interesting, when used by a master of
dissection, but it has this fatal defect in a novel--it destroys
illusion. We want to think that the characters in a story are real
persons. We cannot do this if we see the author set them up as if they
were marionettes, and take them to pieces every few pages, and show their
interior structure, and the machinery by which they are moved. Not only
is the illusion gone, but the movement of the story, if there is a story,
is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment in impatience and
weariness. You find yourself saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellow
the author is! What an ingenious creation this character is! How brightly
the author makes his people talk! This is high praise, but by no means
the highest, and when we reflect we see how immeasurably inferior, in
fiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic. In the dramatic method
the characters appear, and show what they are by what they do and say;
the reader studies their motives, and a part of his enjoyment is in
analyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust reposed in his
perspicacity. We realize how unnecessary minute analysis of character and
long descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare, in which the
characters are so vividly presented to us in action and speech, without
the least interference of the author in description, that we regard them
as persons with whom we might have real relations, and not as bundles of
traits and qualities. True, the conditions of dramatic art and the art of
the novel are different, in that the drama can dispense with
delineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the eye;
but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid of
actors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,
when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, and
let them work out their own destiny according to their characters. It is
a truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compel
his characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real persons
is gone. In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order of
fiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, of
course this does not so much matter.
Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of the
localities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind
as any historical places. Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian." I
was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my
recollection of it. Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and
even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with
increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's
novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character
after another. Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, a
singular thing happened. It suddenly came to me that in reading it I had
not once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me that
he had created the people in whose fortunes I had been so intensely
absorbed; and I never once had felt how clever the novelist was in the
naturally dramatic dialogues of the characters. In short, it had not
entered my mind to doubt the existence of Jeanie and Effie Deans, and
their father, and Reuben Butler, and the others, who seem as real as
historical persons in Scotch history. And when I came to think of it
afterwards, reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern realistic
school, I found that some scenes, notably the night attack on the old
Tolbooth, were as real to me as if I had read them in a police report of
a newspaper of the day. Was Scott, then, only a reporter? Far from it, as
you would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report of
the occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its
irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given events
their proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.
The sacrifice of action to some extent to psychological evolution in
modern fiction may be an advance in the art as an intellectual
entertainment, if the writer does not make that evolution his end, and
does not forget that the indispensable thing in a novel is the story. The
novel of mere adventure or mere plot, it need not be urged, is of a lower
order than that in which the evolution of characters and their
interaction make the story. The highest fiction is that which embodies
both; that is, the story in which action is the result of mental and
spiritual forces in play. And we protest against the notion that the
novel of the future is to be, or should be, merely a study of, or an
essay or a series of analytic essays on, certain phases of social life.
It is not true that civilization or cultivation has bred out of the world
the liking for a story. In this the most highly educated Londoner and the
Egyptian fellah meet on common human ground. The passion for a story has
no more died out than curiosity, or than the passion of love. The truth
is not that stories are not demanded, but that the born raconteur and
story-teller is a rare person. The faculty of telling a story is a much
rarer gift than the ability to analyze character and even than the
ability truly to draw character. It may be a higher or a lower power, but
it is rarer. It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of culture
can attain it, any more than learning can make a poet. Nor is the
complaint well founded that the stories have all been told, the possible
plots all been used, and the combinations of circumstances exhausted. It
is no doubt our individual experience that we hear almost every day--and
we hear nothing so eagerly--some new story, better or worse, but new in
its exhibition of human character, and in the combination of events. And
the strange, eventful histories of human life will no more be exhausted
than the possible arrangements of mathematical numbers. We might as well
say that there are no more good pictures to be painted as that there are
no more good stories to be told.
Equally baseless is the assumption that it is inartistic and untrue to
nature to bring a novel to a definite consummation, and especially to end
it happily. Life, we are told, is full of incompletion, of broken
destinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, of
ambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, or
a resultless play of influences. Well, but life is full, also, of
endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed
dramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in
ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. If
you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on a
journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and
their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them
afterwards, I do not call that a story. Nor am I any better satisfied
when you describe two persons whom you know, whose characters are
interesting, and who become involved in all manner of entanglements, and
then stop your narration; and when I ask, say you have not the least idea
whether they got out of their difficulties, or what became of them. In
real life we do not call that a story where everything is left
unconcluded and in the air. In point of fact, romances are daily
beginning and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our observation.
Should they always end well in the novel? I am very far from saying that.
Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature as well
as in life. I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as proper as
a bad ending. Yet the main object of the novel is to entertain, and the
best entertainment is that which lifts the imagination and quickens the
spirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for a time out of our
humdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar life
somewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more truly from an
artistic point of view. For the majority of the race, in its hard lines,
fiction is an inestimable boon. Incidentally the novel may teach,
encourage, refine, elevate. Even for these purposes, that novel is the
best which shows us the best possibilities of our lives--the novel which
gives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom. Familiarity
with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment, and of
doubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it is not
done with the idealizing touch of the artist.
Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fit
subjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist, or
that the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.
For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold
the mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself. But
when the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving out
the saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as a
rule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,
but more likely reflects a morbid mind. Still it must be added that the
study of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the author
to make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposure
while the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation is
fresh. For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel reveals
to himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness. Of this,
however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who so
represents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the satirist
who so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my moral
fibre, has vindicated his choice of material. On the contrary, those
novelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set forth
goodness as to make it unattractive.
But we come back to the general proposition that the indispensable
condition of the novel is that it shall entertain. And for this purpose
the world is not ashamed to own that it wants, and always will want, a
story--a story that has an ending; and if not a good ending, then one
that in noble tragedy lifts up our nature into a high plane of sacrifice
and pathos. In proof of this we have only to refer to the masterpieces of
fiction which the world cherishes and loves to recur to.
I confess that I am harassed with the incomplete romances, that leave me,
when the book is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at midnight,
abandoned by his conductor, and without a lantern. I am tired of
accompanying people for hours through disaster and perplexity and
misunderstanding, only to see them lost in a thick mist at last. I am
weary of going to funerals, which are not my funerals, however chatty and
amusing the undertaker may be. I confess that I should like to see again
the lovely heroine, the sweet woman, capable of a great passion and a
great sacrifice; and I do not object if the novelist tries her to the
verge of endurance, in agonies of mind and in perils, subjecting her to
wasting sicknesses even, if he only brings her out at the end in a
blissful compensation of her troubles, and endued with a new and sweeter
charm. No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in the
novel of society the destiny should be decided by character. What an
artistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd and
wicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that
there was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix of
Henry Esmond! It is one of the great privileges of fiction to right the
wrongs of life, to do justice to the deserving and the vicious. It is
wholesome for us to contemplate the justice, even if we do not often see
it in society. It is true that hypocrisy and vulgar self-seeking often
succeed in life, occupying high places, and make their exit in the
pageantry of honored obsequies. Yet always the man is conscious of the
hollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measure
of it. It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into such
a career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of justice
by letting us see the true nature of such prosperity. The unscrupulous
man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies in the odor of
respectability. His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has wronged and
defrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and penury. The
novelist cannot reverse the facts without such a shock to our experience
as shall destroy for us the artistic value of his fiction, and bring upon
his work the deserved reproach of indiscriminately "rewarding the good
and punishing the bad." But we have a right to ask that he shall reveal
the real heart and character of this passing show of life; for not to do
this, to content himself merely with exterior appearances, is for the
majority of his readers to efface the lines between virtue and vice. And
we ask this not for the sake of the moral lesson, but because not to do
it is, to our deep consciousness, inartistic and untrue to our judgment
of life as it goes on. Thackeray used to say that all his talent was in
his eyes; meaning that he was only an observer and reporter of what he
saw, and not a Providence to rectify human affairs. The great artist
undervalued his genius. He reported what he saw as Raphael and Murillo
reported what they saw. With his touch of genius he assigned to
everything its true value, moving us to tenderness, to pity, to scorn, to
righteous indignation, to sympathy with humanity. I find in him the
highest art, and not that indifference to the great facts and deep
currents and destinies of human life, that want of enthusiasm and
sympathy, which has got the name of "art for art's sake." Literary
fiction is a barren product if it wants sympathy and love for men. "Art
for art's sake" is a good and defensible phrase, if our definition of art
includes the ideal, and not otherwise.
I do not know how it has come about that in so large a proportion of
recent fiction it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether upon
the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of
"realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome; to
give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, only
the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the
intrigante and the "shady"--to borrow the language of the society she
seeks--the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious;
to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the
gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along
the dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; to bring
us into relations only with the sordid and the common; to force us to sup
with unwholesome company on misery and sensuousness, in tales so utterly
unpleasant that we are ready to welcome any disaster as a relief; and
then--the latest and finest touch of modern art--to leave the whole
weltering mass in a chaos, without conclusion and without possible issue.
And this is called a picture of real life! Heavens! Is it true that in
England, where a great proportion of the fiction we describe and loathe
is produced; is it true that in our New England society there is nothing
but frivolity, sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble ambition
and ignoble living? Is there no charm in social life--no self-sacrifice,
devotion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, and live above them?
Are there no noble women, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the grace
that all the world loves, albeit with the feminine weaknesses that make
all the world hope? Is there no manliness left? Are there no homes where
the tempter does not live with the tempted in a mush of sentimental
affinity? Or is it, in fact, more artistic to ignore all these, and paint
only the feeble and the repulsive in our social state? The feeble, the
sordid, and the repulsive in our social state nobody denies, nor does
anybody deny the exceeding cleverness with which our social disorders are
reproduced in fiction by a few masters of their art; but is it not time
that it should be considered good art to show something of the clean and
bright side?
This is pre-eminently the age of the novel. The development of variety of
fiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious. The prejudice
against novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has taken all
fields for its province; everybody reads novels. Three-quarters of the
books taken from the circulating library are stories; they make up half
the library of the Sunday-schools. If a writer has anything to say, or
thinks he has, he knows that he can most certainly reach the ear of the
public by the medium of a story. So we have novels for children; novels
religious, scientific, historical, archaeological, psychological,
pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of adventure and
exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of books called
novels of society. Not only is everything turned into a story, real or so
called, but there must be a story in everything. The stump-speaker holds
his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes up his congregation
by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher leads his children
into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance; we even had a
President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes. The result of
this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an enormous supply, and
as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the product is mainly
trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in literature is bad
morals. I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the diluted, the
"goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely read by
school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the "knowing,"
audacious, wicked ones,--also, it is reported, read by them, and written
largely by their own sex. For minds enfeebled and relaxed by stories
lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet the
perils of life. This is not the place for discussing the stories written
for the young and for the Sunday-school. It seems impossible to check the
flow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this industry; but
I think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to recognize the truth
that the excessive reading of this class of literature by the young is
weakening to the mind, besides being a serious hindrance to study and to
attention to the literature that has substance.
In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the
breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,
and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new
poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,
what shape matters will assume in Germany." Now if all the poets and
novelists of England and America today were cut up into little pieces
(and we might sacrifice a few for the sake of the experiment), there is
no inspecting augur who could divine therefrom our literary future. The
diverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector. Lost in the
variety, the multiplicity of minute details, the refinements of analysis
and introspection, he would miss any leading indications. For with all
its variety, it seems to me that one characteristic of recent fiction is
its narrowness--narrowness of vision and of treatment. It deals with
lives rather than with life. Lacking ideality, it fails of broad
perception. We are accustomed to think that with the advent of the
genuine novel of society, in the first part of this century, a great step
forward was taken in fiction. And so there was. If the artist did not use
a big canvas, he adopted a broad treatment. But the tendency now is to
push analysis of individual peculiarities to an extreme, and to
substitute a study of traits for a representation of human life.
It scarcely need be said that it is not multitude of figures on a
literary canvas that secures breadth of treatment. The novel may be
narrow, though it swarms with a hundred personages. It may be as wide as
life, as high as imagination can lift itself; it may image to us a whole
social state, though it pats in motion no more persons than we made the
acquaintance of in one of the romances of Hawthorne. Consider for a
moment how Thackeray produced his marvelous results. We follow with him,
in one of his novels of society, the fortunes of a very few people. They
are so vividly portrayed that we are convinced the author must have known
them in that great world with which he was so familiar; we should not be
surprised to meet any of them in the streets of London. When we visit the
Charterhouse School, and see the old forms where the boys sat nearly a
century ago, we have in our minds Colonel Newcome as really as we have
Charles Lamb and Coleridge and De Quincey. We are absorbed, as we read,
in the evolution of the characters of perhaps only half a dozen people;
and yet all the world, all great, roaring, struggling London, is in the
story, and Clive, and Philip, and Ethel, and Becky Sharpe, and Captain
Costigan are a part of life. It is the flowery month of May; the scent of
the hawthorn is in the air, and the tender flush of the new spring
suffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion and pleasure and idleness
surges up and down-the sauntering throng, the splendid equipages, the
endless cavalcade in Rotten Row, in which Clive descries afar off the
white plume of his ladylove dancing on the waves of an unattainable
society; the club windows are all occupied; Parliament is in session,
with its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the thronged streets roar
with life from morn till nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum and
sparkle in the crush of a London season; as you walk the midnight
pavement, through the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes the burst
of bacchanalian song. Here is the world of the press and of letters; here
are institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, glimpses of great ships
going to and fro on distant seas, of India, of Australia. This one book
is an epitome of English life, almost of the empire itself. We are
conscious of all this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the artist
given his little history of half a dozen people in this struggling world.
But this background of a great city, of an empire, is not essential to
the breadth of treatment upon which we insist in fiction, to broad
characterization, to the play of imagination about common things which
transfigures them into the immortal beauty of artistic creations. What a
simple idyl in itself is Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea"! It is the
creation of a few master-touches, using only common material. Yet it has
in it the breadth of life itself, the depth and passion of all our human
struggle in the world-a little story with a vast horizon.
It is constantly said that the conditions in America are unfavorable to
the higher fiction; that our society is unformed, without centre, without
the definition of classes, which give the light and shade that Heine
speaks of in "Don Quixote"; that it lacks types and customs that can be
widely recognized and accepted as national and characteristic; that we
have no past; that we want both romantic and historic background; that we
are in a shifting, flowing, forming period which fiction cannot seize on;
that we are in diversity and confusion that baffle artistic treatment; in
short, that American life is too vast, varied, and crude for the purpose
of the novelist.
These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure--or
shall we say our delay?--if it were not for two or three of our literary
performances. It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare say
no novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifold
diversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of Walt
Whitman's catalogues. But we are not without peculiar types; not without
characters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, inequalities; not
without the charms of nature in infinite variety; and human nature is the
same here that it is in Spain, France, and England. Out of these
materials Cooper wrote romances, narratives stamped with the distinct
characteristics of American life and scenery, that were and are eagerly
read by all civilized peoples, and which secured the universal verdict
which only breadth of treatment commands. Out of these materials, also,
Hawthorne, child-endowed with a creative imagination, wove those
tragedies of interior life, those novels of our provincial New England,
which rank among the great masterpieces of the novelist's art. The master
artist can idealize even our crude material, and make it serve. These
exceptions to a rule do not go to prove the general assertion of a
poverty of material for fiction here; the simple truth probably is that,
for reasons incident to the development of a new region of the earth,
creative genius has been turned in other directions than that of
fictitious literature. Nor do I think that we need to take shelter behind
the wellworn and convenient observation, the truth of which stands in
much doubt, that literature is the final flower of a nation's
civilization.
However, this is somewhat a digression. We are speaking of the tendency
of recent fiction, very much the same everywhere that novels are written,
which we have imperfectly sketched. It is probably of no more use to
protest against it than it is to protest against the vulgar realism in
pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; or
against aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against the
enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a
vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug. Most
of our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection and
self-consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of the
ideal, in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simply
of a piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art. Much of it
is admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and a
subtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack. But I
should be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life by
it, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that is
to say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright and
pathetic world.
THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. FROUDE'S "PROGRESS"
By Charles Dudley Warner
To revisit this earth, some ages after their departure from it, is a
common wish among men. We frequently hear men say that they would give so
many months or years of their lives in exchange for a less number on the
globe one or two or three centuries from now. Merely to see the world
from some remote sphere, like the distant spectator of a play which
passes in dumb show, would not suffice. They would like to be of the
world again, and enter into its feelings, passions, hopes; to feel the
sweep of its current, and so to comprehend what it has become.
I suppose that we all who are thoroughly interested in this world have
this desire. There are some select souls who sit apart in calm endurance,
waiting to be translated out of a world they are almost tired of
patronizing, to whom the whole thing seems, doubtless, like a cheap
performance. They sit on the fence of criticism, and cannot for the life
of them see what the vulgar crowd make such a toil and sweat about. The
prizes are the same dreary, old, fading bay wreaths. As for the soldiers
marching past, their uniforms are torn, their hats are shocking, their
shoes are dusty, they do not appear (to a man sitting on the fence) to
march with any kind of spirit, their flags are old and tattered, the
drums they beat are barbarous; and, besides, it is not probable that they
are going anywhere; they will merely come round again, the same people,
like the marching chorus in the "Beggar's Opera." Such critics, of
course, would not care to see the vulgar show over again; it is enough
for them to put on record their protest against it in the weekly
"Judgment Days" which they edit, and by-and-by withdraw out of their
private boxes, with pity for a world in the creation of which they were
not consulted.
The desire to revisit this earth is, I think, based upon a belief,
well-nigh universal, that the world is to make some progress, and that it
will be more interesting in the future than it is now. I believe that the
human mind, whenever it is developed enough to comprehend its own action,
rests, and has always rested, in this expectation. I do not know any
period of time in which the civilized mind has not had expectation of
something better for the race in the future. This expectation is
sometimes stronger than it is at others; and, again, there are always
those who say that the Golden Age is behind them. It is always behind or
before us; the poor present alone has no friends; the present, in the
minds of many, is only the car that is carrying us away from an age of
virtue and of happiness, or that is perhaps bearing us on to a time of
ease and comfort and security.
Perhaps it is worth while, in view of certain recent discussions, and
especially of some free criticisms of this country, to consider whether
there is any intention of progress in this world, and whether that
intention is discoverable in the age in which we live.
If it is an old question, it is not a settled one; the practical
disbelief in any such progress is widely entertained. Not long ago Mr.
James Anthony Froude published an essay on Progress, in which he examined
some of the evidences upon which we rely to prove that we live in an "era
of progress." It is a melancholy essay, for its tone is that of profound
skepticism as to certain influences and means of progress upon which we
in this country most rely. With the illustrative arguments of Mr.
Froude's essay I do not purpose specially to meddle; I recall it to the
attention of the reader as a representative type of skepticism regarding
progress which is somewhat common among intellectual men, and is not
confined to England. It is not exactly an acceptance of Rousseau's notion
that civilization is a mistake, and that it would be better for us all to
return to a state of nature--though in John Ruskin's case it nearly
amounts to this; but it is a hostility in its last analysis to what we
understand by the education of the people, and to the government of the
people by themselves. If Mr. Froude's essay is anything but an exhibition
of the scholarly weapons of criticism, it is the expression of a profound
disbelief in the intellectual education of the masses of the people. Mr.
Ruskin goes further. He makes his open proclamation against any
emancipation from hand-toil. Steam is the devil himself let loose from
the pit, and all labor-saving machinery is his own invention. Mr. Ruskin
is the bull that stands upon the track and threatens with annihilation
the on-coming locomotive; and I think that any spectator who sees his
menacing attitude and hears his roaring cannot but have fears for the
locomotive.
There are two sorts of infidelity concerning humanity, and I do not know
which is the more withering in its effects. One is that which regards
this world as only a waste and a desert, across the sands of which we are
merely fugitives, fleeing from the wrath to come. The other is that doubt
of any divine intention in development, in history, which we call
progress from age to age.
In the eyes of this latter infidelity history is not a procession or a
progression, but only a series of disconnected pictures, each little era
rounded with its own growth, fruitage, and decay, a series of incidents
or experiments, without even the string of a far-reaching purpose to
connect them. There is no intention of progress in it all. The race is
barbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strong
rob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary by
finesse. The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes to
about the same. The robber used to knock us down and take away our
sheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches.
It is a gentlemanly proceeding, and scientific, and we call it
civilization. Meantime human nature remains the same, and the whole thing
is a weary round that has no advance in it.
If this is true the succession of men and of races is no better than a
vegetable succession; and Mr. Froude is quite right in doubting if
education of the brain will do the English agricultural laborer any good;
and Mr. Ruskin ought to be aided in his crusade against machinery, which
turns the world upside down. The best that can be done with a man is the
best that can be done with a plant-set him out in some favorable
locality, or leave him where he happened to strike root, and there let
him grow and mature in measure and quiet--especially quiet--as he may in
God's sun and rain. If he happens to be a cabbage, in Heaven's name don't
try to make a rose of him, and do not disturb the vegetable maturing of
his head by grafting ideas upon his stock.
The most serious difficulty in the way of those who maintain that there
is an intention of progress in this world from century to century, from
age to age--a discernible growth, a universal development--is the fact
that all nations do not make progress at the same time or in the same
ratio; that nations reach a certain development, and then fall away and
even retrograde; that while one may be advancing into high civilization,
another is lapsing into deeper barbarism, and that nations appear to have
a limit of growth. If there were a law of progress, an intention of it in
all the world, ought not all peoples and tribes to advance pari passu, or
at least ought there not to be discernible a general movement, historical
and contemporary? There is no such general movement which can be
computed, the law of which can be discovered--therefore it does not
exist. In a kind of despair, we are apt to run over in our minds empires
and pre-eminent civilizations that have existed, and then to doubt
whether life in this world is intended to be anything more than a series
of experiments. There is the German nation of our day, the most
aggressive in various fields of intellectual activity, a Hercules of
scholarship, the most thoroughly trained and powerful--though its
civilization marches to the noise of the hateful and barbarous drum. In
what points is it better than the Greek nation of the age of its
superlative artists, philosophers, poets--the age of the most joyous,
elastic human souls in the most perfect human bodies?
Again, it is perhaps a fanciful notion that the Atlantis of Plato was the
northern part of the South American continent, projecting out towards
Africa, and that the Antilles are the peaks and headlands of its sunken
bulk. But there are evidences enough that the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico and the Caribbean Sea were within historic periods the seat of a
very considerable civilization--the seat of cities, of commerce, of
trade, of palaces and pleasure--gardens--faint images, perhaps, of the
luxurious civilization of Baia! and Pozzuoli and Capri in the most
profligate period of the Roman empire. It is not more difficult to
believe that there was a great material development here than to believe
it of the African shore of the Mediterranean. Not to multiply instances
that will occur to all, we see as many retrograde as advance movements,
and we see, also, that while one spot of the earth at one time seems to
be the chosen theatre of progress, other portions of the globe are
absolutely dead and without the least leaven of advancing life, and we
cannot understand how this can be if there is any such thing as an
all-pervading and animating intention or law of progress. And then we are
reminded that the individual human mind long ago attained its height of
power and capacity. It is enough to recall the names of Moses, Buddha,
Confucius, Socrates, Paul, Homer, David.
No doubt it has seemed to other periods and other nations, as it now does
to the present civilized races, that they were the chosen times and
peoples of an extraordinary and limitless development. It must have
seemed so to the Jews who overran Palestine and set their shining cities
on all the hills of heathendom. It must have seemed so to the Babylonish
conquerors who swept over Palestine in turn, on their way to greater
conquests in Egypt. It must have seemed so to Greece when the Acropolis
was to the outlying world what the imperial calla is to the marsh in
which it lifts its superb flower. It must have seemed so to Rome when its
solid roads of stone ran to all parts of a tributary world--the highways
of the legions, her ministers, and of the wealth that poured into her
treasury. It must have seemed so to followers of Mahomet, when the
crescent knew no pause in its march up the Arabian peninsula to the
Bosporus, to India, along the Mediterranean shores to Spain, where in the
eighth century it flowered into a culture, a learning, a refinement in
art and manners, to which the Christian world of that day was a stranger.
It must have seemed so in the awakening of the sixteenth century, when
Europe, Spain leading, began that great movement of discovery and
aggrandizement which has, in the end, been profitable only to a portion
of the adventurers. And what shall we say of a nation as old, if not
older than any of these we have mentioned, slowly building up meantime a
civilization and perfecting a system of government and a social economy
which should outlast them all, and remain to our day almost the sole
monument of permanence and stability in a shifting world?
How many times has the face of Europe been changed--and parts of Africa,
and Asia Minor too, for that matter--by conquests and crusades, and the
rise and fall of civilizations as well as dynasties? while China has
endured, almost undisturbed, under a system of law, administration,
morality, as old as the Pyramids probably--existed a coherent nation,
highly developed in certain essentials, meeting and mastering, so far as
we can see, the great problem of an over-populated territory, living in a
good degree of peace and social order, of respect for age and law, and
making a continuous history, the mere record of which is printed in a
thousand bulky volumes. Yet we speak of the Chinese empire as an instance
of arrested growth, for which there is no salvation, except it shall
catch the spirit of progress abroad in the world. What is this progress,
and where does it come from?
Think for a moment of this significant situation. For thousands of years,
empires, systems of society, systems of civilization--Egyptian, Jewish,
Greek, Roman, Moslem, Feudal--have flourished and fallen, grown to a
certain height and passed away; great organized fabrics have gone down,
and, if there has been any progress, it has been as often defeated as
renewed. And here is an empire, apart from this scene of alternate
success and disaster, which has existed in a certain continuity and
stability, and yet, now that it is uncovered and stands face to face with
the rest of the world, it finds that it has little to teach us, and
almost everything to learn from us. The old empire sends its students to
learn of us, the newest child of civilization; and through us they learn
all the great past, its literature, law, science, out of which we sprang.
It appears, then, that progress has, after all, been with the shifting
world, that has been all this time going to pieces, rather than with the
world that has been permanent and unshaken.
When we speak of progress we may mean two things. We may mean a lifting
of the races as a whole by reason of more power over the material world,
by reason of what we call the conquest of nature and a practical use of
its forces; or we may mean a higher development of the individual man, so
that he shall be better and happier. If from age to age it is
discoverable that the earth is better adapted to man as a dwelling-place,
and he is on the whole fitted to get more out of it for his own growth,
is not that progress, and is it not evidence of an intention of progress?
Now, it is sometimes said that Providence, in the economy of this world,
cares nothing for the individual, but works out its ideas and purposes
through the races, and in certain periods, slowly bringing in, by great
agencies and by processes destructive to individuals and to millions of
helpless human beings, truths and principles; so laying stepping-stones
onward to a great consummation. I do not care to dwell upon this thought,
but let us see if we can find any evidence in history of the presence in
this world of an intention of progress.
It is common to say that, if the world makes progress at all, it is by
its great men, and when anything important for the race is to be done, a
great man is raised up to do it. Yet another way to look at it is, that
the doing of something at the appointed time makes the man who does it
great, or at least celebrated. The man often appears to be only a favored
instrument of communication. As we glance back we recognize the truth
that, at this and that period, the time had come for certain discoveries.
Intelligence seemed pressing in from the invisible. Many minds were on
the alert to apprehend it. We believe, for instance, that if Gutenberg
had not invented movable types, somebody else would have given them to
the world about that time. Ideas, at certain times, throng for admission
into the world; and we are all familiar with the fact that the same
important idea (never before revealed in all the ages) occurs to separate
and widely distinct minds at about the same time. The invention of the
electric telegraph seemed to burst upon the world simultaneously from
many quarters--not perfect, perhaps, but the time for the idea had
come--and happy was it for the man who entertained it. We have agreed to
call Columbus the discoverer of America, but I suppose there is no doubt
that America had been visited by European, and probably Asiatic, people
ages before Columbus; that four or five centuries before him people from
northern Europe had settlements here; he was fortunate, however, in
"discovering" it in the fullness of time, when the world, in its
progress, was ready for it. If the Greeks had had gunpowder,
electro-magnetism, the printing press, history would need to be
rewritten. Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find out these things
is a mystery upon any other theory than the one we are considering.
And it is as mysterious that China, having gunpowder and the art of
printing, is not today like Germany.
There seems to me to be a progress, or an intention of progress, in the
world, independent of individual men. Things get on by all sorts of
instruments, and sometimes by very poor ones. There are times when new
thoughts or applications of known principles seem to throng from the
invisible for expression through human media, and there is hardly ever an
important invention set free in the world that men do not appear to be
ready cordially to receive it. Often we should be justified in saying
that there was a widespread expectation of it. Almost all the great
inventions and the ingenious application of principles have many
claimants for the honor of priority.
On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world an
intention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, I
cannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and pass
away, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate. We,
the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages. I do not
believe that anything of importance has been lost to the world. The
Jewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever was
valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the
civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of
the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap of
incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are part
of the world's solid possessions.
Even those who question the value to the individual of what we call
progress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world from
age to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion. The intelligent
schoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew--more about the
visible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the human
body. The rudiments of his education, the common experiences of his
everyday life, were, at the best, the guesses and speculations of a
remote age. There is certainly an accumulation of facts, ideas,
knowledge. Whether this makes men better, wiser, happier, is indeed
disputed.
In order to maintain the notion of a general and intended progress, it is
not necessary to show that no preceding age has excelled ours in some
special, development. Phidias has had no rival in sculpture, we may
admit. It is possible that glass was once made as flexible as leather,
and that copper could be hardened like steel. But I do not take much
stock in the "lost arts," the wondering theme of the lyceums. The
knowledge of the natural world, and of materials, was never, I believe,
so extensive and exact as it is today. It is possible that there are
tricks of chemistry, ingenious processes, secrets of color, of which we
are ignorant; but I do not believe there was ever an ancient alchemist
who could not be taught something in a modern laboratory. The vast
engineering works of the ancient Egyptians, the remains of their temples
and pyramids, excite our wonder; but I have no doubt that President
Grant, if he becomes the tyrant they say he is becoming, and commands the
labor of forty millions of slaves--a large proportion of them office
--holders--could build a Karnak, or erect a string of pyramids across New
Jersey.
Mr. Froude runs lightly over a list of subjects upon which the believer
in progress relies for his belief, and then says of them that the world
calls this progress--he calls it only change. I suppose he means by this
two things: that these great movements of our modern life are not any
evidence of a permanent advance, and that our whole structure may tumble
into a heap of incoherent sand, as systems of society have done before;
and, again, that it is questionable if, in what we call a stride in
civilization, the individual citizen is becoming any purer or more just,
or if his intelligence is directed towards learning and doing what is
right, or only to the means of more extended pleasures.
It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the first of these points--the
permanence of our advance, if it is an advance. But we may be encouraged
by one thing that distinguishes this period--say from the middle of the
eighteenth century--from any that has preceded it. I mean the
introduction of machinery, applied to the multiplication of man's power
in a hundred directions--to manufacturing, to locomotion, to the
diffusion of thought and of knowledge. I need not dwell upon this
familiar topic. Since this period began there has been, so far as I know,
no retrograde movement anywhere, but, besides the material, an
intellectual and spiritual kindling the world over, for which history has
no sort of parallel. Truth is always the same, and will make its way, but
this subject might be illustrated by a study of the relation of
Christianity and of the brotherhood of men to machinery. The theme would
demand an essay by itself. I leave it with the one remark, that this
great change now being wrought in the world by the multiplicity of
machinery is not more a material than it is an intellectual one, and that
we have no instance in history of a catastrophe widespread enough and
adequate to sweep away its results. That is to say, none of the
catastrophes, not even the corruptions, which brought to ruin the ancient
civilizations, would work anything like the same disaster in an age which
has the use of machinery that this age has.
For instance: Gibbon selects the period between the accession of Trajan
and the death of Marcus Aurelius as the time in which the human race
enjoyed more general happiness than they had ever known before, or had
since known. Yet, says Mr. Froude, in the midst of this prosperity the
heart of the empire was dying out of it; luxury and selfishness were
eating away the principle that held society together, and the ancient
world was on the point of collapsing into a heap of incoherent sand. Now,
it is impossible to conceive that the catastrophe which did happen to
that civilization could have happened if the world had then possessed the
steam-engine, the printing-press, and the electric telegraph. The Roman
power might have gone down, and the face of the world been recast; but
such universal chaos and such a relapse for the individual people would
seem impossible.
If we turn from these general considerations to the evidences that this
is an "era of progress" in the condition of individual men, we are met by
more specific denials. Granted, it is said, all your facilities for
travel and communication, for cheap and easy manufacture, for the
distribution of cheap literature and news, your cheap education, better
homes, and all the comforts and luxuries of your machine civilization, is
the average man, the agriculturist, the machinist, the laborer any better
for it all? Are there more purity, more honest, fair dealing, genuine
work, fear and honor of God? Are the proceeds of labor more evenly
distributed? These, it is said, are the criteria of progress; all else is
misleading.
Now, it is true that the ultimate end of any system of government or
civilization should be the improvement of the individual man. And yet
this truth, as Mr. Froude puts it, is only a half-truth, so that this
single test of any system may not do for a given time and a limited area.
Other and wider considerations come in. Disturbances, which for a while
unsettle society and do not bring good results to individuals, may,
nevertheless, be necessary, and may be a sign of progress. Take the
favorite illustration of Mr. Froude and Mr. Ruskin--the condition of the
agricultural laborer of England. If I understand them, the civilization
of the last century has not helped his position as a man. If I understand
them, he was a better man, in a better condition of earthly happiness,
and with a better chance of heaven, fifty years ago than now, before the
"era of progress" found him out. (It ought to be noticed here, that the
report of the Parliamentary Commission on the condition of the English
agricultural laborer does not sustain Mr. Froude's assumptions. On the
contrary, the report shows that his condition is in almost all respects
vastly better than it was fifty years ago.) Mr. Ruskin would remove the
steam-engine and all its devilish works from his vicinity; he would
abolish factories, speedy travel by rail, new-fangled instruments of
agriculture, our patent education, and remit him to his ancient
condition--tied for life to a bit of ground, which should supply all his
simple wants; his wife should weave the clothes for the family; his
children should learn nothing but the catechism and to speak the truth;
he should take his religion without question from the hearty, fox-hunting
parson, and live and die undisturbed by ideas. Now, it seems to me that
if Mr. Ruskin could realize in some isolated nation this idea of a
pastoral, simple existence, under a paternal government, he would have in
time an ignorant, stupid, brutal community in a great deal worse case
than the agricultural laborers of England are at present. Three-fourths
of the crime in the kingdom of Bavaria is committed in the Ultramontane
region of the Tyrol, where the conditions of popular education are about
those that Mr. Ruskin seems to regret as swept away by the present
movement in England--a stagnant state of things, in which any wind of
heaven would be a blessing, even if it were a tornado. Education of the
modern sort unsettles the peasant, renders him unfit for labor, and gives
us a half-educated idler in place of a conscientious workman. The disuse
of the apprentice system is not made good by the present system of
education, because no one learns a trade well, and the consequence is
poor work, and a sham civilization generally. There is some truth in
these complaints. But the way out is not backward, but forward. The fault
is not with education, though it may be with the kind of education. The
education must go forward; the man must not be half but wholly educated.
It is only half-knowledge like half-training in a trade that is
dangerous.
But what I wish to say is, that notwithstanding certain unfavorable
things in the condition of the English laborer and mechanic, his chance
is better in the main than it was fifty years ago. The world is a better
world for him. He has the opportunity to be more of a man. His world is
wider, and it is all open to him to go where he will. Mr. Ruskin may not
so easily find his ideal, contented peasant, but the man himself begins
to apprehend that this is a world of ideas as well as of food and
clothes, and I think, if he were consulted, he would have no desire to
return to the condition of his ancestors. In fact, the most hopeful
symptom in the condition of the English peasant is his discontent. For,
as skepticism is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discontent is the
mother of progress. The man is comparatively of little use in the world
who is contented.
There is another thought pertinent here. It is this: that no man, however
humble, can live a full life if he lives to himself alone. He is more of
a man, he lives in a higher plane of thought and of enjoyment, the more
his communications are extended with his fellows and the wider his
sympathies are. I count it a great thing for the English peasant, a solid
addition to his life, that he is every day being put into more intimate
relations with every other man on the globe.
I know it is said that these are only vague and sentimental notions of
progress--notions of a "salvation by machinery." Let us pass to something
that may be less vague, even if it be more sentimental. For a hundred
years we have reckoned it progress, that the people were taking part in
government. We have had a good deal of faith in the proposition put forth
at Philadelphia a century ago, that men are, in effect, equal in
political rights. Out of this simple proposition springs logically the
extension of suffrage, and a universal education, in order that this
important function of a government by the people may be exercised
intelligently.
Now we are told by the most accomplished English essayists that this is a
mistake, that it is change, but no progress. Indeed, there are
philosophers in America who think so. At least I infer so from the fact
that Mr. Froude fathers one of his definitions of our condition upon an
American. When a block of printer's type is by accident broken up and
disintegrated, it falls into what is called "pi." The "pi," a mere chaos,
is afterwards sorted and distributed, preparatory to being built up into
fresh combinations. "A distinguished American friend," says Mr. Froude,
"describes Democracy as making pi." It is so witty a sarcasm that I
almost think Mr. Froude manufactured it himself. Well, we have been
making this "pi" for a hundred years; it seems to be a national dish in
considerable favor with the rest of the world--even such ancient nations
as China and Japan want a piece of it.
Now, of course, no form of human government is perfect, or anything like
it, but I should be willing to submit the question to an English traveler
even, whether, on the whole, the people of the United States do not have
as fair a chance in life and feel as little the oppression of government
as any other in the world; whether anywhere the burdens are more lifted
off men's shoulders.
This infidelity to popular government and unbelief in any good results to
come from it are not, unfortunately, confined to the English essayists. I
am not sure but the notion is growing in what is called the intellectual
class, that it is a mistake to intrust the government to the ignorant
many, and that it can only be lodged safely in the hands of the wise few.
We hear the corruptions of the times attributed to universal suffrage.
Yet these corruptions certainly are not peculiar to the United States: It
is also said here, as it is in England, that our diffused and somewhat
superficial education is merely unfitting the mass of men, who must be
laborers, for any useful occupation.
This argument, reduced to plain terms, is simply this: that the mass of
mankind are unfit to decide properly their own political and social
condition; and that for the mass of mankind any but a very limited mental
development is to be deprecated. It would be enough to say of this, that
class government and popular ignorance have been tried for so many ages,
and always with disaster and failure in the end, that I should think
philanthropical historians would be tired of recommending them. But there
is more to be said.
I feel that as a resident on earth, part owner of it for a time,
unavoidably a member of society, I have a right to a voice in determining
what my condition and what my chance in life shall be. I may be ignorant,
I should be a very poor ruler of other people, but I am better capable of
deciding some things that touch me nearly than another is. By what logic
can I say that I should have a part in the conduct of this world and that
my neighbor should not? Who is to decide what degree of intelligence
shall fit a man for a share in the government? How are we to select the
few capable men that are to rule all the rest? As a matter of fact, men
have been rulers who had neither the average intelligence nor virtue of
the people they governed. And, as a matter of historical experience, a
class in power has always sought its own benefit rather than that of the
whole people. Lunacy, extraordinary stupidity, and crime aside, a man is
the best guardian of his own liberty and rights.
The English critics, who say we have taken the government from the
capable few and given it to the people, speak of universal suffrage as a
quack panacea of this "era of progress." But it is not the manufactured
panacea of any theorist or philosopher whatever. It is the natural result
of a diffused knowledge of human rights and of increasing intelligence.
It is nothing against it that Napoleon III. used a mockery of it to
govern France. It is not a device of the closet, but a method of
government, which has naturally suggested itself to men as they have
grown into a feeling of self-reliance and a consciousness that they have
some right in the decision of their own destiny in the world. It is true
that suffrage peculiarly fits a people virtuous and intelligent. But
there has not yet been invented any government in which a people would
thrive who were ignorant and vicious.
Our foreign critics seem to regard our "American system," by the way, as
a sort of invention or patent right, upon which we are experimenting;
forgetting that it is as legitimate a growth out of our circumstances as
the English system is out of its antecedents. Our system is not the
product of theorists or closet philosophers; but it was ordained in
substance and inevitable from the day the first "town meeting" assembled
in New England, and it was not in the power of Hamilton or any one else
to make it otherwise.
So you must have education, now you have the ballot, say the critics of
this era of progress; and this is another of your cheap inventions. Not
that we undervalue book knowledge. Oh, no! but it really seems to us that
a good trade, with the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments back of it,
would be the best thing for most of you. You must work for a living
anyway; and why, now, should you unsettle your minds?
This is such an astounding view of human life and destiny that I do not
know what to say to it. Did it occur to Mr. Froude to ask the man whether
he would be contented with a good trade and the Ten Commandments? Perhaps
the man would like eleven commandments? And, if he gets hold of the
eleventh, he may want to know something more about his fellow-men, a
little geography maybe, and some of Mr. Froude's history, and thus he may
be led off into literature, and the Lord knows where.
The inference is that education--book fashion--will unfit the man for
useful work. Mr. Froude here again stops at a half-truth. As a general
thing, intelligence is useful in any position a man occupies. But it is
true that there is a superficial and misdirected sort of education, so
called, which makes the man who receives it despise labor; and it is also
true that in the present educational revival there has been a neglect of
training in the direction of skilled labor, and we all suffer more or
less from cheap and dishonest work. But the way out of this, again, is
forward, and not backward. It is a good sign, and not a stigma upon this
era of progress, that people desire education. But this education must be
of the whole man; he must be taught to work as well as to read, and he
is, indeed, poorly educated if he is not fitted to do his work in the
world. We certainly shall not have better workmen by having ignorant
workmen. I need not say that the real education is that which will best
fit a man for performing well his duties in life. If Mr. Froude, instead
of his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, and of the Ten
Commandments in England, had recommended the establishment of industrial
schools, he would have spoken more to the purpose.
I should say that the fashionable skepticism of today, here and in
England, is in regard to universal suffrage and the capacity of the
people to govern themselves. The whole system is the sharp invention of
Thomas Jefferson and others, by which crafty demagogues can rule. Instead
of being, as we have patriotically supposed, a real progress in human
development, it is only a fetich, which is becoming rapidly a failure.
Now, there is a great deal of truth in the assertion that, whatever the
form of government, the ablest men, or the strongest, or the most cunning
in the nation, will rule. And yet it is true that in a popular
government, like this, the humblest citizen, if he is wronged or
oppressed, has in his hands a readier instrument of redress than he has
ever had in any form of government. And it must not be forgotten that the
ballot in the hands of all is perhaps the only safeguard against the
tyranny of wealth in the hands of the few. It is true that bad men can
band together and be destructive; but so they can in any government.
Revolution by ballot is much safer than revolution by violence; and,
granting that human nature is selfish, when the whole people are the
government selfishness is on the side of the government. Can you mention
any class in this country whose interest it is to overturn the
government? And, then, as to the wisdom of the popular decisions by the
ballot in this country. Look carefully at all the Presidential elections
from Washington's down, and say, in the light of history, if the popular
decision has not, every time, been the best for the country. It may not
have seemed so to some of us at the time, but I think it is true, and a
very significant fact.
Of course, in this affirmation of belief that one hundred years of
popular government in this country is a real progress for humanity, and
not merely a change from the rule of the fit to the rule of the cunning,
we cannot forget that men are pretty much everywhere the same, and that
we have abundant reason for national humility. We are pretty well aware
that ours is not an ideal state of society, and should be so, even if the
English who pass by did not revile us, wagging their heads. We might
differ with them about the causes of our disorders. Doubtless, extended
suffrage has produced certain results. It seems, strangely enough, to
have escaped the observation of our English friends that to suffrage was
due the late horse disease. No one can discover any other cause for it.
But there is a cause for the various phenomena of this period of shoddy,
of inflated speculation, of disturbance of all values, social, moral,
political, and material, quite sufficient in the light of history to
account for them. It is not suffrage; it is an irredeemable paper
currency. It has borne its usual fruit with us, and neither foreign nor
home critics can shift the responsibility of it upon our system of
government. Yes, it is true, we have contrived to fill the world with our
scandals of late. I might refer to a loose commercial and political
morality; to betrayals of popular trust in politics; to corruptions in
legislatures and in corporations; to an abuse of power in the public
press, which has hardly yet got itself adjusted to its sudden accession
of enormous influence. We complain of its injustice to individuals
sometimes. We might imagine that something like this would occur.
A newspaper one day says: "We are exceedingly pained to hear that the
Hon. Mr. Blank, who is running for Congress in the First District, has
permitted his aged grandmother to go to the town poorhouse. What renders
this conduct inexplicable is the fact that Mr. Blank is a man of large
fortune."
The next day the newspaper says: "The Hon. Mr. Blank has not seen fit to
deny the damaging accusation in regard to the treatment of his
grandmother."
The next day the newspaper says: "Mr. Blank is still silent. He is
probably aware that he cannot afford to rest under this grave charge."
The next day the newspaper asks: "Where's Blank? Has he fled?"
At last, goaded by these remarks, and most unfortunately for himself, Mr.
Blank writes to the newspaper and most indignantly denies the charge; he
never sent his grandmother to the poorhouse.
Thereupon the newspaper says: "Of course a rich man who would put his own
grandmother in the poorhouse would deny it. Our informant was a gentleman
of character. Mr. Blank rests the matter on his unsupported word. It is a
question of veracity."
Or, perhaps, Mr. Blank, more unfortunately for himself, begins by making
an affidavit, wherein he swears that he never sent his grandmother to the
poorhouse, and that, in point of fact, he has not any grandmother
whatever.
The newspaper then, in language that is now classical, "goes for" Mr.
Blank. It says: "Mr. Blank resorts to the common device of the rogue
--the affidavit. If he had been conscious of rectitude, would he not have
relied upon his simple denial?"
Now, if an extreme case like this could occur, it would be bad enough.
But, in our free society, the remedy would be at hand. The constituents
of Mr. Blank would elect him in triumph. The newspaper would lose public
confidence and support and learn to use its position more justly. What I
mean to indicate by such an extreme instance as this is, that in our very
license of individual freedom there is finally a correcting power.
We might pursue this general subject of progress by a comparison of the
society of this country now with that of fifty years ago. I have no doubt
that in every essential this is better than that, in manners, in
morality, in charity and toleration, in education and religion. I know
the standard of morality is higher. I know the churches are purer. Not
fifty years ago, in a New England town, a distinguished doctor of
divinity, the pastor of a leading church, was part owner in a distillery.
He was a great light in his denomination, but he was an extravagant
liver, and, being unable to pay his debts, he was arrested and put into
jail, with the liberty of the "limits." In order not to interrupt his
ministerial work, the jail limits were made to include his house and his
church, so that he could still go in and out before his people. I do not
think that could occur anywhere in the United States today.
I will close these fragmentary suggestions by saying that I, for one,
should like to see this country a century from now. Those who live then
will doubtless say of this period that it was crude, and rather
disorderly, and fermenting with a great many new projects; but I have
great faith that they will also say that the present extending notion,
that the best government is for the people, by the people, was in the
line of sound progress. I should expect to find faith in humanity greater
and not less than it is now, and I should not expect to find that Mr.
Froude's mournful expectation had been realized, and that the belief in a
life beyond the grave had been withdrawn.
ENGLAND
By Charles Dudley Warner
England has played a part in modern history altogether out of proportion
to its size. The whole of Great Britain, including Ireland, has only
eleven thousand more square miles than Italy; and England and Wales alone
are not half so large as Italy. England alone is about the size of North
Carolina. It is, as Franklin, in 1763, wrote to Mary Stevenson in London,
"that petty island which, compared to America, is but a stepping-stone in
a brook, scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry."
A considerable portion of it is under water, or water-soaked a good part
of the year, and I suppose it has more acres for breeding frogs than any
other northern land, except Holland. Old Harrison says that the North
Britons when overcome by hunger used to creep into the marshes till the
water was up to their chins and there remain a long time, "onlie to
qualifie the heats of their stomachs by violence, which otherwise would
have wrought and beene readie to oppresse them for hunger and want of
sustinance." It lies so far north--the latitude of Labrador--that the
winters are long and the climate inhospitable. It would be severely cold
if the Gulf Stream did not make it always damp and curtain it with
clouds. In some parts the soil is heavy with water, in others it is only
a thin stratum above the chalk; in fact, agricultural production could
scarcely be said to exist there until fortunes made in India and in other
foreign adventure enabled the owners of the land to pile it knee-deep
with fertilizers from Peru and elsewhere. Thanks to accumulated wealth
and the Gulf Stream, its turf is green and soft; figs, which will not
mature with us north of the capes of Virginia, ripen in sheltered nooks
in Oxford, and the large and unfrequent strawberry sometimes appears upon
the dinner-table in such profusion that the guests can indulge in one
apiece.
Yet this small, originally infertile island has been for two centuries,
and is today, the most vital influence on the globe. Cast your eye over
the world upon her possessions, insular and continental, into any one of
which, almost, England might be dropped, with slight disturbance, as you
would transfer a hanging garden. For any parallel to her power and
possessions you must go back to ancient Rome. Egypt under Thotmes and
Seti overran the then known world and took tribute of it; but it was a
temporary wave of conquest and not an assimilation. Rome sent her laws
and her roads to the end of the earth, and made an empire of it; but it
was an empire of barbarians largely, of dynasties rather than of peoples.
The dynasties fought, the dynasties submitted, and the dynasties paid the
tribute. The modern "people" did not exist. One battle decided the fate
of half the world--it might be lost or won for a woman's eyes; the flight
of a chieftain might settle the fate of a province; a campaign might
determine the allegiance of half Asia. There was but one compact,
disciplined, law-ordered nation, and that had its seat on the Tiber.
Under what different circumstances did England win her position! Before
she came to the front, Venice controlled, and almost monopolized, the
trade of the Orient. When she entered upon her career Spain was almost
omnipotent in Europe, and was in possession of more than half the Western
world; and besides Spain, England had, wherever she went, to contend for
a foothold with Portugal, skilled in trade and adventure; and with
Holland, rich, and powerful on the sea. That is to say, she met
everywhere civilizations old and technically her superior. Of the ruling
powers, she was the least in arts and arms. If you will take time to fill
out this picture, you will have some conception of the marvelous
achievements of England, say since the abdication of the Emperor Charles
V.
This little island is today the centre of the wealth, of the solid
civilization, of the world. I will not say of art, of music, of the
lighter social graces that make life agreeable; but I will say of the
moral forces that make progress possible and worth while. Of this island
the centre is London; of London the heart is "the City," and in the City
you can put your finger on one spot where the pulse of the world is
distinctly felt to beat. The Moslem regards the Kaaba at Mecca as the
centre of the universe; but that is only a theological phrase. The centre
of the world is the Bank of England in Leadenhall Street. There is not an
occurrence, not a conquest or a defeat, a revolution, a panic, a famine,
an abundance, not a change in value of money or material, no depression
or stoppage in trade, no recovery, no political, and scarcely any great
religious movement--say the civil deposition of the Pope or the Wahhabee
revival in Arabia and India--that does not report itself instantly at
this sensitive spot. Other capitals feel a local influence; this feels
all the local influences. Put your ear at the door of the Bank or the
Stock Exchange near by, and you hear the roar of the world.
But this is not all, nor the most striking thing, nor the greatest
contrast to the empires of Rome and of Spain. The civilization that has
gone forth from England is a self-sustaining one, vital to grow where it
is planted, in vast communities, in an order that does not depend, as
that of the Roman world did, upon edicts and legions from the capital.
And it must be remembered that if the land empire of England is not so
vast as that of Rome, England has for two centuries been mistress of the
seas, with all the consequences of that opportunity--consequences to
trade beyond computation. And we must add to all this that an
intellectual and moral power has been put forth from England clear round
the globe, and felt beyond the limits of the English tongue.
How is it that England has attained this supremacy--a supremacy in vain
disputed on land and on sea by France, but now threatened by an equipped
and disciplined Germany, by an unformed Colossus--a Slav and Tartar
conglomerate; and perhaps by one of her own children, the United States?
I will mention some of the things that have determined England's
extraordinary career; and they will help us to consider her prospects. I
name:
I. The Race. It is a mixed race, but with certain dominant qualities,
which we call, loosely, Teutonic; certainly the most aggressive, tough,
and vigorous people the world has seen. It does not shrink from any
climate, from any exposure, from any geographic condition; yet its choice
of migration and of residence has mainly been on the grass belt of the
globe, where soil and moisture produce good turf, where a changing and
unequal climate, with extremes of heat and cold, calls out the physical
resources, stimulates invention, and requires an aggressive and defensive
attitude of mind and body. The early history of this people is marked by
two things:
( 1 ) Town and village organizations, nurseries of law, order, and
self-dependence, nuclei of power, capable of indefinite expansion,
leading directly to a free and a strong government, the breeders of civil
liberty.
( 2 ) Individualism in religion, Protestantism in the widest sense: I
mean by this, cultivation of the individual conscience as against
authority. This trait was as marked in this sturdy people in Catholic
England as it is in Protestant England. It is in the blood. England never
did submit to Rome, not even as France did, though the Gallic Church held
out well. Take the struggle of Henry II. and the hierarchy. Read the
fight with prerogative all along. The English Church never could submit.
It is a shallow reading of history to attribute the final break with Rome
to the unbridled passion of Henry VIII.; that was an occasion only: if it
had not been that, it would have been something else.
Here we have the two necessary traits in the character of a great people:
the love and the habit of civil liberty and religious conviction and
independence. Allied to these is another trait--truthfulness. To speak
the truth in word and action, to the verge of bluntness and offense--and
with more relish sometimes because it is individually obnoxious and
unlovely--is an English trait, clearly to be traced in the character of
this people, notwithstanding the equivocations of Elizabethan diplomacy,
the proverbial lying of English shopkeepers, and the fraudulent
adulteration of English manufactures. Not to lie is perhaps as much a
matter of insular pride as of morals; to lie is unbecoming an Englishman.
When Captain Burnaby was on his way to Khiva he would tolerate no
Oriental exaggeration of his army rank, although a higher title would
have smoothed his way and added to his consideration. An English official
who was a captive at Bokhara (or Khiva) was offered his life by the Khan
if he would abjure the Christian faith and say he was a Moslem; but he
preferred death rather than the advantage of a temporary equivocation. I
do not suppose that he was a specially pious man at home or that he was a
martyr to religious principle, but for the moment Christianity stood for
England and English honor and civilization. I can believe that a rough
English sailor, who had not used a sacred name, except in vain, since he
said his prayer at his mother's knee, accepted death under like
circumstances rather than say he was not a Christian.
The next determining cause in England's career is:
II. The insular position. Poor as the island was, this was the
opportunity. See what came of it:
( 1 ) Maritime opportunity. The irregular coastlines, the bays and
harbors, the near islands and mainlands invited to the sea. The nation
became, per force, sailors--as the ancient Greeks were and the modern
Greeks are: adventurers, discoverers--hardy, ambitious, seeking food from
the sea and wealth from every side.
( 2 ) Their position protected them. What they got they could keep;
wealth could accumulate. Invasion was difficult and practically
impossible to their neighbors. And yet they were in the bustling world,
close to the continent, commanding the most important of the navigable
seas. The wealth of Holland was on the one hand, the wealth of France on
the other. They held the keys.
( 3 ) The insular position and their free institutions invited refugees
from all the Continent, artisans and skilled laborers of all kinds.
Hence, the beginning of their great industries, which made England rich
in proportion as her authority and chance of trade expanded over distant
islands and continents. But this would not have been possible without the
third advantage which I shall mention, and that is:
III. Coal. England's power and wealth rested upon her coal-beds. In this
bounty nature was more liberal to the tight little island than to any
other spot in Western Europe, and England took early advantage of it. To
be sure, her coal-field is small compared with that of the United
States--an area of only 11,900 square miles to our 192,000. But Germany
has only 1,770; Belgium, 510; France, 2,086; and Russia only in her
expansion of territory leads Europe in this respect, and has now 30,000
square miles of coal-beds. But see the use England makes of this
material: in 1877, she took out of the ground 134,179,968 tons. The
United States the same year took out 50,000,000 tons; Germany,
48,000,000; France, 16,000,000; Belgium, 14,000,000. This tells the story
of the heavy industries.
We have considered as elements of national greatness the race itself, the
favorable position, and the material to work with. I need not enlarge
upon the might and the possessions of England, nor the general
beneficence of her occupation wherever she has established fort, factory,
or colony. With her flag go much injustice, domineering, and cruelty;
but, on the whole, the best elements of civilization.
The intellectual domination of England has been as striking as the
physical. It is stamped upon all her colonies; it has by no means
disappeared in the United States. For more than fifty years after our
independence we imported our intellectual food--with the exception of
politics, and theology in certain forms--and largely our ethical guidance
from England. We read English books, or imitations of the English way of
looking at things; we even accepted the English caricatures of our own
life as genuine--notably in the case of the so-called typical Yankee. It
is only recently that our writers have begun to describe our own life as
it is, and that readers begin to feel that our society may be as
interesting in print as that English society which they have been all
their lives accustomed to read about. The reading-books of children in
schools were filled with English essays, stories, English views of life;
it was the English heroines over whose woes the girls wept; it was of the
English heroes that the boys declaimed. I do not know how much the
imagination has to do in shaping the national character, but for half a
century English writers, by poems and novels, controlled the imagination
of this country. The principal reading then, as now--and perhaps more
then than now--was fiction, and nearly all of this England supplied. We
took in with it, it will be noticed, not only the romance and gilding of
chivalry and legitimacy, such as Scott gives us, but constant instruction
in a society of ranks and degrees, orders of nobility and commonalty, a
fixed social status, a well-ordered, and often attractive, permanent
social inequality, a state of life and relations based upon lingering
feudal conditions and prejudices. The background of all English fiction
is monarchical; however liberal it may be, it must be projected upon the
existing order of things. We have not been examining these foreign social
conditions with that simple curiosity which leads us to look into the
social life of Russia as it is depicted in Russian novels; we have, on
the contrary, absorbed them generation after generation as part of our
intellectual development, so that the novels and the other English
literature must have had a vast influence in molding our mental
character, in shaping our thinking upon the political as well as the
social constitution of states.
For a long time the one American counteraction, almost the only, to this
English influence was the newspaper, which has always kept alive and
diffused a distinctly American spirit--not always lovely or modest, but
national. The establishment of periodicals which could afford to pay for
fiction written about our society and from the American point of view has
had a great effect on our literary emancipation. The wise men whom we
elect to make our laws--and who represent us intellectually and morally a
good deal better than we sometimes like to admit--have always gone upon
the theory, with regard to the reading for the American people, that the
chief requisite of it was cheapness, with no regard to its character so
far as it is a shaper of notions about government and social life. What
educating influence English fiction was having upon American life they
have not inquired, so long as it was furnished cheap, and its authors
were cheated out of any copyright on it.
At the North, thanks to a free press and periodicals, to a dozen reform
agitations, and to the intellectual stir generally accompanying
industries and commerce, we have been developing an immense intellectual
activity, a portion of which has found expression in fiction, in poetry,
in essays, that are instinct with American life and aspiration; so that
now for over thirty years, in the field of literature, we have had a
vigorous offset to the English intellectual domination of which I spoke.
How far this has in the past molded American thought and sentiment, in
what degree it should be held responsible for the infidelity in regard to
our "American experiment," I will not undertake to say. The South
furnishes a very interesting illustration in this connection. When the
civil war broke down the barriers of intellectual non-intercourse behind
which the South had ensconced itself, it was found to be in a colonial
condition. Its libraries were English libraries, mostly composed of old
English literature. Its literary growth stopped with the reign of George
III. Its latest news was the Spectator and the Tatler. The social order
it covered was that of monarchical England, undisturbed by the fiery
philippics of Byron or Shelley or the radicalism of a manufacturing age.
Its chivalry was an imitation of the antiquated age of lords and ladies,
and tournaments, and buckram courtesies, when men were as touchy to
fight, at the lift of an eyelid or the drop of the glove, as Brian de
Bois-Guilbert, and as ready for a drinking-bout as Christopher North. The
intellectual stir of the North, with its disorganizing radicalism, was
rigorously excluded, and with it all the new life pouring out of its
presses. The South was tied to a republic, but it was not republican,
either in its politics or its social order. It was, in its mental
constitution, in its prejudices, in its tastes, exactly what you would
expect a people to be, excluded from the circulation of free ideas by its
system of slavery, and fed on the English literature of a century ago. I
dare say that a majority of its reading public, at any time, would have
preferred a monarchical system and a hierarchy of rank.
To return to England. I have said that English domination usually carries
the best elements of civilization. Yet it must be owned that England has
pursued her magnificent career in a policy often insolent and brutal, and
generally selfish. Scarcely any considerations have stood in the way of
her trade and profit. I will not dwell upon her opium culture in India,
which is a proximate cause of famine in district after district, nor upon
her forcing the drug upon China--a policy disgraceful to a Christian
queen and people. We have only just got rid of slavery, sustained so long
by Biblical and official sanction, and may not yet set up as critics. But
I will refer to a case with which all are familiar--England's treatment
of her American colonies. In 1760 and onward, when Franklin, the agent of
the colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, was cooling his heels in
lords' waiting-rooms in London, America was treated exactly as Ireland
was--that is, discriminated against in every way; not allowed to
manufacture; not permitted to trade with other nations, except under the
most vexatious restrictions; and the effort was continued to make her a
mere agricultural producer and a dependent. All that England cared for us
was that we should be a market for her manufactures. This same
selfishness has been the keynote of her policy down to the present day,
except as the force of circumstances has modified it. Steadily pursued,
it has contributed largely to make England the monetary and industrial
master of the world.
With this outline I pass to her present condition and outlook. The
dictatorial and selfish policy has been forced to give way somewhat in
regard to the colonies. The spirit of the age and the strength of the
colonies forbid its exercise; they cannot be held by the old policy.
Australia boldly adopts a protective tariff, and her parliament is only
nominally controlled by the crown. Canada exacts duties on English goods,
and England cannot help herself. Even with these concessions, can England
keep her great colonies? They are still loyal in word. They still affect
English manners and English speech, and draw their intellectual supplies
from England. On the prospect of a war with Russia they nearly all
offered volunteers. But everybody knows that allegiance is on the
condition of local autonomy. If united Canada asks to go, she will go. So
with Australia. It may be safely predicted that England will never fight
again to hold the sovereignty of her new-world possessions against their
present occupants. And, in the judgment of many good observers, a
dissolution of the empire, so far as the Western colonies are concerned,
is inevitable, unless Great Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin,
becomes an imperial federation, with parliaments distinct and
independent, the crown the only bond of union--the crown, and not the
English parliament, being the titular and actual sovereign. Sovereign
power over America in the parliament Franklin never would admit. His idea
was that all the inhabitants of the empire must be citizens, not some of
them subjects ruled by the home citizens. The two great political parties
of England are really formed on lines constructed after the passage of
the Reform Bill of 1832. The Tories had been long in power. They had made
many changes and popular concessions, but they resisted parliamentary
reform. The great Whig lords, who had tried to govern England without the
people and in opposition to the crown in the days of George III., had
learned to seek popular support. The Reform Bill, which was ultimately
forced through by popular pressure and threat of civil war, abolished the
rotten boroughs, gave representation to the large manufacturing towns and
increased representation to the counties, and the suffrage to all men who
had 'paid ten pounds a year rent in boroughs, or in the counties owned
land worth ten pounds a year or paid fifty pounds rent. The immediate
result of this was to put power into the hands of the middle classes and
to give the lower classes high hopes, so that, in 1839, the Chartist
movement began, one demand of which was universal suffrage. The old party
names of Whig and Tory had been dropped and the two parties had assumed
their present appellations of Conservatives and Liberals. Both parties
had, however, learned that there was no rest for any ruling party except
a popular basis, and the Conservative party had the good sense to
strengthen itself in 1867 by carrying through Mr. Disraeli's bill, which
gave the franchise in boroughs to all householders paying rates, and in
counties to all occupiers of property rated at fifteen pounds a year.
This broadening of the suffrage places the power irrevocably in the hands
of the people, against whose judgment neither crown nor ministry can
venture on any important step.
In general terms it may be said that of these two great parties the
Conservative wishes to preserve existing institutions, and latterly has
leaned to the prerogatives of the crown, and the Liberal is inclined to
progress and reform, and to respond to changes demanded by the people.
Both parties, however, like parties elsewhere, propose and oppose
measures and movements, and accept or reject policies, simply to get
office or keep office. The Conservative party of late years, principally
because it has the simple task of holding back, has been better able to
define its lines and preserve a compact organization. The Liberals, with
a multitude of reformatory projects, have, of course, a less homogeneous
organization, and for some years have been without well-defined issues.
The Conservative aristocracy seemed to form a secure alliance with the
farmers and the great agricultural interests, and at the same time to
have a strong hold upon the lower classes. In what his opponents called
his "policy of adventure," Lord Beaconsfield had the support of the lower
populace. The Liberal party is an incongruous host. On one wing are the
Whig lords and great landowners, who cannot be expected to take kindly to
a land reform that would reform them out of territorial power; and on the
other wing are the Radicals, who would abolish the present land system
and the crown itself, and institute the rule of a democracy. Between
these two is the great body of the middle class, a considerable portion
of the educated and university trained, the majorities of the
manufacturing towns, and perhaps, we may say, generally the
Nonconformists. There are some curious analogies in these two parties to
our own parties before the war. It is, perhaps, not fanciful to suppose
that the Conservative lords resemble our own aristocratic leaders of
democracy, who contrived to keep near the people and had affiliations
that secured them the vote of the least educated portion of the voters;
while the great Liberal lords are not unlike our old aristocratic Whigs,
of the cotton order, who have either little sympathy with the people or
little faculty of showing it. It is a curious fact that during our civil
war respect for authority gained us as much sympathy from the
Conservatives, as love for freedom (hampered by the greed of trade and
rivalry in manufactures) gained us from the Liberals.
To return to the question of empire. The bulk of the Conservative party
would hold the colonies if possible, and pursue an imperial policy; while
certainly a large portion of the Liberals--not all, by any means--would
let the colonies go, and, with the Manchester school, hope to hold
England's place by free-trade and active competition. The imperial policy
may be said to have two branches, in regard to which parties will not
sharply divide: one is the relations to be held towards the Western
colonies, and the other in the policy to be pursued in the East in
reference to India and to the development of the Indian empire, and also
the policy of aggression and subjection in South Africa.
An imperial policy does not necessarily imply such vagaries as the
forcible detention of the forcibly annexed Boer republic. But everybody
sees that the time is near when England must say definitely as to the
imperial policy generally whether it will pursue it or abandon it. And it
may be remarked in passing that the Gladstone government, thus far,
though pursuing this policy more moderately than the Beaconsfield
government, shows no intention of abandoning it. Almost everybody admits
that if it is abandoned England must sink to the position of a third-rate
power like Holland. For what does abandonment mean? It means to have no
weight, except that of moral example, in Continental affairs: to
relinquish her advantages in the Mediterranean; to let Turkey be absorbed
by Russia; to become so weak in India as to risk rebellion of all the
provinces, and probable attack from Russia and her Central Asian allies.
But this is not all. Lost control in Asia is lost trade; this is evident
in every foot of control Russia has gained in the Caucasus, about the
Caspian Sea, in Persia. There Russian manufactures supplant the English;
and so in another quarter: in order to enjoy the vast opening trade of
Africa, England must be on hand with an exhibition of power. We might
show by a hundred examples that the imperial idea in England does not
rest on pride alone, on national glory altogether, though that is a large
element in it, but on trade instincts. "Trade follows the flag" is a
well-known motto; and that means that the lines of commerce follow the
limits of empire.
Take India as an illustration. Why should England care to keep India? In
the last forty years the total revenue from India, set down up to 1880 as
L 1,517,000,000, has been L 53,000,000 less than the expenditure. It
varies with the years, and occasionally the balance is favorable, as in
1879, when the expenditure was L 63,400,000 and the revenue was L
64,400,000. But to offset this average deficit the very profitable trade
of India, which is mostly in British hands, swells the national wealth;
and this trade would not be so largely in British hands if the flag were
away.
But this is not the only value of India. Grasp on India is part of the
vast Oriental network of English trade and commerce, the carrying trade,
the supply of cotton and iron goods. This largely depends upon English
prestige in the Orient, and to lose India is to lose the grip. On
practically the same string with India are Egypt, Central Africa, and the
Euphrates valley. A vast empire of trade opens out. To sink the imperial
policy is to shut this vision. With Russia pressing on one side and
America competing on the other, England cannot afford to lose her
military lines, her control of the sea, her prestige.
Again, India offers to the young and the adventurous a career, military,
civil, or commercial. This is of great weight--great social weight. One
of the chief wants of England today is careers and professions for her
sons. The population of the United Kingdom in 1876 was estimated at near
thirty-four millions; in the last few decades the decennial increase had
been considerably over two millions; at that rate the population in 1900
would be near forty millions. How can they live in their narrow limits?
They must emigrate, go for good, or seek employment and means of wealth
in some such vast field as India. Take away India now, and you cut off
the career of hundreds of thousands of young Englishmen, and the hope of
tens of thousands of households.
There is another aspect of the case which it would be unfair to ignore.
Opportunity is the measure of a nation's responsibility. I have no doubt
that Mr. Thomas Hughes spoke for a very respectable portion of Christian
England, in 1861, when he wrote Mr. James Russell Lowell, in a prefatory
note to "Tom Brown at Oxford," these words:
"The great tasks of the world are only laid on the strongest
shoulders. We, who have India to guide and train, who have for our
task the educating of her wretched people into free men, who feel
that the work cannot be shifted from ourselves, and must be done as
God would have it done, at the peril of England's own life, can and
do feel for you."
It is safe, we think, to say that if the British Empire is to be
dissolved, disintegration cannot be permitted to begin at home. Ireland
has always been a thorn in the side of England. And the policy towards it
could not have been much worse, either to impress it with a respect for
authority or to win it by conciliation; it has been a strange mixture of
untimely concession and untimely cruelty. The problem, in fact, has
physical and race elements that make it almost insolvable. A water-logged
country, of which nothing can surely be predicted but the uncertainty of
its harvests, inhabited by a people of most peculiar mental constitution,
alien in race, temperament, and religion, having scarcely one point of
sympathy with the English. But geography settles some things in this
world, and the act of union that bound Ireland to the United Kingdom in
1800 was as much a necessity of the situation as the act of union that
obliterated the boundary line between Scotland and England in 1707. The
Irish parliament was confessedly a failure, and it is scarcely within the
possibilities that the experiment will be tried again. Irish
independence, so far as English consent is concerned, and until England's
power is utterly broken, is a dream. Great changes will doubtless be made
in the tenure and transfer of land, and these changes will react upon
England to the ultimate abasement of the landed aristocracy; but this
equalization of conditions would work no consent to separation. The
undeniable growth of the democratic spirit in England can no more be
relied on to bring it about, when we remember what renewed executive
vigor and cohesion existed with the Commonwealth and the fiery foreign
policy of the first republic of France. For three years past we have seen
the British Empire in peril on all sides, with the addition of depression
and incipient rebellion at home, but her horizon is not as dark as it was
in 1780, when, with a failing cause in America, England had the whole of
Europe against her.
In any estimate of the prospects of England we must take into account the
recent marked changes in the social condition. Mr. Escott has an
instructive chapter on this in his excellent book on England. He notices
that the English character is losing its insularity, is more accessible
to foreign influences, and is adopting foreign, especially French, modes
of living. Country life is losing its charm; domestic life is changed;
people live in "flats" more and more, and the idea of home is not what it
was; marriage is not exactly what it was; the increased free and
independent relations of the sexes are somewhat demoralizing; women are a
little intoxicated with their newly-acquired freedom; social scandals are
more frequent. It should be said, however, that perhaps the present
perils are due not to the new system, but to the fact that it is new;
when the novelty is worn off the peril may cease.
Mr. Escott notices primogeniture as one of the stable and, curious
enough, one of the democratic institutions of society. It is owing to
primogeniture that while there is a nobility in England there is no
noblesse. If titles and lands went to all the children there would be the
multitudinous noblesse of the Continent. Now, by primogeniture, enough is
retained for a small nobility, but all the younger sons must go into the
world and make a living. The three respectable professions no longer
offer sufficient inducement, and they crowd more and more into trade.
Thus the middle class is constantly recruited from the upper. Besides,
the upper is all the time recruited from the wealthy middle; the union of
aristocracy and plutocracy may be said to be complete. But merit makes
its way continually from even the lower ranks upward, in the professions,
in the army, the law, the church, in letters, in trade, and, what Mr.
Escott does not mention, in the reformed civil service, newly opened to
the humblest lad in the land. Thus there is constant movement up and down
in social England, approaching, except in the traditional nobility, the
freedom of movement in our own country. This is all wholesome and sound.
Even the nobility itself, driven by ennui, or a loss of former political
control, or by the necessity of more money to support inherited estates,
goes into business, into journalism, writes books, enters the
professions.
What are the symptoms of decay in England? Unless the accumulation of
wealth is a symptom of decay, I do not see many. I look at the people
themselves. It seems to me that never in their history were they more
full of vigor. See what travelers, explorers, adventurers they are. See
what sportsmen, in every part of the globe, how much they endure, and how
hale and jolly they are--women as well as men. The race, certainly, has
not decayed. And look at letters. It may be said that this is not the age
of pure literature--and I'm sure I hope the English patent for producing
machine novels will not be infringed--but the English language was never
before written so vigorously, so clearly, and to such purpose. And this
is shown even in the excessive refinement and elaboration of trifles, the
minutia of reflection, the keenness of analysis, the unrelenting pursuit
of every social topic into subtleties untouched by the older essayists.
And there is still more vigor, without affectation, in scientific
investigation, in the daily conquests made in the realm of social
economy, the best methods of living and getting the most out of life. Art
also keeps pace with luxury, and shows abundant life and promise for the
future.
I believe, from these and other considerations, that this vigorous people
will find a way out of its present embarrassment, and a way out without
retreating. For myself, I like to see the English sort of civilization
spreading over the world rather than the Russian or the French. I hope
England will hang on to the East, and not give it over to the havoc of
squabbling tribes, with a dozen religions and five hundred dialects, or
to the military despotism of an empire whose morality is only matched by
the superstition of its religion.
The relations of England and the United States are naturally of the first
interest to us. Our love and our hatred have always been that of true
relatives. For three-quarters of a century our 'amour propre' was
constantly kept raw by the most supercilious patronage. During the past
decade, when the quality of England's regard has become more and more a
matter of indifference to us, we have been the subject of a more
intelligent curiosity, of increased respect, accompanied with a sincere
desire to understand us. In the diplomatic scale Washington still ranks
below the Sublime Porte, but this anomaly is due to tradition, and does
not represent England's real estimate of the status of the republic.
There is, and must be, a good deal of selfishness mingled in our
friendship--patriotism itself being a form of selfishness--but our ideas
of civilization so nearly coincide, and we have so many common
aspirations for humanity that we must draw nearer together,
notwithstanding old grudges and present differences in social structure.
Our intercourse is likely to be closer, our business relations will
become more inseparable. I can conceive of nothing so lamentable for the
progress of the world as a quarrel between these two English-speaking
peoples.
But, in one respect, we are likely to diverge. I refer to literature; in
that, assimilation is neither probable nor desirable. We were brought up
on the literature of England; our first efforts were imitations of it; we
were criticised--we criticised ourselves on its standards. We compared
every new aspirant in letters to some English writer. We were patted on
the back if we resembled the English models; we were stared at or sneered
at if we did not. When we began to produce something that was the product
of our own soil and our own social conditions, it was still judged by the
old standards, or, if it was too original for that, it was only accepted
because it was curious or bizarre, interesting for its oddity. The
criticism that we received for our best was evidently founded on such
indifference or toleration that it was galling. At first we were
surprised; then we were grieved; then we were indignant. We have long ago
ceased to be either surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything the
English critics say of us. We have recovered our balance. We know that
since Gulliver there has been no piece of original humor produced in
England equal to "Knickerbocker's New York"; that not in this century has
any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the "Biglow Papers." We
used to be irritated at what we called the snobbishness of English
critics of a certain school; we are so no longer, for we see that its
criticism is only the result of ignorance--simply of inability to
understand.
And we the more readily pardon it, because of the inability we have to
understand English conditions, and the English dialect, which has more
and more diverged from the language as it was at the time of the
separation. We have so constantly read English literature, and kept
ourselves so well informed of their social life, as it is exhibited in
novels and essays, that we are not so much in the dark with regard to
them as they are with regard to us; still we are more and more bothered
by the insular dialect. I do not propose to criticise it; it is our
misfortune, perhaps our fault, that we do not understand it; and I only
refer to it to say that we should not be too hard on the Saturday Review
critic when he is complaining of the American dialect in the English that
Mr. Howells writes. How can the Englishman be expected to come into
sympathy with the fiction that has New England for its subject--from
Hawthorne's down to that of our present novelists--when he is ignorant of
the whole background on which it is cast; when all the social conditions
are an enigma to him; when, if he has, historically, some conception of
Puritan society, he cannot have a glimmer of comprehension of the subtle
modifications and changes it has undergone in a century? When he visits
America and sees it, it is a puzzle to him. How, then, can he be expected
to comprehend it when it is depicted to the life in books?
No, we must expect a continual divergence in our literatures. And it is
best that there should be. There can be no development of a nation's
literature worth anything that is not on its own lines, out of its own
native materials. We must not expect that the English will understand
that literature that expresses our national life, character, conditions,
any better than they understand that of the French or of the Germans.
And, on our part, the day has come when we receive their literary efforts
with the same respectful desire to be pleased with them that we have to
like their dress and their speech.
THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL
By Charles Dudley Warner
There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of the
people of the United States within two generations. This is more
noticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere; and
the foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which he
attributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety,
which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, finds
very little now to sustain his theory. Although the restless energy
continues, the mixed race in America has certainly changed physically for
the better. Speaking generally, the contours of face and form are more
rounded. The change is most marked in regions once noted for leanness,
angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country the
types of physical manhood are more numerous; and if women of rare and
exceptional beauty are not more numerous, no doubt the average of
comeliness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increase of beauty
due to better development has not been at the expense of delicacy of
complexion and of line, as it has been in some European countries.
Physical well-being is almost entirely a matter of nutrition. Something
is due in our case to the accumulation of money, to the decrease in an
increasing number of our population of the daily anxiety about food and
clothes, to more leisure; but abundant and better-prepared food is the
direct agency in our physical change. Good food is not only more abundant
and more widely distributed than it was two generations ago, but it is to
be had in immeasurably greater variety. No other people existing, or that
ever did exist, could command such a variety of edible products for daily
consumption as the mass of the American people habitually use today. In
consequence they have the opportunity of being better nourished than any
other people ever were. If they are not better nourished, it is because
their food is badly prepared. Whenever we find, either in New England or
in the South, a community ill-favored, dyspeptic, lean, and faded in
complexion, we may be perfectly sure that its cooking is bad, and that it
is too ignorant of the laws of health to procure that variety of food
which is so easily obtainable. People who still diet on sodden pie and
the products of the frying-pan of the pioneer, and then, in order to
promote digestion, attempt to imitate the patient cow by masticating some
elastic and fragrant gum, are doing very little to bring in that
universal physical health or beauty which is the natural heritage of our
opportunity.
Now, what is the relation of our intellectual development to this
physical improvement? It will be said that the general intelligence is
raised, that the habit of reading is much more widespread, and that the
increase of books, periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater mental
activity than existed formerly. It will also be said that the opportunity
for education was never before so nearly universal. If it is not yet true
everywhere that all children must go to school, it is true that all may
go to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great advance has been
made in American scholarship, in specialized learning and investigation;
that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the first rank in
literature and in science is much larger to the population than a
generation ago.
But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to popular
education? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education having
upon the general intellectual habit and taste? There are two ways of
testing this. One is by observing whether the mass of minds is better
trained and disciplined than formerly, less liable to delusions, better
able to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to be led away by
novelties in speculation, or by theories that are unsupported by historic
evidence or that are contradicted by a knowledge of human nature. If we
were tempted to pursue this test, we should be forced to note the seeming
anomaly of a scientific age peculiarly credulous; the ease with which any
charlatan finds followers; the common readiness to fall in with any
theory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept the
wildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to note
also, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come to
conclusions on inadequate evidence--a disposition usually due to
one-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the philosophic
habit. Multitudes of fairly intelligent people are afloat without any
base-line of thought to which they can refer new suggestions; just as
many politicians are floundering about for want of an apprehension of the
Constitution of the United States and of the historic development of
society. An honest acceptance of the law of gravitation would banish many
popular delusions; a comprehension that something cannot be made out of
nothing would dispose of others; and the application of the ordinary
principles of evidence, such as men require to establish a title to
property, would end most of the remaining. How far is our popular
education, which we have now enjoyed for two full generations,
responsible for this state of mind? If it has not encouraged it, has it
done much to correct it?
The other test of popular education is in the kind of reading sought and
enjoyed by the majority of the American people. As the greater part of
this reading is admitted to be fiction, we have before us the relation of
the novel to the common school. As the common school is our universal
method of education, and the novels most in demand are those least worthy
to be read, we may consider this subject in two aspects: the
encouragement, by neglect or by teaching, of the taste that demands this
kind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel to become what this taste
demands.
Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice a
phenomenon in letters--namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as a
vehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news, or
even with creating news and increasing its sensational character, it
grasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the million,
usurping the place of books and to a large extent of periodicals. The
effect of this new departure in journalism is beginning to attract
attention. An increasing number of people read nothing except the
newspapers. Consequently, they get little except scraps and bits; no
subject is considered thoroughly or exhaustively; and they are furnished
with not much more than the small change for superficial conversation.
The habit of excessive newspaper reading, in which a great variety of
topics is inadequately treated, has a curious effect on the mind. It
becomes demoralized, gradually loses the power of concentration or of
continuous thought, and even loses the inclination to read the long
articles which the newspaper prints. The eye catches a thousand things,
but is detained by no one. Variety, which in limitations is wholesome in
literary as well as in physical diet, creates dyspepsia when it is
excessive, and when the literary viands are badly cooked and badly served
the evil is increased. The mind loses the power of discrimination, the
taste is lowered, and the appetite becomes diseased. The effect of this
scrappy, desultory reading is bad enough when the hashed compound
selected is tolerably good. It becomes a very serious matter when the
reading itself is vapid, frivolous, or bad. The responsibility of
selecting the mental food for millions of people is serious. When, in the
last century, in England, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Information, which accomplished so much good, was organized, this
responsibility was felt, and competent hands prepared the popular books
and pamphlets that were cheap in price and widely diffused. Now, it
happens that a hundred thousand people, perhaps a million in some cases,
surrender the right of the all-important selection of the food for their
minds to some unknown and irresponsible person whose business it is to
choose the miscellaneous reading-matter for a particular newspaper. His
or her taste may be good, or it may be immature and vicious; it may be
used simply to create a sensation; and yet the million of readers get
nothing except what this one person chooses they shall read. It is an
astonishing abdication of individual preference. Day after day, Sunday
after Sunday, they read only what this unknown person selects for them.
Instead of going to the library and cultivating their own tastes, and
pursuing some subject that will increase their mental vigor and add to
their permanent stock of thought, they fritter away their time upon a
hash of literature chopped up for them by a person possibly very unfit
even to make good hash. The mere statement of this surrender of one's
judgment of what shall be his intellectual life is alarming.
But the modern newspaper is no doubt a natural evolution in our social
life. As everything has a cause, it would be worth while to inquire
whether the encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a demand, to a
taste created by our common schools. Or, to put the question in another
form, does the system of education in our common schools give the pupils
a taste for good literature or much power of discrimination? Do they come
out of school with the habit of continuous reading, of reading books, or
only of picking up scraps in the newspapers, as they might snatch a hasty
meal at a lunch-counter? What, in short, do the schools contribute to the
creation of a taste for good literature?
Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about the modern novel. It is
feared that it will not be realistic enough, that it will be too
realistic, that it will be insincere as to the common aspects of life,
that it will not sufficiently idealize life to keep itself within the
limits of true art. But while the critics are busy saying what the novel
should be, and attacking or defending the fiction of the previous age,
the novel obeys pretty well the laws of its era, and in many ways,
especially in the variety of its development, represents the time.
Regarded simply as a work of art, it may be said that the novel should be
an expression of the genius of its writer conscientiously applied to a
study of the facts of life and of human nature, with little reference to
the audience. Perhaps the great works of art that have endured have been
so composed. We may say, for example, that "Don Quixote" had to create
its sympathetic audience. But, on the other hand, works of art worthy the
name are sometimes produced to suit a demand and to please a taste
already created. A great deal of what passes for literature in these days
is in this category of supply to suit the demand, and perhaps it can be
said of this generation more fitly than of any other that the novel seeks
to hit the popular taste; having become a means of livelihood, it must
sell in order to be profitable to the producer, and in order to sell it
must be what the reading public want. The demand and sale are widely
taken as the criterion of excellence, or they are at least sufficient
encouragement of further work on the line of the success. This criterion
is accepted by the publisher, whose business it is to supply a demand.
The conscientious publisher asks two questions: Is the book good? and
Will it sell? The publisher without a conscience asks only one question:
Will the book sell? The reflex influence of this upon authors is
immediately felt.
The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for any
purpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thus
encouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels has
become a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of the
silk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment on
individual looms at home; but if demand for the sort of goods furnished
at present continues, there is no reason why they should not be produced,
even more cheaply than they are now, in great factories, where there can
be division of labor and economy of talent. The shoal of English novels
conscientiously reviewed every seventh day in the London weeklies would
preserve their present character and gain in firmness of texture if they
were made by machinery. One has only to mark what sort of novels reach
the largest sale and are most called for in the circulating libraries, to
gauge pretty accurately the public taste, and to measure the influence of
this taste upon modern production. With the exception of the novel now
and then which touches some religious problem or some socialistic
speculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, the
novels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move in
a plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to be
considered works of art. They represent the chromo stage of development.
They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark of
this age--nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering the
training of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that it
should insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should require
quality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectual
development that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on by
the rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace with
the taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have commendable judgment
about the table would think it a piece of extravagance to pay as much for
a book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar that cost
less than a novel. Indeed, we seem to be as yet far away from the
appreciation of the truth that what we put into the mind is as important
to our well-being as what we put into the stomach.
No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book, and
there are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous, though
the ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we are
considering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say its
tastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the reading
selected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon its
attention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable to
deal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish books
of merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.
Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse of
superficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,
any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity of
individual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfect
government. But this is not saying that the common school does all that
it can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It must
be partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools that
there are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste,
judged by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the public
schools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars who
come from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and blood,
and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste peppers his
food. We need not agree with those who say that there is no merit
whatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can we join
those who say that the art of reading will pretty surely encourage a
taste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of reading trash
will by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a matter of
experience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire an appetite
for anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational requires
constantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to expect
good taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste.
What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?
Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of the
majority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business is
to teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading is
little considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest grade
to the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, not
literature. The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not say
childish, for that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyond
description. There is an impression that advanced readers have improved
much in quality within a few years, and doubtless some of them do contain
specimens of better literature than their predecessors. But they are on
the old plan, which must be radically modified or entirely cast aside,
and doubtless will be when the new method is comprehended, and teachers
are well enough furnished to cut loose from the machine. We may say that
to learn how to read, and not what to read, is confessedly the object of
these books; but even this object is not attained. There is an endeavor
to teach how to call the words of a reading-book, but not to teach how to
read; for reading involves, certainly for the older scholars, the
combination of known words to form new ideas. This is lacking. The taste
for good literature is not developed; the habit of continuous pursuit of
a subject, with comprehension of its relations, is not acquired; and no
conception is gained of the entirety of literature or its importance to
human life. Consequently, there is no power of judgment or faculty of
discrimination.
Now, this radical defect can be easily remedied if the school authorities
only clearly apprehend one truth, and that is that the minds of children
of tender age can be as readily interested and permanently interested in
good literature as in the dreary feebleness of the juvenile reader. The
mind of the ordinary child should not be judged by the mind that produces
stuff of this sort: "Little Jimmy had a little white pig." "Did the
little pig know Jimmy?" "Yes, the little pig knew Jimmy, and would come
when he called." "How did little Jimmy know his pig from the other little
pigs?" "By the twist in his tail." ("Children," asks the teacher, "what
is the meaning of 'twist'?") "Jimmy liked to stride the little pig's
back." "Would the little pig let him?" "Yes, when he was absorbed eating
his dinner." ("Children, what is the meaning of 'absorbed'?") And so on.
This intellectual exercise is, perhaps, read to children who have not got
far enough in "word-building" to read themselves about little Jimmy and
his absorbed pig. It may be continued, together with word-learning, until
the children are able to say (is it reading?) the entire volume of this
precious stuff. To what end? The children are only languidly interested;
their minds are not awakened; the imagination is not appealed to; they
have learned nothing, except probably some new words, which are learned
as signs. Often children have only one book even of this sort, at which
they are kept until they learn it through by heart, and they have been
heard to "read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All these books
cultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are--the best of
them--only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to have any
sort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step is taken
in informing him of his relation to the world about him. His education is
not begun.
Now it happens that children go on with this sort of reading and the
ordinary text-books through the grades of the district school into the
high school, and come to the ages of seventeen and eighteen without the
least conception of literature, or of art, or of the continuity of the
relations of history; are ignorant of the great names which illuminate
the ages; have never heard of Socrates, or of Phidias, or of Titian; do
not know whether Franklin was an Englishman or an American; would be
puzzled to say whether it was Ben Franklin or Ben Jonson who invented
lightning--think it was Ben Somebody; cannot tell whether they lived
before or after Christ, and indeed never have thought that anything
happened before the time of Christ; do not know who was on the throne of
Spain when Columbus discovered America--and so on. These are not imagined
instances. The children referred to are in good circumstances and have
had fairly intelligent associations, but their education has been
intrusted to the schools. They know nothing except their text-books, and
they know these simply for the purpose of examination. Such pupils come
to the age of eighteen with not only no taste for the best reading, for
the reading of books, but without the ability to be interested even in
fiction of the first class, because it is full of allusions that convey
nothing to their minds. The stories they read, if they read at all--the
novels, so called, that they have been brought up on--are the diluted and
feeble fictions that flood the country, and that scarcely rise above the
intellectual level of Jimmy and the absorbed pig.
It has been demonstrated by experiment that it is as easy to begin with
good literature as with the sort of reading described. It makes little
difference where the beginning is made. Any good book, any real book, is
an open door into the wide field of literature; that is to say, of
history--that is to say, of interest in the entire human race. Read to
children of tender years, the same day, the story of Jimmy and a Greek
myth, or an episode from the "Odyssey," or any genuine bit of human
nature and life; and ask the children next day which they wish to hear
again. Almost all of them will call for the repetition of the real thing,
the verity of which they recognize, and which has appealed to their
imaginations. But this is not all. If the subject is a Greek myth, they
speedily come to comprehend its meaning, and by the aid of the teacher to
trace its development elsewhere, to understand its historic significance,
to have the mind filled with images of beauty, and wonder. Is it the
Homeric story of Nausicaa? What a picture! How speedily Greek history
opens to the mind! How readily the children acquire knowledge of the
great historic names, and see how their deeds and their thoughts are
related to our deeds and our thoughts! It is as easy to know about
Socrates as about Franklin and General Grant. Having the mind open to
other times and to the significance of great men in history, how much
more clearly they comprehend Franklin and Grant and Lincoln! Nor is this
all. The young mind is open to noble thoughts, to high conceptions; it
follows by association easily along the historic and literary line; and
not only do great names and fine pieces of literature become familiar,
but the meaning of the continual life in the world begins to be
apprehended. This is not at all a fancy sketch. The writer has seen the
whole assembly of pupils in a school of six hundred, of all the eight
grades, intelligently interested in a talk which contained classical and
literary allusions that would have been incomprehensible to an ordinary
school brought up on the ordinary readers and text-books.
But the reading need not be confined to the classics nor to the
master-pieces of literature. Natural history--generally the most
fascinating of subjects--can be taught; interest in flowers and trees and
birds and the habits of animals can be awakened by reading the essays of
literary men on these topics as they never can be by the dry text-books.
The point I wish to make is that real literature for the young,
literature which is almost absolutely neglected in the public schools,
except in a scrappy way as a reading exercise, is the best open door to
the development of the mind and to knowledge of all sorts. The unfolding
of a Greek myth leads directly to art, to love of beauty, to knowledge of
history, to an understanding of ourselves. But whatever the beginning is,
whether a classic myth, a Homeric epic, a play of Sophocles, the story of
the life and death of Socrates, a mediaeval legend, or any genuine piece
of literature from the time of Virgil down to our own, it may not so much
matter (except that it is better to begin with the ancients in order to
gain a proper perspective) whatever the beginning is, it should be the
best literature. The best is not too good for the youngest child.
Simplicity, which commonly characterizes greatness, is of course
essential. But never was a greater mistake made than in thinking that a
youthful mind needs watering with the slops ordinarily fed to it. Even
children in the kindergarten are eager for Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" and
Longfellow's "Hiawatha." It requires, I repeat, little more pains to
create a good taste in reading than a bad taste.
It would seem that in the complete organization of the public schools all
education of the pupil is turned over to them as it was not formerly, and
it is possible that in the stress of text-book education there is no time
for reading at home. The competent teachers contend not merely with the
difficulty of the lack of books and the deficiencies of those in use, but
with the more serious difficulty of the erroneous ideas of the function
of text-books. They will cease to be a commercial commodity of so much
value as now when teachers teach. If it is true that there is no time for
reading at home, we can account for the deplorable lack of taste in the
great mass of the reading public educated at the common schools; and we
can see exactly what the remedy should be--namely, the teaching of the
literature at the beginning of school life, and following it up broadly
and intelligently during the whole school period. It will not crowd out
anything else, because it underlies everything. After many years of
perversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in a
comprehensive text-book, as if it were to be learned--like arithmetic, is
a ludicrous proceeding. This, is not teaching literature nor giving the
scholar a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing the mind with names
and dates, which are not seen to have any relation to present life, and
which speedily fade out of the mind. The love of literature is not to be
attained in this way, nor in any way except by reading the best
literature.
The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, and
learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most
farcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity by
the other current idea, that literature is something separate and apart
from general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought and
experience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life and
explains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largely
in books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe,
that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, and
guide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of a
textbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up to
college almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and of
the ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never read a
book, except the text-books on the specialties in which they have
prepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning people
whose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that they have
no atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we live, and
move, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read to, or
read by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the world and
the thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the living
teacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books,
will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, the
teacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of the
function of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to present
evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it? Why, in
experimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in good
literature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in selecting
reading for children is to make it impossible for them to see any
evidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how few
understand their business! How few are educated! In the best literature
we find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence, if children
read that, they read what their experience will verify. I am told that
publishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading used in
schools--that schools would gladly receive the good literature if they
could get it. But I do not know, in this case, how much the demand has to
do with the supply. I am certain, however, that educated teachers would
use only the best means for forming the minds and enlightening the
understanding of their pupils. It must be kept in mind that reading,
silent reading done by the scholar, is not learning signs and calling
words; it is getting thought. If children are to get thought, they should
be served with the best--that which will not only be true, but appeal so
naturally to their minds that they will prefer it to all meaner stuff. If
it is true that children cannot acquire this taste at home--and it is
true for the vast majority of American children--then it must be given in
the public schools. To give it is not to interrupt the acquisition of
other knowledge; it is literally to open the door to all knowledge.
When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature is
given its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but as
the most easily-opened door to history, art, science, general
intelligence, we shall see the taste of the reading public in the United
States undergo a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likes
at present, and which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and then
there can be no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand for
something better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not be
produced, and those who are only capable of supplying the present demand
will perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident that
literature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers and
patient training. When people know how to read, authors will need to know
how to write.
In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply to
demand. Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were comparatively
few, and were of a class that had leisure and the opportunity of
cultivating the taste, books were generally written for this class, and
aimed at its real or supposed capacities. If the age was coarse in speech
or specially affected in manner, the books followed the lead given by the
demand; but, coarse or affected, they had the quality of art demanded by
the best existing cultivation. Naturally, when the art of reading is
acquired by the great mass of the people, whose taste has not been
cultivated, the supply for this increased demand will, more or less,
follow the level of its intelligence. After our civil war there was a
patriotic desire to commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in
monuments, and the deeds of our great captains in statues. This noble
desire was not usually accompanied by artistic discrimination, and the
land is filled with monuments and statues which express the gratitude of
the people. The coming age may wish to replace them by images and
structures which will express gratitude and patriotism in a higher
because more artistic form. In the matter of art the development is
distinctly reflex. The exhibition of works of genius will slowly instruct
and elevate the popular taste, and in time the cultivated popular taste
will reject mediocrity and demand better things. Only a little while ago
few people in the United States knew how to draw, and only a few could
tell good drawing from bad. To realize the change that has taken place,
we have only to recall the illustrations in books, magazines, and comic
newspapers of less than a quarter of a century ago. Foreign travel,
foreign study, and the importation of works of art (still blindly
restricted by the American Congress) were the lessons that began to work
a change. Now, in all our large towns, and even in hundreds of villages,
there are well-established art schools; in the greater cities, unions and
associations, under the guidance of skillful artists, where five or six
hundred young men and women are diligently, day and night, learning the
rudiments of art. The result is already apparent. Excellent drawing is
seen in illustrations for books and magazines, in the satirical and comic
publications, even in the advertisements and theatrical posters. At our
present rate of progress, the drawings in all our amusing weeklies will
soon be as good as those in the 'Fliegende Blatter.' The change is
marvelous; and the popular taste has so improved that it would not be
profitable to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations of twenty years ago.
But as to fiction, even if the writers of it were all trained in it as an
art, it is not so easy to lift the public taste to their artistic level.
The best supply in this case will only very slowly affect the quality of
the demand. When the poor novel sells vastly better than the good novel,
the poor will be produced to supply the demand, the general taste will be
still further lowered, and the power of discrimination fade out more and
more. What is true of the novel is true of all other literature. Taste
for it must be cultivated in childhood. The common schools must do for
literature what the art schools are doing for art. Not every one can
become an artist, not every one can become a writer--though this is
contrary to general opinion; but knowledge to distinguish good drawing
from bad can be acquired by most people, and there are probably few minds
that cannot, by right methods applied early, be led to prefer good
literature, and to have an enjoyment in it in proportion to its
sincerity, naturalness, verity, and truth to life.
It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the American novel needs for its
development is an audience, but it is safe to say that an audience would
greatly assist it. Evidence is on all sides of a fresh, new, wonderful
artistic development in America in drawing, painting, sculpture, in
instrumental music and singing, and in literature. The promise of this is
not only in the climate, the free republican opportunity, the mixed races
blending the traditions and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but it is
in a certain temperament which we already recognize as American. It is an
artistic tendency. This was first most noticeable in American women, to
whom the art of dress seemed to come by nature, and the art of being
agreeable to be easily acquired.
Already writers have arisen who illustrate this artistic tendency in
novels, and especially in short stories. They have not appeared to owe
their origin to any special literary centre; they have come forward in
the South, the West, the East. Their writings have to a great degree
(considering our pupilage to the literature of Great Britain, which is
prolonged by the lack of an international copyright) the stamp of
originality, of naturalness, of sincerity, of an attempt to give the
facts of life with a sense of their artistic value. Their affiliation is
rather with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than with
the modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market with
the uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especially
bad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it is
printed on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owing
to a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools,
their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior,
mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of the
magazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could earn
as much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all of
whom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must be
confessed that their audience is small.
This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, and
the common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general reading
public, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in the
common school is the same--the lack of inspiration and ideality. The
common school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general public
lacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either produced
by or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to the
demand of the times.
It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in the
schools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set aside
in the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance. The
teacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken eagerness
to know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the Hindoo or the
Greek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend, of the heroic
epic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any genuine piece
of literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge of it as we may
know the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas of a science,
but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the life and
development of the race, to a study of the motives of human action, to a
comprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply enriched, but
becomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of events and
opinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with literature can alone
perform. So that, in school, literature is not only, as I have said, the
easiest open door to all else desirable, the best literature is not only
the best means of awakening the young mind, the stimulus most congenial,
but it is the best foundation for broad and generous culture. Indeed,
without its co-ordinating influence the education of the common school is
a thing of shreds and patches. Besides, the mind aroused to historic
consciousness, kindled in itself by the best that has been said and done
in all ages, is more apt in the pursuit, intelligently, of any specialty;
so that the shortest road to the practical education so much insisted on
in these days begins in the awakening of the faculties in the manner
described. There is no doubt of the value of manual training as an aid in
giving definiteness, directness, exactness to the mind, but mere
technical training alone will be barren of those results, in general
discriminating culture, which we hope to see in America.
The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not, however,
automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift the
nation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can easily be made
to inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influence
in teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened,
elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art,
of American fiction.
It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that an
elevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of a
genuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens the
conveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator. A
book which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to the
highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; which
furnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels the
cares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friends
fail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for a
year, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has a
proper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author.
(1890.)
THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE
By Charles Dudley Warner
Queen Elizabeth being dead about ten o'clock in the morning, March 24,
1603, Sir Robert Cary posted away, unsent, to King James of Scotland to
inform him of the "accident," and got made a baron of the realm for his
ride. On his way down to take possession of his new kingdom the king
distributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; at
Theobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights, of whom Sir Richard
Baker, afterwards the author of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England,"
was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year," says the
chronicler, "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour,
which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce any
county of England had knights enow to make a jury."
Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568, and died in 1645; his "Chronicle"
appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625,
when, he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I, the
storm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement," for he had
thought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end";
and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things lost their
lustre--the exercise of tilting, which Elizabeth made a special
solemnity, and the band of Yeomen of the Guard, choicest persons both for
stature and other good parts, who graced the court of Elizabeth; James
"was so intentive to Realities that he little regarded shows," and in his
time these came utterly to be neglected. The virgin queen was the last
ruler who seriously regarded the pomps and splendors of feudalism.
It was characteristic of the age that the death of James, which occurred
in his fifty-ninth year, should have been by rumor attributed to
"poyson"; but "being dead, and his body opened, there was no sign at all
of poyson, his inward parts being all sound, but that his Spleen was a
little faulty, which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: the
ordinary high-way, especially in old bo'dies, to a natural death."
The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir Francis
Vere, "who as another Hannibal, with his one eye, could see more in the
Martial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward Coke; Sir
Francis Bacon, "who besides his profounder book, of Novum Organum, hath
written the reign of King Henry the Seventh, in so sweet a style, that
like Manna, it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden, whose
Description of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive after death";
"and to speak it in a word, the Trojan Horse was not fuller of Heroick
Grecians, than King James his Reign was full of men excellent in all
kindes of Learning." Among these was an old university acquaintance of
Baker's, "Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes of
Court, not dissolute, but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies, a great
frequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses; until such
times as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was a
means that he betook him to the study of Divinity, and thereupon
proceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher,
that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him."
The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualties
and portents. From December, 1602, to the December following, the plague
destroyed 30,518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixth
year of Elizabeth killed 20,500, and in the thirty-sixth year 17,890,
besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January, 1606, a mighty
whale came up the Thames within eight miles of London, whose body, seen
divers times above water, was judged to be longer than the largest ship
on the river; "but when she tasted the fresh water and scented the Land,
she returned into the sea." Not so fortunate was a vast whale cast upon
the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, in 1575, which was "twenty Ells long, and
thirteen foot broad from the belly to the backbone, and eleven foot
between the eyes. One of his eyes being taken out of his head was more
than a cart with six horses could draw; the Oyl being boyled out of his
head was Parmacittee." Nor the monstrous fish cast ashore in Lincolnshire
in 1564, which measured six yards between the eyes and had a tail fifteen
feet broad; "twelve men stood upright in his mouth to get the Oyl." In
1612 a comet appeared, which in the opinion of Dr. Bainbridge, the great
mathematician of Oxford, was as far above the moon as the moon is above
the earth, and the sequel of it was that infinite slaughters and
devastations followed it both in Germany and other countries. In 1613, in
Standish, in Lancashire, a maiden child was born having four legs, four
arms, and one head with two faces--the one before, the other behind, like
the picture of Janus. (One thinks of the prodigies that presaged the
birth of Glendower.) Also, the same year, in Hampshire, a carpenter,
lying in bed with his wife and a young child, "was himself and the childe
both burned to death with a sudden lightning, no fire appearing outwardly
upon him, and yet lay burning for the space of almost three days till he
was quite consumed to ashes." This year the Globe playhouse, on the
Bankside, was burned, and the year following the new playhouse, the
Fortune, in Golding Lane, "was by negligence of a candle, clean burned
down to the ground." In this year also, 1614, the town of
Stratford-on-Avon was burned. One of the strangest events, however,
happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when "dyed Sir Thomas
Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reported for a
certain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an hour
after he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive." In 1580 a
strange apparition happened in Somersetshire--three score personages all
clothed in black, a furlong in distance from those that beheld them; "and
after their appearing, and a little while tarrying, they vanished away,
but immediately another strange company, in like manner, color, and
number appeared in the same place, and they encountered one another and
so vanished away. And the third time appeared that number again, all in
bright armour, and encountered one another, and so vanished away. This
was examined before Sir George Norton, and sworn by four honest men that
saw it, to be true." Equally well substantiated, probably, was what
happened in Herefordshire in 1571: "A field of three acres, in Blackmore,
with the Trees and Fences, moved from its place and passed over another
field, traveling in the highway that goeth to Herne, and there stayed."
Herefordshire was a favorite place for this sort of exercise of nature.
In 1575 the little town of Kinnaston was visited by an earthquake: "On
the seventeenth of February at six o'clock of the evening, the earth
began to open and a Hill with a Rock under it (making at first a great
bellowing noise, which was heard a great way off) lifted itself up a
great height, and began to travel, bearing along with it the Trees that
grew upon it, the Sheep-folds, and Flocks of Sheep abiding there at the
same time. In the place from whence it was first moved, it left a gaping
distance forty foot broad, and fourscore Ells long; the whole Field was
about twenty Acres. Passing along, it overthrew a Chappell standing in
the way, removed an Ewe-Tree planted in the Churchyard, from the West
into the East; with the like force it thrust before it High-wayes,
Sheep-folds, Hedges, and Trees, made Tilled ground Pasture, and again
turned Pasture into Tillage. Having walked in this sort from Saturday in
the evening, till Monday noon, it then stood still." It seems not
improbable that Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane.
It was for an age of faith, for a people whose credulity was fed on such
prodigies and whose imagination glowed at such wonderful portents, that
Shakespeare wrote, weaving into the realities of sense those awful
mysteries of the supernatural which hovered not far away from every
Englishman of his time.
Shakespeare was born in 1564, when Elizabeth had been six years on the
throne, and he died in 1616, nine years before James I., of the faulty
spleen, was carried to the royal chapel in Westminster, "with great
solemnity, but with greater lamentation." Old Baker, who says of himself
that he was the unworthiest of the knights made at Theobald's,
condescends to mention William Shakespeare at the tail end of the men of
note of Elizabeth's time. The ocean is not more boundless, he affirms,
than the number of men of note of her time; and after he has finished
with the statesmen ("an exquisite statesman for his own ends was Robert
Earl of Leicester, and for his Countries good, Sir William Cecill, Lord
Burleigh"), the seamen, the great commanders, the learned gentlemen and
writers (among them Roger Askam, who had sometime been schoolmaster to
Queen Elizabeth, but, taking too great delight in gaming and
cock-fighting, lived and died in mean estate), the learned divines and
preachers, he concludes: "After such men, it might be thought ridiculous
to speak of Stage-players; but seeing excellency in the meanest things
deserve remembring, and Roscius the Comedian is recorded in History with
such commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of our
Nation. Richard Bourbidge and Edward Allen, two such actors as no age
must ever look to see the like; and to make their Comedies compleat,
Richard Tarleton, who for the Part called the Clowns Part, never had his
match, never will have. For Writers of Playes, and such as have been
players themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson have
especially left their Names recommended to posterity."
Richard Bourbidge (or Burbadge) was the first of the great English tragic
actors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare's
heroes--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III., Romeo,
Brutus, etc. Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of social
life, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns and
comedians. The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres, and
intruded not only between the acts, but even into the play itself, with
his quips and antics. It is probable that he played the part of clown,
grave-digger, etc., in Shakespeare's comedies, and no doubt took
liberties with his parts. It is thought that part of Hamlet's advice to
the players--"and let those that play your clowns speak no more than is
set down for them," etc.--was leveled at Tarleton.
The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whether
Shakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age,
was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, is
probable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangers
there is no doubt. To us he is inexhaustible. The more we study him, the
more are we astonished at his multiform genius. In our complex
civilization, there is no development of passion, or character, or trait
of human nature, no social evolution, that does not find expression
somewhere in those marvelous plays; and yet it is impossible for us to
enter into a full, sympathetic enjoyment of those plays unless we can in
some measure recreate for ourselves the atmosphere in which they were
written. To superficial observation great geniuses come into the world at
rare intervals in history, in a manner independent of what we call the
progress of the race. It may be so; but the form the genius shall take is
always determined by the age in which it appears, and its expression is
shaped by the environments. Acquaintance with the Bedouin desert life of
today, which has changed little for three thousand years, illumines the
book of Job like an electric light. Modern research into Hellenic and
Asiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and
greatly enhanced our enjoyment of them. A fair comprehension of the
Divina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions that
rent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit that
banished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of a
sepulchre in the pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of his
age; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated in
him. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulated materials
of centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His variety and
multiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in the
coinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed,
stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there were
certainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage before Shakespeare. In him
were received the imaginations, the inventions, the aspirations, the
superstitions, the humors, the supernatural intimations; in him met the
converging rays of the genius of his age, as in a lens, to be sent onward
thenceforth in an ever-broadening stream of light.
It was his fortune to live not only in a dramatic age, but in a
transition age, when feudalism was passing away, but while its shows and
splendors could still be seriously comprehended. The dignity that doth
hedge a king was so far abated that royalty could be put upon the stage
as a player's spectacle; but the reality of kings and queens and court
pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the
imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune.
They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and
queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But,
besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the
language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident
in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They all
delighted in ingenuities of phrase, in neat turns and conceits; it was a
compliment then to be called a "conceited" writer.
Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable or
entertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's chronicle
"The Description of England," as it fell under his eyes from 1577 to
1587. Harrison's England is an unfailing mine of information for all the
historians of the sixteenth century; and in the edition published by the
New Shakespeare Society, and edited, with a wealth of notes and
contemporary references, by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, it is a new
revelation of Shakespeare's England to the general reader.
Harrison himself is an interesting character, and trustworthy above the
general race of chroniclers. He was born in 1534, or, to use his
exactness of statement, "upon the 18th of April, hora ii, minut 4,
Secunde 56, at London, in Cordwainer streete, otherwise called
bowe-lane." This year was also remarkable as that in which "King Henry 8
polleth his head; after whom his household and nobility, with the rest of
his subjects do the like." It was the year before Anne Boleyn, haled away
to the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space of fourteen
days, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk, "Hither I
came once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now to receive, I hope,
a crown immortal." In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's school; the litany
in the English tongue, by the king's command, was that year sung openly
in St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison with the other children,
enforced to buy those books, walking in general procession, as was
appointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrison was a student at
both Oxford and Cambridge, taking the degree of bachelor of divinity at
the latter in 1569, when he had been an Oxford M.A. of seven years'
standing. Before this he was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke,
Lord Cobham, who gave him, in 1588-89, the rectory of Radwinter, in
Essex, which he held till his death, in 1593. In 1586 he was installed
canon of Windsor. Between 1559 and 1571 he married Marion Isebrande,--of
whom he said in his will, referring to the sometime supposed unlawfulness
of priests' marriages, "by the laws of God I take and repute in all
respects for my true and lawful wife." At Radwinter, the old parson,
working in his garden, collected Roman coins, wrote his chronicles, and
expressed his mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex, to whom flowed
all the wealth of the land. The lawyers in those days stirred up
contentions, and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever I knew in
Essex," says Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John of Ludlow,
alias Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these two were but
children." This last did so harry a client for four years that the
latter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within four
days made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness." And
after his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was never sheep
shorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was of many to
come." The Welsh were the most litigious people. A Welshman would walk up
to London bare-legged, carrying his hose on his neck, to save wear and
because he had no change, importune his countrymen till he got half a
dozen writs, with which he would return to molest his neighbors, though
no one of his quarrels was worth the money he paid for a single writ.
The humblest mechanic of England today has comforts and conveniences
which the richest nobles lacked in Harrison's day, but it was
nevertheless an age of great luxury and extravagance; of brave apparel,
costly and showy beyond that of any Continental people, though wanting in
refined taste; and of mighty banquets, with service of massive plate,
troops of attendants, and a surfeit of rich food and strong drink.
In this luxury the clergy of Harrison's rank did not share. Harrison was
poor on forty pounds a year. He complains that the clergy were taxed more
than ever, the church having become "an ass whereon every man is to ride
to market and cast his wallet." They paid tenths and first-fruits and
subsidies, so that out of twenty pounds of a benefice the incumbent did
not reserve more than L 13 6s. 8d. for himself and his family. They had
to pay for both prince and laity, and both grumbled at and slandered
them. Harrison gives a good account of the higher clergy; he says the
bishops were loved for their painful diligence in their calling, and that
the clergy of England were reputed on the Continent as learned divines,
skillful in Greek and Hebrew and in the Latin tongue.
There was, however, a scarcity of preachers and ministers in Elizabeth's
time, and their character was not generally high. What could be expected
when covetous patrons canceled their debts to their servants by bestowing
advowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks, grooms, pages,
and lackeys--when even in the universities there was cheating at
elections for scholarships and fellowships, and gifts were for sale! The
morals of the clergy were, however, improved by frequent conferences, at
which the good were praised and the bad reproved; and these conferences
were "a notable spur unto all the ministers, whereby to apply their
books, which otherwise (as in times past) would give themselves to
hawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the ale house,
shooting, and other like vanities." The clergy held a social rank with
tradespeople; their sons learned trades, and their daughters might go out
to service. Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of people"
unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few," says Harrison,
"find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons but our
wives were the causes of our woe." He thinks the ministers will be better
when the patrons are better, and he defends the right of the clergy to
marry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to their widows and
children instead of to the church, or to some school or almshouse. What
if their wives are fond, after the decease of their husbands, to bestow
themselves not so advisedly as their calling requireth; do not duchesses,
countesses, and knights' wives offend in the like fully so often as they?
And Eve, remarks the old philosopher of Radwinter--"Eve will be Eve,
though Adam would say nay."
The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent than
it ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in divers
colors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green,
etc.; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armed
with silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal;
their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their caps
laced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days,
was to behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth before
the hen."
Hospitality among the clergy was never better used, and it was increased
by their marriage; for the meat and drink were prepared more orderly and
frugally, the household was better looked to, and the poor oftener fed.
There was perhaps less feasting of the rich in bishops' houses, and "it
is thought much peradventure, that some bishops in our time do come short
of the ancient gluttony and prodigality of their predecessors;" but this
is owing to the curtailing of their livings, and the excessive prices
whereunto things are grown.
Harrison spoke his mind about dignitaries. He makes a passing reference
to Thomas a Becket as "the old Cocke of Canturburie," who did crow in
behalf of the see of Rome, and the "young cockerels of other sees did
imitate his demeanour." He is glad that images, shrines, and tabernacles
are removed out of churches. The stories in glass windows remain only
because of the cost of replacing them with white panes. He would like to
stop the wakes, guilds, paternities, church-ales, and brides-ales, with
all their rioting, and he thinks they could get on very well without the
feasts of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, the holy-days after Christmas,
Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the Virgin Mary, with the rest. "It
is a world to see," he wrote of 1552, "how ready the Catholicks are to
cast the communion tables out of their churches, which in derision they
call Oysterboards, and to set up altars whereon to say mass." And he
tells with sinful gravity this tale of a sacrilegious sow: "Upon the 23rd
of August, the high altar of Christ Church in Oxford was trimly decked up
after the popish manner and about the middest of evensong, a sow cometh
into the quire, and pulled all to the ground; for which heinous fact, it
is said she was afterwards beheaded; but to that I am not privy." Think
of the condition of Oxford when pigs went to mass! Four years after this
there was a sickness in England, of which a third part of the people did
taste, and many clergymen, who had prayed not to live after the death of
Queen Mary, had their desire, the Lord hearing their prayer, says
Harrison, "and intending thereby to give his church a breathing time."
There were four classes in England--gentlemen, citizens, yeomen, and
artificers or laborers. Besides the nobles, any one can call himself a
gentleman who can live without work and buy a coat of arms--though some
of them "bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain." The
complaint of sending abroad youth to be educated is an old one; Harrison
says the sons of gentlemen went into Italy, and brought nothing home but
mere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and ambitious, proud
behavior, and retained neither religion nor patriotism. Among citizens
were the merchants, of whom Harrison thought there were too many; for,
like the lawyers, they were no furtherance to the commonwealth, but
raised the price of all commodities. In former, free-trade times, sugar
was sixpence a pound, now it is two shillings sixpence; raisins were one
penny, and now sixpence. Not content with the old European trade, they
have sought out the East and West Indies, and likewise Cathay and
Tartary, whence they pretend, from their now and then suspicious voyages,
they bring home great commodities. But Harrison cannot see that prices
are one whit abated by this enormity, and certainly they carry out of
England the best of its wares.
The yeomen are the stable, free men, who for the most part stay in one
place, working the farms of gentlemen, are diligent, sometimes buy the
land of unthrifty gentlemen, educate their sons to the schools and the
law courts, and leave them money to live without labor. These are the men
that made France afraid. Below these are the laborers and men who work at
trades, who have no voice in the commonwealth, and crowds of young
serving-men who become old beggars, highway-robbers, idle fellows, and
spreaders of all vices. There was a complaint then, as now, that in many
trades men scamped their work, but, on the whole, husbandmen and
artificers had never been so good; only there were too many of them, too
many handicrafts of which the country had no need. It appears to be a
fault all along in history that there are too many of almost every sort
of people.
In Harrison's time the greater part of the building in cities and towns
was of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of stone.
In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside, London, in
1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small windows set
close together. The houses are of wood and plaster, each story
overhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofs
projecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front of
each of the lower stories. They presented a lively and gay appearance on
holidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung with colored
draperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators, and every pane
of glass showed a face. In the open country, where timber was scarce, the
houses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue. One
of the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked the large
diet in these homely cottages: "These English," quoth he, "have their
houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the
king." "Whereby it appeareth," comments Harrison, "that he liked better
of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in
their prince-like habitations and palaces." The timber houses were
covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairest
houses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, the
whiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The walls
were hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon were
divers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoves had
just begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, "who build
them not to work and feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but now and
then to sweat in, as occasion and need shall require." Glass in windows,
which was then good and cheap, and made even in England, had generally
taken the place of the lattices and of the horn, and of the beryl which
noblemen formerly used in windows. Gentlemen were beginning to build
their houses of brick and stone, in stately and magnificent fashion. The
furniture of the houses had also grown in a manner "passing delicacy,"
and not of the nobility and gentry only, but of the lowest sort. In
noblemen's houses there was abundance of arras, rich hangings of
tapestry, and silver vessels, plate often to the value of one thousand
and two thousand pounds. The knights, gentlemen, and merchants had great
provision of tapestry, Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, and
cupboards of plate worth perhaps a thousand pounds. Even the inferior
artificers and many farmers had learned also to garnish their cupboards
with plate, their joined beds with silk hangings, and their tables with
fine linen--evidences of wealth for which Harrison thanks God and
reproaches no man, though he cannot see how it is brought about, when all
things are grown to such excessive prices.
Old men of Radwinter noted three things marvelously altered in England
within their remembrance. The first was the multitude of chimneys lately
erected; whereas in their young days there were not, always except those
in the religious and manor houses, above two or three chimneys in most
upland towns of the realm; each one made his fire against a reredos in
the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. The second was the
amendment in lodging. In their youth they lay upon hard straw pallets
covered only with a sheet, and mayhap a dogswain coverlet over them, and
a good round log for pillow. If in seven years after marriage a man could
buy a mattress and a sack of chaff to rest his head on, he thought
himself as well lodged as a lord. Pillows were thought meet only for sick
women. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet over them,
for there was nothing under them to keep the straw from pricking their
hardened hides. The third notable thing was the exchange of treene
(wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin.
Wooden stuff was plenty, but a good farmer would not have above four
pieces of pewter in his house; with all his frugality, he was unable to
pay his rent of four pounds without selling a cow or horse. It was a time
of idleness, and if a farmer at an alehouse, in a bravery to show what he
had, slapped down his purse with six shillings in it, all the rest
together could not match it. But now, says Harrison, though the rent of
four pounds has improved to forty, the farmer has six or seven years'
rent, lying by him, to purchase a new term, garnish his cupboard with
pewter, buy three or four feather-beds, coverlets, carpets of tapestry, a
silver salt, a nest of bowls for wine, and a dozen spoons. All these
things speak of the growing wealth and luxury of the age. Only a little
before this date, in 1568, Lord Buckhurst, who had been ordered to
entertain the Cardinal de Chatillon in Queen Elizabeth's palace at Sheen,
complains of the meanness of the furniture of his rooms. He showed the
officers who preceded the cardinal such furniture and stuff as he had,
but it did not please them. They wanted plate, he had none; such glass
vessels as he had they thought too base. They wanted damask for long
tables, and he had only linen for a square table, and they refused his
square table. He gave the cardinal his only unoccupied tester and
bedstead, and assigned to the bishop the bedstead upon which his wife's
waiting-women did lie, and laid them on the ground. He lent the cardinal
his own basin and ewer, candlesticks from his own table,
drinking-glasses, small cushions, and pots for the kitchen. My Lord of
Leicester sent down two pair of fine sheets for the cardinal and one pair
for the bishop.
Harrison laments three things in his day: the enhancing of rents, the
daily oppression of poor tenants by the lords of manors, and the practice
of usury--a trade brought in by the Jews, but now practiced by almost
every Christian, so that he is accounted a fool that doth lend his money
for nothing. He prays the reader to help him, in a lawful manner, to hang
up all those that take cent. per cent. for money. Another grievance, and
most sorrowful of all, is that many gentlemen, men of good port and
countenance, to the injury of the farmers and commonalty, actually turn
Braziers, butchers, tanners, sheep-masters, and woodmen. Harrison also
notes the absorption of lands by the rich; the decay of houses in the
country, which comes of the eating up of the poor by the rich; the
increase of poverty; the difficulty a poor man had to live on an acre of
ground; his forced contentment with bread made of oats and barley, and
the divers places that formerly had good tenants and now were vacant,
hop-yards and gardens.
Harrison says it is not for him to describe the palaces of Queen
Elizabeth; he dare hardly peep in at her gates. Her houses are of brick
and stone, neat and well situated, but in good masonry not to be compared
to those of Henry VIII's building; they are rather curious to the eye,
like paper-works, than substantial for continuance. Her court is more
magnificent than any other in Europe, whether you regard the rich and
infinite furniture of the household, the number of officers, or the
sumptuous entertainments. And the honest chronicler is so struck with
admiration of the virtuous beauty of the maids of honor that he cannot
tell whether to award preeminence to their amiable countenances or to
their costliness of attire, between which there is daily conflict and
contention. The courtiers of both sexes have the use of sundry languages
and an excellent vein of writing. Would to God the rest of their lives
and conversation corresponded with these gifts! But the courtiers, the
most learned, are the worst men when they come abroad that any man shall
hear or read of. Many of the gentlewomen have sound knowledge of Greek
and Latin, and are skillful in Spanish, Italian, and French; and the
noblemen even surpass them. The old ladies of the court avoid idleness by
needlework, spinning of silk, or continual reading of the Holy Scriptures
or of histories, and writing diverse volumes of their own, or translating
foreign works into English or Latin; and the young ladies, when they are
not waiting on her majesty, "in the mean time apply their lutes,
citherns, pricksong, and all kinds of music." The elders are skillful in
surgery and the distillation of waters, and sundry other artificial
practices pertaining to the ornature and commendation of their bodies;
and when they are at home they go into the kitchen and supply a number of
delicate dishes of their own devising, mostly after Portuguese receipts;
and they prepare bills of fare (a trick lately taken up) to give a brief
rehearsal of all the dishes of every course. I do not know whether this
was called the "higher education of women" at the time.
In every office of the palaces is a Bible, or book of acts of the church,
or chronicle, for the use of whoever comes in, so that the court looks
more like a university than a palace. Would to God the houses of the
nobles were ruled like the queen's! The nobility are followed by great
troops of serving-men in showy liveries; and it is a goodly sight to see
them muster at court, which, being filled with them, "is made like to the
show of a peacock's tail in the full beauty, or of some meadow garnished
with infinite kinds and diversity of pleasant flowers." Such was the
discipline of Elizabeth's court that any man who struck another within it
had his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a most horrible
manner.
The English have always had a passion for gardens and orchards. In the
Roman time grapes abounded and wine was plenty, but the culture
disappeared after the Conquest. From the time of Henry IV. to Henry VIII.
vegetables were little used, but in Harrison's day the use of melons,
pompions, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, turnips, and the like was
revived. They had beautiful flower-gardens annexed to the houses, wherein
were grown also rare and medicinal herbs; it was a wonder to see how many
strange herbs, plants, and fruits were daily brought from the Indies,
America and the Canaries. Every rich man had great store of flowers, and
in one garden might be seen from three hundred to four hundred medicinal
herbs. Men extol the foreign herbs to the neglect of the native, and
especially tobacco, "which is not found of so great efficacy as they
write." In the orchards were plums, apples, pears, walnuts, filberts; and
in noblemen's orchards store of strange fruit-apricots, almonds, peaches,
figs, and even in some oranges, lemons, and capers. Grafters also were at
work with their artificial mixtures, "dallying, as it were, with nature
and her course, as if her whole trade were perfectly known unto them: of
hard fruits they will make soft, of sour sweet, of sweet yet more
delicate; bereaving also some of their kernels, others of their cores,
and finally endowing them with the flavor of musk, amber, or sweet spices
at their pleasure." Gardeners turn annual into perpetual herbs, and such
pains are they at that they even used dish-water for plants. The Gardens
of Hesperides are surely not equal to these. Pliny tells of a rose that
had sixty leaves on one bud, but in 1585 there was a rose in Antwerp that
had one hundred and eighty leaves; and Harrison might have had a slip of
it for ten pounds, but he thought it a "tickle hazard." In his own little
garden, of not above three hundred square feet, he had near three hundred
samples, and not one of them of the common, or usually to be had.
Our kin beyond sea have always been stout eaters of solid food, and in
Elizabeth's time their tables were more plentifully laden than those of
any other nation. Harrison scientifically accounts for their inordinate
appetite. "The situation of our region," he says, "lying near unto the
north, does cause the heat of our stomachs to be of somewhat greater
force; therefore our bodies do crave a little more ample nourishment than
the inhabitants of the hotter regions are accustomed withal, whose
digestive force is not altogether so vehement, because their internal
heat is not so strong as ours, which is kept in by the coldness of the
air, that from time to time (specially in winter) doth environ our
bodies." The north Britons in old times were accustomed often to great
abstinence, and lived when in the woods on roots and herbs. They used
sometimes a confection, "whereof so much as a bean would qualify their
hunger above common expectation"; but when they had nothing to qualify it
with, they crept into the marsh water up to their chins, and there
remained a long time, "only to qualify the heat of their stomachs by
violence."
In Harrison's day the abstemious Welsh had learned to eat like the
English, and the Scotch exceeded the latter in "over much and
distemperate gormandize." The English eat all they can buy, there being
no restraint of any meat for religion's sake or for public order. The
white meats--milk, butter, and cheese--though very dear, are reputed as
good for inferior people, but the more wealthy feed upon the flesh of all
sorts of cattle and all kinds of fish. The nobility ("whose cooks are for
the most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers ") exceed in number
of dishes and change of meat. Every day at dinner there is beef, mutton,
veal, lamb, kid, pork, conie, capon, pig, or as many of these as the
season yielded, besides deer and wildfowl, and fish, and sundry
delicacies "wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring Portingale is not
wanting." The food was brought in commonly in silver vessels at tables of
the degree of barons, bishops, and upwards, and referred first to the
principal personage, from whom it passed to the lower end of the table,
the guests not eating of all, but choosing what each liked; and nobody
stuffed himself. The dishes were then sent to the servants, and the
remains of the feast went to the poor, who lay waiting at the gates in
great numbers.
Drink was served in pots, goblets, jugs, and bowls of silver in
noblemen's houses, and also in Venice glasses. It was not set upon the
table, but the cup was brought to each one who thirsted; he called for
such a cup of drink as he wished, and delivered it again to one of the
by-standers, who made it clean by pouring out what remained, and restored
it to the sideboard. This device was to prevent great drinking, which
might ensue if the full pot stood always at the elbow. But this order was
not used in noblemen's halls, nor in any order under the degree of knight
or squire of great revenue. It was a world to see how the nobles
preferred to gold and silver, which abounded, the new Venice glass,
whence a great trade sprang up with Murano that made many rich. The
poorest even would have glass, but home-made--a foolish expense, for the
glass soon went to bits, and the pieces turned to no profit. Harrison
wanted the philosopher's stone to mix with this molten glass and toughen
it.
There were multitudes of dependents fed at the great houses, and
everywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained.
Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citing
the details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick the
king-maker, was made archbishop of York. There were present, including
servants, thirty-five hundred persons. These are a few of the things used
at the banquet: three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns of
ale, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousand
geese, two thousand pigs,--four thousand conies, four thousand
heronshaws, four thousand venison pasties cold and five hundred hot, four
thousand cold tarts, four thousand cold custards, eight seals, four
porpoises, and so on.
The merchants and gentlemen kept much the same tables as the nobles,
especially at feasts, but when alone were content with a few dishes. They
also desired the dearest food, and would have no meat from the butcher's
but the most delicate, while their list of fruits, cakes, Gates, and
outlandish confections is as long as that at any modern banquet. Wine ran
in excess. There were used fifty-six kinds of light wines, like the
French, and thirty of the strong sorts, like the Italian and Eastern. The
stronger the wine, the better it was liked. The strongest and best was in
old times called theologicum, because it was had from the clergy and
religious men, to whose houses the laity sent their bottles to be filled,
sure that the religious would neither drink nor be served with the worst;
for the merchant would have thought his soul should have gone straightway
to the devil if he had sent them any but the best. The beer served at
noblemen's tables was commonly a year old, and sometimes two, but this
age was not usual. In households generally it was not under a month old,
for beer was liked stale if it were not sour, while bread was desired as
new as possible so that it was not hot.
The husbandman and artificer ate such meat as they could easiest come by
and have most quickly ready; yet the banquets of the trades in London
were not inferior to those of the nobility. The husbandmen, however,
exceed in profusion, and it is incredible to tell what meat is consumed
at bridals, purifications, and such like odd meetings; but each guest
brought his own provision, so that the master of the house had only to
provide bread, drink, houseroom, and fire. These lower classes Harrison
found very friendly at their tables--merry without malice, plain without
Italian or French subtlety--so that it would do a man good to be in
company among them; but if they happen to stumble upon a piece of venison
or a cup of wine or very strong beer, they do not stick to compare
themselves with the lord-mayor--and there is no public man in any city of
Europe that may compare with him in port and countenance during the term
of his office.
Harrison commends the great silence used at the tables of the wiser sort,
and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating and
drinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, and
mistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally are
cup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and small
drink at home come to such opportunities at a banquet! The wealthier sort
in the country entertain their visitors from afar, however long they
stay, with as hearty a welcome the last day as the first; and the
countrymen contrast this hospitality with that of their London cousins,
who joyfully receive them the first day, tolerate them the second, weary
of them the third, and wish 'em at the devil after four days.
The gentry usually ate wheat bread, of which there were four kinds, and
the poor generally bread made of rye, barley, and even oats and acorns.
Corn was getting so dear, owing to the forestallers and middlemen, that,
says the historian, "if the world last a while after this rate, wheat and
rye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some catterpillers
[two-legged speculators] there are that can say so much already."
The great drink of the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be noted
that a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importation
much later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and upon
the brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to a
description of the process, especially as "once in a month practiced by
my wife and her maid servants." They ground eight bushels of malt, added
half a bushel of wheat meal, half a bushel of oat meal, poured in eighty
gallons of water, then eighty gallons more, and a third eighty gallons,
and boiled with a couple of pounds of hops. This, with a few spices
thrown in, made three hogsheads of good beer, meet for a poor man who had
only forty pounds a year. This two hundred gallons of beer cost
altogether twenty shillings; but although he says his wife brewed it
"once in a month," whether it lasted a whole month the parson does not
say. He was particular about the water used: the Thames is best, the
marsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; "the fattest standing
water is always the best." Cider and perry were made in some parts of
England, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; but
there was a kind of "swish-swash" made in Essex from honey-combs and
water, called mead, which differed from the metheglin as chalk from
cheese.
In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking than
formerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were
"beverages" or "nuntion" after dinner, and supper before going to bed
--"a toie brought in by hardie Canutus," who was a gross feeder.
Generally there were, except for the young who could not fast till
dinnertime, only two meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans had
brought in the habit of sitting long at the table--a custom not yet
altogether abated, since the great people, especially at banquets, sit
till two or three o'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matter
to rise and go to evening prayers and return in time for supper.
Harrison does not make much account of the early meal called "breakfast";
but Froude says that in Elizabeth's time the common hour of rising, in
the country, was four o'clock, summer and winter, and that breakfast was
at five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen to
business. The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted together
and alone at seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart of
wine, and a chine of beef; a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope
(says Froude) it may be presumed. The gentry dined at eleven and supped
at five. The merchants took dinner at noon, and, in London, supped at
six. The university scholars out of term ate dinner at ten. The
husbandmen dined at high noon, and took supper at seven or eight. As for
the poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, for
they dined and supped when they could. The English usually began meals
with the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first the
mild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot did
otherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave the
worse to the menials.
I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with an
extract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, and
saw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwards
witnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. The
queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as she
walked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of the
garter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black
and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth
black (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use of
sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore
false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported
to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her
bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry;
and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small,
her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air was
stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was
dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and
over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was
very long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chain
she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." As she swept on in this
magnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, and
always in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke to
her kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along,
everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to give
her hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels.
The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed for
the most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fifty
gentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where she
graciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long live Queen
Elizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people." The
music in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in half
an hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:
"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another
who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, he
spread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Then
came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a
plate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, and
placed what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the same
ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we
were told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing a
tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had
prostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approached
the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe as
if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while
the Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with a
golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of
twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were
received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed
upon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard a
mouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, any
poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest
and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully
selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two
kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of
all this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with
particular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into
the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen
for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court."
The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants.
II
We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely,
dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of the
period more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study the
origin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking and
uncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities," 1611, we have an
Englishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. The
Venetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion, a thousand
years old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to the
body, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin also
black--but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satin
and taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good taste
characterized their apparel. "In both these things," says Coryat, "they
differ much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, we
use many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, and
unseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much
inferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nation
under the sun doth, the French only excepted." On festival days, in
processions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps of
crimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knights
differed from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns,
with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and red
pantofles.
Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of his
countrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety and
fickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in one
hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shape
his apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Even
the gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewd
popish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void of
judgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity,
the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than to
describe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanish
guise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable;
then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is best
liked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short French
breeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not
see any so disguised as are my countrymen in England."
This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to the
tarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the
excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the
variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees;
insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of
attire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suits
of apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!" "And
how men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings and
sending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams of
our hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, and
finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."
The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes the head
was polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to grow long
like a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under the ears,
round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shaved from the
chin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of the Marquis Otto;
some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, others grown long. If
a man have a lean face, the Marquis Otto's cut makes it broad; if it be
platterlike, the long, slender beard makes it seem narrow; "if he be
weasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner look
big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose." Some courageous
gentlemen wore in their ears rings of gold and stones, to improve God's
work, which was otherwise set off by monstrous quilted and stuffed
doublets, that puffed out the figure like a barrel.
There is some consolation, though I don't know why, in the knowledge that
writers have always found fault with women's fashions, as they do today.
Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men;
"such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for light
housewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons." And
he knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces on the
breast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons," to make their dresses
stand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers colored stockings.
"I have met," he says, "with some of these trulls in London so disguised
that it hath passed my skill to determine whether they were men or
women." Of all classes the merchants were most to be commended for rich
but sober attire; "but the younger sort of their wives, both in attire
and costly housekeeping, cannot tell when and how to make an end, as
being women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found and
seen." Elizabeth's time, like our own, was distinguished by new
fashionable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow, a
pease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a lusty gallant, and the "devil
in the hedge." These may be favorites still, for aught I know.
Mr. Furnivall quotes a description of a costume of the period, from the
manuscript of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida." Busino was the chaplain of
Piero Contarina, the Venetian ambassador to James I, in 1617. The
chaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler of
the embassy; and as the Italians sleep away grief, the French sing, the
Germans drink, and the English go to plays to be rid of it, the
Venetians, by advice, sought consolation at the Fortune Theatre; and
there a trick was played upon old Busino, by placing him among a bevy of
young women, while the concealed ambassador and the secretary enjoyed the
joke. "These theatres," says Busino, "are frequented by a number of
respectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselves
among the men without the slightest hesitation . . . . Scarcely was I
seated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herself
beside me . . . . She asked me for my address both in French and English;
and, on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honor me by showing me
some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer than
three gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . . This lady's
bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered, her petticoat--[It is a
trifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worth noting, that the "round
gown," that is, an entire skirt, not open in front and parting to show
the under petticoat, did not come into fashion till near the close of the
eighteenth century.]--of gold tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvet
with a raised pile, lined with yellow muslin with broad stripes of pure
gold. She wore an apron of point lace of various patterns; her headtire
was highly perfumed, and the collar of white satin beneath the delicately
wrought ruff struck me as exceedingly pretty." It was quite in keeping
with the manners of the day for a lady of rank to have lent herself to
this hoax of the chaplain.
Van Meteren, a Netherlander, 1575, speaks also of the astonishing change
or changeableness in English fashions, but says the women are well
dressed and modest, and they go about the streets without any covering of
mantle, hood, or veil; only the married women wear a hat in the street
and in the house; the unmarried go without a hat; but ladies of
distinction have lately learned to cover their faces with silken masks or
vizards, and to wear feathers. The English, he notes, change their
fashions every year, and when they go abroad riding or traveling they don
their best clothes, contrary to the practice of other nations. Another
foreigner, Jacob Rathgeb, 1592, says the English go dressed in exceeding
fine clothes, and some will even wear velvet in the street, when they
have not at home perhaps a piece of dry bread. "The lords and pages of
the royal court have a stately, noble air, but dress more after the
French fashion, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps."
Harrison's arraignment of the English fashions of his day may be
considered as almost commendative beside the diatribes of the old Puritan
Philip Stubbes, in "The Anatomie of Abuses," 1583. The English language
is strained for words hot and rude enough to express his indignation,
contempt, and fearful expectation of speedy judgments. The men escape his
hands with scarcely less damage than the women. First he wreaks his
indignation upon the divers kinds of hats, stuck full of feathers, of
various colors, "ensigns of vanity," "fluttering sails and feathered
flags of defiance to virtue"; then upon the monstrous ruffs that stand
out a quarter of a yard from the neck. "As the devil, in the fullness of
his malice, first invented these ruffs, so has he found out two stays to
bear up this his great kingdom of ruffs--one is a kind of liquid matter
they call starch; the other is a device made of wires, for an
under-propper. Then there are shirts of cambric, holland, and lawn,
wrought with fine needle-work of silk and curiously stitched, costing
sometimes as much as five pounds. Worse still are the monstrous doublets,
reaching down to the middle of the thighs, so hard quilted, stuffed,
bombasted, and sewed that the wearer can hardly stoop down in them. Below
these are the gally-hose of silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reaching
below the knees. So costly are these that "now it is a small matter to
bestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a
hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" To
these gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down
the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes
interlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time
has been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of these
nether-socks." Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of cork
shoes and fine slippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and stitched with
silk, and laced on with gold and silver, which went flipping and flapping
up and down in the dirt. The jerkins and cloaks are of all colors and
fashions; some short, reaching to the knee; others dragging on the
ground; red, white, black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced;
hanged with points and tassels of gold, silver, and silk. The hilts of
daggers, rapiers, and swords are gilt thrice over, and have scabbards of
velvet. And all this while the poor lie in London streets upon pallets of
straw, or else in the mire and dirt, and die like dogs!"
Stubbes was a stout old Puritan, bent upon hewing his way to heaven
through all the allurements of this world, and suspecting a devil in
every fair show. I fear that he looked upon woman as only a vain and
trifling image, a delusive toy, away from whom a man must set his face.
Shakespeare, who was country-bred when he came up to London, and lived
probably on the roystering South Side, near the theatres and
bear-gardens, seems to have been impressed with the painted faces of the
women. It is probable that only town-bred women painted. Stubbes declares
that the women of England color their faces with oils, liquors, unguents,
and waters made to that end, thinking to make themselves fairer than God
made them--a presumptuous audacity to make God untrue in his word; and he
heaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To this follows the
trimming and tricking of their heads, the laying out their hair to show,
which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths and borders from ear to
ear. Lest it should fall down it is under-propped with forks, wires, and
what not. On the edges of their bolstered hair (for it standeth crested
round about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces like pendices
with glass windows on every side) is laid great wreaths of gold and
silver curiously wrought. But this is not the worst nor the tenth part,
for no pen is able to describe the wickedness. "The women use great ruffs
and neckerchers of holland, lawn, camerick, and such cloth, as the
greatest thread shall not be so big as the least hair that is: then, lest
they should fall down, they are smeared and starched in the Devil's
liquor, I mean Starch; after that dried with great diligence, streaked,
patted and rubbed very nicely, and so applied to their goodly necks, and,
withall, under-propped with supportasses, the stately arches of pride;
beyond all this they have a further fetch, nothing inferior to the rest;
as, namely, three or four degrees of minor ruffs, placed gradatim, step
by step, one beneath another, and all under the Master devil ruff. The
skirts, then, of these great ruffs are long and side every way, pleted
and crested full curiously, God wot."
Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particular
inquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty damnation
of them all and several. He cannot even abide their carrying of nosegays
and posies of flowers to smell at, since the palpable odors and fumes of
these do enter the brain to degenerate the spirit and allure to vice.
They must needs carry looking-glasses with them; "and good reason," says
Stubbes, savagely, "for else how could they see the devil in them? for no
doubt they are the devil's spectacles [these women] to allure us to pride
and consequently to destruction forever." And, as if it were not enough
to be women, and the devil's aids, they do also have doublets and
jerkins, buttoned up the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinions
on the shoulder points, as man's apparel is, for all the world. We take
reluctant leave of this entertaining woman-hater, and only stay to quote
from him a "fearful judgment of God, shewed upon a gentlewoman of Antwerp
of late, even the 27th of May, 1582," which may be as profitable to read
now as it was then: "This gentlewoman being a very rich Merchant man's
daughter: upon a time was invited to a bridal, or wedding, which was
solemnized in that Toune, against which day she made great preparation,
for the pluming herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was most
beautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect might be
correspondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof she curled her
hair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the best manner, she
colored her face with waters and Ointments: But in no case could she get
any (so curious and dainty she was) that could starch, and set her Ruffs
and Neckerchers to her mind wherefore she sent for a couple of
Laundresses, who did the best they could to please her humors, but in any
wise they could not. Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and damn,
casting the Ruffs under feet, and wishing that the Devil might take her
when she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (through
the sufference of God) the Devil transforming himself into the form of a
young man, as brave and proper as she in every point of outward
appearance, came in, feigning himself to be a wooer or suitor unto her.
And seeing her thus agonized, and in such a pelting chase, he demanded of
her the cause thereof, who straightway told him (as women can conceal
nothing that lieth upon their stomachs) how she was abused in the setting
of her Ruffs, which thing being heard of him, he promised to please her
mind, and thereto took in hand the setting of her Ruffs, which he
performed to her great contentation and liking, in so much as she looking
herself in a glass (as the Devil bade her) became greatly enamoured of
him. This done, the young man kissed her, in the doing whereof she writhe
her neck in, sunder, so she died miserably, her body being metamorphosed
into black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face (which
before was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearful to look upon.
This being known, preparence was made for her burial, a rich coffin was
provided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and it covered very
sumptuously. Four men immediately assayed to lift up the corpse, but
could not move it; then six attempted the like, but could not once stir
it from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marveling,
caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof. Where they found
the body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean and deformed sitting
in the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to the
great fear and wonder of all beholders."
Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion of
Stubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little of
apparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud.
As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity and
enjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred years
later. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr.
Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shall
not enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer's
lot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact that
for a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a shilling. In
two respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century--in its inns and its roads.
In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign travelers had no choice but to ride
on horseback or to walk. Goods were transported on strings of
pack-horses. When Elizabeth rode into the city from her residence at
Greenwich, she placed herself behind her lord chancellor, on a pillion.
The first improvement made was in the construction of a rude wagon a cart
without springs, the body resting solidly on the axles. In such a vehicle
Elizabeth rode to the opening of her fifth Parliament. In 1583, on a
certain day, Sir Harry Sydney entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, "with his
trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see." Even such
conveyances fared hard on the execrable roads of the period. Down to the
end of the seventeenth century most of the country roads were merely
broad ditches, water-worn and strewn with loose stones. In 1640 Queen
Henrietta was four weary days dragging over the road from Dover to
London, the best in England. Not till the close of the sixteenth century
was the wagon used, and then rarely. Fifty years later stage-wagons ran,
with some regularity, between London and Liverpool; and before the close
of the seventeenth century the stagecoach, a wonderful invention, which
had been used in and about London since 1650, was placed on three
principal roads of the kingdom. It averaged two to three miles an hour.
In the reign of Charles II. a Frenchman who landed at Dover was drawn up
to London in a wagon with six horses in a line, one after the other. Our
Venetian, Busino, who went to Oxford in the coach with the ambassador in
1617, was six days in going one hundred and fifty miles, as the coach
often stuck in the mud, and once broke down. So bad were the main
thoroughfares, even, that markets were sometimes inaccessible for months
together, and the fruits of the earth rotted in one place, while there
was scarcity not many miles distant.
But this difficulty of travel and liability to be detained long on the
road were cheered by good inns, such as did not exist in the world
elsewhere. All the literature of the period reflects lovingly the
homelike delights of these comfortable houses of entertainment. Every
little village boasted an excellent inn, and in the towns on the great
thoroughfares were sumptuous houses that would accommodate from two to
three hundred guests with their horses. The landlords were not tyrants,
as on the Continent, but servants of their guests; and it was, says
Harrison, a world to see how they did contend for the entertainment of
their guests--as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of
bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate,
strength of drink, variety of wines, or well-using of horses. The
gorgeous signs at their doors sometimes cost forty pounds. The inns were
cheap too, and the landlord let no one depart dissatisfied with his bill.
The worst inns were in London, and the tradition has been handed down.
But the ostlers, Harrison confesses, did sometimes cheat in the feed, and
they with the tapsters and chamberlains were in league (and the landlord
was not always above suspicion) with highwaymen outside, to ascertain if
the traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left the hospitable
inn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway and relieved of his
money. The highwayman was a conspicuous character. One of the most
romantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, born
in 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was an
adroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took two
hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow
Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring
Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket,
highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she died
in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, a
traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says of the inns as the best
and cheapest in the world, where the guest shall have his own pleasure.
No sooner does he arrive than the servants run to him--one takes his
horse, another shows him his chamber and lights his fire, a third pulls
off his boots. Then come the host and hostess to inquire what meat he
will choose, and he may have their company if he like. He shall be
offered music while he eats, and if he be solitary the musicians will
give him good-day with music in the morning. In short, "a man cannot more
freely command at home, in his own house, than he may do in his inn."
The amusements of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral than
they were later; and although the theatres were denounced by such
reformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison;
they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays of
Shakespeare were out of fashion. The Londoners went for amusement to the
Bankside, or South Side of the Thames, where were the famous Paris
Gardens, much used as a rendezvous by gallants; and there were the places
for bear and bull baiting; and there were the theatres--the Paris
Gardens, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, and the Globe. The
pleasure-seekers went over usually in boats, of which there were said to
be four thousand plying between banks; for there was only one bridge, and
that was crowded with houses. All distinguished visitors were taken over
to see the gardens and the bears baited by dogs; the queen herself went,
and perhaps on Sunday, for Sunday was the great day, and Elizabeth is
said to have encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so much
hunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of;
but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, in
which the beast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly always
proved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he could
into his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were once
much disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them,
all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood very peaceably
together looking out at the people.
The famous Globe Theatre, which was built in 1599, was burned in 1613,
and in the fire it is supposed were consumed Shakespeare's manuscripts of
his plays. It was of wood (for use in summer only), octagon shaped, with
a thatched roof, open in the centre. The daily performance here, as in
all theatres, was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and boys outside
held the horses of the gentlemen who went in to the play. When theatres
were restrained, in 1600, only two were allowed, the Globe and the
Fortune, which was on the north side, on Golden Lane. The Fortune was
fifty feet square within, and three stories high, with galleries, built
of wood on a brick foundation, and with a roof of tiles. The stage was
forty-three feet wide, and projected into the middle of the yard (as the
pit was called), where the groundlings stood. To one of the galleries
admission was only twopence. The young gallants used to go into the yards
and spy about the galleries and boxes for their acquaintances. In these
theatres there was a drop-curtain, but little or no scenery. Spectators
had boxes looking on the stage behind the curtain, and they often sat
upon the stage with the actors; sometimes the actors all remained upon
the stage during the whole play. There seems to have been great
familiarity between the audience and the actors. Fruits in season,
apples, pears, and nuts, with wine and beer, were carried about to be
sold, and pipes were smoked. There was neither any prudery in the plays
or the players, and the audiences in behavior were no better than the
plays.
The actors were all men. The female parts were taken usually by boys, but
frequently by grown men, and when Juliet or Desdemona was announced, a
giant would stride upon the stage. There is a story that Kynaston, a
handsome fellow, famous in female characters, and petted by ladies of
rank, once kept Charles I. waiting while he was being shaved before
appearing as Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy." The innovation of women on
the stage was first introduced by a French company in 1629, but the
audiences would not tolerate it, and hissed and pelted the actresses off
the stage. But thirty years later women took the place they have ever
since held; when the populace had once experienced the charm of a female
Juliet and Ophelia, they would have no other, and the rage for actresses
ran to such excess at one time that it was a fashion for women to take
the male parts as well. But that was in the abandoned days of Charles II.
Pepys could not control his delight at the appearance of Nell Gwynne,
especially "when she comes like a young gallant, and hath the motions and
carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I
confess, admire her." The acting of Shakespeare himself is only a faint
tradition. He played the ghost in "Hamlet," and Adam in "As You Like It."
William Oldys says (Oldys was an antiquarian who was pottering about in
the first part of the eighteenth century, picking up gossip in
coffee-houses, and making memoranda on scraps of paper in book-shops)
Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived past the middle of the
seventeenth century, was much inquired of by actors about the
circumstances of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weak
in mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that he
had once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein,
being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared
so weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to be
supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was
seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song.
And that was Shakespeare!
The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bear
pits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coarse amusement. And
it is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness as
Shakespeare's should have been welcome.
The more private amusements of the great may well be illustrated by an
account given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson's "Pleasure
Reconciled to Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617.
During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whom
was Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, until
they got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturally
choleric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? What
did you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearing
this, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion,
immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minute
capers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ire
of his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration and
delight of everybody. The other masquers, being thus encouraged,
continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies,
finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses from
the ground . . . . The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing,
being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and his
partner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time--a
compliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions. Owing to his
youth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capers
very gracefully." The prince then went and kissed the hand of his serene
parent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly. When such capers were cut
at Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Bankside
taverns.
The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amusements were
refined. Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bag
of currants. At the end of every month, besides special executions, as
many as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets in
Tyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary in
their hands. Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice were
visible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chains
to stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob. In the suburbs were
oak cages for nocturnal offenders. At the church doors might now and then
be seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evil deeds. A
bridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for the
curbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool,
or ducking-stool. There is an old print of one of these machines standing
on the Thames' bank: on a wheeled platform is an upright post with a
swinging beam across the top, on one end of which the chair is suspended
over the river, while the other is worked up and down by a rope; in it is
seated a light sister of the Bankside, being dipped into the unsavory
flood. But this was not so hated by the women as a similar
discipline--being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat.
Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many other
offenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who were
traitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only.
Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death,
yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. And "this is
one cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths,
for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood,
and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves." Felony
covered a wide range of petty crimes--breach of prison, hunting by night
with painted or masked faces, stealing above forty shillings, stealing
hawks' eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deer
by night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc. Death was the penalty
for all these offenses. For poisoning her husband a woman was burned
alive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water or oil;
heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains;
perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues were
burned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stake
driven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifax
thieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modern
guillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seashore at
low-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who let
the sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and left
there as parcel of the foundation of the new wall. Of rogues-that is,
tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundred
annually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. in his time did hang
up as many as seventy-two thousand rogues. Any parish which let a thief
escape was fined. Still the supply held out.
The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and sturdy beggars, and their
punishment by whipping, branding, etc., are too well known to need
comment. But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate and
deserving poor--poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up.
Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in his
day he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, who
counterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars on
the commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabonds
known by cant names, such as "ruffers," "uprightmen," "priggers,"
"fraters," "palliards," "Abrams," "dummerers "; and of women, "demanders
for glimmer or fire," "mortes," "walking mortes," "doxes," "kinching
coves."
London was esteemed by its inhabitants and by many foreigners as the
richest and most magnificent city in Christendom. The cities of London
and Westminster lay along the north bank in what seemed an endless
stretch; on the south side of the Thames the houses were more scattered.
But the town was mostly of wood, and its rapid growth was a matter of
anxiety. Both Elizabeth and James again and again attempted to restrict
it by forbidding the erection of any new buildings within the town, or
for a mile outside; and to this attempt was doubtless due the crowded
rookeries in the city. They especially forbade the use of wood in
house-fronts and windows, both on account of the danger from fire, and
because all the timber in the kingdom, which was needed for shipping and
other purposes, was being used up in building. They even ordered the
pulling down of new houses in London, Westminster, and for three miles
around. But all efforts to stop the growth of the city were vain.
London, according to the Venetian Busino, was extremely dirty. He did not
admire the wooden architecture; the houses were damp and cold, the
staircases spiral and inconvenient, the apartments "sorry and ill
connected." The wretched windows, without shutters, he could neither open
by day nor close by night. The streets were little better than gutters,
and were never put in order except for some great parade. Hentzner,
however, thought the streets handsome and clean. When it rained it must
have been otherwise. There was no provision for conducting away the
water; it poured off the roofs upon the people below, who had not as yet
heard of the Oriental umbrella; and the countryman, staring at the sights
of the town, knocked about by the carts, and run over by the horsemen,
was often surprised by a douche from a conduit down his back. And,
besides, people had a habit of throwing water and slops out of the
windows, regardless of passers-by.
The shops were small, open in front, when the shutters were down, much
like those in a Cairo bazaar, and all the goods were in sight. The
shopkeepers stood in front and cried their wares, and besought customers.
Until 1568 there were but few silk shops in London, and all those were
kept by women. It was not till about that time that citizens' wives
ceased to wear white knit woolen caps, and three-square Minever caps with
peaks. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the apprentices (a
conspicuous class) wore blue cloaks in winter and blue gowns in summer;
unless men were threescore years old, it was not lawful to wear gowns
lower than the calves of the legs, but the length of cloaks was not
limited. The journeymen and apprentices wore long daggers in the daytime
at their backs or sides. When the apprentices attended their masters and
mistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a great
long club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with their
clubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement
--to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down a
tavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets, especially
in winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men;
but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with rapier
and dagger came in. The streets were entirely unlighted and dangerous at
night, and for this reason the plays at the theatres were given at three
in the afternoon.
About Shakespeare's time many new inventions and luxuries came in: masks,
muffs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given by
maids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes,
scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots,
Venice glass, tobacco. In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme
"Turkeys, Carpes, Hops: Piccarel, and beers,
Came into England: all in one year."
There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee was
introduced till about 1661. Tobacco was first made known in England by
Sir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women till
some years after. It was urged as a great medicine for many ills.
Harrison says, 1573, "In these days the taking in of the smoke of the
Indian herb called 'Tabaco,' by an instrument formed like a little ladle,
whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatly
taken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseases
engendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect." It's
use spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. and others, who doubted
that it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums. In 1614 it was said
that seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399,375 a year
was spent in smoke. Tobacco was even taken on the stage. Every base groom
must have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses, and the shops
of apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never, from morning
till night, without company still taking of tobacco.
There was a saying on the Continent that "England is a paradise for
women, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses." The
society was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, and
yet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture of
downrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech went
with the utmost artificiality of dress and manner. It is curious to note
the insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even three
centuries ago. When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made or
particularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, "It is a pity he is
not an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certain
condescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the
English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing;
the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners,
who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect
in immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose
mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of his
countrymen.
"As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people they
be desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning things
present, and coveting after things to come. Ambitious, proud, light, and
unstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind." The French
paid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for the
French. Perlin (1558) finds the people "proud and seditious, with bad
consciences and unfaithful to their word in war unfortunate, in peace
unfaithful"; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb: "England, good
land, bad people." But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people:
"The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned;
the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white as
alabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; they
are joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil)." He thinks their
manners, however, little civilized: for one thing, they have an
unpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la table
sans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer's description of the
Trumpington miller's wife and daughter:
"Men might her rowtyng hearen a forlong,
The wenche routeth eek par companye."
Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found in
Coryat's "Crudities" (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious custom
of using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out of
the dish with his fingers--would give offense. And he accounts for this
peculiarity quite naturally: "The reason of this their curiosity is,
because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched
with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane." Coryat found
the use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when he returned,
and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fashion, his exploit was
regarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits were seldom served
at dessert, but that the whole population were munching them in the
streets all day long, and in the places of amusement; and it was an
amusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in a
sort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and their
admirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds of
cherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half.
All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink, of
banqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table:
during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, "Drink iou" (he
loves to air his English), that is to say, "Je m'en vois boyre a toy."
You respond, in their language, "Iplaigiu"; that is to say, "Je vous
plege." If you thank them, they say in their language, "God tanque
artelay"; that is, "Je vous remercie de bon coeur." And then, says the
artless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respond
thus: "Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin." At the great and princely
banquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lasting
health, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, by
sound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce." It was so
in Hamlet's day:
"And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge."
According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans,
and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the arms
of their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are lively
and active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hair
close in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; "they
are good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, and
thievish;" and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, "above three
hundred are said to be hanged annually in London." They put a good deal
of sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing of
cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have a
glass in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for
hours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin's comment is that men
are hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lords
whose parents have not had their heads chopped off.
It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited in
the breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of the
time. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, well
dressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives only
excepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have great
liberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets,
where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; are
fond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit before
their doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by
the passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much more liberty
than in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque at Whitehall,
his colleagues kept exclaiming, "Oh, do look at this one--oh, do see
that! Whose wife is this?--and that pretty one near her, whose daughter
is she?" There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, some shriveled skins
and devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beauties greatly predominated.
In the great street pageants, it was the beauty and winsomeness of the
London ladies, looking on, that nearly drove the foreigners wild. In
1606, upon the entry of the king of Denmark, the chronicler celebrates
"the unimaginable number of gallant ladies, beauteous virgins, and other
delicate dames, filling the windows of every house with kind aspect." And
in 1638, when Cheapside was all alive with the pageant of the entry of
the queen mother, "this miserable old queen," as Lilly calls Marie de'
Medicis (Mr. Furnivall reproduces an old cut of the scene), M. de la
Serre does not try to restrain his admiration for the pretty women on
view: only the most fecund imagination can represent the content one has
in admiring the infinite number of beautiful women, each different from
the other, and each distinguished by some sweetness or grace to ravish
the heart and take captive one's liberty. No sooner has he determined to
yield to one than a new object of admiration makes him repent the
precipitation of his judgment.
And all the other foreigners were in the like case of "goneness."
Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, and
by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do
not falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;"
yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they are
somewhat awkward in their style of dress." His second "item" of gratitude
is a Netherland custom that pleased him--whenever a foreigner or an
inhabitant went to a citizen's house on business, or as a guest, he was
received by the master, the lady, or the daughter, and "welcomed" (as it
is termed in their language); "he has a right to take them by the arm and
to kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one does not
do so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on his
part." Even the grave Erasmus, when he visited England, fell easily into
this pretty practice, and wrote with untheological fervor of the "girls
with angel faces," who were "so kind and obliging." "Wherever you come,"
he says, "you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leave
you are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They come
to visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all round.
Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance in fine, wherever you
move there is nothing but kisses"--a custom, says this reformer, who has
not the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to be sufficiently
commended."
We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of the
social study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture of
the sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; but
grave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuous
persons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, the
battles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of the
people by which we judge the character of an age.
III
When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenth
and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in another
atmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is as
varied, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot be
adequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and the
history of the time which produced it.
"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of
Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian
genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much
in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to
apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude
as they were coarse."
Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in the
right spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for any
enlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"
he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literature
should be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired into
English civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought of
the people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry into
popular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and it
is now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object of
study is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of a
period for the first time understood, but it is given its just place as
an exponent of human life and a monument of human action.
The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of either
amusement or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole load
of commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself to
trying to find out first what was the London and the England of
Shakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, what
were the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear his
plays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies of
sin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare will
become a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose and
scope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon the
plays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into his
phrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life, its
visions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, and
warlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at natural
phenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, its
virility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury of
apparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society,
these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admiration
of the poet's knowledge of human life.
The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life of
England, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into the
bustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still in
his veins the throb of the popular blood. There were classic affectations
in England, there were masks and mummeries and classic puerilities at
court and in noble houses--Elizabeth's court would well have liked to be
classical, remarks Guizot--but Shakespeare was not fettered by classic
conventionalities, nor did he obey the unities, nor attempt to separate
on the stage the tragedy and comedy of life--"immense and living stage,"
says the writer I like to quote because he is French, upon which all
things are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the place
which they occupied in a stormy and complicated civilization. In these
dramas the comic element is introduced whenever its character of reality
gives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportune
appearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and Doll
Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, and
the soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, all
the phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with the
nature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which they
naturally occupy. . . .
"Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproduced
by Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatre
of life and truth."
It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare's
day by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that is
true. M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphic
catalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is a
great deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does not
apprehend. Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out. These
robust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength of
their limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguised
sensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries. Humanity is as much
lacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them. The court
frequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon a
courtier's fringed coat, boxes Essex's ears; great ladies beat their
children and their servants. "The sixteenth century," he says, "is like a
den of lions. Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking.
Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fullness. If
nothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated. It is the entire
man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and
finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites,
without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast him altogether
in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as he
will under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration." He has
entered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, every
allurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong with
him. He plunges into all sensations. "Such were the men of this time,
Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself, excessive and inconstant,
ready for devotion and for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic with
strange weaknesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile with
premeditation like the roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid on
principle like the Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping like
children, and of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than once
true knights, displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions of
bearing, only the overflowing of nature. Thus prepared, they could take
in everything, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutality
of shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, accept
all the characters, wantons and virgins, princes and mountebanks, pass
quickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listen
alternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama
even, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take all
tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by side
with this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural style
and limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers and
the speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera,
as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their groves
and meadows; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itself
to furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, for
nowhere else do we find men so complete."
M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed with
innumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The English
is the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, most
impatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; and
the great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the force
and ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions
work in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is a
soldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercise
himself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishments
must inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts,
such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life;
death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purple cloaks, the
holiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained with
blood and bordered with black. Throughout a stern discipline, the axe
ready for every suspicion of treason; "great men, bishops, a chancellor,
princes, the king's relations, queens, a protector kneeling in the straw,
sprinkled the Tower with their blood; one after the other they marched
past, stretched out their necks; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne
Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, the
Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke of
Northumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of
the throne, in the highest ranks of honor, beauty, youth, genius; of the
bright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the
tender mercies of the executioner."
The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grin
on the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts, walking
spirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast country houses, in
the poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seen drawn by
headless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen. All this, with
unbounded luxury, unbridled debauchery, gloom, and revelry hand in hand.
"A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy,
like the sun, pierces through it and upon them strongly and at
intervals." All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life, this
madness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives so
remorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of the
period.
To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give him
a hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweet
homes, something of that great force of moral stability, in the midst of
all violence and excess of passion and performance, which makes a nation
noble. "Opposed to this band of tragic figures," which M. Taine arrays
from the dramas, "with their contorted features, brazen fronts, combative
attitudes, is a troop (he says) of timid figures, tender before
everything, the most graceful and love-worthy whom it has been given to
man to depict. In Shakespeare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet,
Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also in
the others; and it is a characteristic of the race to have furnished
them, as it is of the drama to have represented them. By a singular
coincidence the women are more of women, the men more of men, here than
elsewhere. The two natures go to its extreme--in the one to boldness, the
spirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, and
unpolished character; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience,
inextinguishable affection (hence the happiness and strength of the
marriage tie), a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especially
a woman here gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory and
duty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing, and pretending only
to be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she has
freely and forever chosen." This is an old German instinct. The soul in
this race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to follow
the noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence and
conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment,
abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are not
affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are
binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes
almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or to
jest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved
ones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion."
Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses--the most fascinating and most
dangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a most
suggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of the
Gallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in the
literature of the two races as an expression of their life. It was
natural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the source
of this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forces
and currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itself
feels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literature in
the manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has so
skillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, and
the pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it something
more than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made it
representative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as the
Reformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (the
result of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense that
there was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, above
all places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of a
display of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled in
history. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protesting
democracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing its
condition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, with
small regard for tradition or the unities.
When Shakespeare came up to London with his first poems in his pocket,
the town was so great and full of marvels, and luxury, and entertainment,
as to excite the astonishment of continental visitors. It swarmed with
soldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and every
port, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed with schemes
of colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce, by
planting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand.
Swaggering in the coffee-houses and ruffling it in the streets were the
men who had sailed with Frobisher and Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
Hawkins, and Sir Richard Granville; had perhaps witnessed the heroic
death of Sir Philip Sidney, at Zutphen; had served with Raleigh in Anjou,
Picardy, Languedoc, in the Netherlands, in the Irish civil war; had taken
part in the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, and in the bombardment of
Cadiz; had filled their cups to the union of Scotland with England; had
suffered shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, or had, by the fortune of war,
felt the grip of the Spanish Inquisition; who could tell tales of the
marvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, like
Captain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of the
natives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars in
Hungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaric
pomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who would
see Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who would
fight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, Kineton or
Marston Moor, and perchance see the exit of Charles himself from another
scaffold erected over against the Banqueting House.
Although London at the accession of James I.(1603) had only about one
hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants--the population of England then
numbering about five million--it was so full of life and activity that
Frederick, Duke of Wurtemberg, who saw it a few years before, in 1592,
was impressed with it as a large, excellent, and mighty city of business,
crowded with people buying and selling merchandise, and trading in almost
every corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcely
pass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants, he
says, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing, who
scoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest the
street boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike
to right and left unmercifully without regard to persons.
There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights and
hearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreign
countries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize.
Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whose
voyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. The
exaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, the
poets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard in
money as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitant
interest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passion
for sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news of
which inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who
was in London in 1585, records that, "news arrived of a Spanish ship
captured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions of
uncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coined
reals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing two
bushels, and some sacks of cochineal--the whole valued at twenty-five
barrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half's tribute from
Peru."
The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable to
accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and
Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieur
traveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits;
disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your
nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are,
or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearly
loved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flown
compliment. One gallant says to another: "O, signior, the star that
governs my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in your
arms."--"Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain such
preciousness!"
Dancing was the daily occupation rather than the amusement at court and
elsewhere, and the names of dances exceeded the list of the virtues--such
as the French brawl, the pavon, the measure, the canary, and many under
the general titles of corantees, jigs, galliards, and fancies. At the
dinner and ball given by James I. to Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable
of Castile, in 1604, fifty ladies of honor, very elegantly dressed and
extremely beautiful, danced with the noblemen and gentlemen. Prince Henry
danced a galliard with a lady, "with much sprightliness and modesty,
cutting several capers in the course of the dance"; the Earl of
Southampton led out the queen, and with three other couples danced a
brando, and so on, the Spanish visitors looking on. When Elizabeth was
old and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discovered
practicing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined to
keep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impress
foreign ambassadors with her grace and youth. There was one custom,
however, that may have made dancing a labor of love: it was considered
ill manners for the gentleman not to kiss his partner. Indeed, in all
households and in all ranks of society the guest was expected to salute
thus all the ladies a custom which the grave Erasmus, who was in England
in the reign of Henry VIII., found not disagreeable.
Magnificence of display went hand in hand with a taste for cruel and
barbarous amusements. At this same dinner to the Constable of Castile,
the two buffets of the king and queen in the audience-chamber, where the
banquet was held, were loaded with plate of exquisite workmanship, rich
vessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The constable drank to
the king the health of the queen from the lid of a cup of agate of
extraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, praying
his majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which he
did accordingly, and then the constable directed that the cup should
remain in his majesty's buffet. The constable also drank to the queen the
health of the king from a very beautiful dragon-shaped cup of crystal
garnished with gold, drinking from the cover, and the queen, standing up,
gave the pledge from the cup itself, and then the constable ordered that
the cup should remain in the queen's buffet.
The banquet lasted three hours, when the cloth was removed, the table was
placed upon the ground--that is, removed from the dais--and their
majesties, standing upon it, washed their hands in basins, as did the
others. After the dinner was the ball, and that ended, they took their
places at the windows of a roam that looked out upon a square, where a
platform was raised and a vast crowd was assembled to see the king's
bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a
bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After this
tumblers danced upon a rope and performed feats of agility on horseback.
The constable and his attendants were lighted home by half an hundred
halberdiers with torches, and, after the fatigues of the day, supped in
private. We are not surprised to read that on Monday, the 30th, the
constable awoke with a slight attack of lumbago.
Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bear
and bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste for
blood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swung
the cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matter
of public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven in
the cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cart
moved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs in
order that he might be strangled the sooner.
When Shakespeare was managing his theatres and writing his plays London
was full of foreigners, settled in the city, who no doubt formed part of
his audience, for they thought that English players had attained great
perfection. In 1621 there were as many as ten thousand strangers in
London, engaged in one hundred and twenty-one different trades. The poet
need not go far from Blackfriars to pick up scraps of German and
folk-lore, for the Hanse merchants were located in great numbers in the
neighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street.
Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribes
against luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society and
the variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display of
fine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousand
dresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage down the stream,
on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper. The plays of
Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists,
are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge of
the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see the
fine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvet
should be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, her
hair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with waving
feathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding all
the features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeled
shoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets,
necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damask roses"--a
pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glass
pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the
shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "These
fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weep
with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry they
can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as
of a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.
The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, the
Brandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, the
lord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboring
field, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, to
which hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing, with high
hats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women; gallants
sported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewels and
roses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in a
ribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain." Vincentio,
in the "Taming of the Shrew," exclaims: "O fine villain! A silken
doublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And a capatain hat!" There was
no limit to the caprice and extravagance. Hose and breeches of silk,
velvet, or other rich stuff, and fringed garters wrought of gold or
silver, worth five pounds apiece, are some of the items noted. Burton
says, "'Tis ordinary for a gallant to put a thousand oaks and an hundred
oxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back." Even
serving-men and tailors wore jewels in their shoes.
We should note also the magnificence in the furnishing of houses, the
arras, tapestries, cloth of gold and silver, silk hangings of many
colors, the splendid plate on the tables and sideboards. Even in the
houses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, and
there was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweet
herbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lights
were placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, there
were living candleholders. "Give me a torch," says Romeo; "I'll be a
candle-holder, and look on." Knowledge of the details of luxury of an
English home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hosts
of allusions in Shakespeare.
Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a mark
of gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's term
in London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreigner
could dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, served
at eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanism
rivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with their
fingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mighty
eating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing was carried to an
extravagant height, if we may judge by the account of an orgy at the
king's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King and Queen of
Denmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoned discretion
and sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about in intoxication."
The manners of the male population of the period, says Nathan Drake, seem
to have been compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. Like
Elizabeth, they are brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, like
James, they are credulous, curious, and dissipated. The credulity and
superstition of the age, and its belief in the supernatural, and the
sumptuousness of masques and pageants at the court and in the city, of
which we read so much in the old chronicles, are abundantly reflected in
the pages of Jonson, Shakespeare, and other writers.
The town was full of public-houses and pleasure-gardens, but, curiously
enough, the favorite place of public parading was the middle aisle of St.
Paul's Cathedral--"Paul's Walk," as it was called--which was daily
frequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten to
twelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, or
pleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations,
arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, the
gamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, the
stale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchased
Bardolph. "I bought him," say's the knight, "at Paul's." The tailors went
there to get the fashions of dress, as the gallants did to display them,
one suit before dinner and another after. What a study was this varied,
mixed, flaunting life, this dance of pleasure and license before the very
altar of the church, for the writers of satire, comedy, and tragedy!
But it is not alone town life and court life and the society of the fine
folk that is reflected in the English drama and literature of the
seventeenth century, and here is another wide difference between it and
the French literature of the same period; rural England and the popular
life of the country had quite as much to do in giving tone and color to
the writings of the time. It is necessary to know rural England to enter
into the spirit of this literature, and to appreciate how thoroughly it
took hold of life in every phase. Shakespeare knew it well. He drew from
life the country gentleman, the squire, the parson, the pedantic
schoolmaster who was regarded as half conjurer, the yeoman or farmer, the
dairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds,
boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all these
persons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in the
country festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the Morris
Dances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rustic
merrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, the
love of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, the
naive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake, in
his "Shakespeare and his Times," gives a graphic and indeed charming
picture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and other
sources.
In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transom
windows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all military
accoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at a
raised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigal
hospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by a
huge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by their
seats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, for
wine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food was
of coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions to
this distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were well
understood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eating
done in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from the
banquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five or
six, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham in his
"English Housewife," after treating of the ordering of great feasts,
gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion."
This "humble feast," he says, should consist for the first course of
"sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, and
not empty, or for shew--as thus, for example: first, a shield of brawn
with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef;
fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted;
sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak'd; eighthly, a goose
rosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, a
haunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; the
thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an
olive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or
dowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases,
'quelque choses,' and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make no
less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can conveniently
stand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you may
proportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on one
half the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in the
splendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to the
beholders." After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayers
before supper.
The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectual
animal. He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ran
buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. His great hall was commonly strewn
with marrow-bones, and full of hawks' perches, of hounds, spaniels, and
terriers. His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters he
ate at dinner and supper. At the upper end of the room stood a small
table with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, the
other Fox's "Book of Martyrs." He drank a glass or two of wine at his
meals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glass
of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with
rosemary. After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved his
mind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the "Book of
Martyrs."
This is a portrait of one Henry Hastings, of Dorsetshire, in Gilpin's
"Forest Scenery." He lived to be a hundred, and never lost his sight nor
used spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death
of the stag till he was past fourscore.
The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, and
described by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but lets
himself lie fallow and untitled. His hand guides the plow, and the plow
his thoughts. His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fix a
half-hour's contemplation on a good fat cow. His habitation is under a
poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes that
let out the smoke. Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as much as
at his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef. His
religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord and
refers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in his
way, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capable
only of two prayers--for rain and fair weather.
The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers,
were distinguished in Shakespeare's time by the appellation "Sir," as Sir
Hugh, in the "Merry Wives," Sir Topas, in "Twelfth Night," Sir Oliver, in
"As You Like It." The distinction is marked between priesthood and
knighthood when Vista says, "I am one that would rather go with Sir
Priest than Sir Knight." The clergy were not models of conduct in the
days of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we read
that they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.
There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errant
knights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches,
goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on the
hearth, as in Milton's allusion
"---to the nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat"
A designation of winter in "Love's Labour's Lost" is
"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."
To "turne a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw
it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a
toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks:
"And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks against her lips I bob:"
I love no roast, says John Still, in "Gammer Gurton's Needle,"
"I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte,
And a crab layde in the fyre;
A lytle bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire."
In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species of
wassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrain
intemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged to
drink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peg
lower," or taking him "down a peg," from this custom.
In these details I am not attempting any complete picture of the rural
life at this time, but rather indicating by illustrations the sort of
study which illuminates its literature. We find, indeed, if we go below
the surface of manners, sober, discreet, and sweet domestic life, and an
appreciation of the virtues. Of the English housewife, says Gervase
Markham, was not only expected sanctity and holiness of life, but "great
modesty and temperance, as well outwardly as inwardly. She must be of
chaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent,
witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wise
in discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but
not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comportable in her
counsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belong
to her vocation." This was the mistress of the hospitable house of the
country knight, whose chief traits were loyalty to church and state, a
love of festivity, and an ardent attachment to field sports. His
well-educated daughter is charmingly described in an exquisite poem by
Drayton:
He had, as antique stories tell,
He had, as antique stories tell,
A daughter cleaped Dawsabel,
A maiden fair and free;
And for she was her father's heir,
Full well she ycond the leir
Of mickle courtesy.
"The silk well couth she twist and twine,
And make the fine march-pine,
And with the needle work:
And she couth help the priest to say
His matins on a holy day,
And sing a psalm in Kirk.
"She wore a frock of frolic green
Might well become a maiden queen,
Which seemly was to see;
A hood to that so neat and fine,
In color like the columbine,
Ywrought full featously.
"Her features all as fresh above
As is the grass that grows by Dove,
And lythe as lass of Kent.
Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,
As white as snow on Peakish Hull,
Or swan that swims in Trent.
"This maiden in a morn betime
Went forth when May was in the prime
To get sweet setywall,
The honey-suckle, the harlock,
The lily, and the lady-smock,
To deck her summer hall."
How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to life
is uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury of
the town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland. The dress of a
rich farmer's wife is thus described by Dunbar. She had "a robe of fine
scarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at her
side from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore two
rings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richly
embroidered with silver."
Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great.
How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often been
discussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, he
probably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Society
from Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet. Reading
some letters from Robert, Earl of Essex, to Lady Rich, his sister, the
handsome, fascinating, and disreputable Penelope Devereaux, he notes, in
their humorous melancholy and discontent with mankind, something in tone
and even language which suggests the weak and fantastic side of Hamlet's
mind, and asks if the poet may not have conceived his character of Hamlet
from Essex, and of Horatio from Southampton, his friend and patron. And
he goes on to note some singular coincidences. Essex was supposed by many
to have a good title to the throne. In person he had his father's beauty
and was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark. His
mother had been tempted from her duty while her noble and generous
husband was alive, and this husband was supposed to have been poisoned by
her and her paramour. After the father's murder the seducer had married
the guilty mother. The father had not perished without expressing
suspicion of foul play against himself, yet sending his forgiveness to
his faithless wife. There are many other agreements in the facts of the
case and the incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to Hamlet is
the same as that of Leicester to Essex: under pretense of fatherly
friendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kept
him much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother,
and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignant
favor. Gertrude's relations with her son Hamlet were much like those of
Lettice with Robert Devereaux. Again, it is suggested, in his moodiness,
in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, in
his desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit,
there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the Danish Prince.
This suggestion is interesting in the view that we find in the characters
of the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individuals
strongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions.
These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representative
of human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time.
This is supremely true of Shakespeare, and almost equally true of Jonson
and many of the other stars of that marvelous epoch. In England as well
as in France, as we have said, it was the period of the classic revival;
but in England the energetic reality of the time was strong enough to
break the classic fetters, and to use classic learning for modern
purposes. The English dramatists, like the French, used classic histories
and characters. But two things are to be noted in their use of them.
First, that the characters and the play of mind and passion in them are
thoroughly English and of the modern time. And second, and this seems at
first a paradox, they are truer to the classic spirit than the characters
in the contemporary French drama. This results from the fact that they
are truer to the substance of things, to universal human nature, while
the French seem to be in great part an imitation, having root neither in
the soil of France nor Attica. M. Guizot confesses that France, in order
to adopt the ancient models, was compelled to limit its field in some
sort to one corner of human existence. He goes on to say that the present
"demands of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be
supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to
exist. The classic system had its origin in the life of the time; that
time has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its
works, but can no more be reproduced." Our own literary monuments must
rest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneille or
Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's
system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which
genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social
conditions and those general and diverse feelings, the simultaneous
conjuncture and activity of which constitute for us at the present day
the spectacle of human things."
That is certainly all that any one can claim for Shakespeare and his
fellow-dramatists. They cannot be models in form any more than Sophocles
and Euripides; but they are to be followed in making the drama, or any
literature, expressive of its own time, while it is faithful to the
emotions and feeling of universal human nature. And herein, it seems to
me, lies the broad distinction between most of the English and French
literature of the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the
seventeenth centuries. Perhaps I may be indulged in another observation
on this topic, touching a later time. Notwithstanding the prevalent
notion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classic
culture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the true
classic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notably
Keats and Shelley.
Ben Jonson was a man of extensive and exact classical erudition; he was a
solid scholar in the Greek and Roman literatures, in the works of the
philosophers, poets, and historians. He was also a man of uncommon
attainments in all the literary knowledge of his time. In some of his
tragedies his classic learning was thought to be ostentatiously
displayed, but this was not true of his comedy, and on the whole he was
too strong to be swamped in pseudo-classicism. For his experience of men
and of life was deep and varied. Before he became a public actor and
dramatist, and served the court and fashionable society with his
entertaining, if pedantic, masques, he had been student, tradesman, and
soldier; he had traveled in Flanders and seen Paris, and wandered on foot
through the length of England. London he knew as well as a man knows his
own house and club, the comforts of its taverns, the revels of lords and
ladies, the sports of Bartholomew Fair, and the humors of suburban
villages; all the phases, language, crafts, professions of high and low
city life were familiar to him. And in his comedies, as Mr. A. W. Ward
pertinently says, his marvelously vivid reproduction of manners is
unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. "The age lives in his men and
women, his country gulls and town gulls, his imposters and skeldering
captains, his court ladies and would-be court ladies, his puling
poetasters and whining Puritans, and, above all, in the whole ragamuffin
rout of his Bartholomew Fair. Its pastimes, fashionable and
unfashionable, its games and vapors and jeering, its high-polite
courtships and its pulpit-shows, its degrading superstitions and
confounding hallucinations, its clubs of naughty ladies and its offices
of lying news, its taverns and its tobacco shops, its giddy heights and
its meanest depths--all are brought before us by our author."
No, he was not swamped by classicism, but he was affected by it, and just
here, and in that self-consciousness which Shakespeare was free from, and
which may have been more or less the result of his classic erudition, he
fails of being one of the universal poets of mankind. The genius of
Shakespeare lay in his power to so use the real and individual facts of
life as to raise in the minds of his readers a broader and nobler
conception of human life than they had conceived before. This is creative
genius; this is the idealist dealing faithfully with realistic material;
this is, as we should say in our day, the work of the artist as
distinguished from the work of the photographer. It may be an admirable
but it is not the highest work of the sculptor, the painter, or the
writer, that does not reveal to the mind--that comes into relation with
it something before out of his experience and beyond the facts either
brought before him or with which he is acquainted.
What influence Shakespeare had upon the culture and taste of his own time
and upon his immediate audience would be a most interesting inquiry. We
know what his audiences were. He wrote for the people, and the theatre in
his day was a popular amusement for the multitude, probably more than it
was a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture of letters. A taste
for letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed was
fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court of
Elizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess was taught not
only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen was
translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient to
affect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and the
courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to
"good form." But the taste for erudition was mainly confined to the
metropolis or the families who frequented it, and to persons of rank, and
did not pervade the country or the middle classes. A few of the country
gentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared little
except for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it was
some old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, "Amadis de Gaul," or
a stray playbook, or something like the "History of Long Meg of
Westminster," or perhaps a sheet of news. To read and write were still
rare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a common
notion when he said reading and writing come by nature. Sheets of news
had become common in the town in James's time, the first newspaper being
the English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished food
for Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News." His accusation has a
familiar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst after
published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all at
home, and no syllable of truth in them."
Though Elizabeth and James were warm patrons of the theatre, the court
had no such influence over the plays and players as had the court in
Paris at the same period. The theatres were built for the people, and the
audiences included all classes. There was a distinction between what were
called public and private theatres, but the public frequented both. The
Shakespeare theatres, at which his plays were exclusively performed, were
the Globe, called public, on the Bankside, and the Blackfriars, called
private, on the City side, the one for summer, the other for winter
performances. The Blackfriars was smaller than the Globe, was roofed
over, and needed to be lighted with candles, and was frequented more by
the better class than the more popular Globe. There is no evidence that
Elizabeth ever attended the public theatres, but the companies were often
summoned to play before her in Whitehall, where the appointments and
scenery were much better than in the popular houses.
The price of general admission to the Globe and Blackfriars was sixpence,
at the Fashion Theatre twopence, and at some of the inferior theatres one
penny. The boxes at the Globe were a shilling, at the Blackfriars
one-and-six. The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine to
ten pounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companies
for a performance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and did
not interfere with regular hours. The theatres opened as early as one
o'clock and not later than three in the afternoon. The crowds that filled
the pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselves
variously before the performance began: they drank ale, smoked, fought
for apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheap
publications of the day that were hawked in the theatre. It was a rough
and unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one,
and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way of
scenery. In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it. A board
inscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene of
action. Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced. The interior
roof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery of that
tint, to represent the heavens. But when the idea of a dark, starless
night was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, these heavens were
hung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in many allusions in
Shakespeare, like that in the line,
"Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night"
To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy. The costumes
of the players were sometimes less niggardly than the furnishing of the
stage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was not
difficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stage
use. But there was no lavishing of expense. I am recalling these details
to show that the amusement was popular and cheap. The ordinary actors,
including the boys and men who took women's parts (for women did not
appear on the stage till after the Restoration) received only about five
or six shillings a week (for Sundays and all), and the first-class actor,
who had a share in the net receipts, would not make more than ninety
pounds a year. The ordinary price paid for a new play was less than seven
pounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says that Shakespeare
received only five pounds for "Hamlet."
The influence of the theatre upon politics, contemporary questions that
interested the public, and morals, was early recognized in the restraints
put upon representations by the censorship, and in the floods of attacks
upon its licentious and demoralizing character. The plays of Shakespeare
did not escape the most bitter animadversions of the moral reformers. We
have seen how Shakespeare mirrored his age, but we have less means of
ascertaining what effect he produced upon the life of his time. Until
after his death his influence was mainly direct, upon the play-goers, and
confined to his auditors. He had been dead seven years before his plays
were collected. However the people of his day regarded him, it is safe to
say that they could not have had any conception of the importance of the
work he was doing. They were doubtless satisfied with him. It was a great
age for romances and story-telling, and he told stories, old in new
dresses, but he was also careful to use contemporary life, which his
hearers understood.
It is not to his own age, but to those following, and especially to our
own time, that we are to look for the shaping and enormous influence upon
human life of the genius of this poet. And it is measured not by the
libraries of comments that his works have called forth, but by the
prevalence of the language and thought of his poetry in all subsequent
literature, and by its entrance into the current of common thought and
speech. It may be safely said that the English-speaking world and almost
every individual of it are different from what they would have been if
Shakespeare had never lived. Of all the forces that have survived out of
his creative time, he is one of the chief.
A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
By Charles Dudley Warner
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH
The title naturally suggested for this story was "A Dead Soul," but it
was discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel by
Nikolai Gogol--"Dead Souls"--though the motive has nothing in common with
that used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud
practiced by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of "serfs"
(called souls) not living, or "dead souls."
This story is an attempt to trace the demoralization in a woman's soul of
certain well-known influences in our existing social life. In no other
way could certain phases of our society be made to appear so distinctly
as when reflected in the once pure mirror of a woman's soul.
The character of Margaret is the portrait of no one woman. But it was
suggested by the career of two women (among others less marked) who had
begun life with the highest ideals, which had been gradually eaten away
and destroyed by "prosperous" marriages and association with unscrupulous
methods of acquiring money.
The deterioration was gradual. The women were in all outward conduct
unchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces were
not lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of religion were
even emphasized, but worldliness had eaten the heart out of them, and
they were "dead souls." The tragedy of the withered life was a
thousand-fold enhanced by the external show of prosperous respectability.
The story was first published (in 1888) in Harper's Monthly. During its
progress--and it was printed as soon as each installment was ready (a
very poor plan)--I was in receipt of the usual letters of sympathy, or
protest, and advice. One sympathetic missive urged the removal of
Margaret to a neighboring city, where she could be saved by being brought
under special Christian influences. The transfer, even in a serial, was
impossible, and she by her own choice lived the life she had entered
upon.
And yet, if the reader will pardon the confidence, pity intervened to
shorten it. I do not know how it is with other writers, but the persons
that come about me in a little drama are as real as those I meet in
every-day life, and in this case I found it utterly impossible to go on
to what might have been the bitter, logical development of Margaret's
career. Perhaps it was as well. Perhaps the writer should have no
despotic power over his creations, however slight they are. He may
profitably recall the dictum of a recent essayist that "there is no
limit to the mercy of God."
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
Hartford, August 11, 1899.
A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
I
We were talking about the want of diversity in American life, the lack of
salient characters. It was not at a club. It was a spontaneous talk of
people who happened to be together, and who had fallen into an
uncompelled habit of happening to be together. There might have been a
club for the study of the Want of Diversity in American Life. The members
would have been obliged to set apart a stated time for it, to attend as a
duty, and to be in a mood to discuss this topic at a set hour in the
future. They would have mortgaged another precious portion of the little
time left us for individual life. It is a suggestive thought that at a
given hour all over the United States innumerable clubs might be
considering the Want of Diversity in American Life. Only in this way,
according to our present methods, could one expect to accomplish anything
in regard to this foreign-felt want. It seems illogical that we could
produce diversity by all doing the same thing at the same time, but we
know the value of congregate effort. It seems to superficial observers
that all Americans are born busy. It is not so. They are born with a fear
of not being busy; and if they are intelligent and in circumstances of
leisure, they have such a sense of their responsibility that they hasten
to allot all their time into portions, and leave no hour unprovided for.
This is conscientiousness in women, and not restlessness. There is a day
for music, a day for painting, a day for the display of tea-gowns, a day
for Dante, a day for the Greek drama, a day for the Dumb Animals' Aid
Society, a day for the Society for the Propagation of Indians, and so on.
When the year is over, the amount that has been accomplished by this
incessant activity can hardly be estimated. Individually it may not be
much. But consider where Chaucer would be but for the work of the Chaucer
clubs, and what an effect upon the universal progress of things is
produced by the associate concentration upon the poet of so many minds.
A cynic says that clubs and circles are for the accumulation of
superficial information and unloading it on others, without much
individual absorption in anybody. This, like all cynicism, contains only
a half-truth, and simply means that the general diffusion of
half-digested information does not raise the general level of
intelligence, which can only be raised to any purpose by thorough
self-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is a
favorite simile with us, and we are apt to overlook the fact that the
least important part of his example is buzzing around. If the hive simply
got together and buzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from some
cyclopaedia, let us say, of treacle, there would be no honey added to the
general store.
It occurred to some one in this talk at last to deny that there was this
tiresome monotony in American life. And this put a new face on the
discussion. Why should there be, with every race under the heavens
represented here, and each one struggling to assert itself, and no
homogeneity as yet established even between the people of the oldest
States? The theory is that democracy levels, and that the anxious pursuit
of a common object, money, tends to uniformity, and that facility of
communication spreads all over the land the same fashion in dress; and
repeats everywhere the same style of house, and that the public schools
give all the children in the United States the same superficial
smartness. And there is a more serious notion, that in a society without
classes there is a sort of tyranny of public opinion which crushes out
the play of individual peculiarities, without which human intercourse is
uninteresting. It is true that a democracy is intolerant of variations
from the general level, and that a new society allows less latitude in
eccentricities to its members than an old society.
But with all these allowances, it is also admitted that the difficulty
the American novelist has is in hitting upon what is universally accepted
as characteristic of American life, so various are the types in regions
widely separated from each other, such different points of view are had
even in conventionalities, and conscience operates so variously on moral
problems in one community and another. It is as impossible for one
section to impose upon another its rules of taste and propriety in
conduct--and taste is often as strong to determine conduct as principle
--as it is to make its literature acceptable to the other. If in the land
of the sun and the jasmine and the alligator and the fig, the literature
of New England seems passionless and timid in face of the ruling emotions
of life, ought we not to thank Heaven for the diversity of temperament as
well as of climate which will in the long-run save us from that sameness
into which we are supposed to be drifting?
When I think of this vast country with any attention to local
developments I am more impressed with the unlikenesses than with the
resemblances. And besides this, if one had the ability to draw to the
life a single individual in the most homogeneous community, the product
would be sufficiently startling. We cannot flatter ourselves, therefore,
that under equal laws and opportunities we have rubbed out the saliencies
of human nature. At a distance the mass of the Russian people seem as
monotonous as their steppes and their commune villages, but the Russian
novelists find characters in this mass perfectly individualized, and,
indeed, give us the impression that all Russians are irregular polygons.
Perhaps if our novelists looked at individuals as intently, they might
give the world the impression that social life here is as unpleasant as
it appears in the novels to be in Russia.
This is partly the substance of what was said one winter evening before
the wood fire in the library of a house in Brandon, one of the lesser New
England cities. Like hundreds of residences of its kind, it stood in the
suburbs, amid forest-trees, commanding a view of city spires and towers
on the one hand, and on the other of a broken country of clustering trees
and cottages, rising towards a range of hills which showed purple and
warm against the pale straw-color of the winter sunsets. The charm of the
situation was that the house was one of many comfortable dwellings, each
isolated, and yet near enough together to form a neighborhood; that is to
say, a body of neighbors who respected each other's privacy, and yet
flowed together, on occasion, without the least conventionality. And a
real neighborhood, as our modern life is arranged, is becoming more and
more rare.
I am not sure that the talkers in this conversation expressed their real,
final sentiments, or that they should be held accountable for what they
said. Nothing so surely kills the freedom of talk as to have some
matter-of-fact person instantly bring you to book for some impulsive
remark flashed out on the instant, instead of playing with it and tossing
it about in a way that shall expose its absurdity or show its value.
Freedom is lost with too much responsibility and seriousness, and the
truth is more likely to be struck out in a lively play of assertion and
retort than when all the words and sentiments are weighed. A person very
likely cannot tell what he does think till his thoughts are exposed to
the air, and it is the bright fallacies and impulsive, rash ventures in
conversation that are often most fruitful to talker and listeners. The
talk is always tame if no one dares anything. I have seen the most
promising paradox come to grief by a simple "Do you think so?" Nobody, I
sometimes think, should be held accountable for anything said in private
conversation, the vivacity of which is in a tentative play about the
subject. And this is a sufficient reason why one should repudiate any
private conversation reported in the newspapers. It is bad enough to be
held fast forever to what one writes and prints, but to shackle a man
with all his flashing utterances, which may be put into his mouth by some
imp in the air, is intolerable slavery. A man had better be silent if he
can only say today what he will stand by tomorrow, or if he may not
launch into the general talk the whim and fancy of the moment. Racy,
entertaining talk is only exposed thought, and no one would hold a man
responsible for the thronging thoughts that contradict and displace each
other in his mind. Probably no one ever actually makes up his mind until
he either acts or puts out his conclusion beyond his recall. Why should
one be debarred the privilege of pitching his crude ideas into a
conversation where they may have a chance of being precipitated?
I remember that Morgan said in this talk that there was too much
diversity. "Almost every church has trouble with it--the different social
conditions."
An Englishman who was present pricked-up his ears at this, as if he
expected to obtain a note on the character of Dissenters. "I thought all
the churches here were organized on social affinities?" he inquired.
"Oh, no; it is a good deal a matter of vicinage. When there is a
real-estate extension, a necessary part of the plan is to build a church
in the centre of it, in order to--"
"I declare, Page," said Mrs. Morgan, "you'll give Mr. Lyon a totally
erroneous notion. Of course there must be a church convenient to the
worshipers in every district."
"That is just what I was saying, my dear: As the settlement is not drawn
together on religious grounds, but perhaps by purely worldly motives, the
elements that meet in the church are apt to be socially incongruous, such
as cannot always be fused even by a church-kitchen and a church-parlor."
"Then it isn't the peculiarity of the church that has attracted to it
worshipers who would naturally come together, but the church is a
neighborhood necessity?" still further inquired Mr. Lyon.
"All is," I ventured to put in, "that churches grow up like schoolhouses,
where they are wanted."
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Morgan; "I'm talking about the kind of want
that creates them. If it's the same that builds a music hall, or a
gymnasium, or a railway waiting-room, I've nothing more to say."
"Is it your American idea, then, that a church ought to be formed only of
people socially agreeable together?" asked the Englishman.
"I have no American idea. I am only commenting on facts; but one of them
is that it is the most difficult thing in the world to reconcile
religious association with the real or artificial claims of social life."
"I don't think you try much," said Mrs. Morgan, who carried along her
traditional religious observance with grateful admiration of her husband.
Mr. Page Morgan had inherited money, and a certain advantageous position
for observing life and criticising it, humorously sometimes, and without
any serious intention of disturbing it. He had added to his fair fortune
by marrying the daintily reared daughter of a cotton-spinner, and he had
enough to do in attending meetings of directors and looking out for his
investments to keep him from the operation of the State law regarding
vagrants, and give greater social weight to his opinions than if he had
been compelled to work for his maintenance. The Page Morgans had been a
good deal abroad, and were none the worse Americans for having come in
contact with the knowledge that there are other peoples who are
reasonably prosperous and happy without any of our advantages.
"It seems to me," said Mr. Lyon, who was always in the conversational
attitude of wanting to know, "that you Americans are disturbed by the
notion that religion ought to produce social equality."
Mr. Lyon had the air of conveying the impression that this question was
settled in England, and that America was interesting on account of
numerous experiments of this sort. This state of mind was not offensive
to his interlocutors, because they were accustomed to it in transatlantic
visitors. Indeed, there was nothing whatever offensive, and little
defensive, in Mr. John Lyon. What we liked in him, I think, was his
simple acceptance of a position that required neither explanation nor
apology--a social condition that banished a sense of his own personality,
and left him perfectly free to be absolutely truthful. Though an eldest
son and next in succession to an earldom, he was still young. Fresh from
Oxford and South Africa and Australia and British Columbia he had come to
study the States with a view of perfecting himself for his duties as a
legislator for the world when he should be called to the House of Peers.
He did not treat himself like an earl, whatever consciousness he may have
had that his prospective rank made it safe for him to flirt with the
various forms of equality abroad in this generation.
"I don't know what Christianity is expected to produce," Mr. Morgan
replied, in a meditative way; "but I have an idea that the early
Christians in their assemblies all knew each other, having met elsewhere
in social intercourse, or, if they were not acquainted, they lost sight
of distinctions in one paramount interest. But then I don't suppose they
were exactly civilized."
"Were the Pilgrims and the Puritans?" asked Mrs. Fletcher, who now joined
the talk, in which she had been a most animated and stimulating listener,
her deep gray eyes dancing with intellectual pleasure.
"I should not like to answer 'no' to a descendant of the Mayflower. Yes,
they were highly civilized. And if we had adhered to their methods, we
should have avoided a good deal of confusion. The meeting-house, you
remember, had a committee for seating people according to their quality.
They were very shrewd, but it had not occurred to them to give the best
pews to the sitters able to pay the most money for them. They escaped the
perplexity of reconciling the mercantile and the religious ideas."
"At any rate," said Mrs. Fletcher, "they got all sorts of people inside
the same meeting-house."
"Yes, and made them feel they were all sorts; but in those, days they
were not much disturbed by that feeling."
"Do you mean to say," asked Mr. Lyon, "that in this country you have
churches for the rich and other churches for the poor?"
"Not at all. We have in the cities rich churches and poor churches, with
prices of pews according to the means of each sort, and the rich are
always glad to have the poor come, and if they do not give them the best
seats, they equalize it by taking up a collection for them."
"Mr. Lyon," Mrs. Morgan interrupted, "you are getting a travesty of the
whole thing. I don't believe there is elsewhere in the world such a
spirit of Christian charity as in our churches of all sects."
"There is no doubt about the charity; but that doesn't seem to make the
social machine run any more smoothly in the church associations. I'm not
sure but we shall have to go back to the old idea of considering the
churches places of worship, and not opportunities for sewing-societies,
and the cultivation of social equality."
"I found the idea in Rome," said Mr. Lyon, "that the United States is now
the most promising field for the spread and permanence of the Roman
Catholic faith."
"How is that?" Mr. Fletcher asked, with a smile of Puritan incredulity.
"A high functionary at the Propaganda gave as a reason that the United
States is the most democratic country and the Roman Catholic is the most
democratic religion, having this one notion that all men, high or low,
are equally sinners and equally in need of one thing only. And I must say
that in this country I don't find the question of social equality
interfering much with the work in their churches."
"That is because they are not trying to make this world any better, but
only to prepare for another," said Mrs. Fletcher.
"Now, we think that the nearer we approach the kingdom-of-heaven idea on
earth, the better off we shall be hereafter. Is that a modern idea?"
"It is an idea that is giving us a great deal of trouble. We've got into
such a sophisticated state that it seems easier to take care of the
future than of the present."
"And it isn't a very bad doctrine that if you take care of the present,
the future will take care of itself," rejoined Mrs. Fletcher.
"Yes, I know," insisted Mr. Morgan; "it's the modern notion of
accumulation and compensation--take care of the pennies and the pounds
will take care of themselves--the gospel of Benjamin Franklin."
"Ah," I said, looking up at the entrance of a newcomer, "you are just in
time, Margaret, to give the coup de grace, for it is evident by Mr.
Morgan's reference, in his Bunker Hill position, to Franklin, that he is
getting out of powder."
The girl stood a moment, her slight figure framed in the doorway, while
the company rose to greet her, with a half-hesitating, half-inquiring
look in her bright face which I had seen in it a thousand times.
II
I remember that it came upon me with a sort of surprise at the moment
that we had never thought or spoken much of Margaret Debree as beautiful.
We were so accustomed to her; we had known her so long, we had known her
always. We had never analyzed our admiration of her. She had so many
qualities that are better than beauty that we had not credited her with
the more obvious attraction. And perhaps she had just become visibly
beautiful. It may be that there is an instant in a girl's life
corresponding to what the Puritans called conversion in the soul, when
the physical qualities, long maturing, suddenly glow in an effect which
we call beauty. It cannot be that women do not have a consciousness of
it, perhaps of the instant of its advent. I remember when I was a child
that I used to think that a stick of peppermint candy must burn with a
consciousness of its own deliciousness.
Margaret was just turned twenty. As she paused there in the doorway her
physical perfection flashed upon me for the first time. Of course I do
not mean perfection, for perfection has no promise in it, rather the sad
note of limit, and presently recession. In the rounded, exquisite lines
of her figure there was the promise of that ineffable fullness and
delicacy of womanhood which all the world raves about and destroys and
mourns. It is not fulfilled always in the most beautiful, and perhaps
never except to the woman who loves passionately, and believes she is
loved with a devotion that exalts her body and soul above every other
human being.
It is certain that Margaret's beauty was not classic. Her features were
irregular even to piquancy. The chin had strength; the mouth was
sensitive and not too small; the shapely nose with thin nostrils had an
assertive quality that contradicted the impression of humility in the
eyes when downcast; the large gray eyes were uncommonly soft and clear,
an appearance of alternate tenderness and brilliancy as they were veiled
or uncovered by the long lashes. They were gently commanding eyes, and no
doubt her most effective point. Her abundant hair, brown with a touch of
red in it in some lights, fell over her broad forehead in the fashion of
the time. She had a way of carrying her head, of throwing it back at
times, that was not exactly imperious, and conveyed the impression of
spirit rather than of mere vivacity. These details seem to me all
inadequate and misleading, for the attraction of the face that made it
interesting is still undefined. I hesitate to say that there was a dimple
near the corner of her mouth that revealed itself when she smiled lest
this shall seem mere prettiness, but it may have been the keynote of her
face. I only knew there was something about it that won the heart, as a
too conscious or assertive beauty never does. She may have been plain,
and I may have seen the loveliness of her nature, which I knew well, in
features that gave less sign of it to strangers. Yet I noticed that Mr.
Lyon gave her a quick second glance, and his manner was instantly that of
deference, or at least attention, which he had shown to no other lady in
the room. And the whimsical idea came into my mind--we are all so warped
by international possibilities--to observe whether she did not walk like
a countess (that is, as a countess ought to walk) as she advanced to
shake hands with my wife. It is so easy to turn life into a comedy!
Margaret's great-grandmother--no, it was her great-great-grandmother, but
we have kept the Revolutionary period so warm lately that it seems
near--was a Newport belle, who married an officer in the suite of
Rochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the women
of Rhode Island. After the war was over, our officer resigned his love of
glory for the heart of one of the loveliest women and the care of the
best plantation on the Island. I have seen a miniature of her, which her
lover wore at Yorktown, and which he always swore that Washington
coveted--a miniature painted by a wandering artist of the day, which
entirely justifies the French officer in his abandonment of the trade of
a soldier. Such is man in his best estate. A charming face can make him
campaign and fight and slay like a demon, can make a coward of him, can
fill him with ambition to win the world, and can tame him into the
domesticity of a drawing-room cat. There is this noble capacity in man to
respond to the divinest thing visible to him in this world. Etienne
Debree became, I believe, a very good citizen of the republic, and in '93
used occasionally to shake his head with satisfaction to find that it was
still on his shoulders. I am not sure that he ever visited Mount Vernon,
but after Washington's death Debree's intimacy with our first President
became a more and more important part of his life and conversation. There
is a pleasant tradition that Lafayette, when he was here in 1784,
embraced the young bride in the French manner, and that this salute was
valued as a sort of heirloom in the family.
I always thought that Margaret inherited her New England conscience from
her great-great-grandmother, and a certain esprit or gayety--that is, a
sub-gayety which was never frivolity--from her French ancestor. Her
father and mother had died when she was ten years old, and she had been
reared by a maiden aunt, with whom she still lived. The combined fortunes
of both required economy, and after Margaret had passed her school course
she added to their resources by teaching in a public school. I remember
that she taught history, following, I suppose, the American notion that
any one can teach history who has a text-book, just as he or she can
teach literature with the same help. But it happened that Margaret was a
better teacher than many, because she had not learned history in school,
but in her father's well-selected library.
There was a little stir at Margaret's entrance; Mr. Lyon was introduced
to her, and my wife, with that subtle feeling for effect which women
have, slightly changed the lights. Perhaps Margaret's complexion or her
black dress made this readjustment necessary to the harmony of the room.
Perhaps she felt the presence of a different temperament in the little
circle.
I never can tell exactly what it is that guides her in regard to the
influence of light and color upon the intercourse of people, upon their
conversation, making it take one cast or another. Men are susceptible to
these influences, but it is women alone who understand how to produce
them. And a woman who has not this subtle feeling always lacks charm,
however intellectual she may be; I always think of her as sitting in the
glare of disenchanting sunlight as indifferent to the exposure as a man
would be. I know in a general way that a sunset light induces one kind of
talk and noonday light another, and I have learned that talk always
brightens up with the addition of a fresh crackling stick to the fire. I
shouldn't have known how to change the lights for Margaret, although I
think I had as distinct an impression of her personality as had my wife.
There was nothing disturbing in it; indeed, I never saw her otherwise
than serene, even when her voice betrayed strong emotion. The quality
that impressed me most, however, was her sincerity, coupled with
intellectual courage and clearness that had almost the effect of
brilliancy, though I never thought of her as a brilliant woman.
"What mischief have you been attempting, Mr. Morgan?" asked Margaret, as
she took a chair near him. "Were you trying to make Mr. Lyon comfortable
by dragging in Bunker Hill?"
"No; that was Mr. Fairchild, in his capacity as host."
"Oh, I'm sure you needn't mind me," said Mr. Lyon, good-humoredly. "I
landed in Boston, and the first thing I went to see was the Monument. It
struck me as so odd, you know, that the Americans should begin life by
celebrating their first defeat."
"That is our way," replied Margaret, quickly. "We have started on a new
basis over here; we win by losing. He who loses his life shall find it.
If the red slayer thinks he slays he is mistaken. You know the
Southerners say that they surrendered at last simply because they got
tired of beating the North."
"How odd!"
"Miss Debree simply means," I exclaimed, "that we have inherited from the
English an inability to know when we are whipped."
"But we were not fighting the battle of Bunker Hill, or fighting about
it, which is more serious, Miss Debree. What I wanted to ask you was
whether you think the domestication of religion will affect its power in
the regulation of conduct."
"Domestication? You are too deep for me, Mr. Morgan. I don't any more
understand you than I comprehend the writers who write about the
feminization of literature."
"Well, taking the mystery out of it, the predominant element of worship,
making the churches sort of good-will charitable associations for the
spread of sociability and good-feeling."
"You mean making Christianity practical?"
"Partially that. It is a part of the general problem of what women are
going to make of the world, now they have got hold of it, or are getting
hold of it, and are discontented with being women, or with being treated
as women, and are bringing their emotions into all the avocations of
life."
"They cannot make it any worse than it has been."
"I'm not sure of that. Robustness is needed in churches as much as in
government. I don't know how much the cause of religion is advanced by
these church clubs of Christian Endeavor if that is the name,
associations of young boys and girls who go about visiting other like
clubs in a sufficiently hilarious manner. I suppose it's the spirit of
the age. I'm just wondering whether the world is getting to think more of
having a good time than it is of salvation."
"And you think woman's influence--for you cannot mean anything else--is
somehow taking the vigor out of affairs, making even the church a soft,
purring affair, reducing us all to what I suppose you would call a mush
of domesticity."
"Or femininity."
"Well, the world has been brutal enough; it had better try a little
femininity now."
"I hope it will not be more cruel to women."
"That is not an argument; that is a stab. I fancy you are altogether
skeptical about woman. Do you believe in her education?"
"Up to a certain point, or rather, I should say, after a certain point."
"That's it," spoke up my wife, shading her eyes from the fire with a fan.
"I begin to have my doubts about education as a panacea. I've noticed
that girls with only a smattering--and most of them in the nature of
things can go, no further--are more liable to temptations."
"That is because 'education' is mistaken for the giving of information
without training, as we are finding out in England," said Mr. Lyon.
"Or that it is dangerous to awaken the imagination without a heavy
ballast of principle," said Mr. Morgan.
"That is a beautiful sentiment," Margaret exclaimed, throwing back her
head, with a flash from her eyes. "That ought to shut out women entirely.
Only I cannot see how teaching women what men know is going to give them
any less principle than men have. It has seemed to me a long while that
the time has come for treating women like human beings, and giving them
the responsibility of their position."
"And what do you want, Margaret?" I asked.
"I don't know exactly what I do want," she answered, sinking back in her
chair, sincerity coming to modify her enthusiasm. "I don't want to go to
Congress, or be a sheriff, or a lawyer, or a locomotive engineer. I want
the freedom of my own being, to be interested in everything in the world,
to feel its life as men do. You don't know what it is to have an inferior
person condescend to you simply because he is a man."
"Yet you wish to be treated as a woman?" queried Mr. Morgan.
"Of course. Do you think I want to banish romance out of the world?"
"You are right, my dear," said my wife. "The only thing that makes
society any better than an industrial ant-hill is the love between women
and men, blind and destructive as it often is."
"Well," said Mrs. Morgan, rising to go, "having got back to first
principles--"
"You think it is best to take your husband home before he denies even
them," Mr. Morgan added.
When the others had gone, Margaret sat by the fire, musing, as if no one
else were in the room. The Englishman, still alert and eager for
information, regarded her with growing interest. It came into my mind as
odd that, being such an uninteresting people as we are, the English
should be so curious about us. After an interval, Mr. Lyon said:
"I beg your pardon, Miss Debree, but would you mind telling me whether
the movement of Women's Rights is gaining in America?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Lyon," Margaret replied, after a pause, with
a look of weariness. "I'm tired of all the talk about it. I wish men and
women, every soul of them, would try to make the most of themselves, and
see what would come of that."
"But in some places they vote about schools, and you have conventions--"
"Did you ever attend any kind of convention yourself, Mr. Lyon?"
"I? No. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. Neither did I. But you have a right to, you know. I should
like to ask you one question, Mr. Lyon," the girl, continued, rising.
"Should be most obliged."
"Why is it that so few English women marry Americans?"
"I--I never thought of that," he stammered, reddening. "Perhaps--perhaps
it's because of American women."
"Thank you," said Margaret, with a little courtesy. "It's very nice of
you to say that. I can begin to see now why so many American women marry
Englishmen."
The Englishman blushed still more, and Margaret said good-night.
It was quite evident the next day that Margaret had made an impression on
our visitor, and that he was struggling with some new idea.
"Did you say, Mrs. Fairchild," he asked my wife, "that Miss Debree is a
teacher? It seems very odd."
"No; I said she taught in one of our schools. I don't think she is
exactly a teacher."
"Not intending always to teach?"
"I don't suppose she has any definite intentions, but I never think of
her as a teacher."
"She's so bright, and--and interesting, don't you think? So American?"
"Yes; Miss Debree is one of the exceptions."
"Oh, I didn't mean that all American women were as clever as Miss
Debree."
"Thank you," said my wife. And Mr. Lyon looked as if he couldn't see why
she should thank him.
The cottage in which Margaret lived with her aunt, Miss Forsythe, was not
far from our house. In summer it was very pretty, with its vine-shaded
veranda across the front; and even in winter, with the inevitable
raggedness of deciduous vines, it had an air of refinement, a promise
which the cheerful interior more than fulfilled. Margaret's parting word
to my wife the night before had been that she thought her aunt would like
to see the "chrysalis earl," and as Mr. Lyon had expressed a desire to
see something more of what he called the "gentry" of New England, my wife
ended their afternoon walk at Miss Forsythe's.
It was one of the winter days which are rare in New England, but of which
there had been a succession all through the Christmas holidays. Snow had
not yet come, all the earth was brown and frozen, whichever way you
looked the interlacing branches and twigs of the trees made a delicate
lace-work, the sky was gray-blue, and the low-sailing sun had just enough
heat to evoke moisture from the frosty ground and suffuse the atmosphere
into softness, in which all the landscape became poetic. The phenomenon
known as "red sunsets" was faintly repeated in the greenish crimson glow
along the violet hills, in which Venus burned like a jewel.
There was a fire smoldering on the hearth in the room they entered, which
seemed to be sitting-room, library, parlor, all in one; the old table of
oak, too substantial for ornament, was strewn with late periodicals and
pamphlets--English, American, and French--and with books which lay
unarranged as they were thrown down from recent reading. In the centre
was a bunch of red roses in a pale-blue Granada jug. Miss Forsythe rose
from a seat in the western window, with a book in her hand, to greet her
callers. She was slender, like Margaret, but taller, with soft brown eyes
and hair streaked with gray, which, sweeping plainly aside from her
forehead in a fashion then antiquated, contrasted finely with the flush
of pink in her cheeks. This flush did not suggest youth, but rather
ripeness, the tone that comes with the lines made in the face by gentle
acceptance of the inevitable in life. In her quiet and self-possessed
manner there was a little note of graceful timidity, not perhaps
noticeable in itself, but in contrast with that unmistakable air of
confidence which a woman married always has, and which in the unrefined
becomes assertive, an exaggerated notion of her importance, of the value
added to her opinions by the act of marriage. You can see it in her air
the moment she walks away from the altar, keeping step to Mendelssohn's
tune. Jack Sharpley says that she always seems to be saying, "Well, I've
done it once for all." This assumption of the married must be one of the
hardest things for single women to bear in their self-congratulating
sisters.
I have no doubt that Georgiana Forsythe was a charming girl, spirited and
handsome; for the beauty of her years, almost pathetic in its dignity and
self-renunciation, could not have followed mere prettiness or a
commonplace experience. What that had been I never inquired, but it had
not soured her. She was not communicative nor confidential, I fancy, with
any one, but she was always friendly and sympathetic to the trouble of
others, and helpful in an undemonstrative way. If she herself had a
secret feeling that her life was a failure, it never impressed her
friends so, it was so even, and full of good offices and quiet enjoyment.
Heaven only knows, however, the pathos of this apparently undisturbed
life. For did a woman ever live who would not give all the years of
tasteless serenity, for one year, for one month, for one hour, of the
uncalculating delirium of love poured out upon a man who returned it? It
may be better for the world that there are these women to whom life has
still some mysteries, who are capable of illusions and the sweet
sentimentality that grows out of a romance unrealized.
Although the recent books were on Miss Forsythe's table, her tastes and
culture were of the past age. She admired Emerson and Tennyson. One may
keep current with the news of the world without changing his principles.
I imagine that Miss Forsythe read without injury to herself the
passionate and the pantheistic novels of the young women who have come
forward in these days of emancipation to teach their grandmothers a new
basis of morality, and to render meaningless all the consoling epitaphs
on the mossy New England gravestones. She read Emerson for his sweet
spirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her simple
Congregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy, from
which she took only a habit of toleration.
"Miss Debree has gone to church," she said, in answer to Mr. Lyon's
glance around the room.
"To vespers?"
"I believe they call it that. Our evening meetings, you know, only begin
at early candlelight."
"And you do not belong to the Church?"
"Oh, yes, to the ancient aristocratic church of colonial times," she
replied, with a little smile of amusement. "My niece has stepped off
Plymouth Rock."
"And was your religion founded on Plymouth Rock?"
"My niece says so when I rally her deserting the faith of her fathers,"
replied Miss Forsythe, laughing at the working of the Episcopalian mind.
"I should like to understand about that; I mean about the position of
Dissenters in America."
"I'm afraid I could not help you, Mr. Lyon. I fancy an Englishman would
have to be born again, as the phrase used to be, to comprehend that."
While Mr. Lyon was still unsatisfied on this point, he found the
conversation shifted to the other side. Perhaps it was a new experience
to him that women should lead and not follow in conversation. At any
rate, it was an experience that put him at his ease. Miss Forsythe was a
great admirer of Gladstone and of General Gordon, and she expressed her
admiration with a knowledge that showed she had read the English
newspapers.
"Yet I confess I don't comprehend Gladstone's conduct with regard to
Egypt and Gordon's relief," she said.
"Perhaps," interposed my wife, "it would have been better for Gordon if
he had trusted Providence more and Gladstone less."
"I suppose it was Gladstone's humanity that made him hesitate."
"To bombard Alexandria?" asked Mr. Lyon, with a look of asperity.
"That was a mistake to be expected of a Tory, but not of Mr. Gladstone,
who seems always seeking the broadest principles of justice in his
statesmanship."
"Yes, we regard Mr. Gladstone as a very great man, Miss Forsythe. He is
broad enough. You know we consider him a rhetorical phenomenon.
Unfortunately he always 'muffs' anything he touches."
"I suspected," Miss Forsythe replied, after a moment, "that party spirit
ran as high in England as it does with us, and is as personal."
Mr. Lyon disclaimed any personal feeling, and the talk drifted into a
comparison of English and American politics, mainly with reference to the
social factor in English politics, which is so little an element here.
In the midst of the talk Margaret came in. The brisk walk in the rosy
twilight had heightened her color, and given her a glowing expression
which her face had not the night before, and a tenderness and softness,
an unworldliness, brought from the quiet hour in the church.
"My lady comes at last,
Timid and stepping fast,
And hastening hither,
Her modest eyes downcast."
She greeted the stranger with a Puritan undemonstrativeness, and as if
not exactly aware of his presence.
"I should like to have gone to vespers if I had known," said Mr. Lyon,
after an embarrassing pause.
"Yes?" asked the girl, still abstractedly. "The world seems in a vesper
mood," she added, looking out the west windows at the red sky and the
evening star.
In truth Nature herself at the moment suggested that talk was an
impertinence. The callers rose to go, with an exchange of neighborhood
friendliness and invitations.
"I had no idea," said Mr. Lyon, as they walked homeward, "what the New
World was like."
III
Mr. Lyon's invitation was for a week. Before the end of the week I was
called to New York to consult Mr. Henderson in regard to a railway
investment in the West, which was turning out more permanent than
profitable. Rodney Henderson--the name later became very familiar to the
public in connection with a certain Congressional investigation--was a
graduate of my own college, a New Hampshire boy, a lawyer by profession,
who practiced, as so many American lawyers do, in Wall Street, in
political combinations, in Washington, in railways. He was already known
as a rising man.
When I returned Mr. Lyon was still at our house. I understood that my
wife had persuaded him to extend his visit--a proposal he was little
reluctant to fall in with, so interested had he become in studying social
life in America. I could well comprehend this, for we are all making a
"study" of something in this age, simple enjoyment being considered an
unworthy motive. I was glad to see that the young Englishman was
improving himself, broadening his knowledge of life, and not wasting the
golden hours of youth. Experience is what we all need, and though love or
love-making cannot be called a novelty, there is something quite fresh
about the study of it in the modern spirit.
Mr. Lyon had made himself very agreeable to the little circle, not less
by his inquiring spirit than by his unaffected manners, by a kind of
simplicity which women recognize as unconscious, the result of an
inherited habit of not thinking about one's position. In excess it may be
very disagreeable, but when it is combined with genuine good-nature and
no self-assertion, it is attractive. And although American women like a
man who is aggressive towards the world and combative, there is the
delight of novelty in one who has leisure to be agreeable, leisure for
them, and who seems to their imagination to have a larger range in life
than those who are driven by business--one able to offer the peace and
security of something attained.
There had been several little neighborhood entertainments, dinners at the
Morgans' and at Mrs. Fletcher's, and an evening cup of tea at Miss
Forsythe's. In fact Margaret and Mr. Lyon had been thrown much together.
He had accompanied her to vespers, and they had taken a wintry walk or
two together before the snow came. My wife had not managed it--she
assured me of that; but she had not felt authorized to interfere; and she
had visited the public library and looked into the British Peerage. Men
were so suspicious. Margaret was quite able to take care of herself. I
admitted that, but I suggested that the Englishman was a stranger in a
strange land, that he was far from home, and had perhaps a weakened sense
of those powerful social influences which must, after all, control him in
the end. The only response to this was, "I think, dear, you'd better wrap
him up in cotton and send him back to his family."
Among her other activities Margaret was interested in a mission school in
the city, to which she devoted an occasional evening and Sunday
afternoons. This was a new surprise for Mr. Lyon. Was this also a part of
the restlessness of American life? At Mrs. Howe's german the other
evening the girl had seemed wholly absorbed in dress, and the gayety of
the serious formality of the occasion, feeling the responsibility of it
scarcely less than the "leader." Yet her mind was evidently much occupied
with the "condition of women," and she taught in a public school. He
could not at all make it out. Was she any more serious about the german
than about the mission school? It seemed odd at her age to take life so
seriously. And was she serious in all her various occupations, or only
experimenting? There was a certain mocking humor in the girl that puzzled
the Englishman still more.
"I have not seen much of your life," he said one night to Mr. Morgan;
"but aren't most American women a little restless, seeking an
occupation?"
"Perhaps they have that appearance; but about the same number find it, as
formerly, in marriage."
"But I mean, you know, do they look to marriage as an end so much?"
"I don't know that they ever did look to marriage as anything but a
means."
"I can tell you, Mr. Lyon," my wife interrupted, "you will get no
information out of Mr. Morgan; he is a scoffer."
"Not at all, I do assure you," Morgan replied. "I am just a humble
observer. I see that there is a change going on, but I cannot comprehend
it. When I was young, girls used to go in for society; they danced their
feet off from seventeen to twenty-one. I never heard anything about any
occupation; they had their swing and their fling, and their flirtations;
they appeared to be skimming off of those impressionable, joyous years
the cream of life."
"And you think that fitted them for the seriousness of life?" asked his
wife.
"Well, I am under the impression that very good women came out of that
society. I got one out of that dancing crowd who has been serious enough
for me."
"And little enough you have profited by it," said Mrs. Morgan.
"I'm content. But probably I'm old-fashioned. There is quite another
spirit now. Girls out of pinafores must begin seriously to consider some
calling. All their flirtation from seventeen to twenty-one is with some
occupation. All their dancing days they must go to college, or in some
way lay the foundation for a useful life. I suppose it's all right. No
doubt we shall have a much higher style of women in the future than we
ever had in the past."
"You allow nothing," said Mrs. Fletcher, "for the necessity of earning a
living in these days of competition. Women never will come to their
proper position in the world, even as companions of men, which you regard
as their highest office, until they have the ability to be
self-supporting."
"Oh, I admitted the fact of the independence of women a long time ago.
Every one does that before he comes to middle life. About the shifting
all round of this burden of earning a living, I am not so sure. It does
not appear yet to make competition any less; perhaps competition would
disappear if everybody did earn his own living and no more. I wonder,
by-the-way, if the girls, the young women, of the class we seem to be
discussing ever do earn as much as would pay the wages of the servants
who are hired to do the housework in their places?"
"That is a most ignoble suggestion," I could not help saying, "when you
know that the object in modern life is the cultivation of the mind, the
elevation of women, and men also, in intellectual life."
"I suppose so. I should like to have asked Abigail Adams's opinion on the
way to do it."
"One would think," I said, "that you didn't know that the spinning-jenny
and the stocking-knitter had been invented. Given these, the women's
college was a matter of course."
"Oh, I'm a believer in all kinds of machinery anything to save labor.
Only, I have faith that neither the jenny nor the college will change
human nature, nor take the romance out of life."
"So have I," said my wife. "I've heard two things affirmed: that women
who receive a scientific or professional education lose their faith,
become usually agnostics, having lost sensitiveness to the mysteries of
life."
"And you think, therefore, that they should not have a scientific
education?"
"No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake. Women may be
more likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover their
balance when the novelty is worn off. No amount of science will entirely
change their emotional nature; and besides, with all our science, I don't
see that the supernatural has any less hold on this generation than on
the former."
"Yes, and you might say the world was never before so credulous as it is
now. But what was the other thing?"
"Why, that co-education is likely to diminish marriages among the
co-educated. Daily familiarity in the classroom at the most
impressionable age, revelation of all the intellectual weaknesses and
petulances, absorption of mental routine on an equality, tend to destroy
the sense of romance and mystery that are the most powerful attractions
between the sexes. It is a sort of disenchanting familiarity that rubs
off the bloom."
"Have you any statistics on the subject?"
"No. I fancy it is only a notion of some old fogy who thinks education in
any form is dangerous for women."
"Yes, and I fancy that co-education will have about as much effect on
life generally as that solemn meeting of a society of intelligent and
fashionable women recently in one of our great cities, who met to discuss
the advisability of limiting population."
"Great Scott!" I exclaimed, "this is an interesting age."
I was less anxious about the vagaries of it when I saw the very
old-fashioned way in which the international drama was going on in our
neighborhood. Mr. Lyon was increasingly interested in Margaret's mission
work. Nor was there much affectation in this. Philanthropy, anxiety about
the working-classes, is nowhere more serious or in the fashion than it is
in London. Mr. Lyon, wherever he had been, had made a special study of
the various aid and relief societies, especially of the work for young
waifs and strays.
One Sunday afternoon they were returning from the Bloom Street Mission.
Snow covered the ground, the sky was leaden, and the air had a
penetrating chill in it far more disagreeable than extreme cold.
"We also," Mr. Lyon was saying, in continuation of a conversation, "are
making a great effort for the common people."
"But we haven't any common people here," replied Margaret, quickly. "That
bright boy you noticed in my class, who was a terror six months ago, will
no doubt be in the City Council in a few years, and likely enough mayor."
"Oh, I know your theory. It practically comes to the same thing, whatever
you call it. I couldn't see that the work in New York differed much from
that in London. We who have leisure ought to do something for the
working-classes."
"I sometimes doubt if it is not all a mistake most of our charitable
work. The thing is to get people to do something for themselves."
"But you cannot do away with distinctions?"
"I suppose not, so long as so many people are born vicious, or
incompetent, or lazy. But, Mr. Lyon, how much good do you suppose
condescending charity does?" asked Margaret, firing up in a way the girl
had at times. "I mean the sort that makes the distinctions more evident.
The very fact that you have leisure to meddle in their affairs may be an
annoyance to the folks you try to help by the little palliatives of
charity. What effect upon a wretched city neighborhood do you suppose is
produced by the advent in it of a stylish carriage and a lady in silk, or
even the coming of a well-dressed, prosperous woman in a horse-car,
however gentle and unassuming she may be in this distribution of sympathy
and bounty? Isn't the feeling of inequality intensified? And the
degrading part of it may be that so many are willing to accept this sort
of bounty. And your men of leisure, your club men, sitting in the windows
and seeing the world go by as a spectacle-men who never did an hour's
necessary work in their lives--what effect do you suppose the sight of
them has upon men out of work, perhaps by their own fault, owing to the
same disposition to be idle that the men in the club windows have?"
"And do you think it would be any better if all were poor alike?"
"I think it would be better if there were no idle people. I'm half
ashamed that I have leisure to go every time I go to that mission. And
I'm almost sorry, Mr. Lyon, that I took you there. The boys knew you were
English. One of them asked me if you were a 'lord' or a 'juke' or
something. I cannot tell how they will take it. They may resent the
spying into their world of an 'English juke,' and they may take it in the
light of a show."
Mr. Lyon laughed. And then, perhaps after a little reflection upon the
possibility that the nobility was becoming a show in this world, he said:
"I begin to think I'm very unfortunate, Miss Debree. You seem to remind
me that I am in a position in which I can do very little to help the
world along."
"Not at all. You can do very much."
"But how, when whatever I attempt is considered a condescension? What can
I do?"
"Pardon me," and Margaret turned her eyes frankly upon him. "You can be a
good earl when your time comes."
Their way lay through the little city park. It is a pretty place in
summer--a varied surface, well planted with forest and ornamental trees,
intersected by a winding stream. The little river was full now, and ice
had formed on it, with small openings here and there, where the dark
water, hurrying along as if in fear of arrest, had a more chilling aspect
than the icy cover. The ground was white with snow, and all the trees
were bare except for a few frozen oak-leaves here and there, which
shivered in the wind and somehow added to the desolation. Leaden clouds
covered the sky, and only in the west was there a gleam of the departing
winter day.
Upon the elevated bank of the stream, opposite to the road by which they
approached, they saw a group of people--perhaps twenty-drawn closely
together, either in the sympathy of segregation from an unfeeling world,
or for protection from the keen wind. On the hither bank, and leaning on
the rails of the drive, had collected a motley crowd of spectators, men,
women, and boys, who exhibited some impatience and much curiosity,
decorous for the most part, but emphasized by occasional jocose remarks
in an undertone. A serious ceremony was evidently in progress. The
separate group had not a prosperous air. The women were thinly clad for
such a day. Conspicuous in the little assembly was a tall, elderly man in
a shabby long coat and a broad felt hat, from under which his white hair
fell upon his shoulders. He might be a prophet in Israel come out to
testify to an unbelieving world, and the little group around him, shaken
like reeds in the wind, had the appearance of martyrs to a cause. The
light of another world shone in their thin, patient faces. Come, they
seemed to say to the worldlings on the opposite bank--come and see what
happiness it is to serve the Lord. As they waited, a faint tune was
started, a quavering hymn, whose feeble notes the wind blew away of
first, but which grew stronger.
Before the first stanza was finished a carriage appeared in the rear of
the group. From it descended a middle-aged man and a stout woman, and
they together helped a young girl to alight. She was clad all in white.
For a moment her thin, delicate figure shrank from the cutting wind.
Timid, nervous, she glanced an instant at the crowd and the dark icy
stream; but it was only a protest of the poor body; the face had the
rapt, exultant look of joyous sacrifice.
The tall man advanced to meet her, and led her into the midst of the
group.
For a few moments there was prayer, inaudible at a distance. Then the
tall man, taking the girl by the hand, advanced down the slope to the
stream. His hat was laid aside, his venerable locks streamed in the
breeze, his eyes were turned to heaven; the girl walked as in a vision,
without a tremor, her wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. As
they moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind of
mournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice.
Fitfully the words came on the wind, in an almost heart-breaking wail:
"Beyond the smiling and the weeping I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon."
They were near the water now, and the tall man's voice sounded out loud
and clear:
"Lord, tarry not, but come!"
They were entering the stream where there was an opening clear of ice;
the footing was not very secure, and the tall man ceased singing, but the
little band sang on:
"Beyond the blooming and the fading I shall be soon."
The girl grew paler and shuddered. The tall man sustained her with an
attitude of infinite sympathy, and seemed to speak words of
encouragement. They were in the mid-stream; the cold flood surged about
their waists. The group sang on:
"Beyond the shining and the shading,
Beyond the hoping and the dreading, I shall be soon."
The strong, tender arms of the tall man gently lowered the white form
under the cruel water; he staggered a moment in the swift stream,
recovered himself, raised her, white as death, and the voices of the
wailing tune came:
"Love, rest, and home
Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!"
And the tall man, as he struggled to the shore with his almost insensible
burden, could be heard above the other voices and the wind and the rush
of the waters:
"Lord, tarry not, but come!"
The girl was hurried into the carriage, and the group quickly dispersed.
"Well, I'll be--" The tender-hearted little wife of the rough man in the
crowd who began that sentence did not permit him to finish it. "That'll
be a case for a doctor right away," remarked a well-known practitioner
who had been looking on.
Margaret and Mr. Lyon walked home in silence. "I can't talk about it,"
she said. "It's such a pitiful world."
IV
In the evening, at our house, Margaret described the scene in the park.
"It's dreadful," was the comment of Miss Forsythe. "The authorities ought
not to permit such a thing."
"It seemed to me as heroic as pitiful, aunt. I fear I should be incapable
of making such a testimony."
"But it was so unnecessary."
"How do we know what is necessary to any poor soul? What impressed me
most strongly was that there is in the world still this longing to suffer
physically and endure public scorn for a belief."
"It may have been a disappointment to the little band," said Mr. Morgan,
"that there was no demonstration from the spectators, that there was no
loud jeering, that no snowballs were thrown by the boys."
"They could hardly expect that," said I; "the world has become so
tolerant that it doesn't care."
"I rather think," Margaret replied, "that the spectators for a moment
came under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernatural
in the endurance of that frail girl."
"No doubt," said my wife, after a little pause. "I believe that there is
as much sense of mystery in the world as ever, and as much of what we
call faith, only it shows itself eccentrically. Breaking away from
traditions and not going to church have not destroyed the need in the
minds of the mass of people for something outside themselves."
"Did I tell you," interposed Morgan--"it is almost in the line of your
thought--of a girl I met the other day on the train? I happened to be her
seat-mate in the car-thin face, slight little figure--a commonplace girl,
whom I took at first to be not more than twenty, but from the lines about
her large eyes she was probably nearer forty. She had in her lap a book,
which she conned from time to time, and seemed to be committing verses to
memory as she looked out the window. At last I ventured to ask what
literature it was that interested her so much, when she turned and
frankly entered into conversation. It was a little Advent song-book. She
liked to read it on the train, and hum over the tunes. Yes, she was a
good deal on the cars; early every morning she rode thirty miles to her
work, and thirty miles back every evening. Her work was that of clerk and
copyist in a freight office, and she earned nine dollars a week, on which
she supported herself and her mother. It was hard work, but she did not
mind it much. Her mother was quite feeble. She was an Adventist. 'And
you?' I asked. 'Oh, yes; I am. I've been an Adventist twenty years, and
I've been perfectly happy ever since I joined--perfectly,' she added,
turning her plain face, now radiant, towards me. 'Are you one?' she
asked, presently. 'Not an immediate Adventist,' I was obliged to confess.
'I thought you might be, there are so many now, more and more.' I learned
that in our little city there were two Advent societies; there had been a
split on account of some difference in the meaning of original sin. 'And
you are not discouraged by the repeated failure of the predictions of the
end of the world?' I asked. 'No. Why should we be? We don't fix any
certain day now, but all the signs show that it is very near. We are all
free to think as we like. Most of our members now think it will be next
year.'--'I hope not!' I exclaimed. 'Why?' she asked, turning to me with a
look of surprise. 'Are you afraid?' I evaded by saying that I supposed
the good had nothing to fear. 'Then you must be an Adventist, you have so
much sympathy.'--'I shouldn't like to have the world come to an end next
year, because there are so many interesting problems, and I want to see
how they will be worked out.'--'How can you want to put it off'--and
there was for the first time a little note of fanaticism in her
voice--'when there is so much poverty and hard work? It is such a hard
world, and so much suffering and sin. And it could all be ended in a
moment. How can you want it to go on?' The train approached the station,
and she rose to say good-by. 'You will see the truth some day,' she said,
and went away as cheerful as if the world was actually destroyed. She was
the happiest woman I have seen in a long time."
"Yes," I said, "it is an age of both faith and credulity."
"And nothing marks it more," Morgan added, "than the popular expectation
among the scientific and the ignorant of something to come out of the
dimly understood relation of body and mind. It is like the expectation of
the possibilities of electricity."
"I was going on to say," I continued, "that wherever I walk in the city
of a Sunday afternoon, I am struck with the number of little meetings
going on, of the faithful and the unfaithful, Adventists, socialists,
spiritualists, culturists, Sons and Daughters of Edom; from all the open
windows of the tall buildings come notes of praying, of exhortation, the
melancholy wail of the inspiring Sankey tunes, total abstinence melodies,
over-the-river melodies, songs of entreaty, and songs of praise. There is
so much going on outside of the regular churches!"
"But the churches are well attended," suggested my wife.
"Yes, fairly, at least once a day, and if there is sensational preaching,
twice. But there is nothing that will so pack the biggest hall in the
city as the announcement of inspirational preaching by some young woman
who speaks at random on a text given her when she steps upon the
platform. There is something in her rhapsody, even when it is incoherent,
that appeals to a prevailing spirit."'
"How much of it is curiosity?" Morgan asked. "Isn't the hall just as
jammed when the clever attorney of Nothingism, Ham Saversoul, jokes about
the mysteries of this life and the next?"
"Very likely. People like the emotional and the amusing. All the same,
they are credulous, and entertain doubt and belief on the slightest
evidence."
"Isn't it natural," spoke up Mr. Lyon, who had hitherto been silent,
"that you should drift into this condition without an established
church?"
"Perhaps it's natural," Morgan retorted, "that people dissatisfied with
an established religion should drift over here. Great Britain, you know,
is a famous recruiting-ground for our socialistic experiments."
"Ah, well," said my wife, "men will have something. If what is
established repels to the extent of getting itself disestablished, and
all churches should be broken up, society would somehow precipitate
itself again spiritually. I heard the other day that Boston, getting a
little weary of the Vedas, was beginning to take up the New Testament."
"Yes," said Morgan, "since Tolstoi mentioned it."
After a little the talk drifted into psychic research, and got lost in
stories of "appearances" and "long-distance" communications. It appeared
to me that intelligent people accepted this sort of story as true on
evidence on which they wouldn't risk five dollars if it were a question
of money. Even scientists swallow tales of prehistoric bones on testimony
they would reject if it involved the title to a piece of real estate.
Mr. Lyon still lingered in the lap of a New England winter as if it had
been Capua. He was anxious to visit Washington and study the politics of
the country, and see the sort of society produced in the freedom of a
republic, where there was no court to give the tone and there were no
class lines to determine position. He was restless under this sense of
duty. The future legislator for the British Empire must understand the
Constitution of its great rival, and thus be able to appreciate the
social currents that have so much to do with political action.
In fact he had another reason for uneasiness. His mother had written him,
asking why he stayed so long in an unimportant city, he who had been so
active a traveler hitherto. Knowledge of the capitals was what he needed.
Agreeable people he could find at home, if his only object was to pass
the time. What could he reply? Could he say that he had become very much
interested in studying a schoolteacher--a very charming school-teacher?
He could see the vision raised in the minds of his mother and of the earl
and of his elder sister as they should read this precious confession--a
vision of a schoolma'am, of an American girl, and an American girl
without any money at that, moving in the little orbit of Chisholm House.
The thing was absurd. And yet why was it absurd? What was English
politics, what was Chisholm House, what was everybody in England compared
to this noble girl? Nay, what would the world be without her? He grew hot
in thinking of it, indignant at his relations and the whole artificial
framework of things.
The situation was almost humiliating. He began, to doubt the stability of
his own position. Hitherto he had met no obstacle: whatever he had
desired he had obtained. He was a sensible fellow, and knew the world was
not made for him; but it certainly had yielded to him in everything. Why
did he doubt now? That he did doubt showed him the intensity of his
interest in Margaret. For love is humble, and undervalues self in
contrast with that which it desires. At this touchstone rank, fortune,
all that go with them, seemed poor. What were all these to a woman's
soul? But there were women enough, women enough in England, women more
beautiful than Margaret, doubtless as amiable and intellectual. Yet now
there was for him only one woman in the world. And Margaret showed no
sign. Was he about to make a fool of himself? If she should reject him he
would seem a fool to himself. If she accepted him he would seem a fool to
the whole circle that made his world at home. The situation was
intolerable. He would end it by going.
But he did not go. If he went today he could not see her tomorrow. To a
lover anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow.
In short, he could not go so long as there was any doubt about her
disposition towards him.
And a man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of the
passion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all our
commonsense about the relation of the sexes. Love is still a personal
question, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except in
the old way. Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid men
are upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under its
influence; the student loses his appetite--God bless him! I like to hear
the young fellows at the club rattle on bravely, indifferent to the whole
thing--skeptical, in fact, about it. And then to see them, one after
another, stricken down, and looking a little sheepish and not saying
much, and by-and-by radiant. You would think they owned the world.
Heaven, I think, shows us no finer sarcasm than one of these young
skeptics as a meek family man.
Margaret and Mr. Lyon were much together.
And their talk, as always happens when two persons find themselves much
together, became more and more personal. It is only in books that
dialogues are abstract and impersonal. The Englishman told her about his
family, about the set in which he moved--and he had the English frankness
in setting it out unreservedly--about the life he led at Oxford, about
his travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the world. Margaret in
return had little to tell, her own life had been so simple--not much
except the maidenly reserves, the discontents with herself, which
interested him more than anything else; and of the future she would not
speak at all. How can a woman, without being misunderstood? All this talk
had a certain danger in it, for sympathy is unavoidable between two
persons who look ever so little into each other's hearts and compare
tastes and desires.
"I cannot quite understand your social life over here," Mr. Lyon was
saying one day. "You seem to make distinctions, but I cannot see exactly
for what."
"Perhaps they make themselves. Your social orders seem able to resist
Darwin's theory, but in a republic natural selection has a better
chance."
"I was told by a Bohemian on the steamer coming over that money in
America takes the place of rank in England."
"That isn't quite true."
"And I was told in Boston by an acquaintance of very old family and
little fortune that 'blood' is considered here as much as anywhere."
"You see, Mr. Lyon, how difficult it is to get correct information about
us. I think we worship wealth a good deal, and we worship family a good
deal, but if any one presumes too much upon either, he is likely to come
to grief. I don't understand it very well myself."
"Then it is not money that determines social position in America?"
"Not altogether; but more now than formerly. I suppose the distinction is
this: family will take a person everywhere, money will take him almost
everywhere; but money is always at this disadvantage--it takes more and
more of it to gain position. And then you will find that it is a good
deal a matter of locality. For instance, in Virginia and Kentucky family
is still very powerful, stronger than any distinction in letters or
politics or success in business; and there is a certain diminishing
number of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, who cultivate a good
deal of exclusiveness on account of descent."
"But I am told that this sort of aristocracy is succumbing to the new
plutocracy."
"Well, it is more and more difficult to maintain a position without
money. Mr. Morgan says that it is a disheartening thing to be an
aristocrat without luxury; he declares that he cannot tell whether the
Knickerbockers of New York or the plutocrats are more uneasy just now.
The one is hungry for social position, and is morose if he cannot buy it;
and when the other is seduced by luxury and yields, he finds that his
distinction is gone. For in his heart the newly rich only respects the
rich. A story went about of one of the Bonanza princes who had built his
palace in the city, and was sending out invitations to his first
entertainment. Somebody suggested doubts to him about the response. 'Oh,'
he said, 'the beggars will be glad enough to come!'"
"I suppose, Mr. Lyon," said Margaret, demurely, "that this sort of thing
is unknown in England?"
"Oh, I couldn't say that money is not run after there to some extent."
"I saw a picture in Punch of an auction, intended as an awful satire on
American women. It struck me that it might have two interpretations."
"Yes, Punch is as friendly to America as it is to the English
aristocracy."
"Well, I was only thinking that it is just an exchange of commodities.
People will always give what they have for what they want. The Western
man changes his pork in New York for pictures. I suppose that--what do
you call it?--the balance of trade is against us, and we have to send
over cash and beauty."
"I didn't know that Miss Debree was so much of a political economist."
"We got that out of books in school. Another thing we learned is that
England wants raw material; I thought I might as well say it, for it
wouldn't be polite for you."
"Oh, I'm capable of saying anything, if provoked. But we have got away
from the point. As far as I can see, all sorts of people intermarry, and
I don't see how you can discriminate socially--where the lines are."
Mr. Lyon saw the moment that he had made it that this was a suggestion
little likely to help him. And Margaret's reply showed that he had lost
ground.
"Oh, we do not try to discriminate--except as to foreigners. There is a
popular notion that Americans had better marry at home."
"Then the best way for a foreigner to break your exclusiveness is to be
naturalized." Mr. Lyon tried to adopt her tone, and added, "Would you
like to see me an American citizen?"
"I don't believe you could be, except for a little while; you are too
British."
"But the two nations are practically the same; that is, individuals of
the nations are. Don't you think so?"
"Yes, if one of them gives up all the habits and prejudices of a lifetime
and of a whole social condition to the other."
"And which would have to yield?"
"Oh, the man, of course. It has always been so. My
great-great-grandfather was a Frenchman, but he became, I have always
heard, the most docile American republican."
"Do you think he would have been the one to give in if they had gone to
France?"
"Perhaps not. And then the marriage would have been unhappy. Did you
never take notice that a woman's happiness, and consequently the
happiness of marriage, depends upon a woman's having her own way in all
social matters? Before our war all the men who married down South took
the Southern view, and all the Southern women who married up North held
their own, and sensibly controlled the sympathies of their husbands."
"And how was it with the Northern women who married South, as you say?"
"Well, it must be confessed that a good many of them adapted themselves,
in appearance at least. Women can do that, and never let anyone see they
are not happy and not doing it from choice."
"And don't you think American women adapt themselves happily to English
life?"
"Doubtless some; I doubt if many do; but women do not confess mistakes of
that kind. Woman's happiness depends so much upon the continuation of the
surroundings and sympathies in which she is bred. There are always
exceptions. Do you know, Mr. Lyon, it seems to me that some people do not
belong in the country where they were born. We have men who ought to have
been born in England, and who only find themselves really they go there.
There are who are ambitious, and court a career different from any that a
republic can give them. They are not satisfied here. Whether they are
happy there I do not know; so few trees, when at all grown, will bear
transplanting."
"Then you think international marriages are a mistake?"
"Oh, I don't theorize on subjects I am ignorant of."
"You give me very cold comfort."
"I didn't know," said Margaret, with a laugh that was too genuine to be
consoling, "that you were traveling for comfort; I thought it was for
information."
"And I am getting a great deal," said Mr. Lyon, rather ruefully. "I'm
trying to find out where. I ought to have been born."
"I'm not sure," Margaret said, half seriously, "but you would have been a
very good American."
This was not much of an admission, after all, but it was the most that
Margaret had ever made, and Mr. Lyon tried to get some encouragement out
of it. But he felt, as any man would feel, that this beating about the
bush, this talk of nationality and all that, was nonsense; that if a
woman loved a man she wouldn't care where he was born; that all the world
would be as nothing to him; that all conditions and obstacles society and
family could raise would melt away in the glow of a real passion. And he
wondered for a moment if American girls were not "calculating"--a word to
which he had learned over here to attach a new and comical meaning.
V
The afternoon after this conversation Miss Forsythe was sitting reading
in her favorite window-seat when Mr. Lyon was announced. Margaret was at
her school. There was nothing un usual in this afternoon call; Mr. Lyon's
visits had become frequent and informal; but Miss Forsythe had a nervous
presentiment that something important was to happen, that showed itself
in her greeting, and which was perhaps caught from a certain new
diffidence in his manner.
Perhaps the maiden lady preserves more than any other this sensitiveness,
inborn in women, to the approach of the critical moment in the affairs of
the heart. The day may some time be past when she--is sensitive for
herself--philosophers say otherwise--but she is easily put in a flutter
by the affair of another. Perhaps this is because the negative (as we say
in these days) which takes impressions retains all its delicacy from the
fact that none of them have ever been developed, and perhaps it is a wise
provision of nature that age in a heart unsatisfied should awaken lively
apprehensive curiosity and sympathy about the manifestation of the tender
passion in others. It certainly is a note of the kindliness and charity
of the maiden mind that its sympathies are so apt to be most strongly
excited in the success of the wooer. This interest may be quite separable
from the common feminine desire to make a match whenever there is the
least chance of it. Miss Forsythe was not a match-maker, but Margaret
herself would not have been more embarrassed than she was at the
beginning of this interview.
When Mr. Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the excuse
for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have in
their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious
representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join in
it. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, and looking
into the fire, and said, abruptly, at last:
"I called to see you, Miss Forsythe, to--to consult you about your
niece."
"About her career?" asked Miss Forsythe, with a nervous consciousness of
falsehood.
"Yes, about her career; that is, in a way," turning towards her with a
little smile.
"Yes?"
"You must have seen my interest in her. You must have known why I stayed
on and on. But it was, it is, all so uncertain. I wanted to ask your
permission to speak my mind to her."
"Are you quite sure you know your own mind?" asked Miss Forsythe,
defensively.
"Sure--sure; I have never had the feeling for any other woman I have for
her."
"Margaret is a noble girl; she is very independent," suggested Miss
Forsythe, still avoiding the point.
"I know. I don't ask you her feeling." Mr. Lyon was standing quietly
looking down into the coals. "She is the only woman in the world to me. I
love her. Are you against me?" he asked, suddenly looking up, with a
flush in his face.
"Oh, no! no!" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, with another access of timidity.
"I shouldn't take the responsibility of being against you, or--or
otherwise. It is very manly in you to come to me, and I am sure I--we all
wish nothing but your own happiness. And so far as I am concerned--"
"Then I have your permission?" he asked, eagerly.
"My permission, Mr. Lyon? why, it is so new to me, I scarcely realized
that I had any permission," she said, with a little attempt at
pleasantry. "But as her aunt--and guardian, as one may say--personally I
should have the greatest satisfaction to know that Margaret's destiny was
in the hands of one we all esteem and know as we do you."
"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Lyon, coming forward and seizing her
hand.
"But you must let me say, let me suggest, that there are a great many
things to be thought of. There is such a difference in education, in all
the habits of your lives, in all your relations. Margaret would never be
happy in a position where less was accorded to her than she had all her
life. Nor would her pride let her take such a position."
"But as my wife--"
"Yes, I know that is sufficient in your mind. Have you consulted your
mother, Mr. Lyon?"
"Not yet."
"And have you written to any one at home about my niece?"
"Not yet."
"And does it seem a little difficult to do so?" This was a probe that
went even deeper than the questioner knew. Mr. Lyon hesitated, seeing
again as in a vision the astonishment of his family. He was conscious of
an attempt at self-deception when he replied:
"Not difficult, not at all difficult, but I thought I would wait till I
had something definite to say."
"Margaret is, of course, perfectly free to act for herself. She has a
very ardent nature, but at the same time a great deal of what we call
common sense. Though her heart might be very much engaged, she would
hesitate to put herself in any society which thought itself superior to
her. You see I speak with great frankness."
It was a new position for Mr. Lyon to find his prospective rank seemingly
an obstacle to anything he desired. For a moment the whimsicality of it
interrupted the current of his feeling. He thought of the probable
comments of the men of his London club upon the drift his conversation
was taking with a New England spinster about his fitness to marry a
school-teacher. With a smile that was summoned to hide his annoyance, he
said, "I don't see how I can defend myself, Miss Forsythe."
"Oh," she replied, with an answering smile that recognized his view of
the humor of the situation, "I was not thinking of you, Mr. Lyon, but of
the family and the society that my niece might enter, to which rank is of
the first importance."
"I am simply John Lyon, Miss Forsythe. I may never be anything else. But
if it were otherwise, I did not suppose that Americans objected to rank."
It was an unfortunate speech, felt to be so the instant it was uttered.
Miss Forsythe's pride was touched, and the remark was not softened to her
by the, air of half banter with which the sentence concluded. She said,
with a little stillness and formality: "I fear, Mr. Lyon, that your
sarcasm is too well merited. But there are Americans who make a
distinction between rank and blood. Perhaps it is very undemocratic, but
there is nowhere else more pride of family, of honorable descent, than
here. We think very much of what we call good blood. And you will pardon
me for saying that we are accustomed to speak of some persons and
families abroad which have the highest rank as being thoroughly bad
blood. If I am not mistaken, you also recognize the historic fact of
ignoble blood in the owners of noble titles. I only mean, Mr. Lyon," she
added, with a softening of manner, "that all Americans do not think that
rank covers a multitude of sins."
"Yes, I think I get your American point of view. But to return to myself,
if you will allow me; if I am so fortunate as to win Miss Debree's love,
I have no fear that she would not win the hearts of all my family. Do you
think that my--my prospective position would be an objection to her?"
"Not your position, no; if her heart were engaged. But expatriation,
involving a surrender of all the habits and traditions and associations
of a lifetime and of one's kindred, is a serious affair. One would need
to be very much in love"--and Miss Forsythe blushed a little as she said
it--"to make such a surrender."
"I know. I am sure I love her too much to wish to bring any change in her
life that would ever cause her unhappiness."
"I am glad to feel sure of that."
"And so I have your permission?"
"Most sincerely," said Miss Forsythe, rising and giving him her hand. "I
could wish nothing better for Margaret than union with a man like you.
But whatever I wish, you two have your destiny in your own hands." Her
tone was wholly frank and cordial, but there was a wistful look in her
face, as of one who knew how roughly life handles all youthful
enthusiasms.
When John Lyon walked away from her door his feelings were very much
mixed. At one instant his pride rebelled against the attitude he had just
assumed. But this was only a flash, which he put away as unbecoming a man
towards a true woman. The next thought was one of unselfish consideration
for Margaret herself. He would not subject her to any chance of social
mortifications. He would wait. He would return home and test his love by
renewing his lifelong associations, and by the reception his family would
give to his proposal. And the next moment he saw Margaret as she had
become to him, as she must always be to him. Should he risk the loss of
her by timidity? What were all these paltry considerations to his love?
Was there ever a young man who could see any reasons against the
possession of the woman he loved? Was there ever any love worth the name
that could be controlled by calculations of expediency? I have no doubt
that John Lyon went through the usual process which is called weighing a
thing in the mind. It is generally an amusing process, and it is
consoling to the conscience. The mind has little to do with it except to
furnish the platform on which the scales are set up. A humorist says that
he must have a great deal of mind, it takes him so long to make it up.
There is the same apparent deliberation where love is concerned.
Everything "contra" is carefully placed in one scale of the balance, and
it is always satisfactory and convincing to see how quickly it kicks the
beam when love is placed in the other scale. The lightest love in the
world, under a law as invariable as gravitation, is heavier than any
other known consideration. It is perhaps doing injustice to Mr. Lyon not
to dwell upon this struggle in his mind, and to say that in all honesty
he may not have known that the result of it was predetermined. But
interesting and commendable as are these processes of the mind, I confess
that I should have respected him less if the result had not been
predetermined. And this does not in any way take from him the merit of a
restless night and a tasteless breakfast.
Philosophizers on this topic say that a man ought always to be able to
tell by a woman's demeanor towards him whether she is favorably inclined,
and that he need run no risk. Little signs, the eyes alone, draw people
together, and make formal language superfluous. This theory is abundantly
sustained by examples, and we might rest on it if all women knew their
own minds, and if, on the other hand, they could always tell whether a
man was serious before he made a definite avowal. There is another
notion, fortunately not yet extinct, that the manliest thing a man can do
is to take his life in his hand, pay the woman he loves the highest
tribute in his power by offering her his heart and name, and giving her
the definite word that may be the touchstone to reveal to herself her own
feeling. In our conventional life women must move behind a mask in a
world of uncertainties. What wonder that many of them learn in their
defensive position to play a game, and sometimes experiment upon the
honest natures of their admirers! But even this does not absolve the
chivalrous man from the duty of frankness and explicitness. Life seems
ideal in that far country where the handsome youth stops his carriage at
the gate of the vineyard, and says to the laughing girl carrying a basket
of grapes on her head, "My pretty maid, will you marry me?" And the
pretty maid, dropping a courtesy, says, "Thank you, sir; I am already
bespoken," or "Thank you; I will consider of it when I know you better."
Not for a moment, I suppose, is a woman ever ignorant of a man's
admiration of her, however uncertain she may be of his intentions, and it
was with an unusual flutter of the heart that Margaret received Mr. Lyon
that afternoon. If she had doubts, they were dissipated by a certain
constraint in his manner, and the importance he seemed to be attaching to
his departure, and she was warned to go within her defenses. Even the
most complaisant women like at least the appearance of a siege.
"I'm off tomorrow," he said, "for Washington. You know you recommended it
as necessary to my American education."
"Yes. We send Representatives and strangers there to be educated. I have
never been there myself."
"And do you not wish to go?"
"Very much. All Americans want to go to Washington. It is the great
social opportunity; everybody there is in society. You will be able to
see there, Mr. Lyon, how a republican democracy manages social life.
"Do you mean to say there are no distinctions?"
"Oh, no; there are plenty of official distinctions, and a code that is
very curious and complicated, I believe. But still society is open."
"It must be--pardon me--a good deal like a mob."
"Well, our mobs of that sort are said to be very well behaved. Mr. Morgan
says that Washington is the only capital in the world where the principle
of natural selection applies to society; that it is there shown for the
first time that society is able to take care of itself in the free play
of democratic opportunities."
"It must be very interesting to see that."
"I hope you will find it so. The resident diplomats, I have heard, say
that they find society there more agreeable than at any other capital--at
least those who have the qualities to make themselves agreeable
independent of their rank."
"Is there nothing like a court? I cannot see who sets the mode."
"Officially there may be something like a court, but it can be only
temporary, for the personnel of it is dissolved every four years. And
society, always forming and reforming, as the voters of the republic
dictate, is almost independent of the Government, and has nothing of the
social caste of Berlin or London."
"You make quite an ideal picture."
"Oh, I dare say it is not at all ideal; only it is rather fluid, and
interesting, to see how society, without caste and subject to such
constant change, can still be what is called 'society.' And I am told
that while it is all open in a certain way, it nevertheless selects
itself into agreeable groups, much as society does elsewhere. Yes, you
ought to see what a democracy can do in this way."
"But I am told that money makes your aristocracy here."
"Very likely rich people think they are an aristocracy. You see, Mr.
Lyon, I don't know much about the great world. Mrs. Fletcher, whose late
husband was once a Representative in Washington, says that life is not
nearly so simple there as it used to be, and that rich men in the
Government, vying with rich men who have built fine houses and who live
there permanently without any Government position, have introduced an
element of expense and display that interferes very much with the natural
selection of which Mr. Morgan speaks. But you will see. We are all right
sorry to have you leave us," Margaret added, turning towards him with
frank, unclouded eyes.
"It is very good in you to say so. I have spent here the most delightful
days of my life."
"Oh, that is charming flattery. You will make us all very conceited."
"Don't mock me, Miss Debree. I hoped I had awakened something more
valuable to me than conceit," Lyon said, with a smile.
"You have, I assure you: gratitude. You have opened quite another world
to us. Reading about foreign life does not give one at all the same
impression of it that seeing one who is a part of it does."
"And don't you want to see that life for yourself? I hope some time--"
"Of course," Margaret said, interrupting; "all Americans expect to go to
Europe. I have a friend who says she should be mortified if she reached
heaven and there had to confess that she never had seen Europe. It is one
of the things that is expected of a person. Though you know now that the
embarrassing question that everybody has to answer is, 'Have you been to
Alaska?' Have you been to Alaska, Mr. Lyon?"
This icy suggestion seemed very inopportune to Lyon. He rose and walked a
step or two, and stood by the fire facing her. He confessed, looking
down, that he had not been in Alaska, and he had no desire to go there.
"In fact, Miss Debree," he said, with effort at speaking lightly, "I fear
I am not in a geographical mood today. I came to say good-by, and--and--"
"Shall I call my aunt?" said Margaret, rising also.
"No, I beg; I had something to say that concerns us; that is, that
concerns myself. I couldn't go away without knowing from you--that is,
without telling you--"
The color rose in Margaret's cheek, and she made a movement of
embarrassment, and said, with haste: "Some other time; I beg you will not
say--I trust that I have done nothing that--"
"Nothing, nothing," he went on quickly; "nothing except to be yourself;
to be the one woman"--he would not heed her hand raised in a gesture of
protest; he stood nearer her now, his face flushed and his eyes eager
with determination--"the one woman I care for. Margaret, Miss Debree, I
love you!"
Her hand that rested on the table trembled, and the hot blood rushed to
her face, flooding her in an agony of shame, pleasure, embarrassment, and
anger that her face should contradict the want of tenderness in her eyes.
In an instant self-possession came back to her mind, but not strength to
her body, and she sank into the chair, and looking up, with only pity in
her eyes, said, "I am sorry."
Lyon stopped; his heart seemed to stand still; the blood left his face;
for an instant the sunshine left the world. It was a terrible blow, the
worst a man can receive--a bludgeon on the head is nothing to it. He half
turned, he looked again for an instant at the form that was more to him
than all the world besides, unable to face the dreadful loss, and
recovering speech, falteringly said, "Is that all?"
"That is all, Mr. Lyon," Margaret answered, not looking up, and in a
voice that was perfectly steady.
He turned to go mechanically, and passed to the door in a sort of daze,
forgetful of all conventionality; but habit is strong, and he turned
almost immediately back from the passage. Margaret was still sitting,
with no recognition of his departure.
"I beg you will make my excuses, and say good-by to Miss Forsythe. I had
mentioned it to her. I thought perhaps she had told you, perhaps--I
should like to know if it is anything about difference in--in
nationality, about family, or--"
"No, no," said Margaret; "this could never be anything but a personal
question with me. I--"
"But you said, 'some other time:' Might I ever expect--"
"No, no; there is no other time; do not go on. It can only be painful."
And then, with a forced cheerfulness: "You will no doubt thank me some
day. Your life must be so different from mine. And you must not doubt my
esteem, my appreciation," (her sense of justice forced this from her),
"my good wishes. Good-by." She gave him her hand. He held it for a
second, and then was gone.
She heard his footstep, rapid and receding. So he had really gone! She
was not sorry--no. If she could have loved him! She sank back in her
chair.
No, she could not love him. The man to command her heart must be of
another type. But the greatest experience in a woman's life had come to
her here, just now, in this commonplace room. A man had said he loved
her. A thousand times as a girl she had dreamed of that, hardly
confessing it to herself, and thought of such a scene, and feared it. And
a man had said that he loved her. Her eyes grew tenderer and her face
burned at the thought. Was it with pleasure? Yes, and with womanly pain.
What an awful thing it was! Why couldn't he have seen? A man had said he
loved her. Perhaps it was not in her to love any one. Perhaps she should
live on and on like her aunt Forsythe. Well, it was over; and Margaret
roused herself as her aunt entered the room.
"Has Mr. Lyon been here?"
"Yes; he has just gone. He was so sorry not to see you and say good-by.
He left ever so many messages for you."
"And" (Margaret was moving as if to go) "did he say nothing--nothing to
you?"
"Oh yes, he said a great deal," answered this accomplished hypocrite,
looking frankly in her aunt's eyes. "He said how delightful his visit had
been, and how sorry he was to go."
"And nothing else, Margaret?"
"Oh yes; he said he was going to Washington." And the girl was gone from
the room.
VI
Margaret hastened to her chamber. Was the air oppressive? She opened the
window and sat down by it. A soft south wind was blowing, eating away the
remaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds. Where do
these days come from in January? Why should nature be in a melting mood?
Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm, violence,
anything but this elemental languor. Her emotion was incredible to
herself.
It was only an incident. It had all happened in a moment, and it was
over. But it was the first of the kind in a woman's life. The thrilling,
mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter she
would be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would her
heart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him;
that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said he
loved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She had
rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly,
deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous
position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. It
came to the girl in a flash. She moved nervously in her chair. She put
down the thought as unworthy of her. But she had entertained it for a
moment. In that second, ambition had entered the girl's soul. She had a
glimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her. Was this, then, the
meaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of her
unconfessed dreams of some career? Ambition had entered her soul in a
definite form. She expelled it. It would come again in some form or
other. She was indignant at herself as she thought of it. How odd it was!
Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been broken.
Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion of love,
to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance with her
nature, to be sincere with herself.
After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A stranger
of a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he was
no more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Her
judgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she to
know that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to know
that this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult would
pass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb her
ideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude the
returning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! in
that moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea of
love less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free, but
her nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this experience.
Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, she
probably could not feel--no one could say--that she had done wrong. How
was she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to make
the mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaret
indignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her was
unworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?
I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight as
the entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For as to Margaret, she
seemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred. We
only knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was, that
he said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and that he
seemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in his visit
to Washington.
What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, I
doubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do not
permanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casual
thoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at the
moment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on our
destiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, was
most affected by their interview. But often the implanting of an idea in
the mind is more potent than the frustration of a plan or the
gratification of a desire, so hidden are the causes that make character.
For some time I saw little of Margaret. Affairs in which I was not alone
or chiefly concerned took me from home. One of the most curious and
interesting places in the world is a Chamber in the business heart of New
York--if that scene of struggle and passion can be said to have a heart
--situated midway where the currents of eagerness to acquire the money of
other people, not to make it, ceaselessly meet and dash against each
other. If we could suppose there was a web covering this region, spun by
the most alert and busy of men to catch those less alert and more
productive, here in this Chamber would sit the ingenious spiders. But the
analogy fails, for spiders do not prey upon each other. Scientists say
that the human system has two nerve-centres--one in the brain, to which
and from which are telegraphed all movements depending upon the will, and
another in the small of the back, the centre of the involuntary
operations of respiration, digestion, and so on. It may be fanciful to
suppose that in the national system Washington is the one nervous centre
and New York the other. And yet it does sometimes seem that the nerves
and ganglions in the small of the back in the commercial metropolis act
automatically and without any visible intervention of intelligence. For
all that, their operations may be as essential as the other, in which the
will-power sometimes gets into a deadlock, and sometimes telegraphs the
most eccentric and incomprehensible orders. Puzzled by these
contradictions, some philosophers have said that there may be somewhere
outside of these two material centres another power that keeps affairs
moving along with some steadiness.
This noble Chamber has a large irregular area of floor space, is very
high, and has running round three sides a narrow elevated gallery, from
which spectators can look down upon the throng below. Upon a raised dais
at one side sits the presiding genius of the place, who rules very much
as Jupiter was supposed to govern the earthly swarms, by letting things
run and occasionally launching a thunderbolt. High up on one side, in an
Olympian seclusion, away from the noise and the strife, sits a Board,
calm as fate, and panoplied in the responsibility of chance, whose
function seems to be that of switch-shifters in their windowed cubby at a
network of railway intersections--to prevent collisions.
At both ends of the floor and along one side are narrow railed-off spaces
full of clerks figuring at desks, of telegraph operators clicking their
machines, of messenger-boys arriving and departing in haste, of
unprivileged operators nervously watching the scene and waiting the
chance of a word with some one on the floor; through noiseless swinging
doors men are entering and departing every moment--men in a hurry, men
with anxious faces, conscious that the fate of the country is in their
hands. On the floor itself are five hundred, perhaps a thousand, men,
gathered for the most part in small groups about little stands upon the
summit of which is a rallying legend, talking, laughing, screaming,
good-natured, indifferent, excited, running hither and thither in
response to changing figures in the checker-board squares on the great
wall opposite--calm, cynical one moment, the next violently agitated,
shouting, gesticulating, rushing together, shaking their fists in a
tumult of passion which presently subsides.
The swarms ebb and flow about these little stands--bees, not bringing any
honey, but attracted to the hive where it is rumored most honey is to be
had. By habit some always stand or sit about a particular hive, waiting
for the show of comb. By-and-by there is a stir; the crowd thickens; one
beardless youth shouts out the figure "one-half"; another howls,
"three-eighths." The first one nods. It is done. The electric wire
running up the stand quivers and takes the figure, passes it to all the
other wires, transmits it to every office and hotel in the city, to all
the "tickers" in ten thousand chambers and "bucketshops" and offices in
the republic. Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans, Chicago,
San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious "three-eighths,"
electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to jabber and
gesticulate and "transact business." It is wonderful.
What induced the beardless young man to make this "investment" in
"three-eighths"--who can tell? Perhaps he had heard, as he came into the
room, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call of
Fives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French blood
was too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that a
norther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppers
had been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had been
observed that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his face
and his hat pulled over his eyes. The young man sold what he did not
have, and the other young man bought what he will never get.
This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has an
element of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen, whence
it is characterized by an expression--"dealing in futures." It is not
gambling, for there are no "chips" used, and there is no roulette-table
in sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of anything else. It
is not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which impartial men preside to
insure honest drawings, and there are no predestined blanks and prizes,
and the man who buys and the man who sells can do something, either in
the newspapers or elsewhere, to affect the worth of the investment,
whereas in a lottery everything depends upon the turn of the blind wheel.
It is not necessary, however, to attempt a defense of the Chamber. It is
one of the recognized ways of becoming important and powerful in this
world. The privilege of the floor--a seat, as it is called--in this
temple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in the
Cabinet. It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day or
lost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all over
the land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation of
the Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident. If an
earthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the
bowels of the earth, with all its nervousness and all its electricity, it
is appalling to think what would become of the business of the country.
Not far from this vast Chamber, where great financial operations are
conducted on the highest principles of honor, and with the strictest
regard to the Marquis of Dusenbury's rules, there is another less
pretentious Chamber, known as "open," a sort of overflow meeting. Those
who have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickers
communicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figures
to big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, from
morning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlessly
watching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come here
from habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords in
the great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, "cleaned out." There
is a gray-bearded veteran in seedy clothes, with sunken fiery eyes, who
was once many times a millionaire, was a power in the Board, followed by
reporters, had a palace in the Avenue, and drove to his office with
coachman and footman in livery, and his wife headed the list of
charities. Now he spends his old age watching this blackboard, and
considers it a good day that brings him five dollars and his car-fare. At
one end of the low-ceiled apartment are busy clerks behind a counter,
alert and cheerful. If one should go through a side door and down a
passage he might encounter the smell of rum. Smart young men, clad in the
choicest raiment from the misfit counters, with greed stamped on their
astute faces, bustle about, watch the blackboards, and make investments
with each other. Middle-aged men in slouch hats lounge around with hungry
eyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A tall fellow, whose
gait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard face and lack-lustre
eyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose he is making his
fortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in the mode, and with
the quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room and confers with a
clerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber, and is from the
great house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a "flier" on his own
account, perhaps he represents his house in a side transactionthere are
so many ways open to enterprising young men in the city; at any rate, his
entrance is regarded as significant: This is not a hospital for the
broken down and "cleaned out" of the Chamber, but it is a place of
business, which is created and fed by the incessant "ticker." How men
existed or did any business at all before the advent of the "ticker" is a
wonder.
But the Chamber, the creator of low-pressure and high-pressure, the
inspirer of the "ticker," is the great generator of business. Here I
found Henderson in the morning hour, and he came up to me on the call of
a messenger. He approached, nonchalant and smiling as usual. "Do you see
that man," he said, as we stood a moment looking down, "sitting there on
a side bench--big body, small head, hair grayish, long beard
parted--apparently taking no interest in anything?
"That's Flink, who made the corner in O. B.--one of the longest-headed
operators in the Chamber. He is about the only man who dare try a hold
with Jay Hawker. And for some reason or another, though they have
apparent tussles, Hawker rather favors him. Five years ago he could just
raise money enough to get into the Chamber. Now he is reckoned at
anywhere from five to ten millions. I was at his home the other night.
Everybody was there. I had a queer feeling, in all the magnificence, that
the sheriff might be in there in ten days. Yet he may own a good slice of
the island in ten years. His wife, whom I complimented, and who thanked
me for coming, said she had invited none but the reshershy."
"He looks like a rascal," I ventured to remark.
"Oh, that is not a word used in the Chamber. He is called a 'daisy.' I
was put into his pew in church the other Sunday, and the preacher
described him and his methods so exactly that I didn't dare look at him.
When we came out he whispered, 'That was rather hard on Slack; he must
have felt it.' These men rather like that sort of preaching."
"I don't come here often," Henderson resumed, as we walked away. "The
market is flat today. There promised to be a little flurry in L. and P.,
and I looked in for a customer."
We walked to his down-town club to lunch. Everybody, I noticed, seemed to
know Henderson, and his presence was hailed with a cordial smile, a
good-humored nod, or a hearty grasp of the hand. I never knew a more
prepossessing man; his bonhomie was infectious. Though his demeanor was
perfectly quiet and modest, he carried the air of good-fellowship. He was
entirely frank, cordial, and had that sort of sincerity which one can
afford to have who does not take life too seriously. Tall--at least six
feet-with a well-shaped head set on square shoulders, brown hair inclined
to curl, large blue eyes which could be merry or exceedingly grave, I
thought him a picture of manly beauty. Good-natured, clever, prosperous,
and not yet thirty. What a dower!
After we had disposed of our little matter of business, which I confess
was not exactly satisfactory to me, although when I was told that "the
first bondholders will be obliged to come in," he added that "of course
we shall take care of our friends," we went to his bachelor quarters
uptown. "I want you to see," he said, "how a hermit lives."
The apartments were not my idea of a hermitage--except in the city. A
charming library, spacious, but so full as to be cozy, with an open fire;
chamber, dressing-room, and bathroom connecting, furnished with
everything that a luxurious habit could suggest and good taste would not
refuse, made a retreat that could almost reconcile a sinner to solitude.
There were a few good paintings, many rare engravings, on the walls, a
notable absence, even in the sleeping-room, of photographs of actresses
and professional beauties, but here and there souvenirs of travel and
evidences that the gentler sex had contributed the skill of their slender
fingers to the cheerfulness of the bachelor's home. Scattered about were
the daily and monthly products of the press, the newest sensations, the
things talked about at dinners, but the walls for the most part were
lined with books that are recognized as the proper possessions of the
lover of books, and most of them in exquisite bindings. Less care, I
thought, had been given in the collection to "sets" of "standards" than
to those that are rare, or for some reason, either from distinguished
ownership or autograph notes, have a peculiar value.
In this atmosphere, when we were prepared to take our ease, the talk was
no longer of stocks, or railways, or schemes, but of books. Whether or
not Henderson loved literature I did not then make up my mind, but he had
a passion for books, especially for rare and first editions; and the
delight with which he exhibited his library, the manner in which he
handled the books that he took down one after the other, the sparkle in
his eyes over a "find" or a bargain, gave me a side of his character
quite different from that I should have gained by seeing him "in the
street" only. He had that genuine respect and affection for a "book"
which has become almost traditional in these days of cheap and flimsy
publications, a taste held by scholars and collectors, and quite beyond
the popular comprehension. The respect for a book is essential to the
dignity and consideration of the place of literature in the world, and
when books are treated with no more regard than the newspaper, it is a
sign that literature is losing its power. Even the collector, who may
read little and care more for the externals than for the soul of his
favorites, by the honor he pays them, by the solicitude he expends upon
their preservation without spot, by the lavishness of expense upon
binding, contributes much to the dignity of that art which preserves for
the race the continuity of its thought and development. If Henderson
loved books merely as a collector whose taste for luxury and expense
takes this direction, his indulgence could not but have a certain
refining influence. I could not see that he cultivated any decided
specialty, but he had many rare copies which had cost fabulous prices,
the possession of which gives a reputation to any owner. "My shelves of
Americana," he said, "are nothing like Goodloe's, who has a lot of scarce
things that I am hoping to get hold of some day. But there's a little
thing" (it was a small coffee-colored tract of six leaves, upon which the
binder of the city had exercised his utmost skill) "which Goodloe offered
me five hundred dollars for the other day. I picked it up in a New
Hampshire garret." Not the least interesting part of the collection was
first editions of American authors--a person's value to a collector is
often in proportion to his obscurity--and what most delighted him among
them were certain thin volumes of poetry, which the authors since
becoming famous had gone to a good deal of time and expense to suppress.
The world seems to experience a lively pleasure in holding a man to his
early follies. There were many examples of superb binding, especially of
exquisite tooling on hog-skin covers--the appreciation of which has
lately greatly revived. The recent rage for bindings has been a sore
trouble to students and collectors in special lines, raising the prices
of books far beyond their intrinsic value. I had a charming afternoon in
Henderson's library, an enjoyment not much lessened at the time by
experiencing in it, with him, rather a sense of luxury than of learning.
It is true, one might pass an hour altogether different in the garret of
a student, and come away with quite other impressions of the pageant of
life.
At five o'clock his stylish trap was sent around from the boarding
stable, and we drove in the Park till twilight. Henderson handling the
reins, and making a part of that daily display which is too heterogeneous
to have distinction, reverted quite naturally to the tone of worldliness
and tolerant cynicism which had characterized his conversation in the
morning. If the Park and the moving assemblage had not the air of
distinction, it had that of expense, which is quite as attractive to
many. Here, as downtown, my companion seemed to know and be known by
everybody, returning the familiar salutes of brokers and club men,
receiving gracious bows from stout matrons, smiles and nods from pretty
women, and more formal recognition from stately and stiff elderly men,
who sat bolt-upright beside their wives and tried to look like
millionaires. For every passerby Henderson had a quick word of
characterization sufficiently amusing, and about many a story which
illuminated the social life of the day. It was wonderful how many of this
chance company had little "histories"--comic, tragic, pitiful,
interesting enough for the pages of a novel.
"There is a young lady"--Henderson touched his hat, and I caught a
glimpse of golden hair and a flash of dark eyes out of a mass of furs
--"who has no history: the world is all before her."
"Who is that?"
"The daughter of old Eschelle--Carmen Eschelle--the banker and
politician, you remember; had a diplomatic position abroad, and the girl
was educated in Europe. She is very clever. She and her mother have more
money than they ought to know what to do with."
"That was the celebrated Jay Hawker" ( a moment after), "in the modest
coupe--not much display about him."
"Is he recognized by respectable people?"
"Recognized?" Henderson laughed. "He's a power. There are plenty of
people who live by trying to guess what he is going to do. Hawker isn't
such a bad fellow. Other people have used the means he used to get rich
and haven't succeeded. They are not held up to point a moral. The trouble
is that Hawker succeeded. Of course, it's a game. He plays as fair as
anybody."
"Yes," Henderson resumed, walking his horses in sight of the obelisk,
which suggested the long continuance of the human race, "it is the same
old game, and it is very interesting to those who are in it. Outsiders
think it is all greed. In the Chamber it is a good deal the love of the
game, to watch each other, to find out a man's plans, to circumvent him,
to thwart him, to start a scheme and manipulate it, to catch somebody, to
escape somebody; it is a perpetual excitement."
"The machine in the Chamber appears to run very smoothly," I said. "Oh,
that is a public register and indicator. The system back of it is
comprehensive, and appears to be complicated, but it is really very
simple. Spend an hour some day in the office of Flamm and Slamm, and you
will see a part of the system. There are, always a number of men watching
the blackboard, figures on which are changed every minute by the
attendants. Telegrams are constantly arriving from every part of the
Union, from all over the continent, from all the centres in Europe, which
are read by some one connected with the firm, and then displayed for the
guidance of the watchers of the blackboard. Upon this news one or another
says, 'I think I'll buy,' or 'I think I'll sell,' so and so. His order is
transmitted instantly to the Chamber. In two minutes the result comes
back and appears upon the blackboard."
"But where does the news come from?"
"From the men whose special business it is to pick it up or make it. They
are inside of politics, of the railways, of the weather bureau,
everywhere. The other day in Chicago I sat some time in a broker's office
with others watching the market, and dropped into conversation with a
bright young fellow, at whose right hand, across the rail, was a
telegraph operator at the end of a private wire. Soon a man came in
quietly, and whispered in the ear of my neighbor and went out. The young
fellow instantly wrote a despatch and handed it to the operator, and
turning to me, said, 'Now watch the blackboard.'
"In an incredibly short space of time a fall in a leading railway showed
on the blackboard. 'What was it?' I asked. 'Why, that man was the general
freight manager of the A. B. road. He told me that they were to cut
rates. I sent it to New York by a private wire.' I learned by further
conversation that my young gentleman was a Manufacturer of News, and that
such was his address and intelligence that though he was not a member of
the broker's firm, he made ten thousand a year in the business. Soon
another man came in, whispered his news, and went away. Another
despatch--another responsive change in the figures. 'That,' explained my
companion, 'was a man connected with the weather bureau. He told me that
there would be a heavy frost tonight in the Northwest.'"
"Do they sell the weather?" I asked, very much amused.
"Yes, twice; once over a private wire, and then to the public, after the
value of it has been squeezed out, in the shape of predictions. Oh, the
weather bureau is worth all the money it costs, for business purposes. It
is a great auxiliary."
Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further opportunity
to study a representative man. He was of a good New Hampshire family,
exceedingly respectable without being distinguished. Over the
chimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that had been
at the taking of Louisburg. His grandfather shouldered a musket at Bunker
Hill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as well as a farmer,
and noted for his shrewdness and reticence. Rodney, inheriting the thrift
of his ancestors, had pushed out from his home, adapting this thrift to
the modern methods of turning it to account. He had brought also to the
city the stamina of three generations of plain living--a splendid
capital, by which the city is constantly reinforced, and which one
generation does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme dissipation.
With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had the cheerful
temperament which makes friends, and does not allow their misfortunes to
injure his career. Generous by impulse, he would rather do a favor than
not, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere with any object
he had in view for himself. Inheriting a conventional respect for
religion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke the gayety of a
convivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an uncomfortable
associate in any scheme, according to the modern notions of business,
that promised profit. His engaging manner made him popular, and his
good-natured adroitness made him successful. If his early experience of
life caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his cynicism was
of the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and withdraw from
it, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his private opinion
of men in proportion as he is successful in the game he plays with them.
At this period I could see that he had determined to be successful, and
that he had not determined to be unscrupulous. He would only drift with
the tide that made for fortune. He enjoyed the world--a sufficient reason
why the world should like him. His business morality was gauged by what
other people do in similar circumstances. In short, he was a product of
the period since the civil war closed, that great upheaval of patriotic
feeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much expansion and so many
opportunities. If he had remained in New Hampshire he would probably have
been a successful politician, successful not only in keeping in place,
but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very good
way to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings.
But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, to
speculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion of
politics and of politicians. His success thus far, though considerable,
had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that he
may be said to be admired by all and feared by none. In the general
opinion he was a downright good fellow and amazingly clever.
VII
In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Surely it is not
necessary to choose between love and riches. One may have both, and the
one all the more easily for having attained the other. It must be a
fiction of the moralists who construct the dramas that the god of love
and the god of money each claims an undivided allegiance. It was in some
wholly legendary, perhaps spiritual, world that it was necessary to
renounce love to gain the Rhine gold. The boxes at the Metropolitan did
not believe this. The spectators of the boxes could believe it still
less. For was not beauty there seen shining in jewels that have a market
value, and did not love visibly preside over the union, and make it known
that his sweetest favors go with a prosperous world? And yet, is the
charm of life somewhat depending upon a sense of its fleetingness, of its
phantasmagorial character, a note of coming disaster, maybe, in the midst
of its most seductive pageantry, in the whirl and glitter and hurry of
it? Is there some subtle sense of exquisite satisfaction in snatching the
sweet moments of life out of the very delirium of it, that must soon end
in an awakening to bankruptcy of the affections, and the dreadful loss of
illusions? Else why do we take pleasure--a pleasure so deep that it
touches the heart like melancholy--in the common drama of the opera? How
gay and joyous is the beginning! Mirth, hilarity, entrancing sound,
brilliant color, the note of a trumpet calling to heroism, the beseeching
of the concordant strings, and the soft flute inviting to pleasure;
scenes placid, pastoral, innocent; light-hearted love, the dance on the
green, the stately pageant in the sunlit streets, the court, the ball,
the mad splendor of life. And then love becomes passion, and passion
thwarted hurries on to sin, and sin lifts to the heights of the immortal,
sweetly smiling gods, and plunges to the depths of despair. In vain the
orchestra, the inevitable accompaniment of life, warns and pleads and
admonishes; calm has gone, and gayety has gone; there is no sweetness now
but in the wildness of surrender and of sacrifice. How sad are the
remembered strains that aforetime were incentives to love and promises of
happiness! Gloom settles upon the scene; Mephisto, the only radiant one,
flits across it, and mocks the poor broken-hearted girl clinging to the
church door. There is a dungeon, the chanting of the procession of
tonsured priests, the passing-bell. Seldom appears the golden bridge over
which the baffled and tired pass into Valhalla.
Do we like this because it is life, or because there is a certain
satisfaction in seeing the tragedy which impends over all, pervades the
atmosphere, as it were, and adds something of zest to the mildest
enjoyment? Should we go away from the mimic stage any, better and
stronger if the drama began in the dungeon and ended on the greensward,
with innocent love and resplendent beauty in possession of the Rhine
gold?
How simple, after all, was the created world on the stage to the real
world in the auditorium, with its thousand complexities and dramatic
situations, and if the little knot of players of parts for an hour could
have had leisure to be spectators of the audience, what a deeper
revelation of life would they not have seen! For the world has never
assembled such an epitome of itself, in its passion for pleasure and its
passion for display, as in the modern opera, with its ranks and tiers of
votaries from the pit to the dome. I fancy that even Margaret, whose love
for music was genuine, was almost as much fascinated by the greater
spectacle as by the less.
It was a crowded night, for the opera was one that appealed to the senses
and stimulated them to activity, and left the mind free to pursue its own
schemes; in a word, orchestra and the scenes formed a sort of
accompaniment and interpreter to the private dramas in the boxes. The
opera was made for society, and not society for the opera. We occupied a
box in the second tier--the Morgans, Margaret, and my wife. Morgan said
that the glasses were raised to us from the parquet and leveled at us
from the loges because we were a country party, but he well enough knew
whose fresh beauty and enthusiastic young face it was that drew the fire
when the curtain fell on the first act, and there was for a moment a
little lull in the hum of conversation.
"I had heard," Morgan was saying, "that the opera was not acclimated in
New York; but it is nearly so. The audience do not jabber so loud nor so
incessantly as at San Carlo, and they do not hum the airs with the
singers--"
"Perhaps," said my wife, "that is because they do not know the airs."
"But they are getting on in cultivation, and learning how to assert the
social side of the opera, which is not to be seriously interfered with by
the music on the stage."
"But the music, the scenery, were never before so good," I replied to
these cynical observations.
"That is true. And the social side has risen with it. Do you know what an
impudent thing the managers did the other night in protesting against the
raising of the lights by which the house was made brilliant and the cheap
illusions of the stage were destroyed? They wanted to make the house
positively gloomy for the sake of a little artificial moonlight on the
painted towers and the canvas lakes."
As the world goes, the scene was brilliant, of course with republican
simplicity. The imagination was helped by no titled names any more than
the eye was by the insignia of rank, but there was a certain glow of
feeling, as the glass swept the circle, to know that there were ten
millions in this box, and twenty in the next, and fifty in the next,
attested well enough by the flash of jewels and the splendor of attire,
and one might indulge a genuine pride in the prosperity of the republic.
As for beauty, the world, surely, in this later time, had flowered here
--flowered with something of Aspasia's grace and something of the haughty
coldness of Agrippina. And yet it was American. Here and there in the
boxes was a thoroughbred portrait by Copley--the long shapely neck, the
sloping shoulders, the drooping eyelids, even to the gown in which the
great-grandmother danced with the French officers.
"Who is that lovely creature?" asked Margaret, indicating a box opposite.
I did not know. There were two ladies, and behind them I had no
difficulty in making out Henderson and--Margaret evidently had not seen
him Mr. Lyon. Almost at the same moment Henderson recognized me, and
signaled for me to come to his box. As I rose to do so, Mrs. Morgan
exclaimed: "Why, there is Mr. Lyon! Do tell him we are here." I saw
Margaret's color rise, but she did not speak.
I was presented to Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter; in the latter I
recognized the beauty who had flashed by us in the Park. The elder lady
inclined to stoutness, and her too youthful apparel could not mislead one
as to the length of her pilgrimage in this world, nor soften the hard
lines of her worldly face-lines acquired, one could see, by a social
struggle, and not drawn there by an innate patrician insolence.
"We are glad to see a friend of Mr. Henderson's," she said, "and of Mr.
Lyon's also. Mr. Lyon has told us much of your charming country home. Who
is that pretty girl in your box, Mr. Fairchild?"
Miss Eschelle had her glass pointed at Margaret as I gave the desired
information.
"How innocent!" she murmured. "And she's quite in the style--isn't she,
Mr. Lyon?" she asked, turning about, her sweet mobile face quite the
picture of what she was describing. "We are all innocent in these days."
"It is a very good style," I said.
"Isn't it becoming?" asked the girl, making her dark eyes at once merry
and demure.
Mr. Lyon was looking intently at the opposite box, and a slight shade
came over his fine face. "Ah, I see!"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Eschelle," he said, after a second, "I hardly
know which to admire most, the beauty, or the wit, or the innocence of
the American women."
"There is nothing so confusing, though, as the country innocence," the
girl said, with the most natural air; "it never knows where to stop."
"You are too absurd, Carmen," her mother interposed; "as if the town girl
did!"
"Well, mamma, there is authority for saying that there is a time for
everything, only one must be in the fashion, you know."
Mr. Lyon looked a little dubious at this turn of the talk; Mr. Henderson
was as evidently amused at the girl's acting. I said I was glad to see
that goodness was in fashion.
"Oh, it often is. You know we were promised a knowledge of good as well
as evil. It depends upon the point of view. I fancy, now, that Mr.
Henderson tolerates the good--that is the reason we get on so well
together; and Mr. Lyon tolerates the evil--that's the reason he likes New
York. I have almost promised him that I will have a mission school."
The girl looked quite capable of it, or of any other form of devotion.
Notwithstanding her persistent banter, she had a most inviting innocence
of manner, almost an ingenuousness, that well became her exquisite
beauty. And but for a tentative daring in her talk, as if the gentle
creature were experimenting as to how far one could safely go, her
innocence might have seemed that of ignorance.
It came out in the talk that Mr. Lyon had been in Washington for a week,
and would return there later on.
"We had a claim on him," said Mrs. Eschelle, "for his kindness to us in
London, and we are trying to convince him that New York is the real
capital."
"Unfortunately," added Miss Eschelle, looking up in Mr. Lyon's face, "he
visited Brandon first, and you seem to have bewitched him with your
simple country ways. I can get him to talk of nothing else."
"You mean to say," Mr. Lyon replied, with the air of retorting, "that you
have asked me about nothing else."
"Oh, you know we felt a little responsible for you; and there is no place
so dangerous as the country. Now here you are protected--we put all the
wickedness on the stage, and learn to recognize and shun it."
"It may be wicked," said her mother, "but it is dull. Don't you find it
so, Mr. Henderson? I am passionately fond of Wagner, but it is too noisy
for anything tonight."
"I notice, dear," the dutiful daughter replied for all of us, "that you
have to raise your voice. But there is the ballet. Let us all listen
now."
Mr. Lyon excused himself from going with me, saying that he would call at
our hotel, and I took Henderson. "I shall count the minutes you are going
to lose," the girl said as we went out-to our box. The lobbies in the
interact were thronged with men--for the most part the young speculators
of the Chamber turned into loungers in the foyer--knowing, alert,
attitudinizing in the extreme of the mode, unable even in this hour to
give beauty the preference to business, well knowing, perhaps, that
beauty itself in these days has a fine eye for business.
I liked Henderson better in our box than in his own. Was it because the
atmosphere was more natural and genuine? Or was it Margaret's transparent
nature, her sincere enjoyment of the scene, her evident pleasure in the
music, the color, the gayety of the house, that made him drop the slight
cynical air of the world which had fitted him so admirably a moment
before? He already knew my wife and the Morgans, and, after the greetings
were made, he took a seat by Margaret, quite content while the act was
going on to watch its progress in the play of her responsive features.
How quickly she felt, how the frown followed the smile, how, she seemed
to weigh and try to apprehend the meaning of what went on--how her every
sense enjoyed life!
"It is absurd," she said, turning her bright face to him when the curtain
dropped, "to be so interested in fictitious trouble."
"I'm not so sure that it is," he replied, in her own tone; "the opera is
a sort of pulpit, and not seldom preaches an awful sermon--more plainly
than the preacher dares to make it."
"But not in nomine Dei."
"No. But who can say what is most effective? I often wonder, as I watch
the congregations coming from the churches on the Avenue, if they are any
more solemnized than the audiences that pour out of this house. I confess
that I cannot shake off 'Lohengrin' in a good while after I hear it."
"And so you think the theatres have a moral influence?"
"Honestly"--and I heard his good-natured laugh--"I couldn't swear to
that. But then we don't know what New York might be without them."
"I don't know," said Margaret, reflectively, "that my own good impulses,
such as I have, are excited by anything I see on the stage; perhaps I am
more tolerant, and maybe toleration is not good. I wonder if I should
grow worldly, seeing more of it?"
"Perhaps it is not the stage so much as the house," Henderson replied,
beginning to read the girl's mind.
"Yes, it would be different if one came alone and saw the play,
unconscious of the house, as if it were a picture. I think it is the
house that disturbs one, makes one restless and discontented."
"I never analyzed my emotions," said Henderson, "but when I was a boy and
came to the theatre I well remember that it made me ambitious; every sort
of thing seemed possible of attainment in the excitement of the crowded
house, the music, the lights, the easy successes on the stage; nothing
else is more stimulating to a lad; nothing else makes the world more
attractive."
"And does it continue to have the same effect, Mr. Henderson?"
"Hardly," and he smiled; "the illusion goes, and the stage is about as
real as the house--usually less interesting. It can hardly compete with
the comedy in the boxes."
"Perhaps it is lack of experience, but I like the play for itself."
"Oh yes; desire for the dramatic is natural. People will have it somehow.
In the country village where there are no theatres the people make dramas
out of each other's lives; the most trivial incidents are magnified and
talked about--dramatized, in short."
"You mean gossiped about?"
"Well, you may call it gossip--nothing can be concealed; everybody knows
about everybody else; there is no privacy; everything is used to create
that illusory spectacle which the stage tries to give. I think that in
the country village a good theatre would be a wholesome influence,
satisfy a natural appetite indicated by the inquisition into the affairs
of neighbors, and by the petty scandal."
"We are on the way to it," said Mr. Morgan, who sat behind them; "we have
theatricals in the church parlors, which may grow into a nineteenth
century substitute for the miracle-plays. You mustn't, Margaret, let Mr.
Henderson prejudice you against the country."
"No," said the latter, quickly; "I was only trying to defend the city. We
country people always do that. We must base our theatrical life on
something in nature."
"What is the difference, Mr. Henderson," asked Margaret, "between the
gossip in the boxes and the country gossip you spoke of?"
"In toleration mainly, and lack of exact knowledge. It is here rather
cynical persiflage, not concentrated public opinion."
"I don't follow you," said Morgan. "It seems to me that in the city
you've got gossip plus the stage."
"That is to say, we have the world."
"I don't like to believe that," said Margaret, seriously--"your
definition of the world."
"You make me see that it was a poor jest," he said, rising to go.
"By-the-way, we have a friend of yours in our box tonight--a young
Englishman."
"Oh, Mr. Lyon. We were all delighted with him. Such a transparent,
genuine nature!"
"Tell him," said my wife, "that we should be happy to see him at our
hotel."
When Henderson came back to his box Carmen did not look up, but she said,
indifferently: "What, so soon? But your absence has made one person
thoroughly miserable. Mr. Lyon has not taken his eyes off you. I never
saw such an international attachment."
"What more could I do for Miss Eschelle than to leave her in such
company?"
"I beg your pardon," said Lyon. "Miss Eschelle must believe that I
thoroughly appreciate Mr. Henderson's self-sacrifice. If I occasionally
looked over where he was, I assure you it was in pity."
"You are both altogether too self-sacrificing," the beauty replied,
turning to Henderson a look that was sweetly forgiving. "They who sin
much shall be forgiven much, you know."
"That leaves me," Mr. Lyon answered, with a laugh, "as you say over here,
out in the cold, for I have passed a too happy evening to feel like a
transgressor."
"The sins of omission are the worst sort," she retorted.
"You see what you must do to be forgiven," Henderson said to Lyon, with
that good-natured smile that was so potent to smooth away sharpness.
"I fear I can never do enough to qualify myself." And he also laughed.
"You never will," Carmen answered, but she accompanied the doubt with a
witching smile that denied it.
"What is all this about forgiveness?" asked Mrs. Eschelle, turning to
them from regarding the stage.
"Oh, we were having an experience meeting behind your back, mamma, only
Mr. Henderson won't tell his experience."
"Miss Eschelle is in such a forgiving humor tonight that she absolves
before any one has a chance to confess," he replied.
"Don't you think I am always so, Mr. Lyon?"
Mr. Lyon bowed. "I think that an opera-box with Miss Eschelle is the
easiest confessional in the world."
"That's something like a compliment. You see" (to Henderson) "how much
you Americans have to learn."
"Will you be my teacher?"
"Or your pupil," the girl said, in a low voice, standing near him as she
rose.
The play was over. In the robing and descending through the corridors
there were the usual chatter, meaning looks, confidential asides. It is
always at the last moment, in the hurry, as in a postscript, that woman
says what she means, or what for the moment she wishes to be thought to
mean. In the crowd on the main stairway the two parties saw each other at
a distance, but without speaking.
"Is it true that Lyon is 'epris' there?" Carmen whispered to Henderson
when she had scanned and thoroughly inventoried Margaret.
"You know as much as I do."
"Well, you did stay a long time," she said, in a lower tone.
As Margaret's party waited for their carriage she saw Mrs. Eschelle and
her daughter enter a shining coach, with footman and coachman in livery.
Henderson stood raising his hat. A little white hand was shaken to him
from the window, and a sweet, innocent face leaned forward--a face with
dark, eyes and golden hair, lit up with a radiant smile. That face for
the moment was New York to Margaret, and New York seemed a vain show.
Carmen threw herself back in her seat as if weary. Mrs. Eschelle sat
bolt-upright.
"What in the world, child, made you go on so tonight?"
"I don't know."
"What made you snub Mr. Lyon so often?"
"Did I? He won't mind much. Didn't you see, mother, that he was distrait
the moment he espied that girl? I'm not going to waste my time. I know
the signs. No fisheries imbroglio for me, thank you."
"Fish? Who said anything about fish?"
"Oh, the international business. Ask Mr. Henderson to explain it. The
English want to fish in our waters, I believe. I think Mr. Lyon has had a
nibble from a fresh-water fish. Perhaps it's the other way, and he's
hooked. There be fishers of men, you know, mother."
"You are a strange child, Carmen. I hope you will be civil to both of
them." And they rode on in silence.
VIII
In real life the opera or the theatre is only the prologue to the
evening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins. New
York is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After the
public duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the artificial
comedy and tragedy which imitate life under a mask, and suggest without
satisfying, comes the actual experience. My gentle girl--God bless your
sweet face and pure heart!--who looked down from the sky-parlor at the
Metropolitan upon the legendary splendor of the stage, and the alluring
beauty and wealth of the boxes, and went home to create in dreams the
dearest romance in a maiden's life, you did not know that for many the
romance of the night just began when the curtain fell.
The streets were as light as day. At no other hour were the pavements so
thronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars,
such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a swirl
of pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes and
restaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it is
just the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which has
all of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunity
and unlimited possibility.
At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious--all the
more serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered. Morgan, who
was so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved in
it--some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertaining
than the daily newspaper--knew the histories of half the people in the
room. There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together like
lovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public life
necessary even when the domestic life is established. There is a man who
shot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who rejected
him, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy woman who sits
opposite him in that convivial party. There is a Russian princess, a fair
woman with cool observant eyes, making herself agreeable to a mixed
company in three languages. In this brilliant light is it not wonderful
how dazzlingly beautiful the women are--brunettes in yellow and diamonds,
blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only a bunch of roses for
ornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in a radiant glow that even
the excitement and the lifted glass cannot heighten? That pretty girl
yonder--is she wife or widow?--slight and fresh and fair, they say has an
ambition to extend her notoriety by going upon the stage; the young lady
with her, who does not seem to fear a public place, may be helping her on
the road. The two young gentlemen, their attendants, have the air of
taking life more seriously than the girls, but regard with respectful
interest the mounting vivacity of their companions, which rises and
sparkles like the bubbles in the slender glasses which they raise to
their lips with the dainty grace of practice. The staid family parties
who are supping at adjoining tables notice this group with curiosity, and
express their opinion by elevated eyebrows.
Margaret leaned back in her chair and regarded the whole in a musing'
frame of mind. I think she apprehended nothing of it except the light,
the color, the beauty, the movement of gayety. For her the notes of the
orchestra sounded through it all--the voices of the singers, the hum of
the house; it was all a spectacle and a play. Why should she not enjoy
it? There was something in the nature of the girl that responded to this
form of pleasure--the legitimate pleasure the senses take in being
gratified. "It is so different," she said to me, "from the pleasure one
has in an evening by the fire. Do you know, even Mr. Morgan seems worldly
here."
It was a deeper matter than she thought, this about worldliness, which
had been raised in Margaret's mind. Have we all double natures, and do we
simply conform to whatever surrounds us? Is there any difference in kind
between the country worldliness and the city worldliness? I do not
suppose that Margaret formulated any of these ideas in words. Her
knowledge of the city had hitherto been superficial. It was a place for
shopping, for a day in a picture exhibition, for an evening in the
theatre, no more a part of her existence than a novel or a book of
travels: of the life of the town she knew nothing. That night in her room
she became aware for the first time of another world, restless,
fascinating, striving, full of opportunities. What must London be?
If we could only note the first coming into the mind of a thought that
changes life and re-forms character--supposing that every act and every
new departure has this subtle beginning--we might be less the sport of
circumstances than we seem to be. Unnoted, the desire so swiftly follows
the thought and juggles with the will.
The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses. Mr. Lyon
called. It was a constrained visit. Margaret was cordially civil, and I
fancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been less
so. If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange of
the commonplaces of the day.
"Yes," he was saying to my wife, "perhaps I shall have to change my mind
about the simplicity of your American life. It is much the same in New
York and London. It is only a question of more or less sophistication."
"Mr. Henderson tells us," said my wife, "that you knew the Eschelles in
London."
"Yes. Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season."
"Why almost?"
"Well--you will pardon me--one needs for success in these days to be not
only very clever, but equally daring. It is every day more difficult to
make a sensation."
"I thought her, across the house," Margaret said, "very pretty and
attractive. I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon. Do you mean
that one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in New
York?"
"I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say that
there is always the greater competition in the larger market."
"Oh, my pride," Margaret answered, "does not lie in that direction."
"And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. She
appears to be more interested now in New York than in London."
He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped
suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she be
comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at
the opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.
"And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?" my wife asked.
"Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it." It was an effort
on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly
unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I
could understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world is
to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which
insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society for
First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. "I have never
seen another place," he continued, "where the women are so busy in
improving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings,
recitations, musicales, classes--it fatigues one to keep in sight of
them. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men are
capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild."
"And you find they have no time to be agreeable?"
"Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in,
nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorb
everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as one
of them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a most
interesting city."
The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had been to
see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character,
constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.
"I don't suppose," Mr. Morgan said, "a foreigner would understand it; it
would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London."
"Yes, I saw it," said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. "It was very odd, and
seemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiar
with American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while I
sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play--almost a
part of it, one might say--I doubted if I understood your people as well
as I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is the
beginning of an American drama."
"Some people say that it is."
"But it is so local!"
"Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with.
The only question is, is it true to human nature? What puzzled me in this
American play was its raising the old question of nature and art. You've
seen Coquelin? Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet, the
perfection of training, skill in an art. You never doubt that he is
performing in a play for the entertainment of an audience. You have the
same enjoyment of it that you have of a picture--a picture, I mean, full
of character and sentiment, not a photograph. But I don't think of Denman
Thompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school, but as a
New Hampshire farmer. I don't admire his skill; I admire him. There is
plenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play, plenty of
imitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is the natural
man. If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me." "Probably to
an American audience only he does not," Mr. Lyon remarked.
"Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience."
"I doubt if you will change the laws of art," said Mr. Lyon, rising to
go.
"We shall hope to see you again at our house," my wife said.
"You are very good. I should like it; but my time is running out."
"If you cannot come, you may leave your adieus with Miss Debree, who is
staying some time in the city," my wife said, evidently to Margaret's
annoyance. But she could do no less than give him her city address,
though the information was not accompanied by any invitation in her
manner.
Margaret was to stay some time with two maiden ladies, old friends of her
mother, the Misses Arbuser. The Arbusers were people of consequence in
their day, with a certain social prestige; in fact, the excellent ladies
were two generations removed from successful mercantile life, which in
the remote prospective took on an old-family solidity. Nowhere else in
the city could Margaret have come closer in contact with a certain phase
of New York life in which women are the chief actors--a phase which may
be a transition, and may be only a craze. It is not so much a
condescension of society to literature as it is a discovery that
literature and art, in the persons of those who produce both, may be
sources of amusement, or perhaps, to be just, of the enlargement of the
horizon and the improvement of the mind. The society mind was never
before so hospitable to new ideas and new sensations. Charities, boards
of managers, missions, hospitals, news-rooms, and lodging-houses for the
illiterate and the homeless--these are not sufficient, even with balls,
dancing classes, and teas, for the superfluous energies of this restless,
improving generation; there must be also radical clubs, reading classes,
study classes, ethical, historical, scientific, literary lectures, the
reading of papers by ladies of distinction and gentlemen of special
attainments--an unremitting pursuit of culture and information. Curiosity
is awake. The extreme of social refinement and a mild Bohemianism almost
touch. It passes beyond the affectation of knowing persons who write
books and write for the press, artists in paint and artists in music.
"You cannot be sure in the most exclusive circle"--it was Carmen Eschelle
who said this--"that you will not meet an author or even a journalist."
Not all the women, however, adore letters or affect enthusiasm at
drawing-room lectures; there are some bright and cynical ones who do not,
who write papers themselves, and have an air of being behind the scenes.
Margaret had thought that she was fully occupied in the country, with her
teaching, her reading, her literature and historical clubs, but she had
never known before what it was to be busy and not have time for anything,
always in pursuit of some new thing, and getting a fragment here and
there; life was a good deal like reading the dictionary and remembering
none of the words. And it was all so cosmopolitan and all-embracingly
sympathetic. One day it was a paper by a Servian countess on the social
life of the Servians, absorbingly interesting both in itself and because
it was a countess who read it; and this was followed by the singing of an
Icelandic tenor and a Swedish soprano, and a recital on the violin by a
slight, red-haired, middle-aged woman from London. All the talents seem
to be afloat and at the service of the strenuous ones who are cultivating
themselves.
The first function at which Margaret assisted in the long drawing-rooms
of the Arbusers was a serious one--one that combined the charm of culture
with the temptations of benevolence. The rooms were crowded with the
fashion of the town, with a sprinkling of clergymen and of thin
philanthropic gentlemen in advanced years. It was a four-o'clock, and the
assembly had the cheerfulness of a reception, only that the display of
toilets was felt to be sanctified by a purpose. The performance opened
with a tremendous prelude on the piano by Herr Bloomgarten, who had been
Liszt's favorite pupil; indeed, it was whispered that Liszt had said
that, old as he was, he never heard Bloomgarten without learning
something. There was a good deal of subdued conversation while the
pianist was in his extreme agony of execution, and a hush of extreme
admiration--it was divine, divine, ravishing--when he had finished. The
speaker was a learned female pundit from India, and her object was to
interest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunate
Hindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands and tens of thousands of them
were doomed to early and lifelong widowhood, owing to the operation of
cruel caste laws, which condemned even girls betrothed to deceased
Brahmins to perpetual celibacy. This fate could only be alleviated by the
education and elevation of women. And money was needed for schools,
especially for medical schools, which would break down the walls of
prejudice and enfranchise the sex. The appeal was so charmingly made that
every one was moved by it, especially the maiden ladies present, who
might be supposed to enter into the feelings of their dusky sisters
beyond the seas. The speaker said, with a touch of humor that always
intensifies a serious discourse, that she had been told that in one of
the New England States there was a superfluity of unmarried women; but
this was an entirely different affair; it was a matter of choice with
these highly educated and accomplished women. And the day had come when
woman could make her choice! At this there was a great clapping of hands.
It was one thing to be free to lead a life of single self-culture, and
quite another to be compelled to lead a single fife without self-culture.
The address was a great success, and much enthusiasm spread abroad for
the cause of the unmarried women of India.
In the audience were Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter. Margaret and Carmen
were made acquainted, and were drawn together by curiosity, and perhaps
by a secret feeling of repulsion. Carmen was all candor and sweetness,
and absorbingly interested in the women of India, she said. With
Margaret's permission she would come and see her, for she believed they
had common friends.
It would seem that there could not be much sympathy between natures so
opposed, persons who looked at life from such different points of view,
but undeniably Carmen had a certain attraction for Margaret. The New
Englander, whose climate is at once his enemy and his tonic, always longs
for the tropics, which to him are a region of romance, as Italy is to the
German. In his nature, also, there is something easily awakened to the
allurements of a sensuous existence, and to a desire for a freer
experience of life than custom has allowed him. Carmen, who showed to
Margaret only her best side--she would have been wise to exhibit no other
to Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves with
men--seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinating
worldliness which make the world agreeable.
One morning, a few days after the Indian function, Margaret was alone in
her own cozy sitting-room. Nothing was wanting that luxury could suggest
to make it in harmony with a beautiful woman, nothing that did not
flatter and please, or nurse, perhaps, a personal sense of beauty, and
impart that glow of satisfaction which comes when the senses are adroitly
ministered to. Margaret had been in a mood that morning to pay extreme
attention to her toilet. The result was the perfection of simplicity, of
freshness, of maiden purity, enhanced by the touch of art. As she
surveyed herself in the pier-glass, and noted the refined lines of the
morning-gown which draped but did not conceal the more exquisite lines of
her figure, and adjusted a rose in her bosom, she did not feel like a
Puritan, and, although she may not have noted the fact, she did not look
like one. It was not a look of vanity that she threw into the mirror, or
of special self-consciousness; in her toilet she had obeyed only her
instinct (that infallible guide in a woman of refinement), and if she was
conscious of any emotion, it was of the stirring within her of the
deepest womanly nature.
In fact, she was restless. She flung herself into an easy-chair before
the fire, and took up a novel. It was a novel with a religious problem.
In vain she tried to be interested in it. At home she would have absorbed
it eagerly; they would have discussed it; the doubts and suggestions in
it would have assumed the deepest personal importance. It might have made
an era in her thoughtful country life. Here it did not so appeal to her;
it seemed unreal and shadowy in a life that had so much more of action
than of reflection in it. It was a life fascinating and exciting, and
profoundly unsatisfactory. Yet, after all, it was more really life than
that placid vegetation in the country. She felt that in the whirl of only
a few days of it--operas, receptions, teas, readings, dances, dinners,
where everybody sparkled with a bewildering brilliancy, and yet from
which one brought away nothing but a sense of strain; such gallantry,
such compliments, such an easy tossing about of every topic under heaven;
such an air of knowing everything, and not caring about anything very
much; so much mutual admiration and personal satisfaction! She liked it,
and perhaps was restless because she liked it. To be admired, to be
deferred to--was there any harm in that? Only, if one suffers admiration
today, it becomes a necessity tomorrow. She began to feel the influence
of that life which will not let one stand still for a moment. If it is
not the opera, it is a charity; if it is not a lover, it is some endowed
cot in a hospital. There must be something going on every day, every
hour.
Yes, she was restless, and could not read. She thought of Mr. Henderson.
He had called formally. She had seen him, here and there, again and
again. He had sought her out in all companies; his face had broken into a
smile when he met her; he had talked with her lightly, gayly; she
remembered the sound of his voice; she had learned to know his figure in
a room among a hundred; and she blushed as she remembered that she had
once or twice followed him with her eyes in a throng. He was, to be sure,
nothing to her; but he was friendly; he was certainly entertaining; he
was a part, somehow, of this easy-flowing life.
Miss Eschelle was announced. Margaret begged that she would come upstairs
without ceremony. The mutual taking-in of the pretty street costume and
the pretty morning toilet was the work of a moment--the photographer has
invented no machine that equals a woman's eyes for such a purpose.
"How delightful it is! how altogether charming!" and Margaret felt that
she was included with the room in this admiration. "I told mamma that I
was coming to see you this morning, even if I missed the Nestors'
luncheon. I like to please myself sometimes. Mamma says I'm frivolous,
but do you know"--the girls were comfortably seated by the fire, and
Carmen turned her sweet face and candid eyes to her companion--"I get
dreadfully tired of all this going round and round. No, I don't even go
to the Indigent Mothers' Home; it's part of the same thing, but I haven't
any gift that way. Ah, you were reading--that novel."
"Yes; I was trying to read it; I intend to read it."
"Oh, we have had it! It's a little past now, but it has been all the
rage. Everybody has read it; that is, I don't know that anybody has read
it, but everybody has been talking about it. Of course somebody must have
read it, to set the thing agoing. And it has been discussed to death. I
sometimes feel as if I had changed my religion half a dozen times in a
fortnight. But I haven't heard anything about it for a week. We have
taken up the Hindoo widows now, you know." And the girl laughed, as if
she knew she were talking nonsense.
"And you do not read much in the city?" Margaret asked, with an answering
smile.
"Yes; in the summer. That is, some do. There is a reading set. I don't
know that they read much, but there is a reading set. You know, Miss
Debree, that when a book is published--really published, as Mr. Henderson
says--you don't need to read it. Somehow it gets into the air and becomes
common property. Everybody hears the whole thing. You can talk about it
from a notice. Of course there are some novels that one must read in
order to understand human nature. Do you read French?"
"Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot."
"Nor can I," said Carmen, with a sincere face. "They are too realistic
for me." She was at the moment running over in her mind a "situation" in
a paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. "Mr. Henderson says
that everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise the
novels they don't read."
"You know Mr. Henderson very well?"
"Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of."
"Afraid of?"
"Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes your
curiosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you a
little uneasy."
Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon the
nature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slight
expression of pain on Margaret's face.
"But there is your Mr. Lyon--"
Margaret laughed. "You do me too much honor. I think you discovered him
first."
"Well, our Mr. Lyon." Carmen was still looking into the fire. "He is such
a good young man!"
Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and she
replied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, "We all have the
highest regard for Mr. Lyon."
"Yes, and he is quite gone on Brandon, I assure you. He intends to do a
great deal of good in the world. I think he spends half his time in New
York studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproaches
me that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldly
side. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be"--this
with a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation--"but I haven't
any call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what
she means--dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked,
after a moment, turning to Margaret?
Margaret explained that she was neither.
"Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical.
There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religious
belief."
"I should think not," said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. "It
must be a matter of great anxiety to you here."
Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed with
merriment as she rose.
"What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deep
things. You must not mind what I said about Mr.--(a little pause to read
Margaret's face)--Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charming
you are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not letting
this life tell on one." And she was gone in a shower of compliments and
smiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out.
Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.
The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did not
raise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sort
of woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man to
whom such a woman would be attracted?
IX
It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses--palaces--that begin
to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the
splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay
for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.
This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich
--and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the course
must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can
get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican
simplicity.
Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of
servants in livery--shortclothes and stockings--in decorous vacuity--an
array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of
the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self a
part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal
simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult to
attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to
separate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the town
that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion
used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond
remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented
shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani--it
was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in the
music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had
worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as
an intaglio--indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the
costly facts.
The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:
the house swarmed with servants--retainers, one might say. Margaret, who
was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a
man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women
in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere
accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women
do not cost so much originally as good pictures--that is, good men and
women--everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them.
Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance
afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.
The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson
had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same
studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the
extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under
the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the
dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare
flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply
modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity--pure whiteness, the glow of
yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was
in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre
d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and
hostess--perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple
and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another
generation will remove that.
If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up
to the level of the dinner and the house--what except that of a circle of
wits, who would be out of place there, could be?--the presence of Mr.
Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk
ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at
Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the
irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the
marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who
would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark
across the table about a "corner" (it is impossible absolutely here, as
well as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening of
galleries--anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of the
vivacity and persiflage.
"I saw you, Mr. Henderson"--it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice--"the
other night in a box with a very pretty woman."
"Yes--Miss Eschelle."
"I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, various
places; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be very
entertaining--and enterprising."
"Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other lady
was her mother. And the man with us--that might interest you more, Mrs.
Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm."
"Ah! Then I suppose she has money?"
"I never saw any painful evidence of poverty. But I don't think Mr. Lyon
is fortune-hunting. He seems to be after information and--goodness."
Margaret flushed a little, but apparently Henderson did not notice it.
Then she said (after Mrs. Laflamme had dropped the subject with the
remark that he had come to the right place), "Miss Eschelle called on me
yesterday."
"And was, no doubt, agreeable."
"She was, as Mrs. Laflamme says, entertaining. She quoted you a good
deal."
"Quoted me? For what?"
"As one would a book, as a familiar authority."
"I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you will excuse the street
expression, to have my stock quotable. Perhaps you couldn't tell whether
Miss Eschelle was a bull or a bear in this case?"
"I don't clearly know what that is. She didn't offer me any," said
Margaret, in a tone of carrying on the figure without any personal
meaning.
"Well, she is a bit of an operator. A good many women here amuse
themselves a little in stocks."
"It doesn't seem to me very feminine."
"No? But women generally like to' take risks and chances. In countries
where lotteries are established they always buy tickets."
"Ah! then they only risk what they have. I think women are more prudent
and conservative than men."
"No doubt. They are conservatives usually. But when they do go in for
radical measures and risks, they leave us quite behind." Mr. Henderson
did not care to extend the conversation in this direction, and he asked,
abruptly, "Are you finding New York agreeable, Miss Debree?"
"Yes. Yes and no. One has no time to one's self. Do you understand why it
is, Mr. Henderson, that one can enjoy the whole day and then be
thoroughly dissatisfied with it?"
"Perfectly; when the excitement is over."
"And then I don't seem to be myself here. I have a feeling of having lost
myself."
"Because the world is so big?"
"Not that. Do you know, the world seems much smaller here than at home."
"And the city appears narrow and provincial?"
"I cannot quite explain it. The interests of life don't seem so large
--the questions, I mean, what is going on in Europe, the literature, the
reforms, the politics. I get a wider view when I stand off--at home. I
suppose it is more concentrated here. And, oh dear, I'm so stupid!
Everybody is so alert in little things, so quick to turn a compliment,
and say a bright thing. While I am getting ready to say what I really
think about Browning, for instance, he is disposed of in a sentence."
"That is because you try to say what you really think."
"If one don't, what's the use of talk?"
"Oh, to pass the time."
Margaret looked up to see if Henderson was serious. There was a smile of
amusement on his face, but not at all offensive, because the woman saw
that it was a look of interest also.
"Then I sha'n't be serious any more," she said, as there was a movement
to quit the table.
"That lays the responsibility on me of being serious," he replied, in the
same light tone.
Later they were wandering through the picture-gallery together. A gallery
of modern pictures appeals for the most part to the senses--represents
the pomps, the color, the allurements of life. It struck Henderson
forcibly that this gallery, which he knew well, appeared very different
looking at it with Miss Debree from what it would if he had been looking
at it with Miss Eschelle. There were some pictures that he hurried past,
some technical excellences only used for sensuous effects--that he did
not call attention to as he might have done with another. Curiously
enough, he found himself seeking sentiment, purity. If the drawing was
bad, Margaret knew it; if a false note was struck, she saw it. But she
was not educated up to a good many of the suggestions of the gallery.
Henderson perceived this, and his manner to her became more deferential
and protective. It was a manner to which every true woman responds, and
Margaret was happy, more herself, and talked with a freedom and gayety, a
spice of satire, and a note of reality that made her every moment more
attractive to her companion. In her, animation the charm of her unworn
beauty blazed upon him with a direct personal appeal. He hardly cared to
conceal his frank admiration. She, on her part, was thinking, what could
Miss Eschelle mean by saying that she was afraid of him?
"Does the world seem any larger here, Miss Debree?" he asked, as they had
lingeringly made the circuit of the room and passed out through the
tropical conservatory to join the rest of the company.
"Yes--away from people."
"Then it is not numbers, I am glad to know, that make a world."
She did not reply. But when he encountered her, robed for departure, at
the foot of the stairway, she gave him her hand in good-night, and their
eyes met for a moment.
I wonder if that was the time? Probably not. I fancy that when the right
day came she confessed that the moment was when she first saw him enter
their box at the opera.
Henderson walked down the avenue slowly, hearing the echo of his own
steps in the deserted street. He was in no haste to reach home. It was
such a delightful evening-snowing a little, and cold, but so
exhilarating. He remembered just how she turned her head as she got into
the carriage. She had touched his arm lightly once in the gallery to call
his attention to a picture. Yes, the world was larger, larger, by one,
and it would seem large--her image came to him distinctly--if she were
the only one.
Henderson was under the spell of this evening when the next, in response
to a note asking him to call for a moment on business, he was shown into
the Eschelle drawing-room. It was dimly lighted, but familiarity with the
place enabled him without difficulty to find his way down the long suite,
rather overcrowded with luxurious furniture, statuary, and pictures on
easels, to the little library at the far end glowing in a rosy light.
There, ensconced in a big chair, a book in her hand, one pretty foot on
the fender, sat Carmen, in a grayish, vaporous toilet, which took a warm
hue from the color of the spreading lamp-shades. On the carved table near
was a litter of books and of nameless little articles, costly and
coquettish, which assert femininity, even in a literary atmosphere. Over
the fireplace hung a picture of spring--a budding girl, smiling and
winning, in a semi-transparent raiment, advancing with swift steps to
bring in the season of flowers and of love. The hand that held the book
rested upon the arm of the chair, a finger inserted in the place where
she had been reading, her rounded white arm visible to the elbow, and
Carmen was looking into the fire in the attitude of reflection upon a
suggestive passage.
Women have so many forms of attraction, different women are attractive in
so many different ways, moods are so changing, beauty is so undefinable,
and has so many weapons. And yet men are called inconstant!
It was not until Henderson had time to take in the warmth of this
domestic picture that Carmen rose.
"It is so good of you to come, with all your engagements. Mamma is
excused with a headache, but she has left me power of attorney to ask
questions about our little venture."
"I hope the attorney will not put me through a cross-examination."
"That depends upon how you have been behaving, Mr. Henderson. I'm not
very cross yet. Now, sit there so that I can look at you and see how
honest you are."
"Do you want me to put on my business or my evening expression?"
"Oh, the first, if you mean business."
"Well, your stocks are going up."
"That's nice. You are so lucky! Everything goes up with you. Do you know
what they say of you.
"Nothing bad, I hope."
"That everything you touch turns to gold. That you will be one of the
nabobs of New York in ten years."
"That's a startling destiny."
"Isn't it? I don't like it." The girl seemed very serious. "I'd like you
to be distinguished. To be in the Cabinet. To be minister--go to England.
But one needs a great deal of money for that, to go as one ought to go.
What a career is open to a man in this country if he has money!"
"But I don't care for politics."
"Who does? But position. You can afford that if you have money enough. Do
you know, Mr. Henderson, I think you are dull."
"Thank you. I reckoned you'd find it out."
"The other night at the Nestor ball a lady--no, I won't tell you who she
is--asked me if I knew who that man was across the room; such an air of
distinction; might be the new British Minister. You know, I almost
blushed when I said I did know him."
"Well?"
"You see what people expect of you. When a man looks distinguished and is
clever, and knows how to please if he likes, he cannot help having a
career, unless he is afraid to take the chances."
Henderson was not conscious of ever being wanting in this direction. The
picture conjured up by the ingenious girl was not unfamiliar to his mind,
and he understood quite well the relation to it that Carmen had in her
mind; but he did not take the lead offered. Instead, he took refuge in
the usual commonplace, and asked, "Wouldn't you like to have been a man?"
"Heaven forbid! I should be too wicked. It is responsibility enough to be
a woman. I did not expect such a banality from you. Do you think, Mr.
Henderson, we had better sell?"
"Sell what?"
"Our stocks. You are so occupied that I thought they might fall when you
are up in the clouds somewhere."
"No, I shall not forget."
"Well, such things happen. I might forget you if it were not for the
stocks."
"Then I shall keep the stocks, even if they fall."
"And we should both fall together. That would be some compensation. Not
much. Going to smash with you would be something like going to church
with Mr. Lyon. It might have a steadying effect."
"What has come over you tonight, Carmen?" Henderson asked, leaning
forward with an expression of half amusement, half curiosity.
"I've been thinking--doesn't that astonish you?--about life. It is very
serious. I got some new views talking with that Miss Debree from Brandon.
Chiefly from what she didn't say. She is such a lovely girl, and just as
unsophisticated--well, as we are. I fear I shocked her by telling her
your opinion of French novels."
"You didn't tell her that I approved of all the French novels you read?"
"Oh no! I didn't say you approved of any. It sort of came out that you
knew about them. She is so downright and conscientious. I declare I felt
virtuous shivers running all over me all the time I was with her. I'm
conscientious myself. I want everybody to know the worst of me. I wish I
could practice some concealment. But she rather discourages me. She would
take the color out of a career. She somehow doesn't allow for color, I
could see. Duty, duty--that is the way she looks at life. She'd try to
keep me up to it; no playing by the way. I liked her very much. I like
people not to have too much toleration. She would be just the wife for
some nice country rector."
"Perhaps I ought to tell her your plan for her? I dined with her last
night at the Stotts'."
"Yes?" Carmen had been wondering if he would tell her of that. "Was it
very dull?"
"Not very. There was music, distant enough not to interfere with
conversation, and the gallery afterwards."
"It must have been very exhilarating. You talked about the Duchess of
Bolinbroke, and the opera, and Prince Talleyrand, and the corner in
wheat--dear me, I know, so decorous! And you said Miss Debree was there?"
"I had the honor of taking her out."
"Mr. Henderson"--the girl had risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now
stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged
to turn his head backward to see her--"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are
getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said
that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose the right object.
"Who taught me?" He raised his left hand. She did not respond to the
overture, except to snap the hand with her index-finger, and was back in
her chair again, regarding him demurely.
"I think we shall go abroad soon." The little foot was on the fender
again, and the face had the look of melancholy resolution.
"And leave Mr. Lyon without any protection here?" The remark was made in
a tone of good-humored raillery, but for some reason it seemed to sting
the girl.
"Pshaw!" she said. "How can you talk such nonsense? You," and she rose to
her feet in indignation--"you to advise an American girl to sell herself
for a title--the chance of a title. I'm ashamed of you!"
"Why, Carmen," he replied, flushing, "I advised nothing of the sort. I
hadn't the least idea. I don't care a straw for Mr. Lyon."
"That's just it; you don't care," sinking into her seat, still
unappeased. "I think I'll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupation
enough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that scheme
you were talking over the other night."
Henderson was in turn annoyed. "You can tell him anything you like. I'm
no more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic concerns."
"Now you are offended. It's not nice of you to put me in the wrong when
you know how impulsive I am. I wish I didn't let my feelings run away
with me." This said reflectively, and looking away from him. And then,
turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes: "Do you know, I
sometimes wish I had never seen you. You have so much power to make a
person very bad or very good."
"Come, come," said Henderson, rising, "we mustn't quarrel about an
Englishman--such old friends."
"Yes, we are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him her
hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I
should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of
violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his
face with vestal sweetness. "You are not offended?"
"Not a bit; not the least in the world," said Henderson, heartily,
patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.
When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation,
and there were hard lines in her sweet face. "What an insensible stick!"
Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of
the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to
condemn.
"Well?"
"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I
told him we were going abroad."
"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as amusing."
"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it
would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"
"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you--"
"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really
ought to be civil."
One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, the
new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will be
different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it
never repeats itself.
Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall--making money and
making love.
Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly
divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and
made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he found
the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? he
sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never stand
in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her conscience
would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Would
she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? She
would be if she had a heart.
He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simply
because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessary
to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his advancement, but
he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure. And if there are
men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness in a woman,
Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not dictated, his brain
would have told him the value of the sympathy of a good woman.
He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great fortune.
It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve all the
methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success, and the
thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would approve
what he did.
He saw much of her in those passing days--days that went like a dream to
one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but he saw
little of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a volume; a
word is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other. And then
passion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence of the
object. Imagination then has free play. A little separation sometimes
will fan it into a flame.
The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say that
the leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of hope.
Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business there.
The Misses Arbuser said, "Of course." And Margaret said he must not
forget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers an
affectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.
Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it on the
roadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret, neglecting
the book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window, felt it in all
her veins.
X
It is said that the world is created anew for every person who is in
love. There is therefore this constant miracle of a new heavens and a new
earth. It does not depend upon the seasons. The subtle force which is in
every human being, more or less active, has this power, as if love were
somehow a principle pervading nature itself, and capable of transforming
it. Is this a divine gift? Can it be used more than once? Once spent,
does the world to each succeeding experimenter in it become old and
stale? We say the world is old. In one sense, the real sense to every
person, it is no older than the lives lived in it at any given time. If
it is always passing away, it is always being renewed. Every time a youth
looks love in a maiden's eyes, and sees the timid appealing return of the
universal passion, the world for those two is just as certainly created
as it was on the first morning, in all its color, odor, song, freshness,
promise. This is the central mystery of life.
Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle. Never before
did the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such a
color on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never before
did her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine ecstasy
in the coming of spring.
For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is over,
is apt to be dull. The mind is so occupied with other emotions that the
friends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and the routine
is tame. Out of such a whirl of new experiences to return and find that
nothing has happened; that the old duties and responsibilities are
waiting! Margaret had eagerly leaped from the carriage to throw herself
into her aunt's arms-what a sweet welcome it is, that of kin!--and yet
almost before the greeting was over she felt alone. There was that in the
affectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that seemed to chill the glow and
fever of passion in her new world. And she had nothing to tell.
Everything had changed, and she must behave as if nothing had happened.
She must take up her old life--the interests of the neighborhood. Even
the little circle of people she loved appeared distant from her at the
moment; impossible it seemed to bring them into the rushing current of
her life. Their joy in getting her back again she could not doubt, nor
the personal affection with which she was welcomed. But was the New
England atmosphere a little cold? What was the flavor she missed in it
all? The next day a letter came. The excuse for it was the return of a
fan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket from the opera.
What a wonderful letter it was--his handwriting, the first note from him!
Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness. For Margaret it outweighed the
town of Brandon. It lay in her lap as she sat at her chamber window
looking out over the landscape, which was beginning to be flushed with a
pale green. There was a robin on the lawn, and a blackbird singing in the
pine. "Go not, happy day," she said, with tears in her eyes. She took up
the brief letter and read it again. Was he really hers, "truly"? And she
answered the letter, swiftly and with no hesitation, but with a throbbing
heart. It was a civil acknowledgment; that was all. Henderson might have
lead it aloud in the Exchange. But what color, what charming turns of
expression, what of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him such
a thrill of pleasure when he read it? What secret power has a woman to
make a common phrase so glow with her very self?
Here was something in her life that was her own, a secret, a hope, and
yet a tremulous anticipation to be guarded almost from herself. It
colored everything; it was always, whatever she was doing or saying,
present, like an air that one unconsciously hums for days after it has
caught his fancy. Blessed be the capacity of being fond and foolish! If
that letter was under her pillow at night, if this new revelation was
last in her thought as she fell asleep, if it mingled with the song of
the birds in the spring morning, as some great good pervading the world,
is there anything distinguishing in such an experience that it should be
dwelt on? And if there were questionings and little panics of doubt, did
not these moments also reveal Margaret to herself more certainly than the
hours of happy dreaming?
Questionings no doubt there were, and, later, serious questionings; for
habit is almost as strong as love, and the old ways of life and of
thought will reassert themselves in a thoughtful mind, and reason will
insist on analyzing passion and even hope.
Gradually the home life and every-day interests began to assume their
natural aspect and proportions. It was so sweet and sane, this home life,
interesting and not feverish. There was time for reading, time for
turning over things in the mind, time for those interchanges of feeling
and of ideas, by the fireside; she was not required to be always on dress
parade, in mind or person, always keyed up to make an impression or
receive one; how much wider and sounder was Morgan's view of the world,
allowing for his kindly cynicism, than that prevalent in the talk where
she had lately been! How sincere and hearty and free ran the personal
currents in this little neighborhood! In the very fact that the daily
love and affection for her and interest in her were taken for granted she
realized the difference between her position here and that among newer
friends who showed more open admiration.
Little by little there was a readjustment. In comparison, the city life,
with its intensity of action and feeling, began to appear distant, not so
real, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing part
of this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by? It
could not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now and
again, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no more
letters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse, the
nexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly like
a letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the little
excitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three times,
four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is such a
blank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill? Has he
changed? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between lovers.
Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her that it had
not gone so far as that. But she should see him. She felt sure of that.
And the thought filled all the vacant places in her imagination of the
future.
And yet she thought she was seeing him more clearly than when he was with
her. Oh wise young woman! She fancied she was deliberating, looking at
life with great prudence. It must be one's own fault if one makes a
radical mistake in marriage. She was watching the married people about
her with more interest-the Morgans, our own household, Mrs. Fletcher; and
besides, her aunt, whose even and cheerful life lacked this experience.
It is so wise to do this, to keep one's feelings in control, not to be
too hasty! Everybody has these intervals of prudence. That is the reason
there are so few mistakes.
I dare say that all these reflections and deliberations in the maidenly
mind were almost unconscious to herself; certainly unacknowledged. It was
her imagination that she was following, and scarcely a distinct reality
or intention. She thought of Henderson, and he gave a certain
personality, vivid maybe, to that dream of the future which we all in
youth indulge; but she would have shrunk from owning this even to
herself. We deceive ourselves as often as we deceive others. Margaret
would have repudiated with some warmth any intimation that she had lost
her heart, and was really predicting the practical possibilities of that
loss, and she would have been quite honest with herself in thinking that
she was still mistress of her own feeling. Later on she would know, and
delight to confess, that her destiny was fixed at a certain hour, at a
certain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to that
like links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong in
that; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would have
faded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and more
convinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon deep
reflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would have us
believe, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations; and that men
and women know themselves much less thoroughly than they suppose they do.
There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced, about the inward
struggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that Margaret was
hopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that charming girl
would have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant humiliation if
she had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more, if Henderson
had at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand, her impulse
would have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by anything that
had taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that impulse.
But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock
her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but which
did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simply
the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter--far enough
from that--but one in which there was a certain tone and intention that
the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside from
the announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it was
significant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interested
in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need have
been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran on
con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, was
the excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her a
business visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about his
daily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people in
which she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and there
were slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in the
Government; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and there
were little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no special
mystery about all this travel and hurrying from place to place, but it
gave Margaret a sense of varied and large occupations that she did not
understand. Through it all there was the personality that had been
recently so much in her thoughts. He was coming. That was a very solid
fact that she must meet. And she did not doubt that he was coming to see
her, and soon. That was a definite and very different idea from the dim
belief that he would come some time. He had signed himself hers
"faithfully."
It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it
raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one
hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to think
that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; he
had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that. Therefore
she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have in
dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our
existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was
conscious of being judicially reflective.
But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman
of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her
mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what was
the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his
principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.
Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose
personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so
dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her
simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did not
go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking in
these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing that
he were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some one
solid occupation.
In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,
was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,
any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the
day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper
of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become
millionaires.
"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of the
thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."
"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."
"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Is
there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their
little property?"
"Yes; the law."
"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something
goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will
give you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,
or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"
"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you let
your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people who
want it. You can put it in the ground."
"But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground will
tax it till there is nothing left for me."
"That is equality."
"But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or lands,
while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be a public
official whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I cannot afford
to enforce when I am wronged?"
"The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or only
unfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if you
are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it
needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom
the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer
costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern
luxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will find
it economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out of
it, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about the
law, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It is
like any other commodity."
"You mean to say," I asked, "that the lawyer takes what the operator
leaves?"
"Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice against
lawyers. They must live. There is no nobler occupation than the
application of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble is
that public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and estimates
the lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the aid of a
lawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.
"Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees."
"It seems to me," said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallel
lines, "that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one man
can get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods by
which he gets it."
"That never yet could be set," Morgan replied. "It is impossible for any
number of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolute
freedom of acquisition, trusting to circumstances, misfortune, and death
to knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism."
"Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly come
by?"
"That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean a
process the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration for
others, I doubt. But property accumulates by itself almost. Many a man
who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have
investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and
has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable,
using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd."
"Mr. Morgan," suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an
uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, "what is railroad
wrecking?"
"Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,' as
they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays
dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. They
contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it,
either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus; they
let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even
pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to
accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then they
throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it with
some other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them in
stealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look round
for another road."
"And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of
it?"
"Naturally, the little fish get swallowed."
"It is infamous," said Margaret--"infamous! And men go to work to do
this, to get other people's property, in cool blood?"
"I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business."
"What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank and
robbing it?" she asked, hot with indignation.
"Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement."
"It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a
wrecker should steal your money that way?"
"I was thinking of that."
I never saw Margaret more disturbed--out of all proportion, I thought, to
the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.
"Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like
that?" she asked.
"Oh, no," I said. "Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally
called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate
business. It is a common way of making a fortune."
"You see, Margaret," Morgan explained, "when people in trade buy
anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it."
"It seems to me," Margaret replied, more calmly, "that a great deal of
what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money,
and doesn't help anybody or produce anything."
"Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation."
"And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?"
"Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves
from stagnation."
"I cannot see any good in it," Margaret persisted. "No one seems to have
the things he buys or sells. I don't understand it."
"That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.
Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith and
credit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay the
difference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth."
"I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that betting."
"Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is really
paying for a difference of knowledge or opinion."
"Would you buy stocks that way?"
"What way?"
"Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it, not
really having any stock at all."
"I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if I
could make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle."
"Well," said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, "I don't
understand business morality."
"Nobody does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems to
be suspended by a more than two-thirds vote."
It was by such inquiries, leading to many talks of this sort, that
Margaret was groping in her mind for the solution of what might become to
her a personal question. Consciously she did not doubt Henderson's
integrity or his honor, but she was perplexed about the world of which
she had recently had a glimpse, and it was impossible to separate him
from it. Subjected to an absolutely new experience, stirred as her heart
had never been before by any man--a fact which at once irritated and
pleased her--she was following the law of her own nature, while she was
still her own mistress, to ponder these things and to bring her reason to
the guidance of her feeling. And it is probable that she did not at all
know the strength of her feeling, or have any conception of the real
power of love, and how little the head has to do with the great passion
of life, the intensity of which the poets have never in the least
exaggerated. If she thought of Mr. Lyon occasionally, of his white face
and pitiful look of suffering that day, she could not, after all, make it
real or permanently serious. Indeed, she was sure that no emotion could
so master her. And yet she looked forward to Henderson's coming with a
sort of nervous apprehension, amounting almost to dread.
XI
It was the susceptible time of the year for plants, for birds, for maids:
all innocent natural impulses respond to the subtle influence of spring.
One may well gauge his advance in selfishness, worldliness, and sin by
his loss of this annual susceptibility, by the failure of this sweet
appeal to touch his heart. One must be very far gone if some note of it
does not for a moment bring back the tenderest recollections of the days
of joyous innocence.
Even the city, with its mass of stone and brick, rectangles, straight
lines, dust, noise, and fever of activity, is penetrated by this divine
suggestion of the renewal of life. You can scarcely open a window without
letting in a breath of it; the south wind, the twitter of a sparrow, the
rustle of leaves in the squares, the smell of the earth and of some
struggling plant in the area, the note of a distant hand-organ softened
by distance, are begetting a longing for youth, for green fields, for
love. As Carmen walked down the avenue with Mr. Lyon on a spring morning
she almost made herself believe that an unworldly life with this
simple-hearted gentleman--when he should come into his title and
estate--would be more to her liking than the most brilliant success in
place and power with Henderson. Unfortunately the spring influence also
suggested the superior attractiveness of the only man who had ever taken
her shallow fancy. And unfortunately the same note of nature suggested to
Mr. Lyon the contrast of this artificial piece of loveliness with the
domestic life of which he dreamed.
As for Margaret, she opened her heart to the spring without reserve. It
was May. The soft maples had a purple tinge, the chestnuts showed color,
the apple-trees were in bloom (all the air was full of their perfume),
the blackbirds were chattering in convention in the tall oaks, the bright
leaves and the flowering shrubs were alive with the twittering and
singing of darting birds. The soft, fleecy clouds, hovering as over a
world just created, seemed to make near and participant in the scene the
delicate blue of the sky. Margaret--I remember the morning--was standing
on her piazza, as I passed through the neighborhood drive, with a spray
of apple-blossoms in her hand. For the moment she seemed to embody all
the maiden purity of the scene, all its promise. I said, laughing:
"We shall have to have you painted as spring."
"But spring isn't painted at all," she replied, holding up the apple
--blossoms, and coming down the piazza with a dancing step.
"And so it won't last. We want something permanent," I was beginning to
say, when a carriage passed, going to our house. "I think that must be
Henderson."
"Ah!" she exclaimed. Her sunny face clouded at once, and she turned to go
in as I hurried away.
It was Mr. Henderson, and there was at least pretense enough of business
to occupy us, with Mr. Morgan, the greater part of the day. It was not
till late in the afternoon that Henderson appeared to remember that
Margaret was in the neighborhood, and spoke of his intention of calling.
My wife pointed out the way to him across the grounds, and watched him
leisurely walking among the trees till he was out of sight.
"What an agreeable man Mr. Henderson is!" she said, turning to me; "most
companionable; and yet--and yet, my dear, I'm glad he is not my husband.
You suit me very well." There was an air of conviction about this remark,
as if it were the result of deep reflection and comparison, and it was
emphasized by the little possessory act of readjusting my necktie--one
of the most subtle of female flatteries.
"But who wanted him to be your husband?" I asked. "Married women have the
oddest habit of going about the world picking out the men they would not
like to have married. Do they need continually to justify themselves?"
"No; they congratulate themselves. You never can understand."
"I confess I cannot. My first thought about an attractive woman whose
acquaintance I make is not that I am glad I did not marry her."
"I dare say not. You are all inconsistent, you men. But you are the least
so of any man in the world, I do believe."
It would be difficult to say whether the spring morning seemed more or
less glorious to Margaret when she went indoors, but its serenity was
gone.
It was like the premonition in nature of a change. She put the apple
blossoms in water and placed the jug on the table, turning it about half
a dozen times, moving her head from side to side to get the effect. When
it was exactly right, she said to her aunt, who sat sewing in the
bay-window, in a perfectly indifferent tone, "Mr. Fairchild just passed
here, and said that Mr. Henderson had come."
"Ah!" Her aunt did not lift her eyes from her work, or appear to attach
the least importance to this tremendous piece of news. Margaret was
annoyed at what seemed to her an assumed indifference. Her nerves were
quivering with the knowledge that he had arrived, that he was in the next
house, that he might be here any moment--the man who had entered into her
whole life--and the announcement was no more to her aunt than if she had
said it rained. She was provoked at herself that she should be so
disturbed, yes, annoyed, at his proximity. She wished he had not come
--not today, at any rate. She looked about for something to do, and began
to rearrange this and that trifle in the sitting-room, which she had
perfectly arranged once before in the morning, moving about here and
there in a rather purposeless manner, until her aunt looked up and for a
moment followed her movements till Margaret left the room. In her own
chamber she sat by the window and tried to think, but there was no
orderly mental process; in vain she tried to run over in her mind the
past month and all her reflections and wise resolves. She heard the call
of the birds, she inhaled the odor of the new year, she was conscious of
all that was gracious and inviting in the fresh scene, but in her
sub-consciousness there was only one thought--he was there, he was
coming. She took up her sewing, but the needle paused in the stitch, and
she found herself looking away across the lawn to the hills; she took up
a book, but the words had no meaning, read and reread them as she would.
He is there, he is coming. And what of it? Why should she be so
disturbed? She was uncommitted, she was mistress of her own actions. Had
she not been coolly judging his conduct? She despised herself for being
so nervous and unsettled. If he was coming, why did he not come? Why was
he waiting so long? She arose impatiently and went down-stairs. There was
a necessity of doing something.
"Is there anything that you want from town, auntie?"
"Nothing that I know of. Are you going in?"
"No, unless you have an errand. It is such a fine day that it seems a
pity to stay indoors."
"Well, I would walk if I were you." But she did not go; she went instead
to her room. He might come any moment. She ought not to run away; and yet
she wished she were away. He said he was coming on business. Was it not,
then, a pretense? She felt humiliated in the idea of waiting for him if
the business were not a pretense.
How insensible men are! What a mere subordinate thing to them in life is
the love of a woman! Yes, evidently business was more important to him
than anything else. He must know that she was waiting; and she blushed to
herself at the very possibility that he should think such a thing. She
was not waiting. It was lunch-time. She excused herself. In the next
moment she was angry that she had not gone down as usual. It was time for
him to come. He would certainly come immediately after lunch. She would
not see him. She hoped never to see him. She rose in haste, put on her
hat, put it on carefully, turning and returning before the glass,
selected fresh gloves, and ran down-stairs.
"I'm going, auntie, for a walk to town."
The walk was a long one. She came back tired. It was late in the
afternoon. Her aunt was quietly reading. She needed to ask her nothing:
Mr. Henderson had not been there. Why had he written to her?
"Oh, the Fairchilds want us to come over to dinner," said Miss Forsythe,
without looking up.
"I hope you will go, auntie. I sha'n't mind being alone."
"Why? It's perfectly informal. Mr. Henderson happens to be there."
"I'm too stupid. But you must go. Mr. Henderson, in New York, expressed
the greatest desire to make your acquaintance."
Miss Forsythe smiled. "I suppose he has come up on purpose. But, dear,
you must go to chaperon me. It would hardly be civil not to go, when you
knew Mr. Henderson in New York, and the Fairchilds want to make it
agreeable for him."
"Why, auntie, it is just a business visit. I'm too tired to make the
effort. It must be this spring weather."
Perhaps it was. It is so unfortunate that the spring, which begets so
many desires, brings the languor that defeats their execution. But there
is a limit to the responsibility even of spring for a woman's moods. Just
as Margaret spoke she saw, through the open window, Henderson coming
across the lawn, walking briskly, but evidently not inattentive to the
charm of the landscape. It was his springy step, his athletic figure,
and, as he came nearer, the joyous anticipation in his face. And it was
so sudden, so unexpected--the vision so long looked for! There was no
time for flight, had she wanted to avoid him; he was on the piazza; he
was at the open door. Her hand went quickly to her heart to still the
rapid flutter, which might be from pain and might be from joy--she could
not tell. She had imagined their possible meeting so many times, and it
was not at all like this. She ought to receive him coldly, she ought to
receive him kindly, she ought to receive him indifferently. But how real
he was, how handsome he was! If she could have obeyed the impulse of the
moment I am not sure but she would have fled, and cast herself face
downward somewhere, and cried a little and thanked God for him. He was in
the room. In his manner there was no hesitation, in his expression no
uncertainty. His face beamed with pleasure, and there was so much open
admiration in his eyes that Margaret, conscious of it to her heart's
core, feared that her aunt would notice it. And she met him calmly
enough, frankly enough. The quickness with which a woman can pull herself
together under such circumstances is testimony to her superior fibre.
"I've been looking across here ever since morning," he said, as soon as
the hand-shaking and introduction were over, "and I've only this minute
been released." There was no air of apology in this, but a delicate
intimation of impatience at the delay. And still, what an unconscious
brute a man is!
"I thought perhaps you had returned," said Margaret, "until my aunt was
just telling me we were asked to dine with you."
Henderson gave her a quick glance. Was it possible she thought he could
go away without seeing her?
"Yes, and I was commissioned to bring you over when you are ready." "I
will not keep you waiting long, Mr. Henderson," interposed Miss Forsythe,
out of the goodness of her heart. "My niece has been taking a long walk,
and this debilitating spring weather--"
"Oh, since the sun has gone away, I think I'm quite up to the exertion,
since you wish it, auntie," a speech that made Henderson stare again,
wholly unable to comprehend the reason of an indirection which he could
feel--he who had been all day impatient for this moment. There was a
little talk about the country and the city at this season, mainly
sustained by Miss Forsythe and Henderson, and then he was left alone. "Of
course you should go, Margaret," said her aunt, as they went upstairs;
"it would not be at all the thing for me to leave you here. And what a
fine, manly, engaging fellow Mr. Henderson is!"
"Yes, he acts very much like a man;" and Margaret was gone into her room.
Go? There was not force enough in the commonwealth, without calling out
the militia, to keep Margaret from going to the dinner. She stopped a
moment in the middle of her chamber to think. She had almost forgotten
how he looked--his eyes, his smile. Dear me! how the birds were singing
outside, and how fresh the world was! And she would not hurry. He could
wait. No doubt he would wait now any length of time for her. He was in
the house, in the room below, perhaps looking out of the window, perhaps
reading, perhaps spying about at her knick-knacks--she would like to look
in at the door a moment to see what he was doing. Of course he was here
to see her, and all the business was a pretext. As she sat a moment upon
the edge of her bed reflecting what to put on, she had a little pang that
she had been doing him injustice in her thought. But it was only for an
instant. He was here. She was not in the least flurried. Indeed, her
mental processes were never clearer than when she settled upon her simple
toilet, made as it was in every detail with the sure instinct of a woman
who dresses for her lover. Heavens! what a miserable day it had been,
what a rebellious day! He ought to be punished for it somehow. Perhaps
the rose she put in her hair was part of the punishment. But he should
not see how happy she was; she would be civil, and just a little
reserved; it was so like a man to make a woman wait all day and then
think he could smooth it all over simply by appearing.
But somehow in Henderson's presence these little theories of conduct did
not apply. He was too natural, direct, unaffected, his pleasure in being
with her was so evident! He seemed to brush aside the little defenses and
subterfuges. There was this about him that appeared to her admirable, and
in contrast with her own hesitating indirection, that whatever he
wanted--money, or position, or the love of woman--he went straight to his
object with unconsciousness that failure was possible. Even in walking
across the grounds in the soft sunset light, and chatting easily, their
relations seemed established on a most natural basis, and Margaret found
herself giving way to the simple enjoyment of the hour. She was not only
happy, but her spirits rose to inexpressible gayety, which ran into the
humor of badinage and a sort of spiritual elation, in which all things
seemed possible. Perhaps she recognized in herself, what Henderson saw in
her. And with it all there was an access of tenderness for her aunt, the
dear thing whose gentle life appeared so colorless.
I had never seen Margaret so radiant as at the dinner; her high spirits
infected the table, and the listening and the talking were of the best
that the company could give. I remembered it afterwards, not from
anything special that was said, but from its flow of high animal spirits,
and the electric responsive mood everyone was in; no topic carried too
far, and the chance seriousness setting off the sparkling comments on
affairs. Henderson's talk had the notable flavor of direct contact with
life, and very little of the speculative and reflective tone of Morgan's,
who was always generalizing and theorizing about it. He had just come
from the West, and his off-hand sketches of men had a special cynicism,
not in the least condemnatory, mere good-natured acceptance, and in
contrast to Morgan's moralizing and rather pitying cynicism. It struck me
that he did not believe in his fellows as much as Morgan did; but I
fancied that Margaret only saw in his attitude a tolerant knowledge of
the world.
"Are the people on the border as bad as they are represented?" she asked.
"Certainly not much worse than they represent themselves," he replied; "I
suppose the difference is that men feel less restraint there."
"It is something more than that," added Morgan. "There is a sort of
drift-wood of adventure and devil-may-care-ism that civilization throws
in advance of itself; but that isn't so bad as the slag it manufactures
in the cities."
"I remember you said, Mr. Morgan, that men go West to get rid of their
past," said Margaret.
"As New Yorkers go to Europe to get rid of their future?" Henderson
inquired, catching the phrase.
"Yes"--Morgan turned to Margaret--"doubtless there is a satisfaction
sometimes in placing the width of a continent between a man and what he
has done. I've thought that one of the most popular verses in the
Psalter, on the border, must be the one that says--you will know if I
quote it right 'Look how wide also the East is from the West; so far hath
He set our sins from us.'"
"That is dreadful," exclaimed Margaret. "To think of you spending your
time in the service picking out passages to fit other people!"
"It sounds as if you had manufactured it," was Henderson's comment.
"No; that quiet Mr. Lyon pointed it out to me when we were talking about
Montana. He had been there."
"By-the-way, Mr. Henderson," my wife asked, "do you know what has become
of Mr. Lyon?"
"I believe he is about to go home."
"I fancied Miss Eschelle might have something to say about that," Morgan
remarked.
"Perhaps, if she were asked. But Mr. Lyon appeared rather indifferent to
American attractions."
Margaret looked quickly at Henderson as he said this, and then ventured,
a little slyly, "She seemed to appreciate his goodness."
"Yes; Miss Eschelle has an eye for goodness."
This was said without change of countenance, but it convinced the
listener that Carmen was understood.
"And yet," said Margaret, with a little air of temerity, "you seem to be
very good friends."
"Oh, she is very charitable; she sees, I suppose, what is good in me; and
I'll spare you the trouble of remarking that she must necessarily be very
sharp-sighted."
"And I'm not going to destroy your illusion by telling you her real
opinion of you," Margaret retorted.
Henderson begged to know what it was, but Margaret evaded the question by
new raillery. What did she care at the moment what Carmen thought of
Henderson? What--did either of them care what they were saying, so long
as there was some personal flavor in the talk! Was it not enough to talk
to each other, to see each other?
As we sat afterwards upon the piazza with our cigars, inhaling the odor
of the apple blossoms, and yielding ourselves, according to our age, to
the influence of the mild night, Margaret was in the high spirits which
accompany the expectation of bliss, without the sobering effect of its
responsibility. Love itself is very serious, but the overture is full of
freakish gayety. And it was all gayety that night. We all constituted
ourselves a guard of honor to Miss Forsythe and Margaret when they went
to their cottage, and there was a merry leave-taking in the moonlight. To
be sure, Margaret walked with Henderson, and they lagged a little behind,
but I had no reason to suppose that they were speaking of the stars, or
that they raised the ordinary question of their being inhabited. I doubt
if they saw the stars at all. How one remembers little trifles, that
recur like the gay bird notes of the opening scenes that are repeated in
the tragedy of the opera! I can see Margaret now, on some bantering
pretext, running back, after we had said good-night, to give Henderson
the blush-rose she had worn in her hair. How charming the girl was in
this freakish action!
"Do you think he is good enough for her?" asked my wife, when we were
alone.
"Who is good enough for whom?" I said, a yawn revealing my want of
sentiment.
"Don't be stupid. You are not so blind as you pretend."
"Well, if I am not so blind as I pretend, though I did not pretend to be
blind, I suppose that is mainly her concern."
"But I wish she had cared for Lyon."
"Perhaps Lyon did not care for her," I suggested.
"You never see anything. Lyon was a noble fellow."
"I didn't deny that. But how was I to know about Lyon, my dear? I never
heard you say that you were glad he wasn't your husband."
"Don't be silly. I think Henderson has very serious intentions."
"I hope he isn't frivolous," I said.
"Well, you are. It isn't a joking matter--and you pretend to be so fond
of Margaret!"
"So that is another thing I pretend? What do you want me to do? Which one
do you want me to make my enemy by telling him or her that the other
isn't good enough?"
"I don't want you to do anything, except to be reasonable, and
sympathize."
"Oh, I sympathize all round. I assure you I've no doubt you are quite
right." And in this way I crawled out of the discussion, as usual.
What a pretty simile it is, comparing life to a river, because rivers are
so different! There are the calm streams that flow eagerly from the
youthful sources, join a kindred flood, and go placidly to the sea, only
broadening and deepening and getting very muddy at times, but without a
rapid or a fall. There are others that flow carelessly in the upper
sunshine, begin to ripple and dance, then run swiftly, and rush into
rapids in which there is no escape (though friends stand weeping and
imploring on the banks) from the awful plunge of the cataract. Then there
is the tumult and the seething, the exciting race and rage through the
canon, the whirlpools and the passions of love and revelations of
character, and finally, let us hope, the happy emergence into the lake of
a serene life. And the more interesting rivers are those that have
tumults and experiences.
I knew well enough before the next day was over that it was too late for
the rescue of Margaret or Henderson. They were in the rapids, and would
have rejected any friendly rope thrown to draw them ashore. And
notwithstanding the doubts of my wife, I confess that I had so much
sympathy with the genuineness of it that I enjoyed this shock of two
strong natures rushing to their fate. Was it too sudden? Do two living
streams hesitate when they come together? When they join they join, and
mingle and reconcile themselves afterwards. It is only canals that flow
languidly in parallel lines, and meet, if they meet at all, by the
orderly contrivance of a lock.
In the morning the two were off for a stroll. There is a hill from which
a most extensive prospect is had of the city, the teeming valley, with a
score of villages and innumerable white spires, of forests and meadows
and broken mountain ranges. It was a view that Margaret the night before
had promised to show Henderson, that he might see what to her was the
loveliest landscape in the world. Whether they saw the view I do not
know. But I know the rock from which it is best seen, and could fancy
Margaret sitting there, with her face turned towards it and her hands
folded in her lap, and Henderson sitting, half turned away from it,
looking in her face. There is an apple orchard just below. It was in
bloom, and all the invitation of spring was in the air. That he saw all
the glorious prospect reflected in her mobile face I do not doubt--all
the nobility and tenderness of it. If I knew the faltering talk in that
hour of growing confidence and expectation, I would not repeat it.
Henderson lunched at the Forsythe's, and after lunch he had some talk
with Miss Forsythe. It must have been of an exciting nature to her, for,
immediately after, that good woman came over in a great flutter, and was
closeted with my wife, who at the end of the interview had an air of
mysterious importance. It was evidently a woman's day, and my advice was
not wanted, even if my presence was tolerated. All I heard my wife say
through the opening door, as the consultation ended, was, "I hope she
knows her own mind fully before anything is decided."
As to the objects of this anxiety, they were upon the veranda of the
cottage, quite unconscious of the necessity of digging into their own
minds. He was seated, and she was leaning against the railing on which
the honeysuckle climbed, pulling a flower in pieces.
"It is such a short time I have known you," she was saying, as if in
apology for her own feeling.
"Yes, in one way;" and he leaned forward, and broke his sentence with a
little laugh. "I think I must have known you in some pre-existent state."
"Perhaps. And yet, in another way, it seems long--a whole month, you
know." And the girl laughed a little in her turn.
"It was the longest month I ever knew, after you left the city."
"Was it? I oughtn't to have said that first. But do you know, Mr.
Henderson, you seem totally different from any other man I ever knew."
That this was a profound and original discovery there could be no doubt,
from the conviction with which it was announced. "I felt from the first
that I could trust you."
"I wish"--and there was genuine feeling in the tone--"I were worthier of
such a generous trust."
There was a wistful look in her face--timidity, self-depreciation,
worship--as Henderson rose and stood near her, and she looked up while he
took the broken flower from her hand. There was but one answer to this,
and in spite of the open piazza and the all-observant, all-revealing day,
it might have been given; but at the moment Miss Forsythe was seen
hurrying towards them through the shrubbery. She came straight to where
they stood, with an air of New England directness and determination. One
hand she gave to Henderson, the other to Margaret. She essayed to speak,
but tears were in her eyes, and her lips trembled; the words would not
come. She regarded them for an instant with all the overflowing affection
of a quarter of a century of repression, and then quickly turned and went
in. In a moment they followed her. Heaven go with them!
After Henderson had made his hasty adieus at our house and gone, before
the sun was down, Margaret came over. She came swiftly into the room,
gave me a kiss as I rose to greet her, with a delightful impersonality,
as if she owed a debt somewhere and must pay it at once--we men who are
so much left out of these affairs have occasionally to thank Heaven for a
merciful moment--seized my wife, and dragged her to her room.
"I couldn't wait another moment," she said, as she threw herself on my
wife's bosom in a passion of tears. "I am so happy! he is so noble, and I
love him so!" And she sobbed as if it were the greatest calamity in the
world. And then, after a little, in reply to a question--for women are
never more practical than in such a crisis: "Oh, no--not for a long,
long, long time. Not before autumn."
And the girl looked, through her glad tears, as if she expected to be
admired for this heroism. And I have no doubt she was.
XII
Well, that was another success. The world is round, and like a ball seems
swinging in the air, and swinging very pleasantly, thought Henderson, as
he stepped on board the train that evening. The world is truly what you
make it, and Henderson was determined to make it agreeable. His
philosophy was concise, and might be hung up, as a motto: Get all you
can, and don't fret about what you cannot get.
He went into the smoking compartment, and sat musing by the window for
some time before he lit his cigar, feeling a glow of happiness that was
new in his experience. The country was charming at twilight, but he was
little conscious of that. What he saw distinctly was Margaret's face,
trustful and wistful, looking up into his as she bade him goodby. What he
was vividly conscious of was being followed, enveloped, by a woman's
love.
"You will write, dear, the moment you get there, will you not? I am so
afraid of accidents," she had said.
"Why, I will telegraph, sweet," he had replied, quite gayly.
"Will you? Telegraph? I never had that sort of a message." It seemed a
very wonderful thing that he should use the public wire for this purpose,
and she looked at him with new admiration.
"Are you timid about the train?" he asked.
"No. I never think of it. I never thought of it for myself; but this is
different."
"Oh, I see." He put his arm round her and looked down into her eyes. This
was a humorous suggestion to him, who spent half his time on the trains.
"I think I'll take out an accident policy."
"Don't say that. But you men are so reckless. Promise you won't stand on
the platform, and won't get off while the train is in motion, and all the
rest of the directions," she said, laughing a little with him; "and you
will be careful?"
"I'll take such care of myself as I never did before, I promise. I never
felt of so much consequence in my life."
"You'll think me silly. But you know, don't you, dear?" She put a hand on
each shoulder, and pushing him back, studied his face. "You are all the
world. And only to think, day before yesterday, I didn't think of the
trains at all."
To have one look like that from a woman! To carry it with him! Henderson
still forgot to light his cigar.
"Hello, Rodney!"
"Ah, Hollowell! I thought you were in Kansas City."
The new-comer was a man of middle age, thick set, with rounded shoulders,
deep chest, heavy neck, iron-gray hair close cut, gray whiskers cropped
so as to show his strong jaw, blue eyes that expressed at once resolution
and good-nature.
"Well, how's things? Been up to fix the Legislature?"
"No; Perkins is attending to that," said Henderson, rather indifferently,
like a man awakened out of a pleasant dream. "Don't seem to need much
fixing. The public are fond of parallels."
Hollowell laughed. "I guess that's so--till they get 'em."
"Or don't get them," Henderson added. And then both laughed.
"It looks as if it would go through this time. Bemis says the C. D.'s
badly scared. They'll have to come down lively."
"I shouldn't wonder. By-the-way, look in tomorrow. I've got something to
show you."
Henderson lit his cigar, and they both puffed in silence for some
moments.
"By-the-way, did I ever show you this?" Hollowell took from his
breast-pocket a handsome morocco case, and handed it to his companion. "I
never travel without that. It's better than an accident policy."
Henderson unfolded the case, and saw seven photographs--a showy-looking
handsome woman in lace and jewels, and six children, handsome like their
mother, the whole group with the photographic look of prosperity.
Henderson looked at it as if it had been a mirror of his own destiny, and
expressed his admiration.
"Yes, it's hard to beat," Hollowell confessed, with a soft look in his
face. "It's not for sale. Seven figures wouldn't touch it." He looked at
it lovingly before he put it up, and then added: "Well, there's a figure
for each, Rodney, and a big nest-egg for the old woman besides. There's
nothing like it, old man. You'd better come in." And he put his hand
affectionately on Henderson's knee.
Jeremiah Hollowell--commonly known as Jerry--was a remarkable man. Thirty
years ago he had come to the city from Maine as a "hand" on a coast
schooner, obtained employment in a railroad yard, then as a freight
conductor, gone West, become a contractor, in which position a lucky hit
set him on the road of the unscrupulous accumulation of property. He was
now a railway magnate, the president of a system, a manipulator of
dexterity and courage. All this would not have come about if his big head
had not been packed with common-sense brains, and he had not had uncommon
will and force of character. Success had developed the best side of him,
the family side; and the worst side of him--a brutal determination to
increase his big fortune. He was not hampered by any scruples in
business, but he had the good-sense to deal squarely with his friends
when he had distinctly agreed to do so.
Henderson did not respond to the matrimonial suggestion; it was not
possible for him to vulgarize his own affair by hinting it to such a man
as Hollowell; but they soon fell into serious talk about schemes in which
they were both interested. This talk so absorbed Henderson that after
they had reached the city he had walked some blocks towards his lodging
before he recalled his promise about the message. On his table he found a
note from Carmen bidding him to dinner informally--an invitation which he
had no difficulty in declining on account of a previous engagement. And
then he went to his club, and passed a cheerful evening. Why not? There
was nothing melancholy about the young fellows in the smoking-room, who
liked a good story and the latest gossip, and were attracted to the
society of Henderson, who was open-handed and full of animal spirits, and
above all had a reputation for success, and for being on the inside of
affairs. There is nowhere else so much wisdom and such understanding of
life as in a city club of young fellows, who have their experience still,
for the most part, before them. Henderson was that night in great
"force"--as the phrase is. His companions thought he had made a lucky
turn, and he did not tell them that he had won the love of the finest
girl in the world, who was at that moment thinking of him as fondly as he
was thinking of her--but this was the subconsciousness of his gayety.
Late at night he wrote her a long letter--an honest letter of love and
admiration, which warmed into the tenderness of devotion as it went on; a
letter that she never parted with all her life long; but he left a
description of the loneliness of his evening without her to her
imagination.
It was for Margaret also a happy evening, but not a calm one, and not
gay. She was swept away by a flood of emotions. She wanted to be alone,
to think it over, every item of the short visit, every look, every tone.
Was it all true? The great change made her tremble: of the future she
dared scarcely think. She was restless, but not restless as before; she
could not be calm in such a great happiness. And then the wonder of it,
that he should choose her of all others--he who knew the world so well,
and must have known so many women. She followed him on his journey,
thinking what he was doing now, and now, and now. She would have given
the world to see him just for a moment, to look in his eyes and be sure
again, to have him say that little word once more: there was a kind of
pain in her heart, the separation was so cruel; it had been over two
hours now. More than once in the evening she ran down to the
sitting-room, where her aunt was pretending to be absorbed in a book, to
kiss her, to pet her, to smooth her grayish hair and pat her cheek, and
get her to talk about her girlhood days. She was so happy that tears were
in her eyes half the time. At nine o'clock there was a pull at the bell
that threatened to drag the wire out, and an insignificant little urchin
appeared with a telegram, which frightened Miss Forsythe, and seemed to
Margaret to drop out of heaven. Such an absurd thing to do at night, said
the aunt, and then she kissed Margaret, and laughed a little, and
declared that things had come to a queer pass when people made love by
telegraph. There wasn't any love in the telegram, Margaret said; but she
knew better--the sending word of his arrival was a marvelous exhibition
of thoughtfulness and constancy.
And then she led her aunt on to talk of Mr. Henderson, to give her
impression, how he looked, what she really thought of him, and so on, and
so on.
There was not much to say, but it could be said over and over again in
various ways. It was the one night of the world, and her overwrought
feeling sought relief. It would not be so again. She would be more
reticent and more coquettish about her lover, but now it was all so new
and strange.
That night when the girl went to sleep the telegram was under her pillow,
and it seemed to throb with a thousand messages, as if it felt the
pulsation of the current that sent it.
The prospective marriage of the budding millionaire Rodney Henderson was
a society paper item in less than a week--the modern method of publishing
the banns. This was accompanied by a patronizing reference to the pretty
school-ma'am, who was complimented upon her good-fortune in phrases so
neatly turned as to give Henderson the greatest offense, and leave him no
remedy, since nothing could have better suited the journal than further
notoriety. He could not remember that he had spoken of it to any one
except the Eschelles, to whom his relations made the communication a
necessity, and he suspected Carmen, without, however, guessing that she
was a habitual purveyor of the town gossiper.
"It is a shameful impertinence," she burst out, introducing the subject
herself, when he called to see her. "I would horsewhip the editor." Her
indignation was so genuine, and she took his side with such warm good
comradeship, that his suspicions vanished for a moment.
"What good?" he answered, cooling down at the sight of her rage. "It is
true, we are to be married, and she has taught school. I can't drag her
name into a row about it. Perhaps she never will see it."
"Oh dear! dear me! what have I done?" the girl cried, with an accent of
contrition. "I never thought of that. I was so angry that I cut it out
and put it in the letter that was to contain nothing but congratulations,
and told her how perfectly outrageous I thought it. How stupid!" and
there was a world of trouble in her big dark eyes, while she looked up
penitently, as if to ask his forgiveness for a great crime.
"Well, it cannot be helped," Henderson said, with a little touch of
sympathy for Carmen's grief. "Those who know her will think it simply
malicious, and the others will not think of it a second time."
"But I cannot forgive myself for my stupidity. I'm not sure but I'd
rather you'd think me wicked than stupid," she continued, with the smile
in her eyes that most men found attractive. "I confess--is that very
bad?--that I feel it more for you than for her. But" ( she thought she
saw a shade in his face) "I warn you, if you are not very nice, I shall
transfer my affections to her."
The girl was in her best mood, with the manner of a confiding, intimate
friend. She talked about Margaret, but not too much, and a good deal more
about Henderson and his future, not laying too great stress upon the
marriage, as if it were, in fact, only an incident in his career,
contriving always to make herself appear as a friend, who hadn't many
illusions or much romance, to be sure, but who could always be relied on
in any mood or any perplexity, and wouldn't be frightened or very severe
at any confidences. She posed as a woman who could make allowances, and
whose friendship would be no check or hinderance. This was conveyed in
manner as much as in words, and put Henderson quite at his ease. He was
not above the weakness of liking the comradeship of a woman of whom he
was not afraid, a woman to whom he could say anything, a woman who could
make allowances. Perhaps he was hardly conscious of this. He knew Carmen
better than she thought he knew her, and he couldn't approve of her as a
wife; and yet the fact was that she never gave him any moral worries.
"Yes," she said, when the talk drifted that way, "the chrysalis earl has
gone. I think that mamma is quite inconsolable. She says she doesn't
understand girls, or men, or anything, these days."
"Do you?" asked Henderson, lightly.
"I? No. I'm an agnostic--except in religion. Have you got it into your
head, my friend, that I ever fancied Mr. Lyon?"
"Not for himself--" began Henderson, mischievously.
"That will do." She stopped him. "Or that he ever had any intention--"
"I don't see how he could resist such--"
"Stuff! See here, Mr. Rodney!" The girl sprang up, seized a plaque from
the table, held it aloft in one hand, took half a dozen fascinating,
languid steps, advancing and retreating with the grace of a Nautch girl,
holding her dress with the other hand so as to allow a free movement. "Do
you think I'd ever do that for John the Lyon's head on a charger?"
Then her mood changed to the domestic, as she threw herself into an
easy-chair and said: "After all, I'm rather sorry he has gone. He was a
man you could trust; that is, if you wanted to trust anybody--I wish I
had been made good."
When Henderson bade her good-night it was with the renewed impression
that she was a very diverting comrade.
"I'm sort of sorry for you," she said, and her eyes were not so serious
as to offend, as she gave him her hand, "for when you are married, you
know, as the saying is, you'll want some place to spend your evenings."
The audacity of the remark was quite obscured in the innocent frankness
and sweetness of her manner.
What Henderson had to show Hollowell in his office had been of a nature
greatly to interest that able financier. It was a project that would have
excited the sympathy of Carmen, but Henderson did not speak of it to
her--though he had found that she was a safe deposit of daring schemes in
general--on account of a feeling of loyalty to Margaret, to whom he had
never mentioned it in any of his daily letters. The scheme made a great
deal of noise, later on, when it came to the light of consummation in
legislatures and in courts, both civil and criminal; but its magnitude
and success added greatly to Henderson's reputation as a bold and
fortunate operator, and gave him that consideration which always attaches
to those who command millions of money, and have the nerve to go
undaunted through the most trying crises. I am anticipating by saying
that it absolutely ruined thousands of innocent people, caused widespread
strikes and practical business paralysis over a large region; but those
things were regarded as only incidental to a certain sort of development,
and did not impair the business standing, and rather helped the social
position, of the two or three men who counted their gains by millions in
the operation. It furnished occupation and gave good fees to a multitude
of lawyers, and was dignified by the anxious consultation of many learned
judges. A moralist, if he were poor and pessimistic, might have put the
case in a line, and taken that line from the Mosaic decalogue (which was
not intended for this new dispensation); but it was involved in such a
cloud of legal technicalities, and took on such an aspect of enterprise
and development of resources, and what not, that the general public mind
was completely befogged about it. I am charitable enough to suppose that
if the scheme had failed, the public conscience is so tender that there
would have been a question of Henderson's honesty. But it did not fail.
Of this scheme, however, we knew nothing at the time in Brandon.
Henderson was never in better spirits, never more agreeable, and it did
not need inquiry to convince one that he was never so prosperous. He was
often with us, in flying visits, and I can well remember that his coming
and the expectation of it gave a kind of elation to the summer--that and
Margaret's supreme and sunny happiness. Even my wife admitted that it was
on both sides a love-match, and could urge nothing against it except the
woman's instinct that made her shrink from the point of ever thinking of
him as a husband for herself, which seemed to me a perfectly reasonable
feeling under all the circumstances.
The summer--or what we call summer in the North, which is usually a
preparation for warm weather, ending in a preparation for cold weather
--seemed to me very short--but I have noticed that each summer is a
little shorter than the preceding one. If Henderson had wanted to gain
the confidence of my wife he could not have done so more effectually than
he did in making us the confidants of a little plan he had in the city,
which was a profound secret to the party most concerned. This was the
purchase and furnishing of a house, and we made many clandestine visits
with him to town in the early autumn in furtherance of his plan. He was
intent on a little surprise, and when I once hinted to him that women
liked to have a hand in making the home they were to occupy, he said he
thought that my wife knew Margaret's taste--and besides, he added, with a
smile, "it will be only temporary; I should like her, if she chooses, to
build and furnish a house to suit herself." In any one else this would
have seemed like assumption, but with Henderson it was only the simple
belief in his career.
We were still more surprised when we came to see the temporary home that
Henderson had selected, the place where the bride was to alight, and look
about her for such a home as would suit her growing idea of expanding
fortune and position. It was one of the old-fashioned mansions on
Washington Square, built at a time when people attached more importance
to room and comfort than to outside display--a house that seemed to have
traditions of hospitality and of serene family life. It was being
thoroughly renovated and furnished, with as little help from the
decorative artist and the splendid upholsterer as consisted with some
regard to public opinion; in fact the expenditure showed in solid dignity
and luxurious ease, and not in the construction of a museum in which one
could only move about with the constant fear of destroying something. My
wife was given almost carte blanche in the indulgence of her taste, and
she confessed her delight in being able for once to deal with a house
without the feeling that she was ruining me. Only in the suite designed
for Margaret did Henderson seriously interfere, and insist upon a luxury
that almost took my wife's breath away. She opposed it on moral grounds.
She said that no true woman could stand such pampering of her senses
without destruction of her moral fibre. But Henderson had his way, as he
always had it. What pleased her most in the house was the conservatory,
opening out from the drawing-room--a spacious place with a fountain and
cool vines and flowering plants, not a tropical hothouse in a stifling
atmosphere, in which nothing could live except orchids and flowers born
near the equator, but a garden with a temperature adapted to human lungs,
where one could sit and enjoy the sunshine, and the odor of flowers, and
the clear and not too incessant notes of Mexican birds. But when it was
all done, undoubtedly the most agreeable room in the house was that to
which least thought had been given, the room to which any odds and ends
could be sent, the room to which everybody gravitated when rest and
simple enjoyment without restraint were the object Henderson's own
library, with its big open fire, and the books and belongings of his
bachelor days. Man is usually not credited with much taste or ability to
take care of himself in the matter of comfortable living, but it is
frequently noticed that when woman has made a dainty paradise of every
other portion of the house, the room she most enjoys, that from which it
is difficult to keep out the family, is the one that the man is permitted
to call his own, in which he retains some of the comforts and can indulge
some of the habits of his bachelor days. There is an important truth in
this fact with regard to the sexes, but I do not know what it is.
They were married in October, and went at once to their own house. I
suppose all other days were but a preparation for this golden autumn day
on which we went to church and returned to the wedding-breakfast. I am
sure everybody was happy. Miss Forsythe was so happy that tears were in
her eyes half the time, and she bustled about with an affectation of
cheerfulness that was almost contagious. Poor, dear, gentle lady! I can
imagine the sensations of a peach-tree, in an orchard of trees which bud
and bloom and by-and-by are weighty with yellow fruit, year after year--a
peach-tree that blooms, also, but never comes to fruition, only wastes
its delicate sweetness on the air, and finally blooms less and less, but
feels nevertheless in each returning spring the stir of the sap and the
longing for that fuller life, while all the orchard bursts into flower,
and the bees swarm about the pink promises, and the fruit sets and slowly
matures to lusciousness in the sun of July. I fancy the wedding, which
robbed us all, was hardest for her, for it was in one sense a finality of
her life. Whereas if Margaret had regrets--and deep sorrow she had in
wrenching herself from the little neighborhood, though she never could
have guessed the vacancy she caused by the withdrawal of her loved
presence--her own life was only just beginning, and she was sustained by
the longing which every human soul has for a new career, by the curiosity
and imagination which the traveler feels when he departs for a land which
he desires, and yet dreads to see lest his illusions should vanish.
Margaret was about to take that journey in the world which Miss Forsythe
had dreamed of in her youth, but had never set out on. There are some who
say that those are happiest who keep at home and content themselves with
reading about the lands of the imagination. But happily the world does
not believe this, and indeed would be very unhappy if it could not try
and prove all the possibilities of human nature, to suffer as well as to
enjoy.
I do not know how we fell into the feeling that this marriage was somehow
exceptional and important, since marriages take place every day, and are
so common and ordinarily so commonplace, when the first flutter is over.
Even Morgan said, in his wife's presence, that he thought there had been
weddings enough; at least he would interdict those that upset things like
this one. For one thing, it brought about the house-keeping union of Mrs.
Fletcher and Miss Forsythe in the tatter's cottage--a sort of closing up
of the ranks that happens on the field during a fatal engagement. As we
go on, it becomes more and more difficult to fill up the gaps.
We were very unwilling to feel that Margaret had gone out of our life.
"But you cannot," Morgan used to say, "be friends with the rich, and that
is what makes the position of the very rich so pitiful, for the rich get
so tired of each other."
"But Margaret," my wife urged, "will never be of that sort: money will
not change either her habits or her affections."
"Perhaps. You can never trust to inherited poverty. I have no doubt that
she will resist the world, if anybody can, but my advice is that if you
want to keep along with Margaret, you'd better urge your husband to make
money. Experience seems to teach that while they cannot come to us, we
may sometimes go to them."
My wife and Mrs. Fletcher were both indignant at this banter, and accused
Morgan of want of faith, and even lack of affection for Margaret; in
short, of worldly-mindedness himself.
"Perhaps I am rather shop-worn," he confessed. "It's not distrust of
Margaret's intentions, but knowledge of the strength of the current on
which she has embarked. Henderson will not stop in his career short of
some overwhelming disaster or of death."
"I thought you liked him? At any rate, Margaret will make a good use of
his money."
"It isn't a question, my dear Mrs. Fairchild, of the use of money, but of
the use money makes of you. Yes, I do like Henderson, but I can't give up
my philosophy of life for the sake of one good fellow."
"Philosophy of fudge!" exclaimed my wife. And there really was no answer
to this.
After six weeks had passed, my wife paid a visit to Margaret. Nothing
could exceed the affectionate cordiality of her welcome. Margaret was
overjoyed to see her, to show the house, to have her know her husband
better, to take her into her new life. She was hardly yet over the naive
surprises of her lovely surroundings. Or if it is too mach to say that
her surprise had lasted six weeks--for it is marvelous how soon women
adapt themselves to new conditions if they are agreeable--she was in a
glow of wonder at her husband's goodness, at his love, which had procured
all this happiness for her.
"You have no idea," she said, "how thoughtful he is about everything--and
he makes so little of it all. I am to thank you, he tells me always, for
whatever pleases my taste in the house, and indeed I think I should have
known you had been here if he had not told me. There are so many little
touches that remind me of home. I am glad of that, for it is the more
likely to make you feel that it is your home also."
She clung to this idea in the whirl of the new life. In the first days
she dwelt much on this theme; indeed it was hardly second in her talk to
her worship--I can call it nothing less--of her husband. She liked to
talk of Brandon and the dear life there and the dearer friends--this much
talk about it showed that it was another life, already of the past, and
beginning to be distant in the mind. My wife had a feeling that Margaret,
thus early, was conscious of a drift, of a widening space, and was making
an effort to pull the two parts of her life together, that there should
be no break, as one carried away to sea by a resistless tide grasps the
straining rope that still maintains his slender connection with the
shore.
But it was all so different: the luxurious house, the carriage at call,
the box at the opera, the social duties inevitable with her own
acquaintances and the friends of her husband. She spoke of this in
moments of confidence, and when she was tired, with a consciousness that
it was a different life, but in no tone of regret, and I fancy that the
French blood in her veins, which had so long run decorously in Puritan
channels, leaped at its return into new gayety. Years ago Margaret had
thought that she might some time be a missionary, at least that she
should like to devote her life to useful labors among the poor and the
unfortunate. If conscience ever reminded her of this, conscience was
quieted by the suggestion that now she was in a position to be more
liberal than she ever expected to be; that is, to give everything except
the essential thing--herself. Henderson liked a gay house, brightness,
dinners, entertainment, and that his wife should be seen and admired.
Proof of his love she found in all this, and she entered into it with
spirit, and an enjoyment increased by the thought that she was lightening
the burden of his business, which she could see pressed more and more.
Not that Henderson made any account of his growing occupations, or that
any preoccupation was visible except to the eye of love, which is quick
to see all moods. These were indeed happy days, full of the brightness of
an expanding prosperity and unlimited possibilities of the enjoyment of
life. It was in obedience to her natural instinct, and not yet a feeling
of compensation and propitiation, that enlisted Margaret in the city
charities, connection with which was a fashionable self-entertainment
with some, and a means of social promotion with others. My wife came home
a little weary with so much of the world, but, on the whole, impressed
with Margaret's good-fortune. Henderson in his own house was the soul of
consideration and hospitality, and Margaret was blooming in the beauty
that shines in satisfied desire.
XIII
It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow! Every one knows
the renovation of feeling--often mistaken for a moral renewal--when the
worn dress of the day is exchanged for the fresh evening toilet. The
expansiveness of prosperity has a like effect, though the moralist is
always piping about the beneficent uses of adversity. The moralist is, of
course, right, time enough given; but what does the tree, putting out its
tender green leaves to the wooing of the south wind, care for the
moralist? How charming the world is when you go with it, and not against
it!
It was better than Margaret had thought. When she came to Washington in
the winter season the beautiful city seemed to welcome her and respond to
the gayety of her spirit. It was so open, cheerful, hospitable, in the
appearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks, with the
bronze statues which all looked noble--in the moonlight; it was such a
combination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately elegance
--negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, and
flower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth and
refinement. The very aspect of the street population was novel; compared
to New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and the
passers, who have the fashion of walking in the middle of the street upon
the asphalt as freely as upon the sidewalks, had a sort of busy
leisureliness, the natural air of thousands of officials hived in offices
for a few hours and then left in irresponsible idleness. But what most
distinguished the town, after all, in Margaret's first glimpse of it, was
the swarming negro population pervading every part of it--the slouching
plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing
step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the
washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both
sexes--carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and
irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a
too strict and duty-ridden world.
In the morning, when Margaret looked from the windows of the hotel, the
sky was gray and yielding, and all the outlines of the looming buildings
were softened in the hazy air. The dome of the Capitol seemed to float
like a bubble, and to be as unsubstantial as the genii edifices in the
Arabian tale. The Monument, the slim white shaft as tall as the Great
Pyramid, was still more a dream creation, not really made of hard marble,
but of something as soft as vapor, almost melting into the sky, and yet
distinct, unwavering, its point piercing the upper air, threatening every
instant to dissolve, as if it were truly the baseless fabric of a vision
--light, unreal, ghost-like, spotless, pure as an unsullied thought; it
might vanish in a breath; and yet, no; it is solid: in the mist of doubt,
in the assault of storms, smitten by the sun, beaten by the tempests, it
stands there, springing, graceful, immovable--emblem, let us say, of the
purity and permanence of the republic.
"You never half told me, Rodney, how beautiful it all is!" Margaret
exclaimed, in a glow of delight.
"Yes," said Henderson, "the Monument is behaving very well this morning.
I never saw it before look so little like a factory chimney."
"That is, you never looked at it with my eyes before, cynic. But it is
all so lovely, everywhere."
"Of course it is, dear." They were standing together at the window, and
his arm was where it should have been. "What did you expect? There are
concentrated here the taste and virtue of sixty millions of people."
"But you always said the Washington hotels were so bad. These apartments
are charming."
"Yes"--and he drew her closer to him--"there is no denying that. But
presently I shall have to explain to you an odd phenomenon. Virginia, you
know, used to be famous for its good living, and Maryland was simply
unapproachable for good cooking. It was expected when the District was
made out of these two that the result would be something quite
extraordinary in the places of public entertainment. But, by a process
which nobody can explain, in the union the art of cooking in hotels got
mislaid."
"Well," she said, with winning illogicality, "you've got me."
"If you could only eat the breakfasts for me, as you can see the Monument
for me!"
"Dear, I could eat the Monument for you, if it would do you any good."
And neither of them was ashamed of this nonsense, for both knew that
married people indulge in it when they are happy.
Although Henderson came to Washington on business, this was Margaret's
wedding journey. There is no other city in the world where a wedding
journey can better be combined with such business as is transacted here,
for in both is a certain element of mystery. Washington is gracious to a
bride, if she is pretty and agreeable--devotion to governing, or to
legislation, or to diplomacy, does not render a man insensible to
feminine attractions; and if in addition to beauty a woman has the
reputation of wealth, she is as nearly irresistible here as anywhere. To
Margaret, who was able to return the hospitality she received, and whose
equipage was almost as much admired as her toilets, all doors were
open--a very natural thing, surely, in a good-natured, give-and-take
world. The colonel--Margaret had laughed till she cried when first she
heard her husband saluted by this title in Washington by his New
Hampshire acquaintances, but he explained to her that he had justly won
it years ago by undergoing the hardship of receptions as a member of the
Governor's staff--the colonel had brought on his horses and carriages,
not at all by way of ostentation, but simply out of regard to what was
due her as his wife, and because a carriage at call is a constant
necessity in this city, whose dignity is equal to the square of its
distances, and because there is something incongruous in sending a bride
about in a herdic. Margaret's unworldly simplicity had received a little
shock when she first saw her servants in livery, but she was not slow to
see the propriety and even necessity of it in a republican society, since
elegance cannot be a patchwork, but must be harmonious, and there is no
harmony between a stylish turnout--noble horses nobly caparisoned--and a
coachman and footman on the box dressed according to their own vulgar
taste. Given a certain position, one's sense of fitness and taste mast be
maintained. And there is so much kindliness and consideration in human
nature--Margaret's gorgeous coachman and footman never by a look revealed
their knowledge that she was new to the situation, and I dare say that
their respectful demeanor contributed to raise her in her own esteem as
one of the select and favored in this prosperous world. The most
self-poised and genuine are not insensible to the tribute of this
personal consideration. My lady giving orders to her respectful
servitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious turnout, is not
at all the same person in feeling that she would be if dragged about in a
dissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of the stable. We take
kindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is only the vulgar in soul
who become snobbish in it. Little by little, under this genial
consideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path of worldliness; and
we heard, by the newspapers and otherwise--indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan
were there for a couple of weeks in the winter--that she was never more
sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first season at the capital. I
don't know that the town was raving, as they said, about her beauty and
wit--there is nothing like the wit of a handsome woman--and amiability
and unostentatious little charities, but she was a great favorite. We
used to talk about it by the fire in Brandon, where everything reminded
us of the girl we loved, and rejoice in her good-fortune and happiness,
and get rather heavy-hearted in thinking that she had gone away from us
into such splendor.
"I wish you were here," she wrote to my wife. "I am sure you would enjoy
it. There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people--though
the distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliant
distinguished--and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney is
such a favorite. We go everywhere, literally, and all the time. You must
not scold, but I haven't opened a book, except my prayerbook, in six
weeks--it is such a whirl. And it is so amusing. I didn't know there were
so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the world.
The other night, at the British Minister's, a French attache, who
complimented my awful French--I told him that I inherited all but the
vocabulary and the accent--said that if specimens of the different kinds
of women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washington
could be exhibited, nobody would doubt any more that America is an
interesting country. Wasn't it an impudent speech? I tried to tell him,
in French, how grateful American women are for any little attention from
foreigners who have centuries of politeness behind them. Ah me! I
sometimes long for one of the old-fashioned talks before your smoldering
logs! What we talk about here, Heaven only knows. I sometimes tell Rodney
at night--it is usually morning--that I feel like an extinct piece of
fireworks. But next day it is all delightful again; and, dear friend, I
don't know but that I like being fireworks."
Among the men who came oftenest to see Henderson was Jerry Hollowell. It
seemed to Margaret an odd sort of companionship; it could not be any
similarity of tastes that drew them together, and she could not
understand the nature of the business transacted in their mysterious
conferences. Social life had few attractions for Hollowell, for his
family were in the West; he appeared to have no relations with any branch
of government; he wanted no office, though his influence was much sought
by those who did want it.
"You spend a good deal of time here, Mr. Hollowell," Margaret said one
day when he called in Henderson's absence.
"Yes, ma'am, considerable. Things need a good deal of fixing up.
Washington is a curious place. It's a sort of exchange for the whole
country: you can see everybody here, and it is a good place to arrange
matters."
"With Congress, do you mean?" Margaret had heard much of the corruption
of Congress.
"No, not Congress particularly. Congressmen are just about like other
people. It's all nonsense, this talk about buying Congressmen. You cannot
buy them any more than you can buy other people, but you can sort of work
together with some of them. We don't want anything of Congress, except to
be let alone. If we are doing something to develop the trade in the
Southwest, build it up, some member who thinks he is smart will just as
likely as not try to put in a block somewhere, or investigate, or
something, in order to show his independence, and then he has to be seen,
and shown that he is going against the interests of his constituents. It
is just as it is everywhere: men have to be shown what their real
interest is. No; most Congressmen are poor, and they stay poor. It is a
good deal easier to deal with those among them who are rich and have some
idea about the prosperity of the country. It is just so in the
departments. You've got to watch things, if you expect them to go smooth.
You've got to get acquainted with the men. Most men are reasonable when
you get well acquainted with them. I tell your husband that people are
about as reasonable in Washington as you'll find them anywhere."
"Washington is certainly very pleasant."
"Yes, that's so; it is pleasant. Where most everybody wants something,
they are bound to be accommodating. That's my idea. I reckon you don't
find Jerry Hollowell trying to pull a cat by its tail," he added,
dropping into his native manner.
"Well, I must go and hunt up the old man. Glad to have made your
acquaintance, Mrs. Henderson." And then, with a sly look, "If I knew you
better, ma'am, I should take the liberty of congratulating you that
Henderson has come round so handsomely."
"Come round?" asked Margaret, in amused wonder.
"Well, I took the liberty of giving him a hint that he wasn't cut-out for
a single man. I showed him that," and he lugged out his photograph-case
from a mass of papers in his breast-pocket and handed it to her.
"Ah, I see," said Margaret, studying the photographs with a peculiar
smile.
"Oh, Henderson knows a good thing when he sees it," said Hollowell,
complacently.
It was not easy to be offended with Hollowell's kind-hearted boorishness,
and after he had gone, Margaret sat a long time reflecting upon this new
specimen of man in her experience. She was getting many new ideas in
these days, the moral lines were not as clearly drawn as she had thought;
it was impossible to ticket men off into good and bad. In Hollowell she
had a glimpse of a world low-toned and vulgar; she had heard that he was
absolutely unscrupulous, and she had supposed that he would appear to be
a very wicked man. But he seemed to be good-hearted and tolerant and
friendly. How fond he was of his family, and how charitable about
Congress! And she wondered if the world was generally on Hollowell's
level. She met many men more cultivated than he, gentlemen in manner and
in the first social position, who took, after all, about his tone in
regard to the world, very agreeable people usually, easy to get on with,
not exacting, or professing much faith in anybody, and mildly cynical
--only bitterly cynical when they failed to get what they wanted, and
felt the good things of life slipping away from them. It was to take her
some time to learn that some of the most agreeable people are those who
have succeeded by the most questionable means; and when she came to this
knowledge, what would be her power of judgment as to these means?
"Mr. Hollowell has been here," she said, when Henderson returned.
"Old Jerry? He is a character."
"Do you trust him?"
"It never occurred to me. Yes, I suppose so, as far as his interests go.
He isn't a bad sort of fellow--very long-headed."
"Dear," said Margaret, with hesitation, "I wish you didn't have anything
to do with such men."
"Why, dearest?"
"Oh, I don't know. You needn't laugh. It rather lets one down; and it
isn't like you."
Henderson laughed aloud now. "But you needn't associate with Hollowell.
We men cannot pick our companions in business and politics. It needs all
sorts to keep the world going."
"Then I'd rather let it stop," Margaret said.
"And sell out at auction?" he cried, with a look of amusement.
"But aren't Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fairchild business men?"
"Yes--of the old-fashioned sort. The fact--is, Margaret, you've got a
sort of preserve up in Brandon, and you fancy that the world is divided
into sheep and goats. It's a great mistake. There is no such division.
Every man almost is both a sheep and a goat."
"I don't believe it, Rodney. You are neither." She came close to him, and
taking the collar of his coat in each hand, gave him a little shake, and
looking up into his face with quizzical affection, asked, "What is your
business here?"
Henderson stooped down and kissed her forehead, and tenderly lifted the
locks of her brown hair. "You wouldn't understand, sweet, if I told you."
"You might try."
"Well, there's a man here from Fort Worth who wants us to buy a piece of
railroad, and extend it, and join it with Hollowell's system, and open up
a lot of new country."
"And isn't it a good piece of road?"
"Yes; that's the trouble. The owners want to keep it to themselves, and
prevent the general development. But we shall get it."
"It isn't anything like wrecking, is it, dear?"
"Do you think we would want to wreck our own property?"
"But what has Congress to do with it?"
"Oh, there's a land grant. But some of the members who were not in the
Congress that voted it say that it is forfeited."
In this fashion the explanation went on. Margaret loved to hear her
husband talk, and to watch the changing expression of his face, and he
explained about this business until she thought he was the sweetest
fellow in the world.
The Morgans had arrived at the same hotel, and Margaret went about with
them in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breath
of home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life, gave
a new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round of
entertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was very
interesting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Washington, and to see
the shifting panorama through his experience. He had been very much in
the city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because it
was less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost for
him a certain charm it once had.
"I am not sure," he said, as they were driving one day, "that it is not
now the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way to
be that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets and
avenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many stately
vistas ending in objects refreshing to the eye--a bit of park, banks of
flowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in the
distance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups,
triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air of
distinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrated
itself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries that
are the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only just
begun--the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself to
all sorts of magnificence and beauty."
"I declare," said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, "I didn't know that he could
be so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress."
"In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature as
it used to be. Washington is getting to have a character of its own; it
seems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet the
process is going on here that is so marked all over the country--the
divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years ago,
that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism that a
democracy cannot make society--there was no more agreeable society in the
world than that in Washington even ten years ago: society selected itself
somehow without any marked class distinction, and it was delightfully
simple and accessible."
"And what has changed it?" Margaret asked.
"Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale has
altered. There is so much more display and expense. I remember when a
private carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of money
didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any company
was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the ability
to give a costly dinner or a big ball."
"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody says,"
said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.
"Yes, and they keep more to themselves--withdraw into their studies, or
hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality and
freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents whether
the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized society, or
stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It is as easy
here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner party--all
very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like New York."
"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.
"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and
good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but
when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.
An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly
when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets
stupid."
"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of an
under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one
thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you
slander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here."
"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Washington. I should like to
live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is going
to build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger than
the White House."
"I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell."
"But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy that
we are coming to."
All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerful
city. "You like it as well as anybody," she told him. And in truth he and
Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. "Of course I do," he
said, "for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged to follow it
as a steady business. Washington is a good place to take a plunge
occasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon with
appreciation."
Margaret had thought when she came to Washington that she should spend a
good deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of the
Senators and Representatives, and that she should study the collections
and the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which she
had such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon. But there
was little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties.
She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up and
down, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation was
ever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swinging
of doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, and
concluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, and
bargaining, and private interviewing. Morgan asked her if she expected
that the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done with
the order and decorum of a lyceum debating society. In one of the
committee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently an
indispensable part of the government machine. Her own husband, who had
accompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere. He was
sought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed and
stunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion. She
did not try it again, and very little strolling about the departments
satisfied her. The west end claimed her--the rolling equipages, the
drawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter in
a hundred shining houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of the
assemblies, the full flow of the tide of fashion and of enjoyment--what
is there so good in life? To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to be
loved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented--every Sunday at
morning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout,
whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hope
to be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thanked
Heaven for its gifts.
And it went well with Henderson meantime. Surely he was born under a
lucky star--if it is good-luck for a man to have absolute prosperity and
the gratification of all his desires. One reason why Hollowell sought his
cooperation was a belief in this luck, and besides Henderson was, he
knew, more presentable, and had social access in quarters where influence
was desirable, although Hollowell was discovering that with most men
delicacy in presenting anything that is for their interest is thrown
away. He found no difficulty in getting recruits for his little dinners
at Champolion's--dinners that were not always given in his name, and
where he appeared as a guest, though he footed the bills. Bungling
grossness has disappeared from all really able and large transactions,
and genius is mainly exercised in the supply of motives for a line of
conduct. The public good is one of the motives that looks best in
Washington.
Henderson and Hollowell got what they wanted in regard to the Southwest
consolidation, and got it in the most gentlemanly way. Nobody was bought,
no one was offered a bribe. There were, of course, fees paid for opinions
and for professional services, and some able men induced to take a
prospective interest in what was demonstrably for the public good. But no
vote was given for a consideration--at least this was the report of an
investigating committee later on. Nothing, of course, goes through
Congress of its own weight, except occasionally a resolution of sympathy
with the Coreans, and the calendar needs to be watched, and the good
offices of friends secured. Skillful wording of a clause, the right
moment, and opportune recognition do the business. The main thing is to
create a favorable atmosphere and avoid discussion. When the bill was
passed, Hollowell did give a dinner on his own invitation, a dinner that
was talked of for its refinement as well as its cost. The chief topic of
conversation was the development of the Southwest and the extension of
our trade relations with Mexico. The little scheme, hatched in
Henderson's New York office, in order to transfer certain already created
values to the pockets of himself and his friends, appeared to have a
national importance. When Henderson rose to propose the health of Jerry
Hollowell, neither he nor the man he eulogized as a creator of industries
whose republican patriotism was not bound by State lines nor
circumscribed by sections was without a sense of the humor of the
situation.
And yet in a certain way Mr. Hollowell was conscious that he merited the
eulogy. He had come to believe that the enterprises in which he was
engaged, that absolutely gave him, it was believed, an income of a
million a year, were for the public good. Such vast operations lent him
the importance of a public man. If he was a victim of the confusion of
mind which mistook his own prosperity for the general benefit, he only
shared a wide public opinion which regards the accumulation of enormous
fortunes in a few hands as an evidence of national wealth.
Margaret left Washington with regret. She had a desire to linger in the
opening of the charming spring there, for the little parks were brilliant
with flower beds-tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, violets--the magnolias and
redbuds in their prodigal splendor attracted the eye a quarter of a mile
away, and the slender twigs of the trees began to be suffused with tender
green. It was the sentimental time of the year. But Congress had gone,
and whatever might be the promise of the season, Henderson had already
gathered the fruits that had been forced in the hothouse of the session.
He was in high spirits.
"It has all been so delightful, dear!" said Margaret as they rode away in
the train, and caught their last sight of the dome. They were in
Hollowell's private car, which the good-natured old fellow had put at
their disposal. And Margaret had a sense of how delightful and prosperous
this world is as seen from a private car.
"Yes," Henderson answered, thinking of various things; "it has been a
successful winter. The capital is really attractive. It occurred to me
the other day that America has invented a new kind of city, the
apotheosis of the village--Washington."
They talked of the city, of the acquaintances of the winter, of
Hollowell's thoughtfulness in lending them his car, that their bridal
trip, as he had said, might have a good finish. Margaret's heart opened
to the world. She thought of the friends at Brandon, she thought of the
poor old ladies she was accustomed to look after in the city, of the
ragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was a
manager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and she
thought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so many
of the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and looking
across to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with a
wife's unblushing effrontery, "Dearest, how handsome you are!"
The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in Washington
Square. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature of
this prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If it
came, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that used
to be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of money,
after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell, but on
acquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to her in the
newspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's business, but
did it differ from that of other men she had known, except that it was on
a larger scale? And how much good could be done with money!
On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to which
she had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed to
"My Wife," and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a card, on
which was written, "For Margaret's Easter Charities." Flushed with
pleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was descending
to breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears in her eyes,
cried, "Dearest, how good you are!"
It is such a good and prosperous generation.
XIV
Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May, the
time of the apple blossoms--just a year from the swift wooing of
Margaret--Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in a
mourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earl
of Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air of
profound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought to
his own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine him
more closely to England. It also contained congratulations--which
circumstances had delayed--upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simple
wish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been for
these purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit to
Brandon and the circle of friends there, and it was pervaded by a tone,
almost affectionate, towards Miss Forsythe, which touched her very
deeply. She said it was such a manly letter.
America, the earl said, interested him more and more. In all history, he
wrote, there never had been such an opportunity for studying the
formation of society, for watching the working out of political problems;
the elements meeting were so new, and the conditions so original, that
historical precedents were of little service as guides. He acknowledged
an almost irresistible impulse to come back, and he announced his
intention of another visit as soon as circumstances permitted.
I had noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude as
the country is, and uninteresting according to certain established
standards, it seems to have a "drawing" quality, a certain unexplained
fascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality that
attracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares.
that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an American
wife, his curiosity about the country is sated. But this is generalizing
on narrow premises.
There was certainly in Lyon's letter a longing to see the country again,
but the impression it made upon me when I read it--due partly to its tone
towards Miss Forsythe, almost a family tone--was that the earldom was an
empty thing without the love of Margaret Debree. Life is so brief at the
best, and has so little in it when the one thing that the heart desires
is denied. That the earl should wish to come to America again without
hope or expectation was, however, quite human nature. If a man has found
a diamond and lost it, he is likely to go again and again and wander
about the field where he found it, not perhaps in any defined hope of
finding another, but because there is a melancholy satisfaction in seeing
the spot again. It was some such feeling that impelled the earl to wish
to see again Miss Forsythe, and perhaps to talk of Margaret, but he
certainly had no thought that there were two Margaret Debrees in America.
To her aunt's letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon's loss,
Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence. The news had already
reached the Eschelles, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written to the new
earl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to his change of
fortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now enlarged
opportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans--a most unworldly
note. "I used to think," she had said, when confiding what she had done
to Margaret, "that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but you
have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work among
us fashionable sinners. Do you know," she went on, "that I feel a great
deal less worldly than I used to?"
Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that
Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as
she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all
agree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she came
back in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with Carmen
was one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be more and
more companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of character
made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact remained
that she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried to
astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child of
her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her
candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.
"Margaret," she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of
confidence, "seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.
Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much in
love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is in
love with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him--any woman might be
that--but, do you know, she actually believes in him."
"Why shouldn't she believe in him?" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in
astonishment.
"Oh, of course, in a way," the girl went on. "I like Mr. Henderson--I
like him very much--but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now to
believe in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get along
just as well--and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have any
deceptions?"
Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to her
that the bottom had fallen out of society.
"Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?" the girl persisted.
"If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in each
other, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from a
woman."
"Oh, it isn't any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe," Carmen continued,
sweetly. "Society is a great deal pleasanter when you are not anxious and
don't expect too much."
Miss Forsythe told Margaret that she thought Miss Eschelle was a
dangerous woman. Margaret did not defend her, but she did not join,
either, in condemning her; she appeared to have accepted her as a part of
her world. And there were other things that Margaret seemed to have
accepted without that vigorous protest which she used to raise at
whatever crossed her conscience. To her aunt she was never more
affectionate, never more solicitous about her comfort and her pleasure,
and it was almost enough to see Margaret happy, radiant, expanding day by
day in the prosperity that was illimitable, only there was to her a note
of unreality in all the whirl and hurry of the busy life. She liked to
escape to her room with a book, and be out of it all, and the two weeks
away from her country life seemed long to her. She couldn't reconcile
Margaret's love of the world, her tolerance of Carmen, and other men and
women whose lives seemed to be based on Carmen's philosophy, with her
devotion to the church services, to the city missions, and the dozens of
charities that absorb so much of the time of the leaders of society.
"You are too young, dear, to be so good and devout," was Carmen's comment
on the situation.
To Miss Forsythe's wonder, Margaret did not resent this impertinence, but
only said that no accumulation of years was likely to bring Carmen into
either of these dangers. And the reply was no more satisfactory to Miss
Forsythe than the remark that provoked it.
That she had had a delightful visit, that Margaret was more lovely than
ever, that Henderson was a delightful host, was the report of Miss
Forsythe when she returned to us. In a confidential talk with my wife she
confessed, however, that she couldn't tell whither Margaret was going.
One of the worries of modern life is the perplexity where to spend the
summer. The restless spirit of change affects those who dwell in the
country, as well as those who live in the city. No matter how charming
the residence is, one can stay in it only a part of the year. He actually
needs a house in town, a villa by the sea, and a cottage in the hills.
When these are secured--each one an establishment more luxurious year by
year--then the family is ready to travel about, and is in a greater
perplexity than before whether to spend the summer in Europe or in
America, the novelties of which are beginning to excite the imagination.
This nomadism, which is nothing less than society on wheels, cannot be
satirized as a whim of fashion; it has a serious cause in--the discovery
of the disease called nervous prostration, which demands for its cure
constant change of scene, without any occupation. Henderson recognized
it, but he said that personally he had no time to indulge in it. His
summer was to be a very busy one. It was impossible to take Margaret with
him on his sudden and tedious journeys from one end of the country to the
other, but she needed a change. It was therefore arranged that after a
visit to Brandon she should pass the warm months with the Arbusers in
their summer home at Lenox, with a month--the right month--in the
Eschelle villa at Newport; and he hoped never to be long absent from one
place or the other.
Margaret came to Brandon at the beginning of June, just at the season
when the region was at its loveliest, and just when its society was
making preparations to get away from it to the sea, or the mountains, or
to any place that was not home. I could never understand why a people who
have been grumbling about snow and frost for six months, and longing for
genial weather, should flee from it as soon as it comes. I had made the
discovery, quite by chance--and it was so novel that I might have taken
out a patent on it--that if one has a comfortable home in our northern
latitude, he cannot do better than to stay in it when the hum of the
mosquito is heard in the land, and the mercury is racing up and down the
scale between fifty and ninety. This opinion, however, did not extend
beyond our little neighborhood, and we may be said to have had the summer
to ourselves.
I fancied that the neighborhood had not changed, but the coming of
Margaret showed me that this was a delusion. No one can keep in the same
place in life simply by standing still, and the events of the past two
years had wrought a subtle change in our quiet. Nothing had been changed
to the eye, yet something had been taken away, or something had been
added, a door had been opened into the world. Margaret had come home, yet
I fancied it was not the home to her that she had been thinking about.
Had she changed?
She was more beautiful. She had the air--I should hesitate to call it
that of the fine lady--of assured position, something the manner of that
greater world in which the possession of wealth has supreme importance,
but it was scarcely a change of manner so much as of ideas about life and
of the things valuable in it gradually showing itself. Her delight at
being again with her old friends was perfectly genuine, and she had never
appeared more unselfish or more affectionate. If there was a subtle
difference, it might very well be in us, though I found it impossible to
conceive of her in her former role of teacher and simple maiden, with her
heart in the little concerns of our daily life. And why should she be
expected to go back to that stage? Must we not all live our lives? Miss
Forsythe's solicitude about Margaret was mingled with a curious
deference, as to one who had a larger experience of life than her own.
The girl of a year ago was now the married woman, and was invested with
something of the dignity that Miss Forsythe in her pure imagination
attached to that position. Without yielding any of her opinions, this
idea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little, I thought, to
the amusement of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to whom marriage
took on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from a renewed sense
of the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had been, and
enriched as it was by observation.
In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of the
country, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations of
trades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply called
attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent was
attributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury and
reckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said that
the strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious to
those who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railway
manipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but to
exact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this could
be shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet the
impression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong in
the way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of individual
rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into account
ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that was
discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small
invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the
trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities,
who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the
games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly
compensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and the
advantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefit
of half a dozen insolent men.
In discussing these things in our little parliament we were not
altogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing of
interests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger of
disappearing for the "public good," Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune was
nearly all invested in that sound "rock-bed" railway in the Southwest
that Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. She
was assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sort
of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the
parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if he
would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a
splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this
sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on the
situation these personalities were not referred to, for although Margaret
was silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.
Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money
dishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.
"I had this question referred to me the other day," he said. "A gambler
--not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendid
establishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for his
liberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics--offered the
president of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow a
professorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it was
made?"
"Wouldn't the money do good--as much good as any other hundred thousand
dollars?" asked Margaret.
"Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would be
the moral effect of that?"
"Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get it
without using the gambler's name?"
"I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on a
general principle."
"But wouldn't it be a sneaking thing to take a man's money, and refuse
him the credit of his generosity?"
"But was it generosity? Was not his object, probably, to get a reputation
which his whole life belied, and to get it by obliterating the
distinction between right and wrong?"
"But isn't it a compromising distinction," my wife asked, "to take his
money without his name? The president knows that it is money fraudulently
got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the gambler would feel
that if the president takes it, he cannot think very disapprovingly of
the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would be more honest and
straightforward to take his name with the money."
"The public effect of connecting the gambler's name with the college
would be debasing," said Morgan; "but, on the contrary, is every charity
or educational institution bound to scrutinize the source of every
benefaction? Isn't it better that money, however acquired, should be used
for a good purpose than a bad one?"
"That is a question," I said, "that is a vital one in our present
situation, and the sophistry of it puzzles the public. What would you say
to this case? A man notoriously dishonest, but within the law, and very
rich, offered a princely endowment to a college very much in need of it.
The sum would have enabled it to do a great work in education. But it was
intimated that the man would expect, after a while, to be made one of the
trustees. His object, of course, was social position."
"I suppose, of course," Margaret replied, "that the college couldn't
afford that. It would look like bribery."
"Wouldn't he be satisfied with an LL.D.?" Morgan asked.
"I don't see," my wife said, "any difference between the two cases stated
and that of the stock gambler, whose unscrupulous operations have ruined
thousands of people, who founds a theological seminary with the gains of
his slippery transactions. By accepting his seminary the public condones
his conduct. Another man, with the same shaky reputation, endows a
college. Do you think that religion and education are benefited in the
long-run by this? It seems to me that the public is gradually losing its
power of discrimination between the value of honesty and dishonesty. Real
respect is gone when the public sees that a man is able to buy it."
This was a hot speech for my wife to make. For a moment Margaret flamed
up under it with her old-time indignation. I could see it in her eyes,
and then she turned red and confused, and at length said:
"But wouldn't you have rich men do good with their money?"
"Yes, dear, but I would not have them think they can blot out by their
liberality the condemnation of the means by which many of them make
money. That is what they are doing, and the public is getting used to
it."
"Well," said Margaret, with some warmth, "I don't know that they are any
worse than the stingy saints who have made their money by saving, and act
as if they expected to carry it with them."
"Saints or sinners, it does not make much difference to me," now put in
Mrs. Fletcher, who was evidently considering the question from a
practical point of view, "what a man professes, if he founds a hospital
for indigent women out of the dividends that I never received."
Morgan laughed. "Don't you think, Mrs. Fletcher, that it is a good sign
of the times, that so many people who make money rapidly are disposed to
use it philanthropically?"
"It may be for them, but it does not console me much just now."
"But you don't make allowance enough for the rich. Perhaps they are under
a necessity of doing something. I was reading this morning in the diary
of old John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon this sentence: 'It was a saying of
Navisson, a lawyer, that no man could be valiant unless he hazarded his
body, nor rich unless he hazarded his soul.'"
"Was Navisson a modern lawyer?" I asked.
"No; the diary is dated 1648-1679."
"I thought so."
There was a little laugh at this, and the talk drifted off into a
consideration of the kind of conscience that enables a professional man
to espouse a cause he knows to be wrong as zealously as one he knows to
be right; a talk that I should not have remembered at all, except for
Margaret's earnestness in insisting that she did not see how a lawyer
could take up the dishonest side.
Before Margaret went to Lenox, Henderson spent a few days with us. He
brought with him the amounding cheerfulness, and the air of a prosperous,
smiling world, that attended him in all circumstances. And how happy
Margaret was! They went over every foot of the ground on which their
brief courtship had taken place, and Heaven knows what joy there was to
her in reviving all the tenderness and all the fear of it! Busy as
Henderson was, pursued by hourly telegrams and letters, we could not but
be gratified that his attention to her was that of a lover. How could it
be otherwise, when all the promise of the girl was realized in the bloom
and the exquisite susceptibility of the woman? Among other things, she
dragged him down to her mission in the city, to which he went in a
laughing and bantering mood. When he had gone away, Margaret ran over to
my wife, bringing in her hand a slip of paper.
"See that!" she cried, her eyes dancing with pleasure. It was a check for
a thousand dollars. "That will refurnish the mission from top to bottom,"
she said, "and run it for a year."
"How generous he is!" cried my wife. Margaret did not reply, but she
looked at the check, and there were tears in her eyes.
XV
The Arbuser cottage at Lenox was really a magnificent villa. Richardson
had built it. At a distance it had the appearance of a mediaeval
structure, with its low doorways, picturesque gables, and steep roofs,
and in its situation on a gentle swell of green turf backed by native
forest-trees it imparted to the landscape an ancestral tone which is much
valued in these days. But near to, it was seen to be mediaevalism adapted
to the sunny hospitality of our summer climate, with generous verandas
and projecting balconies shaded by gay awnings, and within spacious, open
to the breezes, and from its broad windows offering views of lawns and
flower-beds and ornamental trees, of a great sweep of pastures and
forests and miniature lakes, with graceful and reposeful hills on the
horizon.
It was, in short, the modern idea of country simplicity. The passion for
country life, which has been in decadence for nearly half a century, has
again become the fashion. Nature, which, left to itself, is a little
ragged, not to say monotonous and tiresome, is discovered to be a
valuable ally for aid in passing the time when art is able to make
portions of it exclusive. What the Arbusers wanted was a simple home in
the country, and in obtaining it they were indulging a sentiment of
returning to the primitive life of their father, who had come to the city
from a hill farm, and had been too busy all his life to recur to the
tastes of his boyhood. At least that was the theory of his daughters; but
the old gentleman had a horror of his early life, and could scarcely be
dragged away from the city even in the summer. He would no doubt have
been astonished at the lofty and substantial stone stables, the long
range of greenhouses, and at a farm which produced nothing except lawns
and flower-beds, ornamental fields of clover, avenues of trees,
lawn-tennis grounds, and a few Alderneys tethered to feed among the
trees, where their beauty would heighten the rural and domestic aspect of
the scene. The Arbusers liked to come to this place as early as possible
to escape the society exactions of the city. That was another theory of
theirs. All their set in the city met there for the same purpose.
Margaret was welcomed with open arms.
"We have been counting the days," said the elder of the sisters. "Your
luggage has come, your rooms are all ready, and your coachman, who has
been here some days, says that the horses need exercise. Everybody is
here, and we need you for a hundred things."
"You are very kind. It is so charming here. I knew it would be, but I
couldn't bear to shorten my visit in Brandon."
"Your aunt must miss you very much. Is she well?"
"Perfectly."
"Wouldn't she have come with you? I've a mind to telegraph."
"I think not. She is wedded to quiet, and goes away from her little
neighborhood with reluctance."
"So Brandon was a little dull?" said Miss Arbuser, with a shrewd guess at
the truth.
"Oh no," quickly replied Margaret, shrinking a little from what was in
her own mind; "it was restful and delightful; but you know that we New
England people take life rather seriously, and inquire into the reason of
things, and want an object in life."
"A very good thing to have," answered this sweet woman of the world,
whose object was to go along pleasantly and enjoy it.
"But to have it all the time!" Margaret suggested, lightly, as she ran
up-stairs. But even in this suggestion she was conscious of a twinge of
disloyalty to her former self. Deep down in her heart, coming to the
atmosphere of Lenox was a relief from questionings that a little
disturbed her at her old home, and she was indignant at herself that it
should be so, and then indignant at the suggestions that put her out of
humor with herself. Was it a sin, she said, to be happy and prosperous?
On her dressing-table was a letter from her husband. He was detained in
the city by a matter of importance. He scratched only a line, to catch
the mail, during a business interview. It was really only a business
interview, and had no sort of relation to Lenox or the summer gayety
there.
Henderson was in his private office. The clerks in the outer offices, in
the neglige of summer costumes, winked to each other as they saw old
Jerry Hollowell enter and make his way to the inner room unannounced.
Something was in the wind.
"Well, old man," said Uncle Jerry, in the cheeriest manner, coming in,
depositing his hat on the table, and taking a seat opposite Henderson,
"we seem to have stirred up the animals."
"Only a little flurry," replied Henderson, laying down his pen and
folding a note he had just finished; "they'll come to reason."
"They've got to." Mr. Hollowell drew out a big bandanna and mopped his
heated face. "I've just got a letter from Jorkins. There's the
certificates that make up the two-thirds-more than we need, anyway. No
flaw about that, is there?"
"No. I'll put these with the balance in the safe. It's all right, if
Jorkins has been discreet. It may make a newspaper scandal if they get
hold of his operations."
"Oh, Jorkins is close. But he is a little overworked. I don't know but it
would do him good to have a little nervous prostration and go abroad for
a while."
"I guess it would do Jorkins good to take a turn in Europe for a year or
so."
"Well, you write to him. Give him a sort of commission to see the English
bondholders, and explain the situation. They will appreciate that half a
loaf is better than no bread. What bothers me is the way the American
bondholders take it. They kick."
"Let 'em kick. The public don't care for a few soreheads and
impracticables in an operation that is going to open up the whole
Southwest. I've an appointment with one of them this morning. He ought to
be here now."
At the moment Henderson's private secretary entered and laid on the table
the card of Mr. John Hopper, who was invited to come in at once. Mr.
Hopper was a man of fifty, with iron-gray hair, a heavy mustache, and a
smooth-shaven chin that showed resolution. In dress and manner his
appearance was that of the shrewd city capitalist--quiet and determined,
who is neither to be deceived nor bullied. With a courteous greeting to
both the men, whom he knew well, he took a seat and stated his business.
"I have called to see you, Mr. Henderson, about the bonds of the A. and
B., and I am glad to find Mr. Hollowell here also."
"What amount do you represent, Mr. Hopper?" asked Henderson.
"With my own and my friends', altogether, rising a million. What do you
propose?"
"You got our circular?"
"Yes, and we don't accept the terms."
"I'm sorry. It is the best that we could do."
"That is, the best you would do!"
"Pardon me, Mr. Hopper, the best we could do under the circumstances. We
gave you your option, to scale down on a fair estimate of the earnings of
the short line (the A. and B.), or to surrender your local bonds and take
new ones covering the whole consolidation, or, as is of course in your
discretion, to hold on and take the chances."
"Which your operations have practically destroyed."
"Not at all, Mr. Hopper. We offer you a much better security on the whole
system instead of a local road."
"And you mean to tell me, Mr. Henderson, that it is for our advantage to
exchange a seven per cent. bond on a road that has always paid its
interest promptly, for a four and a half on a system that is manipulated
nobody knows how? I tell you, gentlemen, that it looks to outsiders as if
there was crookedness somewhere."
"That is a rather rough charge, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with a
smile.
"But we are to understand that if we do not accept your terms, it's a
freeze-out?"
"You are to understand that we want to make the best arrangement possible
for all parties in interest."
"How some of those interests were acquired may be a question for the
courts," replied Mr. Hopper, resolutely. "When we put our money in good
seven per cent. bonds, we propose to inquire into the right of anybody to
demand that we shall exchange them for four and a half per cents. on
other security."
"Perfectly right, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with imperturbable
good-humor; "the transfer books are open to your inspection."
"Well, we prefer to hold on to our bonds."
"And wait for your interest," interposed Hollowell.
Mr. Hopper turned to the speaker. "And while we are waiting we propose to
inquire what has become of the surplus of the A. and B. The bondholders
had the first claim on the entire property."
"And we propose to protect it. See here, Mr. Hopper," continued Uncle
Jerry, with a most benevolent expression, "I needn't tell you that
investments fluctuate--the Lord knows mine do! The A. and B. was a good
road. I know that. But it was going to be paralleled. We'd got to
parallel it to make our Southwest connections. If we had, you'd have
waited till the Gulf of Mexico freezes over before you got any coupons
paid. Instead of that, we took it into our system, and it's being put on
a permanent basis. It's a little inconvenient for holders, and they have
got to stand a little shrinkage, but in the long-run it will be better
for everybody. The little road couldn't stand alone, and the day of big
interest is about over."
"That explanation may satisfy you, Mr. Hollowell, but it don't give us
our money, and I notify you that we shall carry the matter into the
courts. Good-morning."
When Mr. Hopper had gone, the two developers looked at each other a
moment seriously.
"Hopper 'll fight," Hollowell said at last.
"And we have got the surplus to fight him with," replied Henderson.
"That's so," and Uncle Jerry chuckled to himself. "The rats that are on
the inside of the crib are a good deal better off than the rats on the
outside."
"The reporter of The Planet wants five minutes," announced the secretary,
opening the door. Henderson told him to let him in.
The reporter was a spruce young gentleman, in a loud summer suit, with a
rose in his button-hole, and the air of assurance which befits the
commissioner of the public curiosity.
"I am sent by The Planet," said the young man, "to show you this and ask
you if you have anything to say to it."
"What is it?" asked Henderson.
"It's about the A. and B."
"Very well. There is the president, Mr. Hollowell. Show it to him."
The reporter produced a long printed slip and handed it to Uncle Jerry,
who took it and began to read. As his eye ran down the column he was
apparently more and more interested, and he let it be shown on his face
that he was surprised, and even a little astonished. When he had
finished, he said:
"Well, my young friend, how did you get hold of this?"
"Oh, we have a way," said the reporter, twirling his straw hat by the
elastic, and looking more knowing than old Jerry himself.
"So I see," replied Jerry, with an admiring smile; "there is nothing that
you newspaper folks don't find out. It beats the devil!"
"Is it true, sir?" said the young gentleman, elated with this recognition
of his own shrewdness.
"It is so true that there is no fun in it. I don't see how the devil you
got hold of it."
"Have you any explanations?"
"No, I guess not," said Uncle Jerry, musingly. "If it is to come out, I'd
rather The Planet would have it than any, other paper. It's got some
sense. No; print it. It'll be a big beat for your paper. While you are
about it--I s'pose you'll print it anyway?" (the reporter nodded)--"you
might as well have the whole story."
"Certainly. We'd like to have it right. What is wrong about it?"
"Oh, nothing but some details. You have got it substantially. There's a
word or two and a date you are out on, naturally enough, and there are
two or three little things that would be exactly true if they were
differently stated."
"Would you mind telling me what they are?"
"No," said Jerry, with a little reluctance; "might as well have it all
out--eh, Henderson?"
And the old man took his pencil and changed some dates and a name or two,
and gave to some of the sentences a turn that seemed to the reporter only
another way of saying the same thing.
"There, that is all I know. Give my respects to Mr. Goss."
When the commissioner had withdrawn, Uncle Jerry gave vent to a long
whistle. Then he rose suddenly and called to the secretary, "Tell that
reporter to come back." The reporter reappeared.
"I was just thinking, and you can tell Mr. Goss, that now you have got
onto this thing, you might as well keep the lead on it. The public is
interested in what we are doing in the Southwest, and if you, or some
other bright fellow who has got eyes in his head, will go down there, he
will see something that will astonish him. I'm going tomorrow in my
private car, and if you could go along, I assure you a good time. I want
you to see for yourself, and I guess you would. Don't take my word. I
can't give you any passes, and I know you don't want any, but you can
just get into my private car and no expense to anybody, and see all there
is to be seen. Ask Goss, and let me know tonight."
The young fellow went off feeling several inches higher than when he came
in. Such is the power of a good address, and such is the omnipotence of
the great organ. Mr. Jerry Hollowell sat down and began to fan himself.
It was very hot in the office.
"Seems to me it's lunch-time. Great Scott! what a lot of time I used to
waste fighting the newspapers! That thing would have played the devil as
it stood. It will be comparatively harmless now. It will make a little
talk, but there is nothing to get hold of. Queer, about the difference of
a word or two. Come, old man, I'm thirsty."
"Uncle Jerry," said Henderson, taking his arm as they went out, "you
ought to be President of the United States."
"The salary is too small," said Uncle Jerry.
Of all this there was nothing to write to Margaret, who was passing her
time agreeably in the Berkshire hills, a little impatient for her
husband's arrival, postponed from day to day, and full of sympathy for
him, condemned to the hot city and the harassment of a business the
magnitude of which gave him the obligations and the character of a public
man. Henderson sent her instead a column from The Planet devoted to a
description of his private library. Mr. Goss, the editor, who was college
bred, had been round to talk with Henderson about the Southwest trip, and
the conversation drifting into other matters, Henderson had taken from
his desk and shown him a rare old book which he had picked up the day
before in a second-hand shop. This led to further talk about Henderson's
hobby, and the editor had asked permission to send a reporter down to
make a note of Henderson's collection. It would make a good midsummer
item, "The Stock-Broker in Literature," "The Private Tastes of a
Millionaire," etc. The column got condensed into a portable paragraph,
and went the rounds of the press, and changed the opinions of a good many
people about the great operator--he wasn't altogether devoted to vulgar
moneymaking. Uncle Jerry himself read the column with appreciation of its
value. "It diverts the public mind," he said. He himself had recently
diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the Norembega
Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the fact
conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer,
his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerry
who are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs tacked on
to the item.
Margaret was not alone in finding the social atmosphere of Lenox as
congenial as its natural beauties. Mrs. Laflamme declared that it was the
perfection of existence for a couple of months, one in early summer and
another in the golden autumn with its pathetic note of the falling
curtain dropping upon the dream of youth. Mrs. Laflamme was not a
sentimental person, but she was capable of drifting for a moment into a
poetic mood--a great charm in a woman of her vivacity and air of the
world. Margaret remembered her very distinctly, although she had only
exchanged a word with her at the memorable dinner in New York when
Henderson had revealed her feelings to herself. Mrs. Laflamme had the
immense advantage--it seemed so to her after five years of widowhood of
being a widow on the sunny side of thirty-five. If she had lost some
illusions she had gained a great deal of knowledge, and she had no
feverish anxiety about what life would bring her. Although she would not
put it in this way to herself, she could look about her deliberately,
enjoying the prospect, and please herself. Her position had two
advantages--experience and opportunity. A young woman unmarried, she
said, always has the uneasy sense of the possibility--well, it is
impossible to escape slang, and she said it with the merriest laugh--the
possibility of being left. A day or two after Margaret's arrival she had
driven around to call in her dog-cart, looking as fresh as a daisy in her
sunhat. She held the reins, but her seat was shared by Mr. Fox
McNaughton, the most useful man in the village, indispensable indeed; a
bachelor, with no intentions, no occupation, no ambition (except to lead
the german), who could mix a salad, brew a punch, organize a picnic, and
chaperon anything in petticoats with entire propriety, without regard to
age. And he had a position of social authority. This eminence Mr. Fox
McNaughton had attained by always doing the correct thing. The obligation
of society to such men is never enough acknowledged. While they are
trusted and used, and worked to death, one is apt to hear them spoken of
in a deprecatory tone.
"You hold the reins a moment, please. No, I don't want any help," she
said, as she jumped down with an elastic spring, and introduced him to
Margaret. "I've got Mr. McNaughton in training, and am thinking of
bringing him out."
She walked in with Margaret, chatting about the view and the house and
the divine weather.
"And your husband has not come yet?"
"He may come any day. I think business might suspend in the summer."
"So do I. But then, what would become of Lenox? It is rather hard on the
men, only I dare say they like it. Don't you think Mr. Henderson would
like a place here?"
"He cannot help being pleased with Lenox."
"I'm sure he would if you are. I have hardly seen him since that evening
at the Stotts'. Can I tell you?--I almost had five minutes of envy that
evening. You won't mind it in such an old woman?"
"I should rather trust your heart than your age, Mrs. Laflamme," said
Margaret, with a laugh.
"Yes, my heart is as old as my face. But I had a feeling, seeing you walk
away that evening into the conservatory. I knew what was coming. I think
I have discovered a great secret, Mrs. Henderson to be able to live over
again in other people. By-the-way, what has become of that quiet
Englishman, Mr. Lyon?"
"He has come into his title. He is the Earl of Chisholm."
"Dear me, how stupid in us not to have taken a sense of that! And the
Eschelles--do you know anything of the Eschelles?"
"Yes; they are at their house in Newport."
"Do you think there was anything between Miss Eschelle and Mr. Lyon? I
saw her afterwards several times."
"Not that I ever heard. Miss Eschelle says that she is thoroughly
American in her tastes."
"Then her tastes are not quite conformed to her style. That girl might be
anything--Queen of Spain, or coryphee in the opera ballet. She is clever
as clever. One always expects to hear of her as the heroine of an
adventure."
"Didn't you say you knew her in Europe?"
"No. We heard of her and her mother everywhere. She was very independent.
She had the sort of reputation to excite curiosity. But I noticed that
the men in New York were a little afraid of her. She is a woman who likes
to drive very near the edge."
Mrs. Laflamme rose. "I must not keep Mr. McNaughton waiting for any more
of my gossip. We expect you and the Misses Arbuser this afternoon. I warn
you it will be dull. I should like to hear of some summer resort where
the men are over sixteen and under sixty."
Mrs. Laflamme liked to drive near the edge as much as Carmen did, and
this piquancy was undeniably an attraction in her case. But there was
this difference between the two: there was a confidence that Mrs.
Laflamme would never drive over the edge, whereas no one could tell what
sheer Carmen might not suddenly take. A woman's reputation is almost as
much affected by the expectation of what she may do as by anything she
has done. It was Fox McNaughton who set up the dictum that a woman may do
almost anything if it is known that she draws a line somewhere.
The lawn party was not at all dull to Margaret. In the first place, she
received a great deal of attention. Henderson's name was becoming very
well known, and it was natural that the splendor of his advancing fortune
should be reflected in the person of his young wife, whose loveliness was
enhanced by her simple enjoyment of the passing hour. Then the toilets of
the women were so fresh and charming, the colors grouped so prettily on
the greensward, the figures of the slender girls playing at tennis or
lounging on the benches under the trees, recalled scenes from the classic
poets. It was all so rich and refined. Nor did she miss the men of
military age, whose absence Mrs. Laflamme had deplored, for she thought
of her husband. And, besides, she found even the college boys (who are
always spoken of as men) amusing, and the elderly gentlemen--upon whom
watering-place society throws much responsibility--gallant, facetious,
complimentary, and active in whatever was afoot. Their boyishness,
indeed, contrasted with--the gravity of the undergraduates, who took
themselves very seriously, were civil to the young ladies,--confidential
with the married women, and had generally a certain reserve and dignity
which belong to persons upon whom such heavy responsibility rests.
There were, to be sure, men who looked bored, and women who were
listless, missing the stimulus of any personal interest; but the scene
was so animated, the weather so propitious, that, on the whole, a person
must be very cynical not to find the occasion delightful.
There was a young novelist present whose first story, "The Girl I Left
Behind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take a
profound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be read
aloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him,
although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He
was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes,
to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual
frown. Mr. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very
exact in his pronunciation, careful about his manner, and had the air of
a little weariness, of the responsibility of one looking at life. It was
only at rare moments that his face expressed intensity of feeling.
"It is a very pretty scene. I suppose, Mr. Bass, that you are making
studies," said Margaret, by way of opening a conversation.
"No; hardly that. One must always observe. It gets to be a habit. The
thing is to see reality under appearances."
"Then you would call yourself a realist?"
Mr. Bass smiled. "That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want is
nature, color, passion--to pierce the artificialities."
"But you must describe appearance."
"Certainly, to an extent--form, action, talk as it is, even trivialities
--especially the trivialities, for life is made up of the trivial."
"But suppose that does not interest me?"
"Pardon me, Mrs. Henderson, that is because you are used to the
conventional, the selected. Nature is always interesting."
"I do not find it so."
"No? Nature has been covered up; it has been idealized. Look yonder," and
Mr. Bass pointed across the lawn. "See that young woman upon whom the
sunlight falls standing waiting her turn. See the quivering of the
eyelids, the heaving of the chest, the opening lips; note the curve of
her waist from the shoulder, and the line rounding into the fall of the
folds of the Austrian cashmere. I try to saturate myself with that form,
to impress myself with her every attitude and gesture, her color, her
movement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence of
passion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of her
shoe. The picture will be life."
"But suppose, Mr. Bass, when you come to speak with her, you find that
she has no ideas, and talks slang."
"All the better. It shows what we are, what our society is. And besides,
Mrs. Henderson, nearly everybody has the capacity of being wicked; that
is to say, of expressing emotion."
"You take a gloomy view, Mr. Bass."
"I take no view, Mrs. Henderson. My ambition is to record. It will not
help matters by pretending that people are better than they are."
"Well, Mr. Bass, you may be quite right, but I am not going to let you
spoil my enjoyment of this lovely scene," said Margaret, moving away. Mr.
Bass watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebook
a phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a pretty
plutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "The
Last Sigh of the Prude."
The whole world knows how delightful Lenox is. It even has a club where
the men can take refuge from the exactions of society, as in the city.
The town is old enough to have "histories"; there is a romance attached
to nearly every estate, a tragedy of beauty, and money, and
disappointment; great writers have lived here, families whose names were
connected with our early politics and diplomacy; there is a tradition of
a society of wit and letters, of women whose charms were enhanced by a
spice of adventure, of men whose social brilliancy ended in misanthropy.
All this gave a background of distinction to the present gayety, luxury,
and adaptation of the unsurpassed loveliness of nature to the refined
fashion of the age.
Here, if anywhere, one could be above worry, above the passion of envy;
for did not every new "improvement" and every new refinement in living
add to the importance of every member of this favored community? For
Margaret it was all a pageant of beauty. The Misses Arbuser talked about
the quality of the air, the variety of the scenery, the exhilaration of
the drives, the freedom from noise and dust, the country quiet. There
were the morning calls, the intellectual life of the reading clubs, the
tennis parties, the afternoon teas, combined with charming drives from
one elegant place to another; the siestas, the idle swinging in hammocks,
with the latest magazine from which to get a topic for dinner, the mild
excitement of a tete-a-tete which might discover congenial tastes or run
on into an interesting attachment. Half the charm of life, says a
philosopher, is in these personal experiments.
When Henderson came, as he did several times for a few days, Margaret's
happiness was complete. She basked in the sun of his easy enjoyment of
life. She liked to take him about with her, and see the welcome in all
companies of a man so handsome, so natural and cordial, as her husband.
Especially aid she like the consideration in which he was evidently held
at the club, where the members gathered about him to listen to his racy
talk and catch points about the market. She liked to think that he was
not a woman's man. He gave her his version of some recent transactions
that had been commented on in the newspapers, and she was indignant over
the insinuations about him. It was the price, he said, that everybody had
to pay for success. Why shouldn't he, she reflected, make money?
Everybody would if they could, and no one knew how generous he was. If
she had been told that the family of Jerry Hollowell thought of him in
the same way, she would have said that there was a world-wide difference
in the two men. Insensibly she was losing the old standards she used to
apply to success. Here in Lenox, in this prosperous, agreeable world,
there was nothing to remind her of them.
In her enjoyment of this existence without care, I do not suppose it
occurred to her to examine if her ideals had been lowered. Sometimes
Henderson had a cynical, mocking tone about the world, which she reproved
with a caress, but he was always tolerant and good-natured. If he had
told her that he acted upon the maxim that every man and woman has his
and her price she would have been shocked, but she was getting to make
allowances that she would not have made before she learned to look at the
world through his eyes. She could see that the Brandon circle was
over-scrupulous. Her feeling of this would have been confirmed if she had
known that when her aunt read the letter announcing a month's visit to
the Eschelles in Newport, she laid it down with a sigh.
XVI
Uncle Jerry was sitting on the piazza of the Ocean House, absorbed in the
stock reports of a New York journal, answering at random the occasional
observations of his wife, who filled up one of the spacious chairs near
him--a florid woman, with diamonds in her ears, who had the resolute air
of enjoying herself. It was an August Newport morning, when there is a
salty freshness in the air, but a temperature that discourages exertion.
A pony phaeton dashed by containing two ladies. The ponies were
cream-colored, with flowing manes and tails, and harness of black and
gold; the phaeton had yellow wheels with a black body; the diminutive
page with folded arms, on the seat behind, wore a black jacket and yellow
breeches. The lady who held the yellow silk reins was a blonde with dark
eyes. As they flashed by, the lady on the seat with her bowed, and Mr.
Hollowell returned the salute.
"Who's that?" asked Mrs. Hollowell.
"That's Mrs. Henderson."
"And the other one?"
"I don't know her. She knows how to handle the ribbons, though."
"I seen her at the Casino the other night, before you come, with that
tandem-driving count. I don't believe he's any more count than you are."
"Oh, he's all right. He's one of the Spanish legation. This is just the
place for counts. I shouldn't wonder, Maria, if you'd like to be a
countess. We can afford it--the Countess Jeremiah, eh?" and Uncle Jerry's
eyes twinkled.
"Don't be a goose, Mr. Hollowell," bringing her fat hands round in front
of her, so that she could see the sparkle of the diamond rings on them.
"She's as pretty as a picture, that girl, but I should think a good wind
would blow her away. I shouldn't want to have her drive me round."
"Jorkins has sailed," said Mr. Hollowell, looking up from his paper. "The
Planet reporter tried to interview him, but he played sick, said he was
just going over and right back for a change. I guess it will be long
enough before they get a chance at him again."
"I'm glad he's gone. I hope the papers will mind their own business for a
spell."
The house of the Eschelles was on the sea, looking over a vast sweep of
lawn to the cliff and the dimpling blue water of the first beach. It was
known as the Yellow Villa. Coming from the elegance of Lenox, Margaret
was surprised at the magnificence and luxury of this establishment, the
great drawing-rooms, the spacious chambers, the wide verandas, the
pictures, the flowers, the charming nooks and recessed windows, with
handy book-stands, and tables littered with the freshest and
most-talked-of issues from the press of Paris, Madrid, and London. Carmen
had taken a hint from Henderson's bachelor apartment, which she had
visited once with her mother, and though she had no literary taste,
further than to dip in here and there to what she found toothsome and
exciting in various languages, yet she knew the effect of the atmosphere
of books, and she had a standing order at a book-shop for whatever was
fresh and likely to come into notice.
And Carmen was a delightful hostess, both because her laziness gave an
air of repose to the place, and she had the tact never to appear to make
any demands upon her guests, and because she knew when to be piquant and
exhibit personal interest, and when to show even a little abandon of
vivacity. Society flowed through her house without any obstructions. It
was scarcely ever too early and never too late for visitors. Those who
were intimate used to lounge in and take up a book, or pass an hour on
the veranda, even when none of the family were at home. Men had a habit
of dropping in for a five o'clock cup of tea, and where the men went the
women needed little urging to follow. At first there had been some
reluctance about recognizing the Eschelles fully, and there were still
houses that exhibited a certain reserve towards them, but the example of
going to this house set by the legations, the members of which enjoyed a
chat with Miss Eschelle in the freedom of their own tongues and the
freedom of her tongue, went far to break down this barrier. They were
spoken of occasionally as "those Eschelles," but almost everybody went
there, and perhaps enjoyed it all the more because there had been a shade
of doubt about it.
Margaret's coming was a good card for Carmen. The little legend about her
French ancestry in Newport, and the romantic marriage in Rochambeau's
time, had been elaborated in the local newspaper, and when she appeared
the ancestral flavor, coupled with the knowledge of Henderson's
accumulating millions, lent an interest and a certain charm to whatever
she said and did. The Eschelle house became more attractive than ever
before, so much so that Mrs. Eschelle declared that she longed for the
quiet of Paris. To her motherly apprehension there was no result in this
whirl of gayety, no serious intention discoverable in any of the train
that followed Carmen. "You act, child," she said, "as if youth would last
forever."
Margaret entered into this life as if she had been born to it. Perhaps
she was. Perhaps most people never find the career for which they are
fitted, and struggle along at cross-purposes with themselves. We all
thought that Margaret's natural bent was for some useful and
self-sacrificing work in the world, and never could have imagined that
under any circumstances she would develop into a woman of fashion.
"I intend to read a great deal this month," she said to Carmen on her
arrival, as she glanced at the litter of books.
"That was my intention," replied Carmen; "now we can read together. I'm
taking Spanish lessons of Count Crispo. I've learned two Spanish poems
and a Castilian dance."
"Is he married?"
"Not now. He told me, when he was teaching me the steps, that his heart
was buried in Seville."
"He seems to be full of sentiment."
"Perhaps that is because his salary is so small. Mamma says, of all
things an impecunious count! But he is amusing."
"But what do you care for money?" asked Margaret, by way of testing
Carmen's motives.
"Nothing, my dear. But deliver me from a husband who is poor; he would
certainly be a tyrant. Besides, if I ever marry, it will be with an
American."
"But suppose you fall in love with a poor man?"
"That would be against my principles. Never fall below your ideals--that
is what I heard a speaker say at the Town and Country Club, and that is
my notion. There is no safety for you if you lose your principles."
"That depends upon what they are," said Margaret, in the same bantering
tone.
"That sounds like good Mr. Lyon. I suspect he thought I hadn't any. Mamma
said I tried to shock him; but he shocked me. Do you think you could live
with such a man twenty-four hours, even if he had his crown on?"
"I can imagine a great deal worse husbands than the Earl of Chisholm."
"Well, I haven't any imagination."
There was no reading that day nor the next. In the morning there was a
drive with the ponies through town, in the afternoon in the carriage by
the sea, with a couple of receptions, the five o'clock tea, with its
chatter, and in the evening a dinner party for Margaret. One day sufficed
to launch her, and there-after Carmen had only admiration for the
unflagging spirit which Margaret displayed. "If you were only unmarried,"
she said, "what larks we could have!" Margaret looked grave at this, but
only for a moment, for she well knew that she could not please her
husband better than by enjoying the season to the full. He never
criticised her for taking the world as it is; and she confessed to
herself that life went very pleasantly in a house where there were never
any questions raised about duties. The really serious thought in Carmen's
mind was that perhaps after all a woman had no real freedom until she was
married. And she began to be interested in Margaret's enjoyment of the
world.
It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like another
scene in the same play. The actors, who came and went, were for the most
part the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers and
diners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city. In these days
Margaret was quite at home with the old set: the British Minister, the
Belgian, the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the German, and the
Italian, with their families and attaches--nothing was wanting, not even
the Chinese mandarin, who had rooms at the hotel, going about everywhere
in the conscientious discharge of his duties as ambassador to American
society, a great favorite on account of his silk apparel, which
gave him the appearance of a clumsy woman, and the everlasting,
three-thousand-year-old smile on his broad face, punctiliously leaving in
every house a big flaring red piece of paper which the ladies pinned up
for a decoration; a picture of helpless, childlike enjoyment, and almost
independent of the interpreter who followed him about, when he had
learned, upon being introduced to a lady, or taking a cup of tea, to say
"good-by" as distinctly as an articulating machine; a truly learned man,
setting an example of civility and perfect self-possession, but keenly
observant of the oddities of the social life to which his missionary
government had accredited him. One would like to have heard the comments
of the minister and his suite upon our manners; but perhaps they were too
polite to make any even in their seclusion. Certain it is that no one
ever heard any of the legation express any opinion but the most suave and
flattering.
And yet they must have been amazed at the activity of this season of
repose, the endurance of American women who rode to the fox meets, were
excited spectators of the polo, played lawn-tennis, were incessantly
dining and calling, and sat through long dinners served with the
formality and dullness and the swarms of liveried attendants of a royal
feast. And they could not but admire the young men, who did not care for
politics or any business beyond the chances of the stock exchange, but
who expended an immense amount of energy in the dangerous polo contests,
in riding at fences after the scent-bag, in driving tandems and
four-in-hands, and yet had time to dress in the cut and shade demanded by
every changing hour.
Formerly the annual chronicle of this summer pageant, in which the same
women appeared day after day, and the same things were done over and over
again, Margaret used to read with a contempt for the life; but that she
enjoyed it, now she was a part of it, shows that the chroniclers for the
press were unable to catch the spirit of it, the excitement of the
personal encounters that made it new every day. Looking at a ball is
quite another thing from dancing.
"Yes, it is lively enough," said Mr. Ponsonby, one afternoon when they
had returned from the polo grounds and were seated on the veranda. Mr.
Ponsonby was a middle-aged Englishman, whose diplomatic labors at various
courts had worn a bald spot on his crown. Carmen had not yet come, and
they were waiting for a cup of tea. "And they ride well; but I think I
rather prefer the Wild West Show."
"You Englishmen," Margaret retorted, "seem to like the uncivilized. Are
you all tired of civilization?"
"Of some kinds. When we get through with the London season, you know,
Mrs. Henderson, we like to rough it, as you call it, for some months.
But, 'pon my word, I can't see much difference between Washington and
Newport."
"We might get up a Wild West Show here, or a prize-fight, for you. Do you
know, Mr. Ponsonby, I think it will take full another century for women
to really civilize men."
"How so?"
"Get the cruelty and love of brutal sports out of them."
"Then you'd cease to like us. Nothing is so insipid, I fancy, to a woman
as a man made in her own image."
"Well, what have you against Newport?"
"Against it? I'm sure nothing could be better than this." And Mr.
Ponsonby allowed his adventurous eyes to rest for a moment upon
Margaret's trim figure, until he saw a flush in her face. "This
prospect," he added, turning to the sea, where a few sails took the slant
rays of the sun.
"'Where every prospect pleases,"' quoted Margaret, "'and only man--'"
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Henderson; men are not to be considered. The
women in Newport would make the place a paradise even if it were a
desert."
"That is another thing I object to in men."
"What's that?"
"Flattery. You don't say such things to each other at the club. What is
your objection to Newport?"
"I didn't say I had any. But if you compel me well, the whole thing seems
to be a kind of imitation."
"How?"
"Oh, the way things go on--the steeple-chasing and fox-hunting, and the
carts, and the style of the swell entertainments. Is that ill-natured?"
"Not at all. I like candor, especially English candor. But there is Miss
Eschelle."
Carmen drove up with Count Crispo, threw the reins to the groom, and
reached the ground with a touch on the shoulder of the count, who had
alighted to help her down.
"Carmen," said Margaret, "Mr. Ponsonby says that all Newport is just an
imitation."
"Of course it is. We are all imitations, except Count Crispo. I'll bet a
cup of tea against a pair of gloves," said Carmen, who had facility in
picking up information, "that Mr. Ponsonby wasn't born in England."
Mr. Ponsonby looked redder than usual, and then laughed, and said, "Well,
I was only three years old when I left Halifax."
"I knew it!" cried Carmen, clapping her hands. "Now come in and have a
cup of English breakfast tea. That's imitation, too."
"The mistake you made," said Margaret, "was not being born in Spain."
"Perhaps it's not irreparable," the count interposed, with an air of
gallantry.
"No, no," said Carmen, audaciously; "by this time I should be buried in
Seville. No, I should prefer Halifax, for it would have been a pleasure
to emigrate from Halifax. Was it not, Mr. Ponsonby?"
"I can't remember. But it is a pleasure to sojourn in any land with Miss
Eschelle."
"Thank you. Now you shall have two cups. Come."
The next morning, Mr. Jerry Hollowell, having inquired where Margaret was
staying, called to pay his respects, as he phrased it. Carmen, who was
with Margaret in the morning-room, received him with her most
distinguished manner. "We all know Mr. Hollowell," she said.
"That's not always an advantage," retorted Uncle Jerry, seating himself,
and depositing his hat beside his chair. "When do you expect your
husband, Mrs. Henderson?"
"Tomorrow. But I don't mean to tell him that you are here--not at first."
"No," said Carmen; "we women want Mr. Henderson a little while to
ourselves."
Why, I'm the idlest man in America. I tell Henderson that he ought to
take more time for rest. It's no good to drive things. I like quiet."
"And you get it in Newport?" Margaret asked.
"Well, my wife and children get what they call quiet. I guess a month of
it would use me up. She says if I had a place here I'd like it. Perhaps
so. You are very comfortably fixed, Miss Eschelle."
"It does very well for us, but something more would be expected of Mr.
Hollowell. We are just camping-out here. What Newport needs is a real
palace, just to show those foreigners who come here and patronize us. Why
is it, Mr. Hollowell, that all you millionaires can't think of anything
better to do with your money than to put up a big hotel or a great
elevator or a business block?"
"I suppose," said Uncle Jerry, blandly, "that is because they are
interested in the prosperity of the country, and have simple democratic
tastes for themselves. I'm afraid you are not democratic, Miss Eschelle."
"Oh, I'm anxious about the public also. I'm on your side, Mr. Hollowell;
but you don't go far enough. You just throw in a college now and then to
keep us quiet, but you owe it to the country to show the English that a
democrat can have as fine a house as anybody."
"I call that real patriotism. When I get rich, Miss Eschelle, I'll bear
it in mind."
"Oh, you never will be rich," said Carmen, sweetly, bound to pursue her
whim. "You might come to me for a start to begin the house. I was very
lucky last spring in A. and B. bonds."
"How was that? Are you interested in A. and B.?" asked Uncle Jerry,
turning around with a lively interest in this gentle little woman.
"Oh, no; we sold out. We sold when we heard what an interest there was in
the road. Mamma said it would never do for two capitalists to have their
eggs in the same basket."
"What do you mean, Carmen?" asked Margaret, startled. "Why, that is the
road Mr. Henderson is in."
"Yes, I know, dear. There were too many in it."
"Isn't it safe?" said Margaret, turning to Hollowell.
"A great deal more solid than it was," he replied. "It is part of a
through line. I suppose Miss Eschelle found a better investment."
"One nearer home," she admitted, in the most matter-of-fact way.
"Henderson must have given the girl points," thought Hollowell. He began
to feel at home with her. If he had said the truth, it would have been
that she was more his kind than Mrs. Henderson, but that he respected the
latter more.
"I think we might go in partnership, Miss Eschelle, to mutual advantage
--but not in building. Your ideas are too large for me there."
"I should be a very unreliable partner, Mr. Hollowell; but I could
enlarge your ideas, if I had time."
Hollowell laughed, and said he hadn't a doubt of that. Margaret inquired
for Mrs. Hollowell and the children, and she and Carmen appointed an hour
for calling at the Ocean House. The talk went to other topics, and after
a half-hour ended in mutual good-feeling.
"What a delightful old party!" said Carmen, after he had gone. "I've a
mind to adopt him."
In a week Hollowell and Carmen were the best of friends. She called him
"Uncle Jerry," and buzzed about him, to his great delight. "The beauty of
it is," he said, "you never can tell where she will light."
Everybody knows what Newport is in August, and we need not dwell on it.
To Margaret, with its languidly moving pleasures, its well-bred scenery,
the luxury that lulled the senses into oblivion of the vulgar struggle
and anxiety which ordinarily attend life, it was little less than
paradise. To float along with Carmen, going deeper and deeper into the
shifting gayety which made the days fly without thought and with no care
for tomorrow, began to seem an admirable way of passing life. What could
one do fitter, after all, for a world hopelessly full of suffering and
poverty and discontent, than to set an example of cheerfulness and
enjoyment, and to contribute, as occasion offered, to the less fortunate?
Would it help matters to be personally anxious and miserable? To put a
large bill in the plate on Sunday, to open her purse wide for the objects
of charity and relief daily presented, was indeed a privilege and a
pleasure, and a satisfaction to the conscience which occasionally tripped
her in her rapid pace.
"I don't believe you have a bit of conscience," said Margaret to Carmen
one Sunday, as they walked home from morning service, when Margaret had
responded "extravagantly," as Carmen said, to an appeal for the mission
among the city pagans.
"I never said I had, dear. It must be the most troublesome thing you can
carry around with you. Of course I am interested in the heathen, but
charity--that is where I agree with Uncle Jerry--begins at home, and I
don't happen to know a greater heathen than I am."
"If you were as bad as you make yourself out, I wouldn't walk with you
another step."
"Well, you ask mother. She was in such a rage one day when I told Mr.
Lyon that he'd better look after Ireland than go pottering round among
the neglected children. Not that I care anything about the Irish," added
this candid person.
"I suppose you wanted to make it pleasant for Mr. Lyon?"
"No; for mother. She can't get over the idea that she is still bringing
me up. And Mr. Lyon! Goodness! there was no living with him after his
visit to Brandon. Do you know, Margaret, that I think you are just a
little bit sly?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Margaret, looking offended.
"Dear, I don't blame you," said the impulsive creature, wheeling short
round and coming close to Margaret. "I'd kiss you this minute if we were
not in the public road."
When Henderson came, Margaret's world was full; no desire was
ungratified. He experienced a little relief when she did not bother him
about his business nor inquire into his operations with Hollowell, and he
fancied that she was getting to accept the world as Carmen accepted it.
There had been moments since his marriage when he feared that Margaret's
scruples would interfere with his career, but never a moment when he had
doubted that her love for him would be superior to any solicitations from
others. Carmen, who knew him like a book, would have said that the model
wife for Henderson would be a woman devoted to him and to his interests,
and not too scrupulous. A wife is a torment, if you can't feel at ease
with her.
"If there were only a French fleet in the harbor, dear," said Margaret
one day, "I should feel that I had quite taken up the life of my
great-great-grandmother."
They were sailing in Hollowell's yacht, in which Uncle Jerry had brought
his family round from New York. He hated the water, but Mrs. Hollowell
and the children doted on the sea, he said.
"Wouldn't the torpedo station make up for it?" Henderson asked.
"Hardly. But it shows the change of a hundred years. Only, isn't it odd,
this personal dropping back into an old situation? I wonder what she was
like?"
"The accounts say she was the belle of Newport. I suppose Newport has a
belle once in a hundred years. The time has come round. But I confess I
don't miss the French fleet," replied Henderson, with a look of love that
thrilled Margaret through and through.
"But you would have been an officer on the fleet, and I should have
fallen in love with you. Ah, well, it is better as it is."
And it was better. The days went by without a cloud. Even after Henderson
had gone, the prosperity of life filled her heart more and more.
"She might have been like me," Carmen said to herself, "if she had only
started right; but it is so hard to get rid of a New England conscience."
When Margaret stayed in her room, one morning, to write a long-postponed
letter to her aunt, she discovered that she had very little to write, at
least that she wanted to write, to her aunt. She began, however,
resolutely with a little account of her life. But it seemed another thing
on paper, addressed to the loving eyes at Brandon. There were too much
luxury and idleness and triviality in it, too much Carmen and Count
Crispo and flirtation and dissipation in it.
She tore it up, and went to the window and looked out upon the sea. She
was indignant with the Brandon people that they should care so little
about this charming life. She was indignant at herself that she had torn
up the letter. What had she done that anybody should criticise her? Why
shouldn't she live her life, and not be hampered everlastingly by
comparisons?
She sat down again, and took up her pen. Was she changing--was she
changed? Why was it that she had felt a little relief when her last
Brandon visit was at an end, a certain freedom in Lenox and a greater
freedom in Newport? The old associations became strong again in her mind,
the life in the little neighborhood, the simplicity of it, the high
ideals of it, the daily love and tenderness. Her aunt was no doubt
wondering now that she did not write, and perhaps grieving that Margaret
no more felt at home in Brandon. It was too much. She loved them, she
loved them all dearly. She would write that, and speak only generally of
her frivolous, happy summer. And she began, but somehow the letter seemed
stiff and to lack the old confiding tone.
But why should they disapprove of her? She thought of her husband. If
circumstances had altered, was she to blame? Could she always be thinking
of what they would think at Brandon? It was an intolerable bondage. They
had no right to set themselves up over her. Suppose her aunt didn't like
Carmen. She was not responsible for Carmen. What would they have her do?
Be unhappy because Henderson was prosperous, and she could indulge her
tastes and not have to drudge in school? Suppose she did look at some
things differently from what she used to. She knew more of the world.
Must you shut yourself up because you found you couldn't trust everybody?
What was Mr. Morgan always hitting at? Had he any better opinion of men
and women than her husband had? Was he any more charitable than Uncle
Jerry? She smiled as she thought of Uncle Jerry and his remark--"It's a
very decent world if you don't huff it." No; she did like this life, and
she was not going to pretend that she didn't. It would be dreadful to
lose the love and esteem of her dear old friends, and she cried a little
as this possibility came over her. And then she hardened her heart a
little at the thought that she could not help it if they chose to
misunderstand her and change.
Carmen was calling from the stairs that it was time to dress for the
drive. She dashed off a note. It contained messages of love for
everybody, but it was the first one in her life written to her aunt not
from her heart.
XVII
Shall we never have done with this carping at people who succeed? Are
those who start and don't arrive any better than those who do arrive? Did
not men always make all the money they had an opportunity to make? Must
we always have the old slow-coach merchants and planters thrown up to us?
Talk of George Washington and the men of this day! Were things any better
because they were on a small scale? Wasn't the thrifty George Washington
always adding to his plantations, and squeezing all he could out of his
land and his slaves? What are the negro traditions about it? Were they
all patriots in the Revolutionary War? Were there no contractors who
amassed fortunes then? And how was it in the late war? The public has a
great spasm of virtue all of a sudden. But we have got past the day of
stage-coaches.
Something like this Henderson was flinging out to Carmen as he paced back
and forth in her parlor. It was very unlike him, this outburst, and
Carmen knew that he would indulge in it to no one else, not even to Uncle
Jerry. She was coiled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes sparkling with
admiration of his indignation and force. I confess that he had been
irritated by the comments of the newspapers, and by the prodding of the
lawyers in the suit then on trial over the Southwestern consolidation.
"Why, there was old Mansfield saying in his argument that he had had some
little experience in life, but he never had known a man to get rich
rapidly, barring some piece of luck, except by means that it would make
him writhe to have made public. I don't know but that Uncle Jerry was
right, that we made a mistake in not retaining him for the corporation."
"Not if you win," said Carmen, softly. "The public won't care for the
remark unless you fail."
"And he tried to prejudice the Court by quoting the remark attributed to
Uncle Jerry, 'The public be d---d' as if, said Mansfield, the public has
no rights as--against the railroad wreckers. Uncle Jerry laughed, and
interrupted: 'That's nonsense, reporters' nonsense. What I said was that
if the public thought I was fool enough to make it our enemy, the public
might be d---d (begging your honor's pardon).' Then everybody laughed.
'It's the bond holders, who want big dividends, that stand in the way of
the development of the country, that's what it is,' said he, as he sat
down, to those around him, but loud enough to be heard all over the room.
Mansfield asked the protection of the Court against these clap-trap
interruptions. The judge said it was altogether irregular, and Uncle
Jerry begged pardon. The reporters made this incident the one prominent
thing in the case that day."
"What a delightful Uncle Jerry it is!" said Carmen. "You'd better keep an
eye on him, Rodney; he'll be giving your money to that theological
seminary in Alabama."
"That reminds me," Henderson said, cooling down, "of a paragraph in The
Planet, the other day, about the amount of my gifts unknown to the
public. I showed it to Uncle Jerry, and he said, 'Yes, I mentioned it to
the editor; such things don't do any harm.'"
"I saw it, and wondered who started it," Carmen replied, wrinkling her
brows as if she had been a good deal perplexed about it.
"I thought," said Henderson, with a smile, "that it ought to be explained
to you."
"No," she said, reflectively; "you are liberal enough, goodness knows
--too liberal--but you are not a flat."
Henderson was in the habit of dropping in at the Eschelles' occasionally,
when he wanted to talk freely. He had no need to wear a mask with Carmen.
Her moral sense was tolerant and elastic, and feminine sympathy of this
sort is a grateful cushion. She admired Henderson, without thinking any
too well of the world in general, and she admired him for the qualities
that were most conformable to his inclination. It was no case of
hero-worship, to be sure, nor for tragedy; but then what a satisfaction
it must be to sweet Lady Macbeth, coiled up on her sofa, to feel that the
thane of Cawdor has some nerve!
The Hendersons had come back to Washington Square late in the autumn. It
is a merciful provision that one has an orderly and well-appointed home
to return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate, was
a little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, and
experienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold and
entered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut the
door there even against the solicitations of nature and against the
weariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late autumn
days, and yet not lifeless by any means! Indeed, it seemed all the more a
haven because the roar of the great city environed it, and one could
feel, without being disturbed by, the active pulsation of human life. And
then, if one has sentiment, is there anywhere that it is more ministered
to than in the city at the close of the year? The trees in the little
park grow red and yellow and brown, the leaves fall and swirl and drift
in windrows by the paths, the flower-beds flame forth in the last dying
splendor of their color; the children, chasing each other with hoop and
ball about the walks, are more subdued than in the spring-time; the old
men, seeking now the benches where the sunshine falls, sit in dreamy
reminiscence of the days that are gone; the wandering minstrel of Italy
turns the crank of his wailing machine, O! bella, bella, as in the
spring, but the notes seem to come from far off and to be full of memory
rather than of promise; and at early morning, or when the shadows
lengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the trees has a salt
smell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the fading foliage.
But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all this note of
melancholy! Life is to begin again.
But the social season opened languidly. It takes some time to recover
from the invigoration of the summer gayety--to pick up again the threads
and weave them into that brilliant pattern, which scarcely shows all its
loveliness of combination and color before the weavers begin to work in
the subdued tints of Lent. How delightful it is to see this knitting and
unraveling of the social fabric year after year! and how untiring are the
senders of the shuttles, the dyers, the hatchelers, the spinners, the
ever-busy makers and destroyers of the intricate web we call society!
After one campaign, must there not be time given to organize for another?
Who has fallen out, who are the new recruits, who are engaged, who will
marry, who have separated, who has lost his money? Before we can safely
reorganize we must not only examine the hearts but the stock-list. No
matter how many brilliant alliances have been arranged, no matter how
many husbands and wives have drifted apart in the local whirlpools of the
summer's current, the season will be dull if Wall Street is torpid and
discouraged. We cannot any of us, you see, live to ourselves alone. Does
not the preacher say that? And do we not all look about us in the pews,
when he thus moralizes, to see who has prospered? The B's have taken a
back seat, the C's have moved up nearer the pulpit. There is a reason for
these things, my friends.
I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to the
little church where she said her prayers; for however restful her life
might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was
involved in the most serious struggle of his life--a shameful kind of
conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his
annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with
injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and
Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been
ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations.
Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and Henderson,
with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the courts. The
affair made a tremendous stir. Some of the bondholders of the A. and B.
happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise about their
injury. As several millions were involved in this one branch of the case
--the suit of the bondholders--the newspapers treated it with the
consideration and dignity it deserved. It was a vast financial operation,
some said, scathingly, a "deal," but the magnitude of it prevented it
from falling into the reports of petty swindling that appear in the
police-court column. It was a public affair, and not to be judged by
one's private standard. I know that there were remarks made about
Henderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them, but I
never heard that he lost standing in the street. Still, in justice to the
street it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be proven,
and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more lenient
judgment in the street than elsewhere.
In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all the
private sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fight
with the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances. It needed all his
courage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through. That he went
through was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it was
proof also that he was a good fellow. If there were people who thought
otherwise, I never heard that they turned their backs on him, or failed
in that civility which he never laid aside in his intercourse with
others.
If a man present a smiling front to the world under extreme trial, is not
that all that can be expected of him? Shall he not be excused for showing
a little irritation at home when things go badly? Henderson was as
good-humored a man as I ever knew, and he loved Margaret, he was proud of
her, he trusted her. Since when did the truest love prevent a man from
being petulant, even to the extent of wounding those he best loves,
especially if the loved one shows scruples when sympathy is needed? The
reader knows that the present writer has no great confidence in the
principle of Carmen; but if she had been married, and her husband had
wrecked an insurance company and appropriated all the surplus belonging
to the policy-holders, I don't believe she would have nagged him about
it.
And yet Margaret loved Henderson with her whole soul. And in this stage
of her progress in the world she showed that she did, though not in the
way Carmen would have showed her love, if she had loved, and if she had a
soul capable of love.
It may have been inferred from Henderson's exhibition of temper that his
case had gone against him. It is true; an injunction had been granted in
the lower court, and public opinion went with the decree, and was in a
great measure satisfied by it. But this fight had really only just begun;
it would go on in the higher courts, with new resources and infinite
devices, which the public would be unable to fathom or follow, until
by-and-by it would come out that a compromise had been made, and the easy
public would not understand that this compromise gave the looters of the
railway substantially all they ever expected to get. The morning after
the granting of the injunction Henderson had been silent and very much
absorbed at breakfast, hardly polite, Margaret thought, and so
inattentive to her remarks that she asked him twice whether they should
accept the Brandon invitation to Christmas. "Christmas! I don't know.
I've got other things to think of than Christmas," he said, scarcely
looking at her, and rising abruptly and going away to his library.
When the postman brought Margaret's mail there was a letter in it from
her aunt, which she opened leisurely after the other notes had been
glanced through, on the principle that a family letter can wait, or from
the fancy that some have of keeping the letter likely to be most
interesting till the last. But almost the first line enchained her
attention, and as she read, her heart beat faster, and her face became
scarlet. It was very short, and I am able to print it, because all
Margaret's correspondence ultimately came into possession of her aunt:
"BRANDON, December 17th.
"DEAREST MARGARET,--You do not say whether you will come for
Christmas, but we infer from your silence that you will. You know
how pained we shall all be if you do not. Yet I fear the day will
not be as pleasant as we could wish. In fact, we are in a good deal
of trouble. You know, dear, that poor Mrs. Fletcher had nearly
every dollar of her little fortune invested in the A. and B. bonds,
and for ten months she has not had a cent of income, and no prospect
of any. Indeed, Morgan says that she will be lucky if she
ultimately saves half her principal. We try to cheer her up, but
she is so cast down and mortified to have to live, as she says, on
charity. And it does make rather close house-keeping, though I'm
sure I couldn't live alone without her. It does not make so much
difference with Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Morgan, for they have plenty
of other resources. Mr. Fairchild tells her that she is in very
good company, for lots of the bonds are held in Brandon, and she is
not the only widow who suffers; but this is poor consolation. We
had great hopes, the other day, of the trial, but Morgan says it may
be years before any final settlement. I don't believe Mr. Henderson
knows. But there, dearest, I won't find fault. We are all well,
and eager to see you. Do come.
"Your affectionate aunt,
"GEORGIAN A."
Margaret's hand that held the letter trembled, and the eyes that read
these words were hot with indignation; but she controlled herself into an
appearance of calmness as she marched away with it straight to the
library.
As she entered, Henderson was seated at his desk, with bowed head and
perplexed brows, sorting a pile of papers before him, and making notes.
He did not look up until she came close to him and stood at the end of
his desk. Then, turning his eyes for a moment, and putting out his left
hand to her, he said, "Well, what is it, dear?"
"Will you read that?" said Margaret, in a voice that sounded strange in
her own ears.
"What?"
"A letter from Aunt Forsythe."
"Family matter. Can't it wait?" said Henderson, going on with his
figuring.
"If it can, I cannot," Margaret answered, in a tone that caused him to
turn abruptly and look at her. He was so impatient and occupied that even
yet he did not comprehend the new expression in her face.
"Don't you see I am busy, child? I have an engagement in twenty minutes
in my office."
"You can read it in a moment," said Margaret, still calm.
Henderson took the letter with a gesture of extreme annoyance, ran his
eye through it, flung it from him on the table, and turned squarely round
in his chair.
"Well, what of it?"
"To ruin poor Mrs. Fletcher and a hundred like her!" cried Margaret, with
rising indignation.
"What have I to do with it? Did I make their investments? Do you think I
have time to attend to every poor duck? Why don't people look where they
put their money?"
"It's a shame, a burning shame!" she cried, regarding him steadily.
"Oh, yes; no doubt. I lost a hundred thousand yesterday; did I whine
about it? If I want to buy anything in the market, have I got to look
into every tuppenny interest concerned in it? If Mrs. Fletcher or anybody
else has any complaint against me, the courts are open. I defy the whole
pack!" Henderson thundered out, rising and buttoning his coat--"the
whole pack!"
"And you have nothing else to say, Rodney?" Margaret persisted, not
quailing in the least before his indignation. He had never seen her so
before, and he was now too much in a passion to fully heed her.
"Oh, women, women!" he said, taking up his hat, "you have sympathy enough
for anybody but your husbands." He pushed past her, and was gone without
another word or look.
Margaret turned to follow him. She would have cried "Stop!" but the word
stuck in her throat. She was half beside herself with rage for a moment.
But he had gone. She heard the outer door close. Shame and grief overcame
her. She sat down in the chair he had just occupied. It was infamous the
way Mrs. Fletcher was treated. And her husband--her husband was so
regardless of it. If he was not to blame for it, why didn't he tell
her--why didn't he explain? And he had gone away without looking at her.
He had left her for the first time since they were married without
kissing her! She put her head down on the desk and sobbed; it seemed as
if her heart would break. Perhaps he was angry, and wouldn't come back,
not for ever so long.
How cruel to say that she did not sympathize with her husband! How could
he be angry with her for her natural anxiety about her old friend! He was
unjust. There must be something wrong in these schemes, these great
operations that made so many confiding people suffer. Was everybody
grasping and selfish? She got up and walked about the dear room, which
recalled to her only the sweetest memories; she wandered aimlessly about
the lower part of the house. She was wretchedly unhappy. Was her husband
capable of such conduct? Would he cease to love her for what she had
done--for what she must do? How lovely this home was! Everything spoke of
his care, his tenderness, his quickness to anticipate her slightest wish
or whim. It had been all created for her. She looked listlessly at the
pictures, the painted ceiling, where the loves garlanded with flowers
chased each other; she lifted and let drop wearily the rich hangings. He
had said that it was all hers. How pretty was this vista through the
luxurious rooms down to the green and sunny conservatory. And she shrank
instinctively from it all. Was it hers? No; it was his. And was she only
a part of it? Was she his? How cold his look as he went away!
What is this love, this divine passion, of which we hear so much? Is it,
then, such a discerner of right and wrong? Is it better than anything
else? Does it take the place of duty, of conscience? And yet what an
unbearable desert, what a den of wild beasts it would be, this world,
without love, the passionate, all-surrendering love of the man and the
woman!
In the chambers, in her own apartments, into which she dragged her steps,
it was worse than below. Everything here was personal. Mrs. Fairchild had
said that it was too rich, too luxurious; but her husband would have it
so. Nothing was too costly, too good, for the woman he loved. How happy
she had been in this boudoir, this room, her very own, with her books,
the souvenirs of all her happy life!
It seemed alien now, external, unsympathetic. Here, least of all places,
could she escape from herself, from her hateful thoughts. It was a chilly
day, and a bright fire crackled on the hearth. The square was almost
deserted, though the sun illuminated it, and showed all the delicate
tracery of the branches and twigs. It was a December sun. Her easy-chair
was drawn to the fire and her book-stand by it, with the novel turned
down that she had been reading the night before. She sat down and took up
the book. She had lost her interest in the characters. Fiction! What
stuff it was compared to the reality of her own life! No, it was
impossible. She must do something. She went to her dressing-room and
selected a street dress. She took pleasure in putting on the plainest
costume she could find, rejecting every ornament, everything but the
necessary and the simple. She wanted to get back to herself. Her maid
appeared in response to the bell.
"I am going out, Marie."
"Will madame have the carriage?"
"No, I will walk; I need exercise. Tell Jackson not to serve lunch."
Yes, she would walk; for it was his carriage, after all.
It was after mid-day. In the keen air and the bright sunshine the streets
were brilliant. Margaret walked on up the avenue. How gay was the city,
what a zest of life in the animated scene! The throng increased as she
approached Twenty-third Street. In the place where three or four currents
meet there was the usual jam of carriages, furniture wagons, carts, cars,
and hurried, timid, half-bewildered passengers trying to make their way
through it. It was all such a whirl and confusion. A policeman aided
Margaret to gain the side of the square. Children were playing there;
white-capped maids were pushing about baby-carriages; the sparrows
chattered and fought with as much vivacity as if they were natives of the
city instead of foreigners in possession. It seemed all so empty and
unreal. What was she, one woman with an aching heart, in the midst of it
all? What had she done? How could she have acted otherwise? Was he still
angry with her? The city was so vast and cruel. On the avenue again there
was the same unceasing roar of carts and carriages; business, pleasure,
fashion, idleness, the stream always went by. From one and another
carriage Margaret received a bow, a cool nod, or a smile of greeting.
Perhaps the occupants wondered to see her on foot and alone. What did it
matter? How heartless it all was! what an empty pageant! If he was
alienated, there was nothing. And yet she was right. For a moment she
thought of the Arbusers. She thought of Carmen. She must see somebody.
No, she couldn't talk. She couldn't trust herself. She must bear it
alone.
And how weary it was, walking, walking, with such a burden! House after
house, street after street, closed doors, repellant fronts, staring at
her. Suppose she were poor and hungry, a woman wandering forlorn, how
stony and pitiless these insolent mansions! And was she not burdened and
friendless and forlorn! Tired, she reached at last, and with no purpose,
the great white cathedral. The door was open. In all this street of
churches and palaces there was no other door open. Perhaps here for a
moment she could find shelter from the world, a quiet corner where she
could rest and think and pray.
She entered. It was almost empty, but down the vista of the great columns
hospitable lights gleamed, and here and there a man or a woman--more
women than men--was kneeling in the great aisle, before a picture, at the
side of a confessional, at the steps of the altar. How hushed and calm
and sweet it was! She crept into a pew in a side aisle in the shelter of
a pillar; and sat down. Presently, in the far apse, an organ began to
play, its notes stealing softly out through the great spaces like a
benediction. She fancied that the saints, the glorified martyrs in the
painted windows illumined by the sunlight, could feel, could hear, were
touched by human sympathy in their beatitude. There was peace here at any
rate, and perhaps strength. What a dizzy whirl it all was in which she
had been borne along! The tones of the organ rose fuller and fuller, and
now at the side entrances came pouring in children, the boys on one side,
the girls on another-school children with their books and satchels, the
poor children of the parish, long lines of girls and of boys, marshaled
by priests and nuns, streaming in--in frolicsome mood, and filling all
the pews of the nave at the front. They had their books out, their
singing-books; at a signal they all stood up; a young priest with his
baton stepped into the centre aisle; he waved his stick, Margaret heard
his sweet tenor voice, and then the whole chorus of children's voices
rising and filling all the house with the innocent concord, but always
above all the penetrating, soaring notes of the priest-strong, clear,
persuading. Was it not almost angelic there at the moment? And how
inspired the beautiful face of the singer leading the children!
Ah, me! it is not all of the world worldly, then. I don't know that the
singing was very good: it was not classical, I fear; not a voice, maybe,
that priest's, not a chorus, probably, that, for the Metropolitan. I hear
the organ is played better elsewhere. Song after song, chorus after
chorus, repeated, stopped, begun again: it was only drilling the little
urchins of the parochial schools--little ragamuffins, I dare say, many of
them. What was there in this to touch a woman of fashion, sitting there
crying in her corner? Was it because they were children's voices, and
innocent? Margaret did not care to check her tears. She was thinking of
her old home, of her own childhood, nay, of her girlhood--it was not so
long ago--of her ideals then, of her notion of the world and what it
would bring her, of the dear, affectionate life, the simple life, the
school, the little church, her room in the cottage--the chamber where
first the realization of love came to her with the odors of May. Was it
gone, that life?--gone or going out of her heart? And--great heavens!
--if her husband should be cold to her! Was she very worldly? Would he
love her if she were as unworldly as she once was? Why should this
childish singing raise these contrasts, and put her at odds so with her
own life? For a moment I doubt not this dear girl saw herself as we were
beginning to see her. Who says that the rich and the prosperous and the
successful do not need pity?
Was this a comforting hour, do you think, for Margaret in the cathedral?
Did she get any strength, I wonder? When the singing was over and the
organ ceased, and the children had filed out, she stole away also,
wearily and humbly enough, and took the stage down the avenue. It was
near the dinner-hour, and Henderson, if he came, would be at home any
moment. It seemed as if she could not wait--only to see him!
XVIII
Do you suppose that Henderson had never spoken impatiently and sharply to
his wife before, that Margaret had never resented it and replied with
spirit, and been hurt and grieved, and that there had never been
reconciliations? In writing any biography there are some things that are
taken for granted with an intelligent public. Are men always gentle and
considerate, and women always even-tempered and consistent, simply by
virtue of a few words said to the priest?
But this was a more serious affair. Margaret waited in a tumult of
emotion. She felt that she would die if she did not see him soon, and she
dreaded his coming. A horrible suspicion had entered her mind that
respect for her husband, confidence in him, might be lowered, and a more
horrible doubt that she might lose his love. That she could not bear. And
was Henderson unconscious of all this? I dare say that in the perplexing
excitement of the day he did recall for a moment with a keen thrust of
regret the scene of the morning-his wife standing there flushed, wounded,
indignant. "I might have turned back, and taken her in my arms, and told
her it was all right," he thought. He wished he had done so. But what
nonsense it was to think that she could be seriously troubled! Besides,
he couldn't have women interfering with him every moment.
How inconsiderate men are! They drop a word or a phrase--they do not know
how cruel it is--or give a look--they do not know how cold it is--and are
gone without a second thought about it; but it sinks into the woman's
heart and rankles there. For the instant it is like a mortal blow, it
hurts so, and in the brooding spirit it is exaggerated into a hopeless
disaster. The wound will heal with a kind word, with kisses. Yes, but
never, never without a little scar. But woe to the woman's love when she
becomes insensible to these little stabs!
Henderson hurried home, then, more eagerly than usual, with reparation in
his heart, but still with no conception of the seriousness of the breach.
Margaret heard the key in the door, heard his hasty step in the hall,
heard him call, as he always did on entering, "Margaret! where is
Margaret?" and she, sitting there in the deep window looking on the
square, longed to run to him, as usual also, and be lifted up in his
strong arms; but she could not stir. Only when he found her did she rise
up with a wistful look and a faint smile. "Have you had a good day,
child?" And he kissed her. But her kiss was on her lips only, for her
heart was heavy.
"Dinner will be served as soon as you dress," she said. What a greeting
was this! Who says that a woman cannot be as cruel as a man? The dinner
was not very cheerful, though Margaret did her best not to appear
constrained, and Henderson rattled on about the events of the day. It had
been a deuce of a day, but it was coming right; he felt sure that the
upper court would dissolve the injunction; the best counsel said so; and
the criminal proceedings--"Had there been criminal proceedings?" asked
Margaret, with a stricture at her heart--had broken down completely,
hadn't a leg to stand on, never had, were only begun to bluff the
company. It was a purely malicious prosecution. And Henderson did not
think it necessary to tell Margaret that only Uncle Jerry's dexterity had
spared both of them the experience of a night in the Ludlow Street jail.
"Come," said Henderson--"come into the library. I have something to tell
you." He put his arm round her as they walked, and seating himself in his
chair by his desk in front of the fire, he tried to draw Margaret to sit
on his knee.
"No; I'll sit here, so that I can see you," she said, composed and
unyielding.
He took out his pocket-book, selected a slip of paper, and laid it on the
table before him. "There, that is a check for seven hundred dollars. I
looked in the books. That is the interest for a year on the Fletcher
bonds. Might as well make it an even year; it will be that soon."
"Do you mean to say--" asked Margaret, leaning forward.
"Yes; to brighten up the Christmas up there a little."
"--that you are going to send that to Mrs. Fletcher?" Margaret had
risen.
"Oh, no; that wouldn't do. I cannot send it, nor know anything about it.
It would raise the--well, it would--if the other bondholders knew
anything about it. But you can change that for your check, and nobody the
wiser."
"Oh, Rodney!" She was on his knee now. He was good, after all. Her head
was on his shoulder, and she was crying a little. "I've been so unhappy,
so unhappy, all day! And I can send that?" She sprang up. "I'll do it
this minute--I'll run and get my check-book!" But before she reached the
door she turned back, and came and stood by him and kissed him again and
again, and tumbled up his hair, and looked at him. There is, after all,
nothing in the world like a woman.
"Time enough in the morning," said Henderson, detaining her. "I want to
tell you all about it."
What he told her was, in fact, the case as it had been presented by his
lawyers, and it seemed a very large, a constitutional, kind of case. "Of
course," he said, "in the rivalry and competition of business somebody
must go to the wall, and in a great scheme of development and
reorganization of the transportation of a region as big as an empire some
individual interests will suffer. You can't help these changes. I'm sorry
for some of them--very sorry; but nothing would ever be done if we waited
to consider every little interest. And that the men who create these
great works, and organize these schemes for the benefit of the whole
public, shouldn't make anything by their superior enterprise and courage
is all nonsense. The world is not made that way."
The explanation, I am bound to say, was one that half the world considers
valid; it was one that squeezed through the courts. And when it was done,
and the whole thing had blown over, who cared? There were some
bondholders who said that it was rascally, that they had been boldly
swindled. In the clubs, long after, you would hear it said that Hollowell
and Henderson were awfully sharp, and hard to beat. It is a very bad
business, said the Brandon parliament, and it just shows that the whole
country is losing its moral sense, its capacity to judge what is right
and what is wrong.
I do not say that this explanation, the nature of which I have only
indicated, would have satisfied the clear mind of Margaret a year or two
before. But it was made by the man she loved, the man who had brought her
out into a world that was full of sunlight and prosperity and satisfied
desire; and more and more, day by day, she saw the world through his
eyes, and accepted his estimate of the motives of people--and a low
estimate I fear it was. Who would not be rich if he could? Do you mean to
tell me that a man who is getting fat dividends out of a stock does not
regard more leniently the manner in which that stock is manipulated than
one who does not own any of it? I dare say, if Carmen had heard that
explanation, and seen Margaret's tearful, happy acceptance of it, she
would have shaken her pretty head and said, "They are getting too worldly
for me."
In the morning the letter was despatched to Miss Forsythe, enclosing the
check for Mrs. Fletcher--a joyful note, full of affection. "We cannot
come," Margaret wrote. "My husband cannot leave, and he does not want to
spare me"--the little hypocrite! he had told her that she could easily go
for a day "but we shall think of you dear ones all day, and I do hope
that now there will not be the least cloud on your Christmas."
It seems a great pity, in view of the scientific organization of society,
that there are so many sensibilities unclassified and unprovided for in
the otherwise perfect machinery. Why should the beggar to whom you toss a
silver dollar from your carriage feel a little grudge against you?
Perhaps he wouldn't like to earn the dollar, but if it had been
accompanied by a word of sympathy, his sensibility might have been
soothed by your recognition of human partnership in the goods of this
world. People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of right;
but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill to swallow
until self-respect is a little broken down. Probably the resentment lies
in the recognition of the truth that it is much easier to be charitable
than to be just. If Margaret had seen the effect produced by her letter
she might have thought of this; she might have gone further, and
reflected upon what would have been her own state of mind two years
earlier if she had received such a letter. Miss Forsythe read it with a
very heavy heart. She hesitated about showing it to Mrs. Fletcher, and
when she did, and gave her the check, it was with a sense of shame.
"The insolence of the thing!" cried Mrs. Fletcher, as soon as she
comprehended it.
"Not insolence," pleaded Miss Forsythe, softly; "it is out of the
kindness of her heart. She would be dreadfully wounded to know that you
took it so."
"Well," said Mrs. Fletcher, hotly, "I like that kind of sensibility. Does
she think I have no feeling? Does she think I would take from her as a
charity what her husband knows is mine by right?"
"Perhaps her husband--"
"No," Mrs. Fletcher interrupted. "Why didn't he send it, then? why didn't
the company send it? They owe it. I'm not a pauper. And all the other
bondholders who need the money as much as I do! I'm not saying that if
the company sent it I should refuse it because the others had been
treated unjustly; but to take it as a favor, like a beggar!"
"Of course you cannot take it from Margaret," said Miss Forsythe sadly.
"How dreadful it is!"
Mrs. Fletcher would have shared her last crust with Miss Forsythe, and if
her own fortune were absolutely lost, she would not hesitate to accept
the shelter of her present home, using her energies to add to their
limited income, serving and being served in all love and trust. But this
is different from taking a bounty from the rich.
The check had to go back. Even my wife, who saw no insolence in
Margaret's attempt, applauded Mrs. Fletcher's spirit. She told Miss
Forsythe that if things did not mend they might get a few little pupils
for Mrs. Fletcher from the neighborhood, and Miss Forsythe knew that she
was thinking that her own boy might have been one of them if he had
lived. Mr. Morgan was a little satirical, as usual. He thought it would
be a pity to check Margaret's growing notion that there was no wrong that
money could not heal a remark that my wife thought unjust to the girl.
Mrs. Fletcher was for re-enclosing the check without a word of comment,
but that Miss Forsythe would not do.
"My dearest Margaret," she wrote, "I know the kindness of heart that
moved you to do this, and I love you more than ever, and am crying as I
think of it. But you must see yourself, when you reflect, that Mrs.
Fletcher could not take this from you. Her self-respect would not permit
it. Somebody has done a great wrong, and only those who have done it can
undo it. I don't know much about such things, my dear, and I don't
believe all that the newspapers have been saying, but there would be no
need for charity if there had not been dishonesty somewhere. I cannot
help thinking that. We do not blame you. And you must not take it to
heart that I am compelled to send this back. I understand why you sent
it, and you must try to understand why it cannot be kept."
There was more of this sort in the letter. It was full of a kind of
sorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret's love were
slipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet it
had in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinster
could not conceal. Softened as it was by affectionate words, and all the
loving messages of the season, it was like a slap in the face to
Margaret. She read it in the first place with intense mortification, and
then with indignation. This was the way her loving spirit was flung back
upon her! They did not blame her! They blamed her husband, then. They
condemned him. It was his generosity that was spurned.
Is there a particular moment when we choose our path in life, when we
take the right or the left? At this instant, when Margaret arose with the
crumpled letter in her hand, and marched towards her husband's library,
did she choose, or had she been choosing for the two years past, and was
this only a publication of her election? Why had she secretly been a
little relieved from restraint when her Brandon visit ended in the
spring? They were against her husband; they disapproved of him, that was
clear. Was it not a wife's duty to stand by her husband? She was
indignant with the Brandon scrupulousness; it chafed her.. Was this
simply because she loved her husband, or was this indignation a little
due also to her liking for the world which so fell in with her
inclinations? The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossible
wholly to condemn or wholly to approve. If Margaret's destiny had been
united with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernment
in such a case as this? It is such a pity that for most people there is
only one chance in life.
She laid the letter and the check upon her husband's desk. He read it
with a slight frown, which changed to a smile of amusement as he looked
up and saw Margaret's excitement.
"Well, it was a miss-go. Those folks up there are too good for this
world. You'd better send it to the hospital."
"But you see that they say they do not blame me," Margaret said, with
warmth.
"Oh, I can stand it. People usually don't try to hurt my feelings that
way. Don't mind it, child. They will come to their senses, and see what
nonsense it all is."
Yes, it was nonsense. And how generous and kind at heart her husband was!
In his skillful making little of it she was very much comforted, and at
the same time drawn into more perfect sympathy with him. She was glad she
was not going to Brandon for Christmas; she would not submit herself to
its censorship. The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her aunt was
short and almost formal. She was very sorry they looked at the matter in
that way. She thought she was doing right, and they might blame her or
not, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any distinction to
be set up between her and her husband, etc.
Was this little note a severance of her present from her old life? I do
not suppose she regarded it so. If she had fully realized that it was a
step in that direction, would she have penned it with so little regret as
she felt? Or did she think that circumstances and not her own choice were
responsible for her state of feeling? She was mortified, as has been
said, but she wrote with more indignation than pain.
A year ago Carmen would have been the last person to whom Margaret would
have spoken about a family affair of this kind. Nor would she have done
so now, notwithstanding the intimacy established at Newport, if Carmen
had not happened in that day, when Margaret was still hurt and excited,
and skillfully and most sympathetically extracted from her the cause of
the mood she found her in. But even with all these allowances, that
Margaret should confide such a matter to Carmen was the most startling
sign of the change that had taken place in her.
"Well," said this wise person, after she had wormed out the whole story,
and expressed her profound sympathy, and then fallen into an attitude of
deep reflection--"well, I wish I could cast my bread upon the waters in
that way. What are you going to do with the money?"
"I've sent it to the hospital."
"What extravagance! And did you tell your aunt that?"
"Of course not."
"Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making her
feel bad."
"But I don't want to make her feel bad."
"Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldly
this way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that."
"You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike," cried Margaret, laughing in
spite of herself--"both of you as bad as you can be."
"But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?" asked Carmen, innocently.
To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise,
though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with Miss
Forsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone filled her
with alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did not dare to
face.
There was a passage in the letter which she did not show; not that it was
unfeeling, she told my wife afterwards, but that it exhibited a
worldly-mindedness that she could not have conceived of in Margaret. She
could bear separation from the girl on whom she had bestowed her
tenderest affection, that she had schooled herself to expect upon her
marriage--that, indeed, was only a part of her life of willing
self-sacrifice--their paths must lie apart, and she could hope to see
little of her. But what she could not bear was the separation in spirit,
the wrenching apart of sympathy, the loss of her heart, and the thought
of her going farther and farther away into that world whose cynical and
materialistic view of life made her shudder. I think there are few
tragedies in life comparable to this to a sensitive, trusting soul--not
death itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos. Family
quarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrong
and even indignation to keep up the spirits. There was no family quarrel
here, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss. In
one sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended,
she had lived so in this girl--ever since she came to her a child, in
long curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous,
affectionate thing. These two then never had had any secrets, never any
pleasure, never any griefs they did not share. She had seen the child's
mind unfold, the girl's grace and intelligence, the woman's character.
Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!
Margaret's little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her,
much in the condition she had left it. She might come back at any time,
and be a girl again. Here were many of the things which she had
cherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of her
maidenhood. It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness the
morning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslin
curtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills. She must be
here; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the little
Margaret came back to her. Ah, and when she turned, would she hear the
quick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangled
hair and lift her up and kiss her? There in that closet still hung
articles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she became
a woman--kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift. How each
one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the inner
closet was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it was that
led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge her
grief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little bonnet, a
spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she took
her first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbons
were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almost
as fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's delight in
the nodding roses!
When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and
finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the
window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling down
her cheeks. God help her!
XIX
The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than
a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the
patient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from the
vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in
domestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel would
be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while
appearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the
gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other--a
severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the
substitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is certain
to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to habituate one
to a lower view of human nature.
There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but
there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. There
was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the
growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get on
very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life. Miss
Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticity
of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to be
endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, and
that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the harder to
bear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted it, and had
moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great compensation for
such loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career that is more and
more agreeable. And I had to confess, when occasionally I saw Margaret
during that winter, that she did not need us. Why should she? Did not the
city offer her everything that she desired? And where in the world are
beauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a magnificent
establishment better appreciated? I do not know what criterion newspaper
notoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney Henderson's movements
were as faithfully chronicled as if she had been a visiting princess or
an actress of eccentric proclivities. Her name appeared as patroness of
all the charities, the balls, the soirees, musical and literary, and if
it did not appear in a list of the persons at any entertainment, one
might suspect that the affair lacked the cachet of the best society. I
suppose the final test of one's importance is to have all the details of
one's wardrobe spread before the public. Judged by this, Margaret's
career in New York was phenomenal. Even our interested household could
not follow her in all the changing splendor of her raiment. In time even
Miss Forsythe ceased to read all these details, but she cut them out,
deposited them with other relics in a sort of mortuary box of the child
and the maiden. I used to wonder if, in the Brandon attitude of mind at
this period, there were not just a little envy of such unclouded
prosperity. It is so much easier to forgive a failure than a success.
In the spring the Hendersons went abroad. The resolution to go may have
been sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to run up
and say good-by. The newspapers said that the trip was taken on account
of Mrs. Henderson's health; that it was because Henderson needed rest
from overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time, pending
the settlement of certain complications. There were ugly stories afloat,
but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many different
sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every word
Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression of
his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immensely
raised. Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humored
deference of the world to this sort of success. It is said that the
attraction of gravitation lessens according to the distance from the
earth, and there seems to be a region of aerial freedom, if one can
attain it, where the moral forces cease to be operative.
They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interim
made two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it was
made public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection with
names of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity.
Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of her
experiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went they
commanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune. What most
impressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so little
interested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressed
such a lively desire to see. If she saw them at all, it was from a
different point of view than that she formerly had. She did indeed
express her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours in
London, to whom I had written to call on her--people in very moderate
circumstances, I am ashamed to say--but she had not time to see much of
them. She and her husband had spent a couple of days at Chisholm
--delightful days. Of the earl she had literally nothing to say, except
that he was very kind, and that his family received them with the most
engaging and simple cordiality. "It makes me laugh," she wrote from
Chisholm, "when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport.
I've got some ideas for our new house." A note came from "John Lyon" to
Miss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in so
poor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon. I did not see it,
but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.
In Paris Margaret was ill--very ill; and this misfortune caused for a
time a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with a
disappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of their
natures. She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all our
apprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession of
gayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies. They returned
in June. Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and there
would be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with us
on her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life were
more and more divergent.
How could it be otherwise? There were so many topics of conversation that
we had to avoid. Even light remarks on current news, comments that we
used to make freely on the conduct of conspicuous persons, now carried
condemnation that took a personal color. The doubtful means of making
money, the pace of fashionable life, the wasteful prodigality of the
time, we instinctively shrank from speaking of before Margaret. Perhaps
we did her injustice. She was never more gracious, never more anxious to
please. I fancied that there was at times something pathetic in her
wistful desire for our affection and esteem. She was always a generous
girl, and I have no doubt she felt repelled at the quiet rejection of her
well-meant efforts to play the Lady Bountiful. There were moments during
her brief visit when her face was very sad, but no doubt her predominant
feeling escaped her in regard to the criticism quoted from somebody on
Jerry Hollowell's methods and motives. "People are becoming very
self-righteous," she said.
My wife said to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation of
Carmen Eschelle, "The people I cannot stand are those who pretend they
are not wicked." If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism has
usually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up as
Margaret had been could not very well come to her present view of life
without a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so lovely
--perhaps there is no moral quality in a good temper--that change of
principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning;
perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness
abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is
recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her
attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so
sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very
attractiveness of the worldly sort, I fancied, that pained her aunt, and
marked the separateness of their sympathies.
How could it be otherwise than that our interests should diverge? It was
a very busy summer with the Hendersons. They were planning the New York
house, which had been one of the objects of Henderson's early ambition.
The sea-air had been prescribed for Margaret, and Henderson had built a
steam-yacht, the equipment and furnishing of which had been a prolific
newspaper topic. It was greatly admired by yachtsmen for the beauty of
its lines and its speed, and pages were written about its sumptuous and
comfortable interior. I never saw it, having little faith in the comfort
of any structure that is not immovably reposeful, but from the
descriptions it was a boudoir afloat. In it short voyages were made
during the summer all along the coast from New York to Maine, and the
arrival and departure of the Henderson yacht was one of the telegraphic
items we always looked for. Carmen Eschelle was usually of the party on
board, sometimes the Misses Arbuser; it was always a gay company, and in
whatever harbor it dropped anchor there was a new impetus given to the
somewhat languid pleasure of the summer season. We read of the dinners
and lunches on board, the entertainments where there were wine and
dancing and moonlight, and all that. I always thought of it as a fairy
sort of ship, sailing on summer seas, freighted with youth and beauty,
and carrying pleasure and good-fortune wherever it went. What more
pleasing spectacle than this in a world that has such a bad name for want
and misery?
Henderson was master of the situation. The sudden accumulation of
millions of money is a mystery to most people. If Henderson had been
asked about it he would have said that he had not a dollar which he had
not earned by hard work. None worked harder. If simple industry is a
virtue, he would have been an example for Sunday-school children. The
object of life being to make money, he would have been a perfect example.
What an inspiration, indeed, for all poor boys were the names of
Hollowell and Henderson, which were as familiar as the name of the
President! There was much speculation as to the amount of Henderson's
fortune, and many wild estimates of it, but by common consent he was one
of the three or four great capitalists. The gauge of this was his power,
and the amounts he could command in an emergency. There was a mystery in
the very fact that the amount he could command was unknown. I have said
that his accumulation was sudden; it was probably so only in appearance.
For a dozen years, by operations, various, secret, untiring, he had been
laying the foundations for his success, and in the maturing of his
schemes it became apparent how vast his transactions had been. For years
he had been known as a rising man, and suddenly he became an important
man. The telegraph, the newspapers, chronicled his every movement;
whatever he said was construed like a Delphic oracle. The smile or the
frown of Jay Hawker himself had not a greater effect upon the market. The
Southwest operation, which made so much noise in the courts, was merely
an incident. In the lives of many successful men there are such
incidents, which they do not care to have inquired into, turning-points
that one slides over in the subsequent gilded biography, or, as it is
called, the nickel-plated biography. The uncomfortable A. and B.
bondholders had been settled with and silenced, after a fashion. In the
end, Mrs. Fletcher had received from the company nearly the full amount
of her investment. I always thought this was due to Margaret, but I made
no inquiries. There were many people who had no confidence in Henderson,
but generally his popularity was not much affected, and whatever was said
of him in private, his social position was almost as unchallenged as his
financial. It was a great point in his favor that he was very generous to
his family and his friends, and his public charities began to be talked
of. Nothing could have been more admirable than a paper which appeared
about this time in one of the leading magazines, written by a great
capitalist during a strike in his "system," off the uses of wealth and
the responsibilities of rich men. It amused Henderson and Uncle Jerry,
and Margaret sent it, marked, to her aunt. Uncle Jerry said it was very
timely, for at the moment there was a report that Hollowell and Henderson
had obtained possession of one of the great steamship lines in connection
with their trans-continental system. I thought at the time that I should
like to have heard Carmen's comments on the paper.
The continued friendly alliance of Rodney Henderson and Jerry Hollowell
was a marvel to the public, which expected to read any morning that the
one had sold out the other, or unloaded in a sly deal. The Stock Exchange
couldn't understand it; it was so against all experience that it was
considered something outside of human nature. But the explanation was
simple enough. The two kept a sharp eye on each other, and, as Uncle
Jerry would say, never dropped a stitch; but the simple fact was that
they were necessary to each other, and there had been no opportunity when
the one could handsomely swallow the other. So it was beautiful to see
their accord, and the familiar understanding between them.
One day in Henderson's office--it was at the time they were arranging the
steamship "scoop" while they were waiting for the drafting of some
papers, Uncle Jerry suddenly asked:
"By the way, old man, what's all this about a quarter of a million for a
colored college down South?"
"Oh, that's Mrs. Henderson's affair. They say it's the most magnificent
college building south of Washington. It's big enough. I've seen the plan
of it. Henderson Hall, they are going to call it. I suggested Margaret
Henderson Hall, but she wouldn't have it."
"What is it for?"
"One end of it is scientific, geological, chemical, electric, biological,
and all that; and the other end is theological. Miss Eschelle says it's
to reconcile science and religion."
"She's a daisy-that girl. Seems to me, though, that you are educating the
colored brother all on top. I suppose, however, it wouldn't have been so
philanthropic to build a hall for a white college."
Henderson laughed. "You keep your eye on the religious sentiment of the
North, Uncle Jerry. I told Mrs. Henderson that we had gone long on the
colored brother a good while. She said this was nothing. We could endow a
Henderson University by-and-by in the Southwest, white as alabaster, and
I suppose we shall."
"Yes, probably we've got to do something in that region to keep 'em
quiet. The public is a curious fish. It wants plenty of bait."
"And something to talk about," continued Henderson. "We are going down
next week to dedicate Henderson Hall. I couldn't get out of it."
"Oh, it will pay," said Uncle Jerry, as he turned again to business.
The trip was made in Henderson's private car; in fact, in a special
train, vestibuled; a neat baggage car with library and reading-room in
one end, a dining-room car, a private car for invited guests, and his own
car--a luxurious structure, with drawing-room, sleeping-room, bath-room,
and office for his telegrapher and type-writer. The whole was a most
commodious house of one story on wheels. The cost of it would have built
and furnished an industrial school and workshop for a hundred negroes;
but this train was, I dare say, a much more inspiring example of what
they might attain by the higher education. There were half a dozen in the
party besides the Hendersons--Carmen, of course; Mr. Ponsonby, the
English attache; and Mrs. Laflamme, to matronize three New York young
ladies. Margaret and Carmen had never been so far South before.
Is it not agreeable to have sweet charity silver shod? This sumptuous
special train caused as much comment as the errand on which it went. Its
coming was telegraphed from station to station, and crowds everywhere
collected to see it. Brisk reporters boarded it; the newspapers devoted
columns to descriptions of it; editorials glorified it as a signal
example of the progress of the great republic, or moralized on it as a
sign of the luxurious decadence of morals; pointing to Carthage and Rome
and Alexandria in withering sarcasm that made those places sink into
insignificance as corrupters of the world. There were covert allusions to
Cleopatra ensconced in the silken hangings of the boudoir car, and one
reporter went so far as to refer to the luxury of Capua and Baiae, to
their disparagement. All this, however, was felt to add to the glory of
the republic, and it all increased the importance of Henderson. To hear
the exclamations, "That's he!" "That's him!" "That's Henderson!" was to
Margaret in some degree a realization of her ambition; and Carmen
declared that it was for her a sweet thought to be identified with
Cleopatra.
So the Catachoobee University had its splendid new building--as great a
contrast to the shanties from which its pupils came as is the Capitol at
Washington to the huts of a third of its population. If the reader is
curious he may read in the local newspapers of the time glowing accounts
of its "inaugural dedication"; but universities are so common in this
country that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies of
this sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy on
himself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundred
young men and women of various colors and invited guests--a eulogy which
no one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that she
refused to take the affair seriously.
"I felt for you, Mr. Henderson,"; she said, after the exercises were
over. "I blushed for you. I almost felt ashamed, after all the president
said, that you had given so little."
"You seem, Miss Eschelle," remarked Mr. Ponsonby, "to be enthusiastic
about the education and elevation of the colored people."
"Yes, I am; I quite share Mr. Henderson's feeling about it. I'm for the
elevation of everything."
"There is a capital chance for you," said Henderson; "the university
wants some scholarships."
"And I've half a mind to found one--the Eschelle Scholarship of Washing
and Clear-starching. You ought to have seen my clothes that came back to
the car. Probably they were not done by your students. The things looked
as if they had been dragged through the Cat-a-what-do-you-call-it River,
and ironed with a pine chip."
"Could you do them any better, with all your cultivation?" asked
Margaret.
"I think I could, if I was obliged to. But I couldn't get through that
university, with all its ologies and laboratories and Greek and queer
bottles and machines. You have neglected my education, Mr. Henderson."
"It is not too late to begin now; you might see if you could pass the
examination here. It is part of our plan gradually to elevate the
whites," said Henderson.
"Yes, I know; and did you see that some of the scholars had red hair and
blue eyes, quite in the present style? And how nice the girls looked,"
she rattled on; "and what a lot of intelligent faces, and how they
kindled up when the president talked about the children of Israel in the
wilderness forty years, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon! And you, sir"
--she turned to the Englishman--"I've heard, were against all this
emancipation during the war."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Ponsonby, "we never were against emancipation,
and wanted the best side to win."
"You had a mighty queer way of showing it, then."
"Well, honestly, Miss Eschelle, do you think the negroes are any better
off?"
"You'd better ask them. My opinion is that everybody should do what he
likes in this world."
"Then what are you girding Mr. Henderson for about his university?"
"Because these philanthropists, like Mr. Henderson and Uncle Jerry
Hollowell, are all building on top; putting on the frosting before the
cake rises."
"Haven't you found out, Mr. Ponsonby," Margaret interrupted, "that if
there were eight sides to a question, Miss Eschelle would be on every one
of them?"
"And right, too. There are eight sides to every question, and generally
more. I think the negro question has a hundred. But there is only one
side to Henderson Hall. It is a noble institution. I like to think about
it, and Uncle Caesar Hollowell crossing the Rubicon in his theological
seminary. It is all so beautiful!"
"You are a bad child," said Margaret. "We should have left you at home."
"No, not bad, dear; only confused with such a lot of good deeds in a
naughty world."
That this junketing party was deeply interested in the cause of education
for whites or blacks, no one would have gathered from the conversation.
Margaret felt that Carmen had exactly hit the motives of this sort of
philanthropy, and she was both amused and provoked by the girl's mockery.
By force of old habit she defended, as well she might, these schools.
"You must have a high standard," she said. "You cannot have good lower
schools without good higher schools. And these colleges, which you think
above the colored people, will stimulate them and gradually raise the
whole mass. You cannot do anything until you educate teachers."
"So I have always heard," replied the incorrigible. "I have always been a
philanthropist about the negro till I came down here, and I intend to be
again when I go back."
Mrs. Laflamme was not a very eager apostle either, and the young ladies
devoted themselves to the picturesque aspects of the population, without
any concern for the moral problems. They all declared that they liked the
negro. But Margaret was not to be moved from her good-humor by any amount
of badgering. She liked Henderson Hall; she was proud of the
consideration it brought her husband; she had a comfortable sense of
doing something that was demanded by her opportunity. It is so difficult
to analyze motives, and in Margaret's case so hard to define the change
that had taken place in her. That her heart was not enlisted in this
affair, as it would have been a few years before, she herself knew.
Insensibly she had come to look at the world, at men and women, through
her husband's eyes, to take the worldly view, which is not inconsistent
with much good feeling and easy-going charity. She also felt the
necessity--a necessity totally unknown to such a nature as Carmen's--of
making compensation, of compounding for her pleasures. Gradually she was
learning to play her husband's game in life, and to see no harm in it.
What, then, is this thing we call conscience? Is it made of India-rubber?
I once knew a clever Southern woman, who said that New England women
seemed to her all conscience--Southern women all soul and impulse. If it
were possible to generalize in this way, we might say that Carmen had
neither conscience nor soul, simply very clever reason. Uncle Jerry had
no more conscience than Carmen, but he had a great deal of natural
affection. Henderson, with an abundance of good-nature, was simply a man
of his time, troubled with no scruples that stood in the way of his
success. Margaret, with a finer nature than either of them, stifling her
scruples in an atmosphere of worldly-mindedness, was likely to go further
than either of them. Even such a worldling as Carmen understood this. "I
do things," she said to Mrs. Laflamme--she made anybody her confidant
when the fit was on her--"I do things because I don't care. Mrs.
Henderson does the same, but she does care."
Margaret would be a sadder woman, but not a better woman, when the time
came that she did not care. She had come to the point of accepting
Henderson's methods of overreaching the world, and was tempering the
result with private liberality. Those were hypocrites who criticised him;
those were envious who disparaged him; the sufficient ethics of the world
she lived in was to be successful and be agreeable. And it is difficult
to condemn a person who goes with the general opinion of his generation.
Carmen was under no illusions about Henderson, or the methods and manners
of which she was a part. "Why pretend?" she said. "We are all bad
together, and I like it. Uncle Jerry is the easiest person to get on
with." I remember a delightful, wicked old baroness whom I met in my
youth stranded in Geneva on short allowance--European resorts are full of
such characters. "My dear," she said, "why shouldn't I renege? Why
shouldn't men cheat at cards? It's all in the game. Don't we all know we
are trying to deceive each other and get the best of each other? I
stopped pretending after Waterloo. Fighting for the peace of Europe! Bah!
We are all fighting for what we can get."
So the Catachoobee Henderson Hall was dedicated, and Mr. Henderson got
great credit out of it.
"It's a noble deed, Mr. Henderson," Carmen remarked, when they were at
dinner on the car the day of their departure. "But"--in an aside to her
host--"I advise the lambs in Wall Street to look alive at your next
deal."
XX
We can get used to anything. Morgan says that even the New England summer
is endurable when you learn to dress warmly enough. We come to endure
pain and loss with equanimity; one thing and another drops out of our
lives-youth, for instance, and sometimes enthusiasm--and still we go on
with a good degree of enjoyment. I do not say that Miss Forsythe was
quite the same, or that a certain zest of life and spring had not gone
out of the little Brandon neighborhood.
As the months and the years went by we saw less and less of Margaret
--less and less, that is, in the old way. Her rare visits were
perfunctory, and gave little satisfaction to any of us; not that she was
ungracious or unkindly, but simply because the things we valued in life
were not the same. There was no doubt that any of us were welcome at the
Hendersons' when they were in the city, genuinely, though in an exterior
way, but gradually we almost ceased to keep up an intercourse which was a
little effort on both sides. Miss Forsythe came back from her infrequent
city visits weary and sad.
Was Margaret content? I suppose so. She was gay; she was admired; she was
always on view in that semi-public world in which Henderson moved; she
attained a newspaper notoriety which many people envied. If she journeyed
anywhere, if she tarried anywhere, if she had a slight illness, the fact
was a matter of public concern. We knew where she worshiped; we knew the
houses she frequented, the charities she patronized, the fetes she
adorned, every new costume that her wearing made the fashion. Was she
content? She could perhaps express no desire that an attempt was not made
to gratify it. But it seems impossible to get enough things enough money,
enough pleasure. They had a magnificent place in Newport; it was not
large enough; they were always adding to it--awning, a ballroom, some
architectural whim or another. Margaret had a fancy for a cottage at Bar
Harbor, but they rarely went there. They had an interest in Tuxedo; they
belonged to an exclusive club on Jekyl Island. They passed one winter
yachting among the islands in the eastern Mediterranean; a part of
another sailing from one tropical paradise to another in the West Indies.
If there was anything that money could not obtain, it seemed to be a
place where they could rest in serene peace with themselves.
I used to wonder whether Margaret was satisfied with her husband's
reputation. Perhaps she mistook the newspaper homage, the notoriety, for
public respect. She saw his influence and his power. She saw that he was
feared, and of course hated, by some--the unsuccessful--but she saw the
terms he was on with his intimates, due to the fact that everybody
admitted that whatever Henderson was in "a deal," privately he was a
deuced good fellow.
Was this an ideal married life? Henderson's selfishness was fully
developed, and I could see that he was growing more and more hard. Would
Margaret not have felt it, if she also had not been growing hard, and
accustomed to regard the world in his unbelieving way? No, there was
sharpness occasionally between them, tiffs and disagreements. He was a
great deal away from home, and she plunged into a life of her own, which
had all the external signs of enjoyment. I doubt if he was ever very
selfish where she was concerned, and love can forgive almost any conduct
where there is personal indulgence. I had a glimpse of the real state of
things in a roundabout way. Henderson loved his wife and was proud of
her, and he was not unkind, but he might have been a brute and tied her
up to the bedpost, and she never would have shown by the least sign to
the world that she was not the most happy of wives.
When the Earl of Chisholm was in this country it was four years after
Margaret's marriage--we naturally saw a great deal of him. The young
fellow whom we liked so much had become a man, with a graver demeanor,
and I thought a trace of permanent sadness in his face; perhaps it was
only the responsibility of his position, or, as Morgan said, the modern
weight that must press upon an earl who is conscientious. He was still
unmarried. The friendship between him and Miss Forsythe, which had been
kept alive by occasional correspondence, became more cordial and
confidential. In New York he had seen much of Margaret, not at all to his
peace of mind in many ways, though the generous fellow would have been
less hurt if he had not estimated at its real value the life she was
leading. It did not need Margaret's introduction for the earl to be
sought for by the novelty and pleasure loving society of the city; but he
got, as he confessed, small satisfaction out of the whirl of it, although
we knew that he met Mrs. Henderson everywhere, and in a manner assisted
in her social triumphs. But he renewed his acquaintance with Miss
Eschelle, and it was the prattle of this ingenuous creature that made him
more heavy-hearted than anything else.
"How nice it is of you, Mr. Lyon--may I call you so, to bring back the
old relations?--to come here and revive the memory of the dear old days
when we were all innocent and happy! Dear me, I used to think I could
patronize that little country girl from Brandon! I was so worldly--don't
you remember?--and she was so good. And now she is such a splendid woman,
it is difficult for the rest of us to keep pace with her. The nerve she
has, and the things she will do! I just envy her. I sometimes think she
will drive me into a convent. And don't you think she is more beautiful
than ever? Of course her face is a little careworn, but nobody makes up
as she does; she was just ravishing the other night. Do you know, I think
she takes her husband too seriously."
"I trust she is happy," the earl had said.
"Why shouldn't she be?" Carmen asked in return. "She has everything she
wants. They both have a little temper; life would be flat without that;
she is a little irritable sometimes; she didn't use to be; and when they
don't agree they let each other alone for a little. I think she is as
happy as anybody can be who is married. Now you are shocked! Well, I
don't know any one who is more in love than she is, and that may be
happiness. She is becoming exactly like Mr. Henderson. You couldn't ask
anything more than that."
If Margaret were really happy, the earl told Miss Forsythe, he was glad,
but it was scarcely the career he would have thought would have suited
her.
Meantime, the great house was approaching completion. Henderson's palace,
in the upper part of the city, had long been a topic for the
correspondents of the country press. It occupied half a square. Many
critics were discontented with it because it did not occupy the whole
square. Everybody was interested in having it the finest residence on the
continent. Why didn't Henderson take the whole block of ground, build his
palace on three sides, with the offices and stables on the fourth, throw
a glass roof over the vast interior court, plant it with tropical trees
and plants, adorn it with flower-beds and fountains, and make a veritable
winter-garden, giving the inhabitants a temperate climate all the cold
months? He might easily have summer in the centre of the city from
November to April. These rich people never know what to do with their
money. Such a place would give distinction to the city, and compel
foreigners to recognize the high civilization of America. A great deal of
fault was found with Henderson privately for his parsimony in such a
splendid opportunity.
Nevertheless it was already one of the sights of the town. Strangers were
taken to see it, as it rose in its simple grandeur. Local reporters made
articles on the progress of the interior whenever they could get an
entrance. It was not ornate enough to please, generally, but those who
admired the old Louvre liked the simplicity of its lines and the dignity
of the elevations. They discovered the domestic note in its quiet
character, and said that the architect had avoided the look of an
"institution" in such a great mass. He was not afraid of dignified wall
space, and there was no nervous anxiety manifested, which would have
belittled it with trivial ornamentation.
Perhaps it was not an American structure, although one could find in it
all the rare woods and stones of the continent. Great numbers of foreign
workmen were employed in its finishing and decoration. One could wander
in it from Pompeii to Japan, from India to Versailles, from Greece to the
England of the Tudors, from the Alhambra to colonial Salem. It was so
cosmopolitan that a representative of almost any nationality, ancient or
modern, could have been suited in it with an apartment to his taste, and
if the interior lacked unity it did not lack a display of variety that
appealed to the imagination. From time to time paragraphs appeared in
English, French, and Italian journals, regarding the work of this and
that famous artist who was designing a set of furniture or furnishing the
drawings of a room, or carving the paneling and statuary, or painting the
ceiling of an apartment in the great Palazzo Henderson in New York
--Washington. The United American Workers (who were half foreigners by
birth) passed resolutions denouncing Henderson for employing foreign
pauper labor, and organized more than one strike while the house was
building. It was very unpatriotic and un-American to have anything done
that could not be done by a member of the Union. There was a firm of
excellent stone-cutters which offered to make all the statuary needed in
the house, and set it up in good shape, and when the offer was declined,
it memorialized Congress for protection.
Although Henderson gave what time he could spare to the design and
erection of the building, it pleased him to call it Margaret's house, and
to see the eagerness with which she entered into its embellishment. There
was something humorous in the enlargement of her ideas since the days
when she had wondered at the magnificence of the Washington Square home,
and modestly protested against its luxury. Her own boudoir was a cheap
affair compared with that in the new house.
"Don't you think, dear," she said, puzzling over the drawings, "that it
would better be all sandalwood? I hate mosaics. It looks so cheap to have
little bits of precious woods stuck about."
"I should think so. But what do you do with the ebony?"
"Oh, the ebony and gold? That is the adjoining sitting-room--such a
pretty contrast."
"And the teak?"
"It has such a beautiful polish. That is another room. Carmen says that
will be our sober room, where we go when we want to repent of things."
"Well, if you have any sandal-wood left over, you can work it into your
Boys' Lodging-house, you know."
"Don't be foolish! And then the ballroom, ninety feet long--it looks
small on the paper. And do you think we'd better have those life-size
figures all round, mediaeval statues, with the incandescents? Carmen says
she would prefer a row of monks--something piquant about that in a
ballroom. I don't know that I like the figures, after all; they are too
crushing and heavy."
"It would make a good room for the Common Council," Henderson suggested.
"Wouldn't it be prettier hung with silken arras figured with a chain of
dancing-girls? Dear me, I don't know what to do. Rodney, you must put
your mind on it."
"Might line it with gold plate. I'll make arrangements so that you can
draw on the Bank of England."
Margaret looked hurt. "But you told me, dear, not to spare anything
--that we would have the finest house in the city. I'm sure I sha'n't
enjoy it unless you want it."
"Oh, I want it," resumed Henderson, good-humoredly. "Go ahead, little
wife. We shall pull through."
"Women beat me," Henderson confessed to Uncle Jerry next day. "They are
the most economical of beings and the most extravagant. I've got to look
round for an extra million somewhere today."
"Yes, there is this good thing about women," Uncle Jerry responded, with
a twinkle in his eyes, "they share your riches just as cheerfully as they
do your poverty. I tell Maria that if I had the capacity for making money
that she has for spending it I could assume the national debt."
To have the finest house in the city, or rather, in the American
newspaper phrase, in the Western world, was a comprehensible ambition for
Henderson, for it was a visible expression of his wealth and his
cultivated taste. But why Margaret should wish to exchange her dainty and
luxurious home in Washington Square for the care of a vast establishment
big enough for a royal court, my wife could not comprehend. But why not?
To be the visible leader in her world, to be able to dispense a
hospitality which should surpass anything heretofore seen, to be the
mistress and autocrat of an army of servants, with ample room for their
evolution, in a palace whose dimensions and splendor should awaken envy
and astonishment--would this not be an attraction to a woman of
imagination and spirit?
Besides, they had outgrown the old house. There was no longer room for
the display, scarcely for the storage, of the works of art, the pictures,
the curiosities, the books, that unlimited money and the opportunity of
foreign travel had collected in all these years. "We must either build or
send our things to a warehouse," Henderson had long ago said. Among the
obligations of wealth is the obligation of display. People of small means
do not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with the
accumulation of property. It was only natural that Margaret, who might
have been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a country
clergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed a
world too large for the country girl.
"I don't see how you could do with less room," Carmen said, with an air
of profound conviction. They were looking about the house on its last
uninhabited day, directing the final disposition of its contents. For
Carmen, as well as for Margaret, the decoration and the furnishing of the
house had been an occupation. The girl had the whim of playing the part
of restrainer and economizer in everything; but Henderson used to say,
when Margaret told him of Carmen's suggestions, that a little more of her
economy would ruin him.
"Yes," Margaret admitted, "there does not seem to be anything that is not
necessary."
"Not a thing. When you think of it, two people require as much space as a
dozen; when you go beyond one room, you must go on. Of course you
couldn't get on without a reception-room, drawing-rooms, a conservatory,
a music-room, a library, a morning-room, a breakfast-room, a small
dining-room and a state dining-room, Mr. Henderson's snuggery, with his
own library, a billiard-room, a picture-gallery--it is full already;
you'll have to extend it or sell some pictures--your own suite and Mr.
Henderson's suite, and the guest-rooms, and I forgot the theatre in the
attic. I don't see but you have scrimped to the last degree."
"And yet there is room to move about," Margaret acknowledged, with a
gratified smile, as they wandered around. "Dear me, I used to think the
Stotts' house was a palace."
It was the height of the season before Lent. There had been one delay and
another, but at last all the workmen had been expelled, and Margaret was
mistress of her house. Cards for the house-warming had been out for two
weeks, and the event was near. She was in her own apartments this pale,
wintry afternoon, putting the finishing touches to her toilet. Nothing
seemed to suit. The maid found her in a very bad humor. "Remember," she
had said to her husband, when he ordered his brougham after breakfast,
"sharp seven, we are to dine alone the first time." It lacked two hours
yet of dinner-time, but she was dressing for want of other occupation.
Was this then the summit of her ambition? She had indeed looked forward
to some such moment as this as one of exultation in the satisfaction of
all her wishes. She took up a book of apothegms that lay on the table,
and opened by chance to this, "Unhappy are they whose desires are all
ratified." It was like a sting. Why should she think at this moment of
her girlhood; of the ideals indulged in during that quiet time; of her
aunt's cheerful, tender, lonely life; of her rejection of Mr. Lyon? She
did not love Mr. Lyon; she was not satisfied then. How narrow that little
life in Brandon had been! She threw the book from her. She hated all that
restraint and censoriousness. If her aunt could see her in all this
splendor, she would probably be sadder than ever. What right had she to
sit there and mourn--as she knew her aunt did--and sigh over her career?
What right had they to sit in judgment on her?
She went out from her room, down the great stairway, into the spacious
house, pausing in the great hall to see opening vista after vista in the
magnificent apartments. It was the first time that she had alone really
taken the full meaning of it--had possessed it with the eye. It was hers.
Wherever she went, all hers. No, she had desires yet. It should be filled
with life--it should be the most brilliant house in the world. Society
should see, should acknowledge the leadership. Yes--as she glanced at
herself in a drawing-room mirror--they should see that Henderson's wife
was capable of a success equal to his own, and she would stop the hateful
gossip about him. She set her foot firmly as she thought about it; she
would crush those people who had sneered at them as parvenu. She strayed
into the noble gallery. Some face there touched her, some landscape
soothed her. No, she said to herself, I will win them, I do not want
hateful strife.
Who knows what is in a woman? how many moods in a quarter of an hour, and
which is the characteristic one? Was this the Margaret who had walked
with Lyon that Sunday afternoon of the baptism, and had a heart full of
pain for the pitiful suffering of the world?
As she sat there she grew calmer. Her thoughts went away in a vision of
all the social possibilities of this wonderful house. From vaguely
admiring what she looked at, she began to be critical; this and that
could be changed to advantage; this shade of hanging was not harmonious;
this light did not fall right. She smiled to think that her husband
thought it all done. How he would laugh to find that she was already
planning to rearrange it! Hadn't she been satisfied for almost
twenty-four hours? That was a long time for a woman. Then she thought of
the reception; of the guests; of what some of them would wear; how they
would look about; what they would say. She was already in that world
which was so shining and shifting and attractive. She did not hear
Henderson come in until his arm was around her.
"Well, sweet, keeping house alone? I've had a jolly day; lucky as old Mr.
Luck."
"Have you?" she cried, springing up. "I'm so glad. Come, see the house."
"You look a little pale," he said, as they strolled out to the
conservatory together.
"Just a little tired," she admitted. "Do you know, Rodney, I hated this
house at five o'clock--positively hated it?"
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know; I was thinking. But I liked it at half-past six. I
love it now. I've got used to it, as if I had always lived here. Isn't it
beautiful everywhere? But I'm going to make some changes."
"A hanging garden on the roof?" Henderson asked, with meekness.
"That would be nice. No, not now. But to make over and take off the new
look. Everything looks so new."
"Well, we will try to live that down."
And so they wandered on, admiring, bantering, planning. Could Etienne
Debree have seen his descendant at this moment he would have been more
than ever proud of his share in establishing the great republic, and of
his appreciation of the promise of its beauty. What satisfies a woman's
heart is luxury, thought Henderson, in an admiring cynical moment.
They had come into his own den and library, and he stood looking at the
rows of his favorite collection shining in their new home. For all its
newness it had a familiar look. He thought for a moment that he might be
in his old bachelor quarters. Suddenly Margaret made a rush at him. She
shook the great fellow. She feasted her eyes on him.
"What's got into you to look so splendid? Do you hear, go this instant
and dress, and make yourself ten times as fascinating."
XXI
Live not unto yourselves! Can any one deny that this blessed sentiment is
extending in modern life? Do we build houses for ourselves or for others?
Do we make great entertainments for our own comfort? I do not know that
anybody regarded the erection of the Henderson palace as an altruistic
performance. The socialistic newspapers said that it was pure
ostentation. But had it not been all along in the minds of the builders
to ask all the world to see it, to share the delight of it? Is this a
selfish spirit? When I stroll in the Park am I not pleased with the
equipages, with the display of elegance upon which so much money has been
lavished for my enjoyment?
All the world was asked to the Henderson reception. The coming event was
the talk of the town. I have now cuttings from the great journals,
articles describing the house, more beautifully written than Gibbon's
stately periods about the luxury of later Rome. It makes one smile to
hear that the day of fine writing is over. Everybody was eager to go;
there was some plotting to obtain invitations by those who felt that they
could not afford to be omitted from the list that would be printed; by
those who did not know the Hendersons, and did not care to know them, but
who shared the general curiosity; and everybody vowed that he supposed he
must go, but he hated such a crush and jam as it was sure to be. Yet no
one would have cared to go if it had not promised to be a crush. I said
that all the world was asked, which is our way of saying that a thousand
or two had been carefully selected from the million within reach.
Invitations came to Brandon, of course, for old times' sake. The Morgans
said that they preferred a private view; Miss Forsythe declared that she
hadn't the heart to go; in short, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild alone went to
represent the worldly element.
I am sorry to say that the reader must go to the files of the city press
for an account of the night's festivity. The pen that has been used in
portraying Margaret's career is entirely inadequate to it. There is a
general impression that an American can do anything that he sets his hand
to, but it is not true; it is true only that he tries everything. The
reporter is born, as the poet is; it cannot be acquired--that
astonishing, irresponsible command of the English language; that warm,
lyrical tone; that color, and bewildering metaphorical brilliancy; that
picturesqueness; that use of words as the painter uses pigments, in
splashes and blotches which are so effective; that touch of raillery and
sarcasm and condescension; that gay enjoyment of reveling in the
illimitable; that air of superior knowledge and style; that dash of
sentiment; that calm and somewhat haughty judgment.
I am always impressed at such an entertainment with the good-humor of the
American people, no matter what may be the annoyance and discomfort.
In all the push and thrust and confusion, amid the rending of trains, the
tearing of lace, the general crushing of costumes, there was the merriest
persiflage, laughter, and chatter, and men and women entered into and
drew out of the fashionable wreck in the highest spirits. For even in
such a spacious mansion there were spots where currents met, and rooms
where there was a fight for mere breath. It would have been a tame affair
without this struggle. And what an epitome of life it all was! There were
those who gave themselves up to admiration, who gushed with enthusiasm;
there were those who had the weary air of surfeit with splendor of this
sort; there were the bustling and volatile, who made facetious remarks,
and treated the affair like a Fourth of July; and there were also groups
dark and haughty, like the Stotts, who held a little aloof, and coldly
admitted that it was most successful; it lacked je ne sais quoi, but it
was in much better taste than they had expected. Is there something in
the very nature of a crowd to bring out the inherent vulgarity of the
best-bred people, so that some have doubted whether the highest
civilization will tolerate these crushing and hilarious assemblies?
At any rate, one could enjoy the general effect. There might be vulgar
units, and one caught notes of talk that disenchanted, but there were so
many women of rare and stately beauty, of exquisite loveliness, of charm
in manner and figure--so many men of fine presence, with such an air of
power and manly prosperity and self-reliance--I doubt if any other
assembly in the world, undecorated by orders and uniforms, with no blazon
of rank, would have a greater air of distinction. Looking over it from a
landing in the great stairway that commanded vistas and ranges of the
lofty, brilliant apartments, vivified by the throng, which seemed
ennobled by the spacious splendor in which it moved, one would be
pardoned a feeling of national pride in the spectacle. I drew aside to
let a stately train of beauty and of fashion descend, and saw it sweep
through the hall, and enter the drawing-rooms, until it was lost in a sea
of shifting color. It was like a dream.
And the centre of all this charming plutocratic graciousness and beauty
was Margaret--Margaret and her handsome husband. Where did the New
Hampshire boy learn this simple dignity of bearing, this good-humored
cordiality without condescension, this easy air of the man of the world?
Was this the railway wrecker, the insurance manipulator, the familiar of
Uncle Jerry, the king of the lobby, the pride and the bugaboo of Wall
Street? Margaret was regnant. And how charmingly she received her guests!
How well I knew that half-imperious toss of the head, and the glance of
those level, large gray eyes, softened instantly, on recognition, into
the sweetest smile of welcome playing about the dimple and the expressive
mouth! What woman would not feel a little thrill of triumph? The world
was at her feet. Why was it, I wonder, as I stood there watching the
throng which saluted this queenly woman of the world, in an hour of
supreme social triumph, while the notes of the distant orchestra came
softly on the air, and the overpowering perfume of banks of flowers and
tropical plants--why was it that I thought of a fair, simple girl,
stirred with noble ideals, eager for the intellectual life, tender,
sympathetic, courageous? It was Margaret Debree--how often I had seen her
thus!--sitting on her little veranda, swinging her chip hat by the
string, glowing from some errand in which her heart had played a much
more important part than her purse. I caught the odor of the honeysuckle
that climbed on the porch, and I heard the note of the robin that nested
there.
"You seem to be in a brown study," said Carmen, who came up, leaning on
the arm of the Earl of Chisholm.
"I'm lost in admiration. You must make allowance, Miss Eschelle, for a
person from the country."
"Oh, we are all from the country. That is the beauty of it. There is Mr.
Hollowell, used to drive a peddler's cart, or something of that sort, up
in Maine, talking with Mr. Stott, whose father came in on the towpath of
the Erie Canal. You don't dance? The earl has just been giving me a whirl
in the ballroom, and I've been trying to make him understand about
democracy."
"Yes," the earl rejoined; "Miss Eschelle has been interpreting to me
republican simplicity."
"And he cannot point out, Mr. Fairchild, why this is not as good as a
reception at St. James. I suppose it's his politeness."
"Indeed, it is all very charming. It must be a great thing to be the
architect of your own fortune."
"Yes; we are all self-made," Carmen confessed.
"I am, and I get dreadfully tired of it sometimes. I have to read over
the Declaration and look at the map of the Western country at such times.
A body has to have something to hold on to."
"Why, this seems pretty substantial," I said, wondering what the girl was
driving at.
"Oh, yes; I suppose the world looks solid from a balloon. I heard one man
say to another just now, 'How long do you suppose Henderson will last?'
Probably we shall all come down by the run together by-and-by."
"You seem to be on a high plane," I suggested.
"I guess it's the influence of the earl. But I am the most misunderstood
of women. What I really like is simplicity. Can you have that without the
social traditions," she appealed to the earl, "such as you have in
England?"
"I really cannot say," the earl replied, laughing. "I fancied there was
simplicity in Brandon; perhaps that was traditional."
"Oh, Brandon!" Carmen cried, "see what Brandon does when it gets a
chance. I assure your lordship that we used to be very simple people in
New York. Come, let us go and tell Mrs. Henderson how delightful it all
is. I'm so sorry for her."
As I moved about afterwards with my wife we heard not many comments, a
word here and there about Henderson's wonderful success, a remark about
Margaret's beauty, some sympathy for her in such a wearisome ordeal--the
world is full of kindness--the house duly admired, and the ordinary
compliments paid; the people assembled were, as usual, absorbed in their
own affairs. From all we could gather, all those present were used to
living in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a matter of
course. Was there no envy? Was there nothing said about the airs of a
country school-ma'am, the aplomb of an adventurer? Were there no
criticisms afterwards as the guests rolled home in their carriages,
surfeited and exhausted? What would you have? Do you expect the
millennium to begin in New York?
The newspapers said that it was the most brilliant affair the metropolis
had ever seen. I have no doubt it was. And I do not judge, either, by the
newspaper estimates of the expense. I take the simple words addressed by
the earl to Margaret, when he said good-night, at their full value. She
flushed with pleasure at his modest commendation. Perhaps it was to her
the seal of her night's triumph.
The house was opened. The world had seen it. The world had gone. If sleep
did not come that night to her tired head on the pillow, what wonder? She
had a position in the great world. In imagination it opened wider and
wider. Could not the infinite possibilities of it fill the hunger of any
soul?
The echoes of the Henderson reception continued long in the country
press. Items multiplied as to the cost. It was said that the sum expended
in flowers alone, which withered in a night, would have endowed a ward in
a charity hospital. Some wag said that the price of the supper would have
changed the result of the Presidential election. Views of the mansion
were given in the illustrated papers, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs.
Henderson. In country villages, in remote farmhouses, this great social
event was talked of, Henderson's wealth was the subject of conjecture,
Margaret's toilet was an object of interest. It was a shining example of
success. Preachers, whose sensational sermons are as widely read as
descriptions of great crimes, moralized on Henderson's career and
Henderson's palace, and raised up everywhere an envied image of worldly
prosperity. When he first arrived in New York, with only fifty cents in
his pocket--so the story ran-and walked up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, he
had nearly been run over at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street by a
carriage, the occupants of which, a lady and gentleman, had stared
insolently at the country youth. Never mind, said the lad to himself, the
day will come when you will cringe to me. And the day did come when the
gentleman begged Henderson to spare him in Wall Street, and his wife
intrigued for an invitation to Mrs. Henderson's ball. The reader knows
there is not a word of truth in this. Alas! said the preacher, if he had
only devoted his great talents to the service of the Good and the True!
Behold how vain are all the triumphs of this world! see the result of the
worship of Mammon! My friends, the age is materialized, a spirit of
worldliness is abroad; be vigilant, lest the deceitfulness of riches send
your souls to perdition. And the plain country people thanked God for
such a warning, and the country girl dreamed of Margaret's career, and
the country boy studied the ways of Henderson's success, and resolved
that he, too, would seek his fortune in this bad metropolis.
The, Hendersons were important people. It was impossible that a knowledge
of their importance should not have a reflex influence upon Margaret.
Could it be otherwise than that gradually the fineness of her
discrimination should be dulled by the almost universal public consent in
the methods by which Henderson had achieved his position, and that in
time she should come to regard adverse judgment as the result of envy?
Henderson himself was under less illusion; the world was about what he
had taken it for, only a little worse--more gullible, and with less
principle. Carmen had mocked at Margaret's belief in Henderson. It is
certainly a pitiful outcome that Margaret, with her naturally believing
nature, should in the end have had a less clear perception of what was
right and wrong than Henderson himself. Yet Henderson would not have
shrunk, any more than Carmen would, from any course necessary to his
ends, while Margaret would have shrunk from many things; but in absolute
worldliness, in devotion to it, the time had come when Henderson felt
that his Puritan wife was no restraint upon him. It was this that broke
gentle Miss Forsythe's heart when she came fully to realize it.
I said that the world was at Margaret's feet. Was it? How many worlds are
there, and does one ever, except by birth (in a republic), conquer them
all? Truth to say, there were penetralia in New York society concerning
which this successful woman was uneasy in her heart. There were people
who had accepted her invitations, to whose houses she had been, who had a
dozen ways of making her feel that she was not of them. These people--I
suppose that if two castaways landed naked on a desert island, one of
them would instantly be the ancien regime--had spoken of Mrs. Henderson
and her ambition to the Earl of Chisholm in a way that pained him. They
graciously assumed that he, as one of the elect, would understand them.
It was therefore with a heavy heart that he came to say good-by to
Margaret before his return.
I cannot imagine anything more uncomfortable for an old lover than a
meeting of this sort; but I suppose the honest fellow could not resist
the inclination to see Margaret once more. I dare say she had a little
flutter of pride in receiving him, in her consciousness of the change in
herself into a wider experience of the world. And she may have been a
little chagrined that he was not apparently more impressed by her
surroundings, nor noticed the change in herself, but met her upon the
ground of simple sincerity where they had once stood. What he tried to
see, what she felt he was trying to see, was not the beautiful woman
about whose charm and hospitality the town talked, but the girl he had
loved in the old days.
He talked a little, a very little, about himself and his work in England,
and a great deal about what had interested him here on his second visit,
the social drift, the politics, the organized charities; and as he
talked, Margaret was conscious how little the world in which she lived
seemed to interest him; how little importance he attached to it. And she
saw, as in a momentary vision of herself, that the things that once
absorbed her and stirred her sympathies were now measurably indifferent
to her. Book after book which he casually mentioned, as showing the drift
of the age, and profoundly affecting modern thought, she knew only by
name. "I guess," said Carmen, afterwards, when Margaret spoke of the
earl's conversation, "that he is one of those who are trying to live in
the spirit--what do they call it?--care for things of the mind."
"You are doing a noble work," he said, "in your Palace of Industry."
"Yes, it is very well managed," Margaret replied; "but it is uphill work,
the poor are so ungrateful for charity."
"Perhaps nobody, Mrs. Henderson, likes to be treated as an object of
charity."
"Well, work isn't what they want when we give it, and they'd rather live
in the dirt than in clean apartments."
"Many of them don't know any better, and a good many of our poor resent
condescension."
"Yes," said Margaret, with warmth; "they are getting to demand things as
their right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in that
quarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do with
such people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled,
'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying round
here.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, Dick; the lady's got
to have some pleasure. Don't yer see, she's a-slummin'?'"
"It's very hard, I know," said the earl; "perhaps we are all on the wrong
track."
"Maybe. Mr. Henderson says that the world would get on better if
everybody minded his own business."
"I wish it were possible," the earl remarked, with an air of finishing
the topic. "I have just been up to Brandon, Mrs. Henderson. I fear that I
have seen the dear place for the last time."
"You don't mean that you are tired of America?"
"Not that. I shall never, even in thought, tire of Brandon."
"Yes, they are dear, good people."
"I thought Miss Forsythe--what a sweet, brave woman she is!--was looking
sad and weary."
"Oh, aunt won't do anything, or take an interest in anything. She just
stays there. I've tried in vain to get her here. Do you know"--and she
turned upon the earl a look of the old playfulness--"she doesn't quite
approve of me."
"Oh," he replied, hesitating a little--"I think, Mrs. Henderson, that her
heart is bound up in you. It isn't for me to say that you haven't a truer
friend in the world."
"Yes, I know. If I'd only--" and she stopped, with a petulant look on her
fair face--"well, it doesn't matter. She is a dear soul."
"I--suppose," said the earl, rising, "we shall see you again on the other
side?"
"Perhaps," with a smile. Could anything be more commonplace than such a
parting? Good-by, I shall see you tomorrow or next year, or in the next
world. Hail and farewell! That is the common experience. But, oh, the
bitterness of it to many a soul!
It is quite possible that when the Earl of Chisholm said good-by, with an
air of finality, Margaret felt that another part of her life was closed.
He was not in any way an extraordinary person, he was not a very rich
peer, probably with his modesty and conscientiousness, and devotion to
the ordinary duties of his station, he would never attain high rank in
the government. Yet no one could be long with him without apprehending
that his life was on a high plane. It was with a little irritation that
Margaret recognized this, and remembered, with a twinge of conscience,
that it was upon that plane that her life once traveled. The time had
been when the more important thing to her was the world of ideas, of
books, of intellectual life, of passionate sympathy with the fortunes of
humanity, of deepest interest in all the new thoughts struck out by the
leaders who studied the profound problems of life and destiny.
That peace of mind which is found only in the highest activity for the
noblest ends she once had, though she thought it then unrest and
striving--what Carmen, who was under no illusions about Henderson, or
Uncle Jerry, or the world of fashion, and had an intuitive perception of
cant that is sometimes denied to the children of light, called "taking
pleasure in the things of the mind." To do Margaret justice, there
entered into her reflections no thought of the title and position of the
Earl of Chisholm. They had never been alluring to her. If one could take
any satisfaction in this phase of her character, her worldiness was
purely American.
"I hardly know which I should prefer," Carmen was saying when they were
talking over the ball and the earl's departure, "to be an English
countess or the wife of an American millionaire."
"It might depend upon the man," replied Margaret, with a smile.
"The American," continued Carmen, not heeding this suggestion, "has the
greater opportunities, and is not hindered by traditions. If you were a
countess you would have to act like a countess. If you are an American
you can act--like anything--you can do what you please. That is nicer.
Now, an earl must do what an earl has always done. What could you do with
such a husband? Mind! Yes, I know, dear, about things of the mind. First,
you know, he will be a gentleman socialist (in the magazines), and maybe
a Christian socialist, or a Christian scientist, or something of that
sort, interested in the Mind Cure."
"I should think that would suit you. Last I knew, you were deep in the
Mind Cure."
"So I was. That was last week. Now I'm in the Faith Cure; I've found out
about both. The difference is, in the Mind Cure you don't require any
faith; in the Faith Cure you don't require any mind. The Faith Cure just
suits me."
"So you put your faith in an American millionaire?"
"Yes, I think I should, until an American millionaire put faith in me.
That might shake me. It is such a queer world. No, I'm in doubt. If you
loved an earl he would stay an earl. If you loved an American
millionaire, ten to one he would fail."
Margaret did not escape the responsibility of her success. Who does? My
dear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you not
already repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel this
year, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did the
public overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now your
presumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne.
This year it is, "that Miss Charmian who set herself up as a second
Hawthorne." When the new house was opened, it might be said that socially
Mrs. Henderson had "arrived." Had she? When one enters on the path of
worldliness is there any resting-place? Is not eternal vigilance the
price of position?
Henderson was apparently on good terms with the world. Many envied him,
many paid him the sincerest flattery, that of imitation. He was a king in
the street, great enterprises sought his aid, all the charities knocked
at his door, his word could organize a syndicate or a trust, his nod
could smash a "corner." There were fabulous stories about his wealth,
about his luck. This also was Margaret's world. Her ambition expanded in
it with his. The things he set his heart on she coveted. Alas! there is
always another round to the ladder.
Seeing the means by which he gained his ends, and the public condonation
of them, would not his cynicism harden into utter unbelief in general
virtue and goodness? I don't know that Henderson changed much, accented
as his grasping selfishness was on occasion; prosperity had not impaired
that indifferent good-fellowship and toleration which had early gained
him popularity. His presence was nowhere a rebuke to whatever was going
on. He was always accessible, often jocular. The younger members in the
club said Henderson was a devilish good fellow, whatever people said. The
President of the United States used to send for him and consult him,
because he wanted no office; he knew men, and it was a relief to talk
with a liberal rich man of so much bonhomie who wanted nothing.
And Margaret, what view of the world did all this give her? Did she come
in contact with any one who had not his price, who was not going or
wanting to go in the general current? Was it not natural that she should
take Henderson's view? Dear me, I am not preaching about her. We did not
see much of her in those days, and for one or two years of what I suppose
was her greatest enjoyment of her social triumphs. So far as we heard,
she was liked, admired, followed, envied. It could not be otherwise, for
she did not lose her beauty nor her charm, and she tried to please. Once
when I saw her in the city and we fell into talk--and the talk was gay
enough and unconstrained--I was struck with a certain hardness of tone, a
little bitterness quite unlike her old self. It is a very hard thing to
say, and I did not say it even to my wife, but I had a painful impression
that she was valuing people by the money they had, by the social position
they had attained.
Was she content in that great world in which she moved? I had heard
stories of slights, of stabs, of rebuffs, of spiteful remarks. Had she
not come to know how success even in social life is sometimes attained
--the meannesses, the jealousies, the cringing? Even with all her money
at command, did she not know that her position was at the price of
incessant effort? Because she had taken a bold step today, she must take
a bolder one tomorrow--more display, more servants, some new invention of
luxury and extravagance. And seeing, as I say, the inside of this life
and what it required, and how triumphs and notoriety were gained, was it
a wonder that she gradually became in her gayety cynical, in her
judgments bitter?
I am not criticising her. What are we, who have had no opportunities, to
sit in judgment on her! I believe that it is true that it was at her
solicitation that Henderson at last did endow a university in the
Southwest. I know that her name was on all the leading charities of the
city. I know that of all the patronesses of the charity ball her costume
was the most exquisite, and her liberality was most spoken of. I know
that in the most fashionable house of worship (the newspapers call it
that) she was a constant attendant; that in her modest garb she never
missed a Lenten service; and we heard that she performed a novena during
this penitential season.
Why protract the story of how Margaret was lost to us? Could this
interest any but us--we who felt the loss because we still loved her? And
why should we presume to set up our standard of what is valuable in life,
of what is a successful career? She had not become what we hoped, and
little by little all the pleasure of intercourse on both sides, I dare
say, disappeared. Could we say that life, after all, had not given her
what she most desired? Rather than write on in this strain about her, I
would like to read her story as it appeared to the companions whose
pleasures were her pleasures, whose successes were her successes--her
story written by one who appreciated her worldly advantages, and saw all
the delight there was in this attractive worldliness.
What comfort there was in it we had in knowing that she was a favorite in
the society of which we read such glowing descriptions, and that no one
else bore its honors more winningly. It was not an easy life, with all
its exactions and incessant movement. It demanded more physical strength
than most women possess, and we were not surprised to hear from time to
time that she was delicate, and that she went through her season with
feverish excitement. But she chose it; it had become necessary to her.
Can women stop in such a career, even if they wish to stop?
Yes, she chose it. I, for one, never begrudged her any pleasure she had
in life, and I do not know but she was as happy as it is possible for
human being to be in a full experiment of worldliness. Who is the judge?
But we, I say, who loved her, and knew so well the noble possibilities of
her royal nature under circumstances favorable to its development, felt
more and more her departure from her own ideals. Her life in its
spreading prosperity seemed more and more shallow. I do not say she was
heartless, I do not say she was uncharitable, I do not say that in all
the externals of worldly and religious observance she was wanting; I do
not say that the more she was assimilated to the serenely worldly nature
of her husband she did not love him, or that she was unlovely in the
worldliness that ingulfed her and bore her onward. I do not know that
there is anything singular in her history. But the pain of it to us was
in the certainty--and it seemed so near--that in the decay of her higher
life, in the hardening process of a material existence, in the transfer
of all her interests to the trivial and sensuous gratifications--time,
mind, heart, ambition, all fixed on them--we should never regain our
Margaret. What I saw in a vision of her future was a dead soul--a
beautiful woman in all the success of envied prosperity, with a dead
soul.
XXII
It is difficult not to convey a false impression of Margaret at this
time. Habits, manners, outward conduct--nay, the superficial kindliness
in human intercourse, the exterior graceful qualities, may all remain
when the character has subtly changed, when the real aims have changed,
when the ideals are lowered. The fair exterior may be only a shell. I can
imagine the heart retaining much tenderness and sympathy with suffering
when the soul itself has ceased to struggle for the higher life, when the
mind has lost, in regard to life, the final discrimination of what is
right and wrong.
Perhaps it is fairer to Margaret to consider the general opinion of the
world regarding her. No doubt, if we had now known her for the first
time, we should have admired her exceedingly, and probably have accounted
her thrice happy in filling so well her brilliant position. That her loss
of interest in things intellectual, in a wide range of topics of human
welfare, which is in the individual soul a sign of warmth and growth,
made her less companionable to some is true, but her very absorption in
the life of her world made her much more attractive to others. I well
remember a dinner one day at the Hendersons', when Mr. Morgan and I
happened to be in town, and the gay chat and persiflage of the society
people there assembled. Margaret shone in it. The light and daring touch
of her raillery Carmen herself might have envied, and the spirit in which
she handled the trifles and personal gossip tossed to the surface, like
the bubbles on the champagne.
It was such a pretty picture--the noble diningroom, the table sparkling
with glass and silver and glowing with masses of choicest flowers from
the conservatory, the animated convives, and Margaret presiding, radiant
in a costume of white and gold.
"After all," Morgan was saying, apropos of the position of women, "men
get mighty little out of it in the modern arrangement."
"I've always said, Mr. Morgan," Margaret retorted, "that you came into
the world a couple of centuries too late; you ought to have been here in
the squaw age."
"Well, men were of some account then. I appeal to Henderson," Morgan
persisted, "if he gets more than his board and clothes."
"Oh, my husband has to make his way; he's no time for idling and
philosophizing round."
"I should think not. Come, Henderson, speak up; what do you get out of
it?"
"Oh," said Henderson, glancing at his wife with an amused expression,
"I'm doing very well. I'm very well taken care of, but I often wonder
what the fellows did when polygamy was the fashion."
"Polygamy, indeed!" cried Margaret. "So men only dropped the a pluribus
unum method on account of the expense?"
"Not at all," replied Henderson. "Women are so much better now than
formerly that one wife is quite enough."
"You have got him well in hand, Mrs. Henderson, but--" Morgan began.
"But," continued Margaret for him, "you think as things are going that
polyandry will have to come in fashion--a woman will need more than one
husband to support her?"
"And I was born too soon," murmured Carmen.
"Yes, dear, you'll have to be born again. But, Mr. Morgan, you don't seem
to understand what civilization is."
"I'm beginning to. I've been thinking--this is entirely impersonal--that
it costs more to keep one fine lady going than it does a college. Just
reckon it up." (Margaret was watching him with sparkling eyes.) "The
palace in town is for her, the house in the mountains, the house by the
sea, are for her, the army of servants is for her, the horses and
carriages for all weathers are for her, the opera box is for her, and
then the wardrobe--why, half Paris lives on what women wear. I say
nothing of what would become of the medical profession but for her."
"Have you done?" asked Margaret.
"No, but I'm taking breath."
"Well, why shouldn't we support the working-people of Paris and
elsewhere? Do you want us to make our own clothes and starve the
sewing-women? Suppose there weren't any balls and fine dresses and what
you call luxury. What would the poor do without the rich? Isn't it the
highest charity to give them work? Even with it they are ungrateful
enough."
"That is too deep for me," said Morgan, evasively. "I suppose they ought
to be contented to see us enjoying ourselves. It's all in the way of
civilization, I dare say."
"It's just as I thought," said Margaret, more lightly. "You haven't an
inkling of what civilization is. See that flower before you. It is the
most exquisite thing in this room. See the refinement of its color and
form. That was cultivated. The plant came from South Africa. I don't know
what expense the gardener has been to about it, what material and care
have been necessary to bring it to perfection. You may take it to Mrs.
Morgan as an object-lesson. It is a thing of beauty. You cannot put any
of your mercantile value on it. Well, that is woman, the consummate
flower of civilization. That is what civilization is for."
"I'm sorry for you, old fellow," said Henderson.
"I'm sorry for myself," Carmen said, demurely.
"I admit all that," Morgan replied. "Take Mr. Henderson as a gardener,
then."
"Suppose you take somebody else, and let my husband eat his dinner."
"Oh, I don't mind preaching; I've got used to being made to point a
moral."
"But he will go on next about the luxury of the age, and the extravagance
of women, and goodness knows what," said Margaret.
"No, I'm talking about men," Morgan continued. "Consider Henderson--it's
entirely impersonal--as a gardener. What does he get out of his
occupation? He can look at the flower. Perhaps that is enough. He gets a
good dinner when he has time for it, an hour at his club now and then,
occasionally an evening or half a day off at home, a decent wardrobe--"
"Fifty-two suits," interposed Margaret.
"His own brougham--"
"And a four-in-hand," added Margaret.
"A pass on the elevated road--"
"And a steam-yacht."
"Which he never gets time to sail in; practically all the time on the
road, or besieged by a throng in his office, hustled about from morning
till night, begged of, interviewed, a telegraphic despatch every five
minutes, and--"
"And me!" cried Margaret, rising. The guests all clapped their hands.
The Hendersons liked to have their house full, something going on
--dinners, musicales, readings, little comedies in the theatre; there was
continual coming and going, calling, dropping in for a cup of tea, late
suppers after the opera; the young fellows of town found no place so
agreeable for a half-hour after business as Mrs. Henderson's
reception-room. I fancied that life would be dull and hang heavily,
especially for Margaret, without this perpetual movement and excitement.
Henderson, who certainly had excitement enough without seeking it at
home, was pleased that his wife should be a leader in society, as he was
in the great enterprises in which his fortune waxed to enormous
proportions. About what we call the home life I do not know. Necessarily,
as heretofore, Henderson was often absent, and whether Margaret
accompanied him or not, a certain pace of life had to be kept up.
I suppose there is no delusion more general than that of retiring upon a
fortune--as if, when gained, a fortune would let a person retire, or,
still more improbable, as if it ever were really attained. It is not at
all probable that Henderson had set any limit to that he desired; the
wildest speculations about its amount would no doubt fall short of
satisfying the love of power which he expected to gratify in immeasurably
increasing it. Does not history teach us that to be a great general, or
poet, or philanthropist, is not more certain to preserve one's name than
to be the richest man, the Croesus, in his age? I could imagine Margaret
having a certain growing pride in this distinction, and a glowing
ambition to be socially what her husband was financially.
Heaven often plans more mercifully for us than we plan for ourselves. Had
not the Hebrew prophets a vision of the punishment by prosperity? Perhaps
it applied to an old age, gratified to the end by possession of
everything that selfishness covets, and hardened into absolute
worldliness. I knew once an old lady whose position and wealth had always
made her envied, and presumably happy, who was absolutely to be pitied
for a soul empty of all noble feeling.
The sun still shone on Margaret, and life yielded to her its specious
sweets. She was still young. If in her great house, in her dazzling
career, in the whirl of resplendent prosperity, she had hours of
unsatisfied yearning for something unattainable in this direction, the
world would not have guessed it. Whenever we heard of her she was the
centre and star of whatever for the moment excited the world of fashion.
It was indeed, at last, in the zenith of her gay existence that I, became
aware of a certain feminine anxiety about her in our neighborhood. She
had been, years before, very ill in Paris, and the apprehensions for her
safety now were based upon the recollection of her peril then. The days
came when the tender-hearted Miss Forsythe went about the house restless,
impatient, tearful, waiting for a summons that was sure to come when she
was needed. She thought only of her child, as she called her, and all the
tenderness of her nature was stirred-these years of cloud and separation
and pain were as they had not been. Little Margaret had promised to send
for her. She would not obtrude before she was wanted, but Margaret was
certain to send. And she was ready for departure the instant the despatch
came from Henderson--"Margaret wants you to come at once." I went with
her.
In calamity, trouble, sorrow, it is wonderful how the ties of blood
assert themselves. In this hour I am sure that Margaret longed for no one
more than her dear aunt, in whose arms, as a child, she had so often
forgotten her griefs. She had been able to live without her--nay, for a
long time her presence had been something of a restraint and a rebuke,
and her feelings had hardened towards her. Why is it that the heart
hardens in prosperity?
When we arrived Margaret was very ill. The house itself had a serious
air: it was no longer the palace of festivity and gayety, precautions had
been taken to secure quiet, the pavement was littered, and within the
hushed movements and the sombre looks spoke of apprehension and the
absence of the spirit that had been the life and light of the house. Our
arrival seemed to be a relief to Henderson. Little was said. I had never
before seen him nervous, never before so restless and anxious, probably
never before in all his career had he been unnerved with a sense of his
own helplessness.
"She has been asking for you this moment," he said, as he accompanied
Miss Forsythe to Margaret's apartment.
"Dear, dear aunt, I knew you would come--I love you so;" she had tried to
raise herself a little in her bed, and was sobbing like a child in her
aunt's arms.
"You must have courage, Margaret; it will all be well."
"Yes, but I'm so discouraged; I'm so tired."
The vigil began. The nurses were in waiting. The family physician would
not leave the house. He was a man of great repute in his profession. Dr.
Seftel's name was well known to me, but I had never met him before; a man
past middle life, smooth shaven, thin iron-gray hair, grave, usually
taciturn, deliberate in all his movements, as if every gesture were
important and significant, but with a kindly face. Knowing that every
moment of his waking life was golden, I could not but be impressed with
the power that could command his exclusive service for an indefinite
time. When he came down, we talked together in Henderson's room.
"It is a question of endurance, of constitution," he said; "many weak
women have this quality of persistence; many strong women go to pieces at
once; we know little about it. Mrs. Henderson"--glancing about him--"has
everything to live for; that's in her favor. I suppose there are not two
other men in the country whose fortune equals Henderson's."
I do not know how it was, probably the patient was not forgotten, but in
a moment the grave doctor was asking me if I had seen the last bulletin
about the yacht regatta. He took the keenest interest in the contest, and
described to me the build and sailing qualities of the different yachts
entered, and expressed his opinion as to which would win, and why. From
this he passed to the city government and the recent election--like a
true New Yorker, his chief interest centred in the city politics and not
in the national elections. Without the least unbending from his dignity,
he told me many anecdotes about city politicians, which would have been
amusing if I had not been anxious about other things.
The afternoon passed, and the night, and the day, I cannot tell how. But
at evening I knew by the movements in the house that the crisis had come.
I was waiting in Henderson's library. An hour passed, when Henderson came
hurrying in, pale, excited, but joyous.
"Thank God," he cried, "it is a boy!"
"And Margaret?" I gasped.
"Is doing very well!" He touched a bell, and gave an order to the
servant. "We will drink to the dear girl and to the heir of the house."
He was in great spirits. The doctor joined us, but I noticed that he was
anxious, and he did not stay long. Henderson was in and out, talking,
excited, restless. But everything was going very well, he thought. At
last, as we sat talking, a servant appeared at the door, with a
frightened look.
"The baby, sir!"
"What?"
Alas! there had been an heir of the house of Henderson for just two
hours; and Margaret was not sustaining herself.
Why go on? Henderson was beside himself; stricken with grief, enraged, I
believe, as well, at the thought of his own impotence. Messengers were
despatched, a consultation was called. The best skill of the city, at any
cost, was at Margaret's bedside. Was there anything, then, that money
could not do? How weak we are!
The next day the patient was no better, she was evidently sinking. The
news went swiftly round the city. It needed a servant constantly at the
door to answer the stream of sympathetic inquirers. Reporters were
watching the closed house from the opposite pavement. I undertook to
satisfy some of them who gained the steps and came forward, civil enough
and note-books in hand, when the door was opened. This intrusion of
curiosity seemed so dreadful.
The great house was silent. How vain and empty and pitiful it all seemed
as I wandered alone through the gorgeous apartments! What a mockery it
all was of the tragedy impending above-stairs--the approach on list-shod
feet of the great enemy! Let us not be unjust. He would have come just
the same if his prey had lain in a farmhouse among the hills, or in a
tenement-house in C Street.
A day and a night, and another day--and then! It was Miss Forsythe who
came down to me, with strained eyes and awe in her face. It needed no
words. She put her face upon my shoulder, and sobbed as if her heart were
broken.
I could not stay in the house. I went out into the streets, the streets
brilliant in the sun of an autumn day, into the town, gay, bustling,
crowded, pulsing with vigorous life. How blue the sky was! The sparrows
twittered in Madison Square, the idlers sat in the sun, the children
chased their hoops about the fountain.
I wandered into the club. The news had preceded me there. More than one
member in the reading-room grasped my hand, with just a word of sympathy.
Two young fellows, whom I had last seen at the Henderson dinner, were
seated at a small table.
"It's rough, Jack"--the speaker paused, with a match in his hand--"it's
rough. I'll be if she was not the finest woman I ever knew."
My wife and I were sitting in the orchestra stalls of the Metropolitan.
The opera was Siegfried. At the close of the first act, as we turned to
the house, we saw Carmen enter a box, radiant, in white. Henderson
followed, and took a seat a little in shadow behind her. There were
others in the box. There was a little movement and flutter as they came
in and glasses were turned that way.
"Married, and it is only two years," I said.
"It is only a year and eight months," my wife replied.
And the world goes on as cheerfully and prosperously as ever.
THE GOLDEN HOUSE
By Charles Dudley Warner
I
It was near midnight: The company gathered in a famous city studio were
under the impression, diligently diffused in the world, that the end of
the century is a time of license if not of decadence. The situation had
its own piquancy, partly in the surprise of some of those assembled at
finding themselves in bohemia, partly in a flutter of expectation of
seeing something on the border-line of propriety. The hour, the place,
the anticipation of the lifting of the veil from an Oriental and ancient
art, gave them a titillating feeling of adventure, of a moral hazard
bravely incurred in the duty of knowing life, penetrating to its core.
Opportunity for this sort of fruitful experience being rare outside the
metropolis, students of good and evil had made the pilgrimage to this
midnight occasion from less-favored cities. Recondite scholars in the
physical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women from
Washington, whose charms make the reputation of many a newspaper
correspondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life, who have
moments of longing to shine in some more languorous material paradise,
had made a hasty flitting to be present at the ceremony, sustained by a
slight feeling of bravado in making this exceptional descent. But the
favored hundred spectators were mainly from the city-groups of late
diners, who fluttered in under that pleasurable glow which the red
Jacqueminot always gets from contiguity with the pale yellow Clicquot;
theatre parties, a little jaded, and quite ready for something real and
stimulating; men from the clubs and men from studios--representatives of
society and of art graciously mingled, since it is discovered that it is
easier to make art fashionable than to make fashion artistic.
The vast, dimly lighted apartment was itself mysterious, a temple of
luxury quite as much as of art. Shadows lurked in the corners, the ribs
of the roof were faintly outlined; on the sombre walls gleams of color,
faces of loveliness and faces of pain, studies all of a mood or a
passion, bits of shining brass, reflections from lustred ware struggling
out of obscurity; hangings from Fez or Tetuan, bits of embroidery,
costumes in silk and in velvet, still having the aroma of balls a hundred
years ago, the faint perfume of a scented society of ladies and gallants;
a skeleton scarcely less fantastic than the draped wooden model near it;
heavy rugs of Daghestan and Persia, making the footfalls soundless on the
floor; a fountain tinkling in a thicket of japonicas and azaleas; the
stems of palmettoes, with their branches waving in the obscurity
overhead; points of light here and there where a shaded lamp shone on a
single red rose in a blue Granada vase on a toppling stand, or on a mass
of jonquils in a barbarous pot of Chanak-Kallessi; tacked here and there
on walls and hangings, colored memoranda of Capri and of the North Woods,
the armor of knights, trophies of small-arms, crossed swords of the Union
and the Confederacy, easels, paints, and palettes, and rows of canvases
leaning against the wall-the studied litter, in short, of a successful
artist, whose surroundings contribute to the popular conception of his
genius.
On the wall at one end of the apartment was stretched a white canvas; in
front of it was left a small cleared space, on the edge of which, in the
shadow, squatting on the floor, were four swarthy musicians in Oriental
garments, with a mandolin, a guitar, a ney, and a darabooka drum. About
this cleared space, in a crescent, knelt or sat upon the rugs a couple of
rows of men in evening dress; behind them, seated in chairs, a group of
ladies, whose white shoulders and arms and animated faces flashed out in
the semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of spectators
--beautiful young gentlemen with vacant faces and the elevated Oxford
shoulders, rosy youth already blase to all this world can offer, and
gray-headed men young again in the prospect of a new sensation. So they
kneel or stand, worshipers before the shrine, expecting the advent of the
Goddess of AEsthetic Culture.
The moment has come. There is a tap on the drum, a tuning of the
strings, a flash of light from the rear of the room inundates the white
canvas, and suddenly a figure is poised in the space, her shadow cast
upon the glowing background.
It is the Spanish dancer!
The apparition evokes a flutter of applause. It is a superb figure, clad
in a high tight bodice and long skirts simply draped so as to show every
motion of the athletic limbs. She seems, in this pose and light,
supernaturally tall. Through her parted lips white teeth gleam, and she
smiles. Is it a smile of anticipated, triumph, or of contempt? Is it
the smile of the daughter of Herodias, or the invitation of a
'ghazeeyeh'? She pauses. Shall she surprise, or shock, or only please?
What shall the art that is older than the pyramids do for these kneeling
Christians? The drum taps, the ney pipes, the mandolin twangs, her arms
are extended--the castanets clink, a foot is thrust out, the bosom
heaves, the waist trembles. What shall it be--the old serpent dance of
the Nile, or the posturing of decorous courtship when the olives are
purple in the time of the grape harvest? Her head, wreathed with coils
of black hair, a red rose behind the left ear, is thrown back. The eyes
flash, there is a snakelike movement of the limbs, the music hastens
slowly in unison with the quickening pulse, the body palpitates, seems to
flash invitation like the eyes, it turns, it twists, the neck is thrust
forward, it is drawn in, while the limbs move still slowly, tentatively;
suddenly the body from the waist up seems to twist round, with the waist
as a pivot, in a flash of athletic vigor, the music quickens, the arms
move more rapidly to the click of the heated castenets, the steps are
more pronounced, the whole woman is agitated, bounding, pulsing with
physical excitement. It is a Maenad in an access of gymnastic energy.
Yes, it is gymnastics; it is not grace; it is scarcely alluring. Yet it
is a physical triumph. While the spectators are breathless, the fury
ceases, the music dies, and the Spaniard sinks into a chair, panting with
triumph, and inclines her dark head to the clapping of hands and the
bravos. The kneelers rise; the spectators break into chattering groups;
the ladies look at the dancer with curious eyes; a young gentleman with
the elevated Oxford shoulders leans upon the arm of her chair and fans
her. The pose is correct; it is the somewhat awkward tribute of culture
to physical beauty.
To be on speaking terms with the phenomenon was for the moment a
distinction. The young ladies wondered if it would be proper to go
forward and talk with her.
"Why not?" said a wit. "The Duke of Donnycastle always shakes hands with
the pugilists at a mill."
"It is not so bad"--the speaker was a Washington beauty in an evening
dress that she would have condemned as indecorous for the dancer it is
not so bad as I--"
"Expected?" asked her companion, a sedate man of thirty-five, with the
cynical air of a student of life.
"As I feared," she added, quickly. "I have always had a curiosity to
know what these Oriental dances mean."
"Oh, nothing in particular, now. This was an exhibition dance. Of
course its origin, like all dancing, was religious. The fault I find
with it is that it lacks seriousness, like the modern exhibition of the
dancing dervishes for money."
"Do you think, Mr. Mavick, that the decay of dancing is the reason our
religion lacks seriousness? We are in Lent now, you know. Does this
seem to you a Lenten performance?"
"Why, yes, to a degree. Anything that keeps you up till three o'clock in
the morning has some penitential quality."
"You give me a new view, Mr. Mavick. I confess that I did not expect to
assist at what New Englanders call an 'evening meeting.' I thought Eros
was the deity of the dance."
"That, Mrs. Lamon, is a vulgar error. It is an ancient form of worship.
Virtue and beauty are the same thing--the two graces."
"What a nice apothegm! It makes religion so easy and agreeable."
"As easy as gravitation."
"Dear me, Mr. Mavick, I thought this was a question of levitation. You
are upsetting all my ideas. I shall not have the comfort of repenting of
this episode in Lent."
"Oh yes; you can be sorry that the dancing was not more alluring."
Meantime there was heard the popping of corks. Venetian glasses filled
with champagne were quaffed under the blessing of sparkling eyes, young
girls, almond-eyed for the occasion, in the costume of Tokyo, handed
round ices, and the hum of accelerated conversation filled the studio.
"And your wife didn't come?"
"Wouldn't," replied Jack Delancy, with a little bow, before he raised his
glass. And then added, "Her taste isn't for this sort of thing."
The girl, already flushed with the wine, blushed a little--Jack thought
he had never seen her look so dazzlingly handsome--as she said, "And you
think mine is?"
"Bless me, no, I didn't mean that; that is, you know"--Jack didn't
exactly see his way out of the dilemma--"Edith is a little old-fashioned;
but what's the harm in this, anyway?"
"I did not say there was any," she replied, with a smile at his
embarrassment. "Only I think there are half a dozen women in the room
who could do it better, with a little practice. It isn't as Oriental as
I thought it would be."
"I cannot say as to that. I know Edith thinks I've gone into the depths
of the Orient. But, on the whole, I'm glad--" Jack stopped on the verge
of speaking out of his better nature.
"Now don't be rude again. I quite understand that she is not here."
The dialogue was cut short by a clapping of hands. The spectators took
their places again, the lights were lowered, the illumination was turned
on the white canvas, and the dancer, warmed with wine and adulation, took
a bolder pose, and, as her limbs began to move, sang a wild Moorish
melody in a shrill voice, action and words flowing together into the
passion of the daughter of tents in a desert life. It was all vigorous,
suggestive, more properly religious, Mavick would have said, and the
applause was vociferous.
More wine went about. There was another dance, and then another, a slow
languid movement, half melancholy and full of sorrow, if one might say
that of a movement, for unrepented sin; a gypsy dance this, accompanied
by the mournful song of Boabdil, "The Last Sigh of the Moor." And
suddenly, when the feelings of the spectators were melted to tender
regret, a flash out of all this into a joyous defiance, a wooing of
pleasure with smiling lips and swift feet, with the clash of cymbals and
the quickened throb of the drum. And so an end with the dawn of a new
day.
It was not yet dawn, however, for the clocks were only striking three as
the assembly, in winter coats and soft wraps, fluttered out to its
carriages, chattering and laughing, with endless good-nights in the
languages of France, Germany, and Spain.
The streets were as nearly deserted as they ever are; here and there a
lumbering market-wagon from Jersey, an occasional street-car with its
tinkling bell, rarer still the rush of a trembling train on the elevated,
the voice of a belated reveler, a flitting female figure at a street
corner, the roll of a livery hack over the ragged pavement. But mainly
the noise of the town was hushed, and in the sharp air the stars, far off
and uncontaminated, glowed with a pure lustre.
Farther up town it was quite still, and in one of the noble houses in the
neighborhood of the Park sat Edith Delancy, married not quite a year,
listening for the roll of wheels and the click of a night-key.
II
Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, for
no one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate.
The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and he
sauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an elective
course, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came in
contact. And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merely
easy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to him
when he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies. The cowboys and the
severe moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to get
the drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother. It isn't a bad
test of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who have
few or none of the conventional virtues. These non-moral enforcers of
justice--as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in the
New York clubs liked him--and perhaps the moral standard of approval of
the one was as good as the other.
Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of England
he might have taken first-rate rank in athletics. But he had never taken
first-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship. He had a great many
expensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge, except in
imagination. The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a library of
scarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him. Those who account
for failures in life by a man's circumstances, and not by a lack in the
man himself, which is always the secret of failure, said that Jack was
unfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty thousand a year.
This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough to permit a man
to expand in any direction. It is true that he was related to millions
and moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these millions might never
flow into his bank account. They were not in hand to use, and they also
helped to paralyze effort--like black clouds of an impending shower that
may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher indoors.
The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marry
Edith Fletcher. The wedding, which took place some eight months before
the advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the girl
had even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his society
entirely, was supposed to have ideals. Her family, indeed, was an old
one on the island, and was prominent long before the building of the
stone bridge on Canal Street over the outlet of Collect Pond. Those who
knew Edith well detected in her that strain of moral earnestness which
made the old Fletchers such stanch and trusty citizens. The wonder was
not that Jack, with his easy susceptibility to refined beauty, should
have been attracted to her, or have responded to a true instinct of what
was best for him, but that Edith should have taken up with such a perfect
type of the aimlessness of the society strata of modern life. The
wonder, however, was based upon a shallow conception of the nature of
woman. It would have been more wonderful if the qualities that endeared
Jack to college friends and club men, to the mighty sportsmen who do not
hesitate, in the clubs, to devastate Canada and the United States of big
game, and to the border ruffians of Dakota, should not have gone straight
to the tender heart of a woman of ideals. And when in all history was
there a woman who did not believe, when her heart went with respect for
certain manly traits, that she could inspire and lift a man into a noble
life?
The silver clock in the breakfast-room was striking ten, and Edith was
already seated at the coffee-urn, when Jack appeared. She was as fresh
as a rose, and greeted him with a bright smile as he came behind her
chair and bent over for the morning kiss--a ceremony of affection which,
if omitted, would have left a cloud on the day for both of them, and
which Jack always declared was simply a necessity, or the coffee would
have no flavor. But when a man has picked a rose, it is always a sort of
climax which is followed by an awkward moment, and Jack sat down with the
air of a man who has another day to get through with.
"Were you amused with the dancing--this morning?"
"So, so," said Jack, sipping his coffee. "It was a stunning place for
it, that studio; you'd have liked that. The Lamons and Mavick and a lot
of people from the provinces were there. The company was more fun than
the dance, especially to a fellow who has seen how good it can be and how
bad in its home."
"You have a chance to see the Spanish dancer again, under proper
auspices," said Edith, without looking up.
"How's that?"
"We are invited by Mrs. Brown--"
"The mother of the Bible class at St. Philip's?"
"Yes--to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female
Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance."
"Who? Mrs. Brown?"
Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. "They are to make an
artificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning."
"They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religious
in its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?"
"Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a small
check."
"Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing--shirking
my duty of personal service by a contribution?"
"Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night,
did you?"
Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such a
gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these
months. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't
break up my day so."
"As for instance?"
"Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse
--Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and see
a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds and
other animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought were
caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to see
things in motion--flying birds and moving horses which we never caught
till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step into
the club a minute, and--"
"Be in at lunch? Bess is coming."
"Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do."
Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the outer
door close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of notes at
her plate, and thinking of many things--things that it began to dawn upon
her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must be
done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it had
looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear the
vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes.
Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much easier to her
before she had tried them.
As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch of
English violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no better
subject. Many people thought her eyes her best feature; they were large
brown eyes, yet not always brown, green at times, liquid, but never
uncertain, apt to have a smile in them, yet their chief appealing
characteristic was trustfulness, a pure sort of steadfastness, that
always conveyed the impression of a womanly personal interest in the
person upon whom they were fixed. They were eyes that haunted one like a
remembered strain of music. The lips were full, and the mouth was drawn
in such exquisite lines that it needed the clear-cut and emphasized chin
to give firmness to its beauty. The broad forehead, with arching
eyebrows, gave an intellectual cast to a face the special stamp of which
was purity. The nose, with thin open nostrils, a little too strong for
beauty, together with the chin, gave the impression of firmness and
courage; but the wonderful eyes, the inviting mouth, so modified this
that the total impression was that of high spirit and great sweetness of
character. It was the sort of face from which one might expect
passionate love or unflinching martyrdom. Her voice had a quality the
memory of which lingered longer even than the expression of her eyes; it
was low, and, as one might say, a fruity voice, not quite clear, though
sweet, as if veiled in femineity. This note of royal womanhood was also
in her figure, a little more than medium in height, and full of natural
grace. Somehow Edith, with all these good points, had not the reputation
of a belle or a beauty--perhaps for want of some artificial splendor--but
one could not be long in her company without feeling that she had great
charm, without which beauty becomes insipid and even commonplace, and
with which the plainest woman is attractive.
Edith's theory of life, if one may so dignify the longings of a young
girl, had been very simple, and not at all such as would be selected by
the heroine of a romance. She had no mission, nor was she afflicted by
that modern form of altruism which is a yearning for notoriety by
conspicuous devotion to causes and reforms quite outside her normal
sphere of activity. A very sincere person, with strong sympathy for
humanity tempered by a keen perception of the humorous side of things,
she had a purpose, perhaps not exactly formulated, of making the most out
of her own life, not in any outward and shining career, but by a
development of herself in the most helpful and harmonious relations to
her world. And it seemed to her, though she had never philosophized it,
that a marriage such as she believed she had made was the woman's way to
the greatest happiness and usefulness. In this she followed the dictates
of a clear mind and a warm heart. If she had reasoned about it,
considering how brief life is, and how small can be any single
contribution to a better social condition, she might have felt more
strongly the struggle against nature, and the false position involved in
the new idea that marriage is only a kind of occupation, instead of an
ordinance decreed in the very constitution of the human race. With the
mere instinct of femineity she saw the falseness of the assumption that
the higher life for man or woman lies in separate and solitary paths
through the wilderness of this world. To an intelligent angel,
seated on the arch of the heavens, the spectacle of the latter-day
pseudo-philosophic and economic dribble about the doubtful expediency of
having a wife, and the failure of marriage, must seem as ludicrous as
would a convention of birds or of flowers reasoning that the processes of
nature had continued long enough. Edith was simply a natural woman, who
felt rather than reasoned that in a marriage such as her heart approved
she should make the most of her life.
But as she sat here this morning this did not seem to be so simple a
matter as it had appeared. It began to be suspected that in order to
make the most of one's self it was necessary to make the most of many
other persons and things. The stream in its own channel flowed along not
without vexations, friction and foaming and dashings from bank to bank;
but it became quite another and a more difficult movement when it was
joined to another stream, with its own currents and eddies and
impetuosities and sluggishness, constantly liable to be deflected if not
put altogether on another course. Edith was not putting it in this form
as she turned over her notes of invitation and appointments and
engagements, but simply wondering where the time for her life was to come
in, and for Jack's life, which occupied a much larger space than it
seemed to occupy in the days before it was joined to hers. Very curious
this discovery of what another's life really is. Of course the society
life must go on, that had always gone on, for what purpose no one could
tell, only it was the accepted way of disposing of time; and now there
were the dozen ways in which she was solicited to show her interest in
those supposed to be less fortunate in life than herself-the alleviation
of the miseries of her own city. And with society, and charity, and
sympathy with the working classes, and her own reading, and a little
drawing and painting, for which she had some talent, what became of that
comradeship with Jack, that union of interests and affections, which was
to make her life altogether so high and sweet?
This reverie, which did not last many minutes, and was interrupted by the
abrupt moving away of Edith to the writing-desk in her own room, was
caused by a moment's vivid realization of what Jack's interests in life
were. Could she possibly make them her own? And if she did, what would
become of her own ideals?
III
It was indeed a busy day for Jack. Great injustice would be done him if
it were supposed that he did not take himself and his occupations
seriously. His mind was not disturbed by trifles. He knew that he had
on the right sort of four-in-hand necktie, with the appropriate pin of
pear-shaped pearl, and that he carried the cane of the season. These
things come by a sort of social instinct, are in the air, as it were, and
do not much tax the mind. He had to hasten a little to keep his
half-past-eleven o'clock appointment at Stalker's stables, and when he
arrived several men of his set were already waiting, who were also busy
men, and had made a little effort to come round early and assist Jack in
making up his mind about the horse.
When Mr. Stalker brought out Storm, and led him around to show his
action, the connoisseurs took on a critical attitude, an attitude of
judgment, exhibited not less in the poise of the head and the serious
face than in the holding of the cane and the planting of legs wide apart.
And the attitude had a refined nonchalance which professional horsemen
scarcely ever attain. Storm could not have received more critical and
serious attention if he had been a cooked terrapin. He could afford to
stand this scrutiny, and he seemed to move about with the consciousness
that he knew more about being a horse than his judges.
Storm was, in fact, a splendid animal, instinct with life from his thin
flaring nostril to his small hoof; black as a raven, his highly groomed
skin took the polish of ebony, and showed the play of his powerful
muscles, and, one might say, almost the nervous currents that thrilled
his fine texture. His large, bold eyes, though not wicked, flamed now
and then with an energy and excitement that gave ample notice that he
would obey no master who had not stronger will and nerve than his own.
It was a tribute to Jack's manliness that, when he mounted him for a turn
in the ring, Storm seemed to recognize the fine quality of both seat and
hand, and appeared willing to take him on probation.
"He's got good points," said Mr. Herbert Albert Flick, "but I'd like a
straighter back."
"I'll be hanged, though, Jack," was Mr. Mowbray Russell's comment, "if
I'd ride him in the Park before he's docked. Say what you like about
action, a horse has got to have style."
"Moves easy, falls off a little too much to suit me in the quarter,"
suggested Mr. Pennington Docstater, sucking the head of his cane.
"How about his staying quality, Stalker?"
"That's just where he is, Mr. Docstater; take him on the road, he's a
stayer for all day. Goes like a bird. He'll take you along at the rate
of nine miles in forty-five minutes as long as you want to sit there."
"Jump?" queried little Bobby Simerton, whose strong suit at the club was
talking about meets and hunters.
"Never refused anything I put him at," replied Stalker; "takes every
fence as if it was the regular thing."
Storm was in this way entirely taken to pieces, praised and disparaged,
in a way to give Stalker, it might be inferred from his manner, a high
opinion of the knowledge of these young gentlemen. "It takes a
gentleman," in fact, Stalker said, "to judge a hoss, for a good hoss is a
gentleman himself." It was much discussed whether Storm would do better
for the Park or for the country, whether it would be better to put him in
the field or keep him for a roadster. It might, indeed, be inferred that
Jack had not made up his mind whether he should buy a horse for use in
the Park or for country riding. Even more than this might be inferred
from the long morning's work, and that was that while Jack's occupation
was to buy a horse, if he should buy one his occupation would be gone.
He was known at the club to be looking for the right sort of a horse, and
that he knew what he wanted, and was not easily satisfied; and as long as
he occupied this position he was an object of interest to sellers and to
his companions.
Perhaps Mr. Stalker understood this, for when the buyers had gone he
remarked to the stable-boy, "Mr. Delancy, he don't want to buy no hoss."
When the inspection of the horse was finished it was time for lunch, and
the labors of the morning were felt to justify this indulgence, though
each of the party had other engagements, and was too busy to waste the
time. They went down to the Knickerbocker.
The lunch was slight, but its ordering took time and consideration, as it
ought, for nothing is so destructive of health and mental tone as the
snatching of a mid-day meal at a lunch counter from a bill of fare
prepared by God knows whom. Mr. Russell said that if it took time to buy
a horse, it ought to take at least equal time and care to select the
fodder that was to make a human being wretched or happy. Indeed, a man
who didn't give his mind to what he ate wouldn't have any mind by-and-by
to give to anything. This sentiment had the assent of the table, and was
illustrated by varied personal experience; and a deep feeling prevailed,
a serious feeling, that in ordering and eating the right sort of lunch a
chief duty of a useful day had been discharged.
It must not be imagined from this, however, that the conversation was
about trifles. Business men and operators could have learned something
about stocks and investments, and politicians about city politics.
Mademoiselle Vivienne, the new skirt dancer, might have been surprised at
the intimate tone in which she was alluded to, but she could have got
some useful hints in effects, for her judges were cosmopolitans who had
seen the most suggestive dancing in all parts of the world. It came out
incidentally that every one at table had been "over" in the course of the
season, not for any general purpose, not as a sightseer, but to look at
somebody's stables, or to attend a wedding, or a sale of etchings, or to
see his bootmaker, or for a little shooting in Scotland, just as one
might run down to Bar Harbor or Tuxedo. It was only an incident in a
busy season; and one of the fruits of it appeared to be as perfect a
knowledge of the comparative merits of all the ocean racers and captains
as of the English and American stables and the trainers. One not
informed of the progress of American life might have been surprised to
see that the fad is to be American, with a sort of patronage of things
and ways foreign, especially of things British, a large continental kind
of attitude, begotten of hearing much about Western roughing it, of
Alaska, of horse-breeding and fruit-raising on the Pacific, of the
Colorado River Canon. As for stuffs, well yes, London. As for style,
you can't mistake a man who is dressed in New York.
The wine was a white Riesling from California. Docstater said his
attention had been called to it by Tom Dillingham at the Union, who had a
ranch somewhere out there. It was declared to be sound and palatable;
you know what you are drinking. This led to a learned discussion of the
future of American wines, and a patriotic impulse was given to the trade
by repeated orders. It was declared that in American wines lay the
solution of the temperance question. Bobby Simerton said that Burgundy
was good enough for him, but Russell put him down, as he saw the light
yellow through his glass, by the emphatic affirmation that plenty of
cheap American well-made wine would knock the bottom out of all the
sentimental temperance societies and shut up the saloons, dry up all
those not limited to light wines and beer. It was agreed that the
saloons would have to go.
This satisfactory conclusion was reached before the coffee came on and
the cigarettes, and the sound quality of the Riesling was emphasized by a
pony of cognac.
It is fortunate when the youth of a country have an ideal. No nation is
truly great without a common ideal, capable of evoking enthusiasm and
calling out its energies. And where are we to look for this if not in
the youth, and especially in those to whom fortune and leisure give an
opportunity of leadership? It is they who can inspire by their example,
and by their pursuits attract others to a higher conception of the
national life. It may take the form of patriotism, as in this country,
pride in the great republic, jealousy of its honor and credit, eagerness
for its commanding position among the nations, patriotism which will show
itself, in all the ardor of believing youth, in the administration of
law, in the purity of politics, in honest local government, and in a
noble aspiration for the glory of the country. It may take the form of
culture, of a desire that the republic-liable, like all self-made
nations, to worship wealth-should be distinguished not so much by a
vulgar national display as by an advance in the arts, the sciences, the
education that adorns life, in the noble spirit of humanity, and in the
nobler spirit of recognition of a higher life, which will be content with
no civilization that does not tend to make the country for every citizen
a better place to live in today than it was yesterday. Happy is the
country, happy the metropolis of that country, whose fortunate young men
have this high conception of citizenship!
What is the ideal of their country which these young men cherish? There
was a moment--was there not for them?--in the late war for the Union,
when the republic was visible to them in its beauty, in its peril, and in
a passion of devotion they were eager--were they not?--to follow the flag
and to give their brief lives to its imperishable glory. Nothing is
impossible to a nation with an ideal like that. It was this flame that
ran over Europe in the struggle of France against a world in arms. It
was this national ideal that was incarnate in Napoleon, as every great
idea that moves the world is sooner or later incarnated. What was it
that we saw in Washington on his knees at Valley Forge, or blazing with
wrath at the cowardice on Monmouth? in Lincoln entering Richmond with
bowed head and infinite sorrow and yearning in his heart? An embodiment
of a great national idea and destiny.
In France this ideal burns yet like a flame, and is still evoked by a
name. It is the passion of glory, but the desire of a nation, and
Napoleon was the incarnation of passion. They say that he is not dead as
others are dead, but that he may come again and ride at the head of his
legions, and strike down the enemies of France; that his bugle will call
the youth from every hamlet, that the roll of his drum will transform
France into a camp, and the grenadiers will live again and ride with him,
amid hurrahs, and streaming tears, and shouts of "My Emperor! Oh, my
Emperor!" Is it only a legend? But the spirit is there; not a boy but
dreams of it, not a girl but knots the thought in with her holiday
tricolor. That is to have an abiding ideal, and patiently to hold it, in
isolation, in defeat, even in an overripe civilization.
We believe--do we not?--in other triumphs than those of the drum and the
sword. Our aspirations for the republic are for a nobler example of
human society than the world has yet seen. Happy is the country, and the
metropolis of the country, whose youth, gilded only by their virtues,
have these aspirations.
When the party broke up, the street lamps were beginning to twinkle here
and there, and Jack discovered to his surprise that the Twiss business
would have to go over to another day. It was such a hurrying life in New
York. There was just time for a cup of tea at Mrs. Trafton's. Everybody
dropped in there after five o'clock, when the duties of the day were
over, with the latest news, and to catch breath before rushing into the
program of the evening.
There were a dozen ladies in the drawing-room when Jack entered, and his
first impression was that the scream of conversation would be harder to
talk against than a Wagner opera; but he presently got his cup of tea,
and found a snug seat in the chimney-corner by Miss Tavish; indeed, they
moved to it together, and so got a little out of the babel. Jack thought
the girl looked even prettier in her walking-dress than when he saw her
at the studio; she had style, there was no doubt about that; and then,
while there was no invitation in her manner, one felt that she was a
woman to whom one could easily say things, and who was liable at any
moment to say things interesting herself.
"Is this your first appearance since last night, Mr. Delancy?"
"Oh no; I've been racing about on errands all day. It is very restful to
sit down by a calm person."
"Well, I never shut my eyes till nine o'clock. I kept seeing that
Spanish woman whirl around and contort, and--do you mind my telling you?
--I couldn't just help it, I" (leaning forward to Jack) "got up and tried
it before the glass. There! Are you shocked?"
"Not so much shocked as excluded," Jack dared to say. "But do you
think--".
"Yes, I know. There isn't anything that an American girl cannot do.
I've made up my mind to try it. You'll see."
"Will I?"
"No, you won't. Don't flatter yourself. Only girls. I don't want men
around."
"Neither do I," said Jack, honestly.
Miss Tavish laughed. "You are too forward, Mr. Delancy. Perhaps some
time, when we have learned, we will let in a few of you, to look in at
the door, fifty dollars a ticket, for some charity. I don't see why
dancing isn't just as good an accomplishment as playing the harp in a
Greek dress."
"Nor do I; I'd rather see it. Besides, you've got Scripture warrant for
dancing off the heads of people. And then it is such a sweet way of
doing a charity. Dancing for the East Side is the best thing I have
heard yet."
"You needn't mock. You won't when you find out what it costs you."
"What are you two plotting?" asked Mrs. Trafton, coming across to the
fireplace.
"Charity," said Jack, meekly.
"Your wife was here this morning to get me to go and see some of her
friends in Hester Street."
"You went?"
"Not today. It's awfully interesting, but I've been."
"Edith seems to be devoted to that sort of thing," remarked Miss Tavish.
"Yes," said Jack, slowly, "she's got the idea that sympathy is better
than money; she says she wants to try to understand other people's
lives."
"Goodness knows, I'd like to understand my own."
"And were you trying, Mr. Delancy, to persuade Miss Tavish into that sort
of charity?"
"Oh dear, no," said Jack; "I was trying to interest the East End in
something, for the benefit of Miss Tavish."
"You'll find that's one of the most expensive remarks you ever made,"
retorted Miss Tavish, rising to go.
"I wish Lily Tavish would marry," said Mrs. Trafton, watching the girl's
slender figure as it passed through the portiere; "she doesn't know what
to do with herself."
Jack shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, she'd be a lovely wife for somebody;"
and then he added, as if reminiscently, "if he could afford it.
Good-by."
"That's just a fashion of talking. I never knew a time when so many
people afforded to do what they wanted to do. But you men are all alike.
Good-by."
When Jack reached home it was only a little after six o'clock, and as
they were not to go out to dine till eight, he had a good hour to rest
from the fatigues of the day, and run over the evening papers and dip
into the foreign periodicals to catch a topic or two for the
dinner-table.
"Yes, sir," said the maid, "Mrs. Delancy came in an hour ago."
IV
Edith's day had been as busy as Jack's, notwithstanding she had put aside
several things that demanded her attention. She denied herself the
morning attendance on the Literature Class that was raking over the
eighteenth century. This week Swift was to be arraigned. The last time
when Edith was present it was Steele. The judgment, on the whole, had
been favorable, and there had been a little stir of tenderness among the
bonnets over Thackeray's comments on the Christian soldier. It seemed to
bring him near to them. "Poor Dick Steele!" said the essayist. Edith
declared afterwards that the large woman who sat next to her, Mrs. Jerry
Hollowell, whispered to her that she always thought his name was
Bessemer; but this was, no doubt, a pleasantry. It was a beautiful
essay, and so stimulating! And then there was bouillon, and time to look
about at the toilets. Poor Steele, it would have cheered his life to
know that a century after his death so many beautiful women, so
exquisitely dressed, would have been concerning themselves about him.
The function lasted two hours. Edith made a little calculation. In five
minutes she could have got from the encyclopaedia all the facts in the
essay, and while her maid was doing her hair she could have read five
times as much of Steele as the essayist read. And, somehow, she was not
stimulated, for the impression seemed to prevail that now Steele was
disposed of. And she had her doubts whether literature would, after all,
prove to be a permanent social distraction. But Edith may have been too
severe in her judgment. There was probably not a woman in the class that
day who did not go away with the knowledge that Steele was an author, and
that he lived in the eighteenth century. The hope for the country is in
the diffusion of knowledge.
Leaving the class to take care of Swift, Edith went to the managers'
meeting at the Women's Hospital, where there was much to do of very
practical work, pitiful cases of women and children suffering through no
fault of their own, and money more difficult to raise than sympathy.
The meeting took time and thought. Dismissing her carriage, and relying
on elevated and surface cars, Edith then took a turn on the East Side,
in company with a dispensary physician whose daily duty called her into
the worst parts of the town. She had a habit of these tours before her
marriage, and, though they were discouragingly small in direct results,
she gained a knowledge of city life that was of immense service in her
general charity work. Jack had suggested the danger of these excursions,
but she had told him that a woman was less liable to insult in the East
Side than in Fifth Avenue, especially at twilight, not because the East
Side was a nice quarter of the city, but because it was accustomed to see
women who minded their own business go about unattended, and the prowlers
had not the habit of going there. She could even relate cases of
chivalrous protection of "ladies" in some of the worst streets.
What Edith saw this day, open to be seen, was not so much sin as
ignorance of how to live, squalor, filthy surroundings acquiesced in as
the natural order, wonderful patience in suffering and deprivation,
incapacity, ill-paid labor, the kindest spirit of sympathy and
helpfulness of the poor for each other. Perhaps that which made the
deepest impression on her was the fact that such conditions of living
could seem natural to those in them, and that they could get so much
enjoyment of life in situations that would have been simple misery to
her.
The visitors were in a foreign city. The shop signs were in foreign
tongues; in some streets all Hebrew. On chance news-stands were
displayed newspapers in Russian, Bohemian, Arabic, Italian, Hebrew,
Polish, German-none in English. The theatre bills were in Hebrew or
other unreadable type. The sidewalks and the streets swarmed with noisy
dealers in every sort of second-hand merchandise--vegetables that had
seen a better day, fish in shoals. It was not easy to make one's way
through the stands and push-carts and the noisy dickering buyers and
sellers, who haggled over trifles and chaffed good-naturedly and were
strictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is more
crowded or more industrious. If youth is the hope of the country, the
sight was encouraging, for children were in the gutters, on the house
steps, at all the windows. The houses seemed bursting with humanity,
and in nearly every room of the packed tenements, whether the inmates
were sick or hungry, some sort of industry was carried on. In the damp
basements were junk-dealers, rag-pickers, goose-pickers. In one noisome
cellar, off an alley, among those sorting rags, was an old woman of
eighty-two, who could reply to questions only in a jargon, too proud to
beg, clinging to life, earning a few cents a day in this foul occupation.
But life is sweet even with poverty and rheumatism and eighty years.
Did her dull eyes, turning inward, see the Carpathian Hills, a free
girlhood in village drudgery and village sports, then a romance of love,
children, hard work, discontent, emigration to a New World of promise?
And now a cellar by day, the occupation of cutting rags for carpets, and
at night a corner in a close and crowded room on a flock bed not fit for
a dog. And this was a woman's life.
Picturesque foreign women going about with shawls over their heads and
usually a bit of bright color somewhere, children at their games, hawkers
loudly crying their stale wares, the click of sewing-machines heard
through a broken window, everywhere animation, life, exchange of rough or
kindly banter. Was it altogether so melancholy as it might seem? Not
everybody was hopelessly poor, for here were lawyers' signs and doctors'
signs--doctors in whom the inhabitants had confidence because they
charged all they could get for their services--and thriving pawnbrokers'
shops. There were parish schools also--perhaps others; and off some dark
alley, in a room on the ground-floor, could be heard the strident noise
of education going on in high-voiced study and recitation. Nor were
amusements lacking--notices of balls, dancing this evening, and ten-cent
shows in palaces of legerdemain and deformity.
It was a relenting day in March; patches of blue sky overhead, and the
sun had some quality in its shining. The children and the caged birds at
the open windows felt it-and there were notes of music here and there
above the traffic and the clamor. Turning down a narrow alley, with a
gutter in the centre, attracted by festive sounds, the visitors came into
a small stone-paved court with a hydrant in the centre surrounded by tall
tenement-houses, in the windows of which were stuffed the garments that
would no longer hold together to adorn the person. Here an Italian girl
and boy, with a guitar and violin, were recalling la bella Napoli, and a
couple of pretty girls from the court were footing it as merrily as if it
were the grape harvest. A woman opened a lower room door and sharply
called to one of the dancing girls to come in, when Edith and the doctor
appeared at the bottom of the alley, but her tone changed when she
recognized the doctor, and she said, by way of apology, that she didn't
like her daughter to dance before strangers. So the music and the dance
went on, even little dots of girls and boys shuffling about in a
stiff-legged fashion, with applause from all the windows, and at last
a largesse of pennies--as many as five altogether--for the musicians.
And the sun fell lovingly upon the pretty scene.
But then there were the sweaters' dens, and the private rooms where half
a dozen pale-faced tailors stitched and pressed fourteen and sometimes
sixteen hours a day, stifling rooms, smelling of the hot goose and
steaming cloth, rooms where they worked, where the cooking was done,
where they ate, and late at night, when overpowered with weariness, lay
down to sleep. Struggle for life everywhere, and perhaps no more
discontent and heart-burning and certainly less ennui than in the palaces
on the avenues.
The residence of Karl Mulhaus, one of the doctor's patients, was typical
of the homes of the better class of poor. The apartment fronted on a
small and not too cleanly court, and was in the third story. As Edith
mounted the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.
Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common hydrant
and sink. The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough to
contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two other
chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely
admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining,
dark, and nearly filled by a big bed. On the walls of the living room
were hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces of
industry, and on the bureau Edith noticed two illustrated newspapers of
the last year, a patent-medicine almanac, and a volume of Schiller. The
bureau also held Mr. Mulhaus's bottles of medicine, a comb which needed a
dentist, and a broken hair-brush. What gave the room, however, a
cheerful aspect were some pots of plants on the window-ledges, and half a
dozen canary-bird cages hung wherever there was room for them.
None of the family happened to be at home except Mr. Mulhaus, who
occupied the rocking-chair, and two children, a girl of four years and a
boy of eight, who were on the floor playing "store" with some blocks of
wood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scraps of paper, and a tangle
of twine. In their prattle they spoke, the English they had learned from
their brother who was in a store.
"I feel some better today," said Mr. Mulhaus, brightening up as the
visitors entered, "but the cough hangs on. It's three months since this
weather that I haven't been out, but the birds are a good deal of
company." He spoke in German, and with effort. He was very thin and
sallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful look of his
refined face. The doctor explained to Edith that he had been getting
fair wages in a type-foundry until he had become too weak to go any
longer to the shop.
It was rather hard to have to sit there all day, he explained to the
doctor, but they were getting along. Mrs. Mulhaus had got a job of
cleaning that day; that would be fifty cents. Ally--she was twelve--was
learning to sew. That was her afternoon to go to the College Settlement.
Jimmy, fourteen, had got a place in a store, and earned two dollars a
week.
"And Vicky?" asked the doctor.
"Oh, Vicky," piped up the eight-year-old boy. "Vicky's up to the
'stution"--the hospital was probably the institution referred to--"ever
so long now. I seen her there, me and Jim did. Such a bootifer place!
'Nd chicken!" he added. "Sis got hurt by a cart."
Vicky was seventeen, and had been in a fancy store.
"Yes," said Mulhaus, in reply to a question, "it pays pretty well raising
canaries, when they turn out singers. I made fifteen dollars last year.
I hain't sold much lately. Seems 's if people stopped wanting 'em such
weather. I guess it 'll be better in the spring."
"No doubt it will be better for the poor fellow himself before spring,"
said the doctor as they made their way down the dirty stairways. "Now
I'll show you one of my favorites."
They turned into a broader street, one of the busy avenues, and passing
under an archway between two tall buildings, entered a court of back
buildings. In the third story back lived Aunt Margaret. The room was
scarcely as big as a ship's cabin, and its one window gave little light,
for it opened upon a narrow well of high brick walls. In the only chair
Aunt Margaret was seated close to the window. In front of her was a
small work-table, with a kerosene lamp on it, but the side of the
room towards which she looked was quite occupied by a narrow couch
--ridiculously narrow, for Aunt Margaret was very stout. There was a thin
chest of drawers on the other side, and the small coal stove that stood
in the centre so nearly filled the remaining space that the two visitors
were one too many.
"Oh, come in, come in," said the old lady, cheerfully, when the door
opened. "I'm glad to see you."
"And how goes it?" asked the doctor.
"First rate. I'm coming on, doctor. Work's been pretty slack for two
weeks now, but yesterday I got work for two days. I guess it will be
better now."
The work was finishing pantaloons. It used to be a good business before
there was so much cutting in.
"I used to get fifteen cents a pair, then ten; now they don't pay but
five. Yes, the shop furnishes the thread."
"And how many pairs can you finish in a day?" asked Edith.
"Three--three pairs, to do 'em nice--and they are very particular--if I
work from six in the morning till twelve at night. I could do more, but
my sight ain't what it used to be, and I've broken my specs."
"So you earn fifteen cents a day?"
"When I've the luck to get work, my lady. Sometimes there isn't any.
And things cost so much. The rent is the worst."
It appeared that the rent was two dollars and a half a month. That must
be paid, at any rate. Edith made a little calculation that on a flush
average of ninety cents a week earned, and allowing so many cents for
coal and so many cents for oil, the margin for bread and tea must be
small for the month. She usually bought three cents' worth of tea at a
time.
"It is kinder close," said the old lady, with a smile. "The worst is,
my feet hurt me so I can't stir out. But the neighbors is real kind.
The little boy next room goes over to the shop and fetches my pantaloons
and takes 'em back. I can get along if it don't come slack again."
Sitting all day by that dim window, half the night stitching by a
kerosene lamp; lying for six hours on that narrow couch! How to account
for this old soul's Christian resignation and cheerfulness! "For," said
the doctor, "she has seen better days; she has moved in high society; her
husband, who died twenty years ago, was a policeman. What the old lady
is doing is fighting for her independence. She has only one fear--the
almshouse."
It was with such scenes as these in her eyes that Edith went to her
dressing-room to make her toilet for the Henderson dinner.
V
It was the first time they had dined with the Hendersons. It was Jack's
doings. "Certainly, if you wish it," Edith had said when the invitation
came. The unmentioned fact was that Jack had taken a little flier in
Oshkosh, and a hint from Henderson one evening at the Union, when the
venture looked squally, had let him out of a heavy loss into a small
profit, and Jack felt grateful.
"I wonder how Henderson came to do it?" Jack was querying, as he and old
Fairfax sipped their five-o'clock "Manhattan."
"Oh, Henderson likes to do a good-natured thing still, now and then.
Do you know his wife?"
"No. Who was she?"
"Why, old Eschelle's daughter, Carmen; of course you wouldn't know; that
was ten years ago. There was a good deal of talk about it at the time."
"How?"
"Some said they'd been good friends before Mrs. Henderson's death."
"Then Carmen, as you call her, wasn't the first?"
"No, but she was an easy second. She's a social climber; bound to get
there from the start."
"Is she pretty?"
"Devilish. She's a little thing. I saw her once at Homburg, on the
promenade with her mother.
"The kind of sweet blonde, I said to myself, that would mix a man up in a
duel before he knew where he was."
"She must be interesting."
"She was always clever, and she knows enough to play a straight game and
when to propitiate. I'll bet a five she tells Henderson whom to be good
to when the chance offers."
"Then her influence on him is good?"
"My dear sir, she gets what she wants, and Henderson is going to the.....
well, look at the lines in his face. I've known Henderson since he
came fresh into the Street. He'd rarely knife a friend when his first
wife was living. Now, when you see the old frank smile on his face, it's
put on."
It was half-past eight when Mr. Henderson with Mrs. Delancy on his arm
led the way to the diningroom. The procession was closed by Mrs.
Henderson and Mr. Delancy. The Van Dams were there, and Mrs. Chesney and
the Chesney girls, and Miss Tavish, who sat on Jack's right, but the rest
of the guests were unknown to Jack, except by name. There was a strong
dash of the Street in the mixture, and although the Street was tabooed in
the talk, there was such an emanation of aggressive prosperity at the
table that Jack said afterwards that he felt as if he had been at a
meeting of the board.
If Jack had known the house ten years ago, he would have noticed certain
subtle changes in it, rather in the atmosphere than in many alterations.
The newness and the glitter of cost had worn off. It might still be
called a palace, but the city had now a dozen handsomer houses, and
Carmen's idea, as she expressed it, was to make this more like a home.
She had made it like herself. There were pictures on the walls that
would not have hung there in the late Mrs. Henderson's time; and the
prevailing air was that of refined sensuousness. Life, she said, was her
idea, life in its utmost expression, untrammeled, and yes, a little
Greek. Freedom was perhaps the word, and yet her latest notion was
simplicity. The dinner was simple. Her dress was exceedingly simple,
save that it had in it somewhere a touch of audacity, revealing in a
flash of invitation the hidden nature of the woman. She knew herself
better than any one knew her, except Henderson, and even he was forced to
laugh when she travestied Browning in saying that she had one soul-side
to face the world with, one to show the man she loved, and she declared
he was downright coarse when on going out of the door he muttered, "But
it needn't be the seamy side." The reported remark of some one who had
seen her at church that she looked like a nun made her smile, but she
broke into a silvery laugh when she head Van Dam's comment on it, "Yes,
a devil of a nun."
The library was as cozy as ever, but did not appear to be used much as a
library. Henderson, indeed, had no time to add to his collection or
enjoy it. Most of the books strewn on the tables were French novels or
such American tales as had the cachet of social riskiness. But Carmen
liked the room above all others. She enjoyed her cigarette there, and
had a fancy for pouring her five-o'clock tea in its shelter. Books which
had all sorts of things in them gave somehow an unconventional atmosphere
to the place, and one could say things there that one couldn't say in a
drawing-room.
Henderson himself, it must be confessed, had grown stout in the ten
years, and puffy under the eyes. There were lines of irritation in his
face and lines of weariness. He had not kept the freshness of youth so
well as Carmen, perhaps because of his New England conscience. To his
guest he was courteous, seemed to be making an effort to be so, and
listened with well-assumed interest to the story of her day's pilgrimage.
At length he said, with a smile, "Life seems to interest you, Mrs.
Delancy."
"Yes, indeed," said Edith, looking up brightly; "doesn't it you?"
"Why, yes; not life exactly, but things, doing things--conflict."
"Yes, I can understand that. There is so much to be done for everybody."
Henderson looked amused. "You know in the city the gospel is that
everybody is to be done."
"Well," said Edith, not to be diverted, "but, Mr. Henderson, what is it
all for--this conflict? Perhaps, however, you are fighting the devil?"
"Yes, that's it; the devil is usually the other fellow. But, Mrs.
Delancy," added Henderson, with an accent of seriousness, "I don't know
what it's all for. I doubt if there is much in it."
"And yet the world credits you with finding a great deal in it."
"The world is generally wrong. Do you understand poker, Mrs. Delancy?
No! Of course you do not. But the interest of the game isn't so much in
the cards as in the men."
"I thought it was the stakes."
"Perhaps so. But you want to win for the sake of winning. If I gambled
it would be a question of nerve. I suppose that which we all enjoy is
the exercise of skill in winning."
"And not for the sake of doing anything--just winning? Don't you get
tired of that?" asked Edith, quite simply.
There was something in Edith's sincerity, in her fresh enthusiasm about
life, that appeared to strike a reminiscent note in Henderson. Perhaps
he remembered another face as sweet as hers, and ideals, faint and long
ago, that were once mixed with his ideas of success. At any rate, it was
with an accent of increased deference, and with a look she had not seen
in his face before, that he said:
"People get tired of everything. I'm not sure but it would interest me
to see for a minute how the world looks through your eyes." And then he
added, in a different tone, "As to your East Side, Mrs. Henderson tried
that some years ago."
"Wasn't she interested?"
"Oh, very much. For a time. But she said there was too much of it."
And Edith could detect no tone of sarcasm in the remark.
Down at the other end of the table, matters were going very smoothly.
Jack was charmed with his hostess. That clever woman had felt her way
along from the heresy trial, through Tuxedo and the Independent Theatre
and the Horse Show, until they were launched in a perfectly free
conversation, and Carmen knew that she hadn't to look out for thin ice.
"Were you thinking of going on to the Conventional Club tonight, Mr.
Delancy?" she was saying.
"I don't belong," said Jack. "Mrs. Delancy said she didn't care for it."
"Oh, I don't care for it, for myself," replied Carmen.
"I do," struck in Miss Tavish. "It's awfully nice."
"Yes, it does seem to fill a want. Why, what do you do with your
evenings, Mr. Delancy?"
"Well, here's one of them."
"Yes, I know, but I mean between twelve o'clock and bedtime."
"Oh," said Jack, laughing out loud, "I go to bed--sometimes."
"Yes, 'there's always that. But you want some place to go to after the
theatres and the dinners; after the other places are shut up you want to
go somewhere and be amused."
"Yes," said Jack, falling in, "it is a fact that there are not many
places of amusement for the rich; I understand. After the theatres you
want to be amused. This Conventional Club is--"
"I tell you what it is. It's a sort of Midnight Mission for the rich.
They never have had anything of the kind in the city."
"And it's very nice," said Miss Tavish, demurely.
The performers are selected. You can see things there that you want to
see at other places to which you can't go. And everybody you know is
there."
"Oh, I see," said Jack. "It's what the Independent Theatre is trying to
do, and what all the theatrical people say needs to be done, to elevate
the character of the audiences, and then the managers can give better
plays."
"That's just it. We want to elevate the stage," Carmen explained.
"But," continued Jack, "it seems to me that now the audience is select
and elevated, it wants to see the same sort of things it liked to see
before it was elevated."
"You may laugh, Mr. Delancy," replied Carmen, throwing an earnest
simplicity into her eyes, "but why shouldn't women know what is going on
as well as men?"
"And why," Miss Tavish asked, "will the serpentine dances and the London
topical songs do any more harm to women than to men?"
"And besides, Mr. Delancy," Carmen said, chiming in, "isn't it just as
proper that women should see women dance and throw somersaults on the
stage as that men should see them? And then, you know, women are such a
restraining influence."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Jack. "I thought the Conventional was
for the benefit of the audience, not for the salvation of the
performers."
"It's both. It's life. Don't you think women ought to know life? How
are they to take their place in the world unless they know life as men
know it?"
"I'm sure I don't know whose place they are to take, the serpentine
dancer's or mine," said Jack, as if he were studying a problem. "How
does your experiment get on, Miss Tavish?"
Carmen looked up quickly.
"Oh, I haven't any experiment," said Miss Tavish, shaking her head.
"It's just Mr. Delancy's nonsense."
"I wish I had an experiment. There is so little for women to do. I wish
I knew what was right." And Carmen looked mournfully demure, as if life,
after all, were a serious thing with her.
"Whatever Mrs. Henderson does is sure to be right," said Jack, gallantly.
Carmen shot at him a quick sympathetic glance, tempered by a grateful
smile. "There are so many points of view."
Jack felt the force of the remark as he did the revealing glance. And he
had a swift vision of Miss Tavish leading him a serpentine dance, and of
Carmen sweetly beckoning him to a pleasant point of view. After all it
doesn't much matter. Everything is in the point of view.
After dinner and cigars and cigarettes in the library, the talk dragged a
little in duets. The dinner had been charming, the house was lovely, the
company was most agreeable. All said that. It had been so somewhere
else the night before that, and would be the next night. And the ennui
of it all! No one expressed it, but Henderson could not help looking it,
and Carmen saw it. That charming hostess had been devoting herself to
Edith since dinner. She was so full of sympathy with the East-Side work,
asked a hundred questions about it, and declared that she must take it up
again. She would order a cage of canaries from that poor German for her
kitchen. It was such a beautiful idea. But Edith did not believe in her
one bit. She told Jack afterwards that "Mrs. Henderson cares no more for
the poor of New York than she does for--"
"Henderson?" suggested Jack.
"Oh, I don't know anything about that. Henderson has only one idea--to
get the better of everybody, and be the money king of New York. But I
should not wonder if he had once a soft spot in his heart. He is better
than she is."
It was still early, lacked half an hour of midnight, and the night was
before them. Some one proposed the Conventional. "Yes," said Carmen;
"all come to our box." The Van Dams would go, Miss Tavish, the Chesneys;
the suggestion was a relief to everybody. Only Mr. Henderson pleaded
important papers that must have his attention that night. Edith said
that she was too tired, but that her desertion must not break up the
party.
"Then you will excuse me also," said Jack, a little shade of
disappointment in his face.
"No, no," said Edith, quickly; "you can drop me on the way. Go, by all
means, Jack."
"Do you really want me to go, dear?" said Jack, aside.
"Why of course; I want you to be happy."
And Jack recalled the loving look that accompanied these words, later on,
as he sat in the Henderson box at the Conventional, between Carmen and
Miss Tavish, and saw, through the slight haze of smoke, beyond the
orchestra, the praiseworthy efforts of the Montana Kicker, who had just
returned with the imprimatur of Paris, to relieve the ennui of the modern
world.
The complex affair we call the world requires a great variety of people
to keep it going. At one o'clock in the morning Carmen and our friend
Mr. Delancy and Miss Tavish were doing their part. Edith lay awake
listening for Jack's return. And in an alley off Rivington Street a
young girl, pretty once, unknown to fortune but not to fame, was about to
render the last service she could to the world by leaving it.
The impartial historian scarcely knows how to distribute his pathos.
By the electric light (and that is the modern light) gayety is almost as
pathetic as suffering. Before the Montana girl hit upon the happy device
that gave her notoriety, her feet, whose every twinkle now was worth a
gold eagle, had trod a thorny path. There was a fortune now in the whirl
of her illusory robes, but any day--such are the whims of fashion--she
might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking
at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give her
a pittance of a few dollars a week. How long had Carmen waited on the
social outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she anything
but a tinsel queen? Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did the friends
of his youth respect him? had he public esteem? Carmen used to cut out
the newspaper paragraphs that extolled Henderson's domestic virtue and
his generosity to his family, and show them to her lord, with a queer
smile on her face. Miss Tavish, in the nervous consciousness of fleeting
years, was she not still waiting, dashing here and there like a bird in a
net for the sort of freedom, audacious as she was, that seemed denied
her? She was still beautiful, everybody said, and she was sought and
flattered, because she was always merry and good-natured. Why should Van
Dam, speaking of women, say that there were horses that had been set up,
and checked up and trained, that held their heads in an aristocratic
fashion, moved elegantly, and showed style, long after the spirit had
gone out of them? And Jack himself, happily married, with a comfortable
income, why was life getting flat to him? What sort of career was it
that needed the aid of Carmen and the serpentine dancer? And why not,
since it is absolutely necessary that the world should be amused?
We are in no other world when we enter the mean tenement in the alley off
Rivington Street. Here also is the life of the town. The room is small,
but it contains a cook-stove, a chest of drawers, a small table, a couple
of chairs, and two narrow beds. On the top of the chest are a
looking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine. The cracked
walls are bare and not clean. In one of the beds are two children,
sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged woman, in a
soiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her shoulders, a
dirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired and worn and
sleepy. On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a woman in
experience. The kerosene lamp on the stand at the head of the bed casts a
spectral light on her flushed face, and the thin arms that are restlessly
thrown outside the cover. By the bedside sits the doctor, patient,
silent, and watchful. The doctor puts her hand caressingly on that of the
girl. It is hot and dry. The girl opens her eyes with a startled look,
and says, feebly:
"Do you think he will come?"
"Yes, dear, presently. He never fails."
The girl closed her eyes again, and there was silence. The dim rays of
the lamp, falling upon the doctor, revealed the figure of a woman of less
than medium size, perhaps of the age of thirty or more, a plain little
body, you would have said, who paid the slightest possible attention to
her dress, and when she went about the city was not to be distinguished
from a working-woman. Her friends, indeed, said that she had not the
least care for her personal appearance, and unless she was watched, she
was sure to go out in her shabbiest gown and most battered hat. She wore
tonight a brown ulster and a nondescript black bonnet drawn close down on
her head and tied with black strings. In her lap lay her leathern bag,
which she usually carried under her arm, that contained medicines, lint,
bandages, smelling-salts, a vial of ammonia, and so on; to her patients
it was a sort of conjurer's bag, out of which she could produce anything
that an emergency called for.
Dr. Leigh was not in the least nervous or excited. Indeed, an artist
would not have painted her as a rapt angelic visitant to this abode of
poverty. This contact with poverty and coming death was quite in her
ordinary experience. It would never have occurred to her that she was
doing anything unusual, any more than it would have occurred to the
objects of her ministrations to overwhelm her with thanks. They trusted
her, that was all. They met her always with a pleasant recognition.
She belonged perhaps to their world. Perhaps they would have said that
"Dr. Leigh don't handsome much," but their idea was that her face was
good. That was what anybody would have said who saw her tonight, "She
has such a good face;" the face of a woman who knew the world, and
perhaps was not very sanguine about it, had few illusions and few
antipathies, but accepted it, and tried in her humble way to alleviate
its hardships, without any consciousness of having a mission or making a
sacrifice.
Dr. Leigh--Miss Ruth Leigh--was Edith's friend. She had not come from
the country with an exalted notion of being a worker among the poor about
whom so much was written; she had not even descended from some high
circle in the city into this world, moved by a restless enthusiasm for
humanity. She was a woman of the people, to adopt a popular phrase.
From her childhood she had known them, their wants, their sympathies,
their discouragements; and in her heart--though you would not discover
this till you had known her long and well--there was a burning sympathy
with them, a sympathy born in her, and not assumed for the sake of having
a career. It was this that had impelled her to get a medical education,
which she obtained by hard labor and self-denial. To her this was not a
means of livelihood, but simply that she might be of service to those all
about her who needed help more than she did. She didn't believe in
charity, this stout-hearted, clearheaded little woman; she meant to make
everybody pay for her medical services who could pay; but somehow her
practice was not lucrative, and the little salary she got as a dispensary
doctor melted away with scarcely any perceptible improvement in her own
wardrobe. Why, she needed nothing, going about as she did.
She sat--now waiting for the end; and the good face, so full of sympathy
for the living, had no hope in it. Just another human being had come to
the end of her path--the end literally. It was so everyday. Somebody
came to the end, and there was nothing beyond. Only it was the end, and
that was peace. One o'clock--half-past one. The door opened softly.
The old woman rose from the foot of the bed with a start and a low
"Herr! gross Gott." It was Father Damon. The girl opened her eyes with
a frightened look at first, and then an eager appeal. Dr. Leigh rose to
make room for him at the bedside. They bowed as he came forward, and
their eyes met. She shook her head. In her eyes was no expectation, no
hope. In his was the glow of faith. But the eyes of the girl rested
upon his face with a rapt expression. It was as if an angel had entered
the room.
Father Damon was a young man, not yet past thirty, slender, erect.
He had removed as he came in his broad-brimmed soft hat. The hair was
close-cut, but not tonsured. He wore a brown cassock, falling in
straight lines, and confined at the waist with a white cord. From his
neck depended from a gold chain a large gold cross. His face was
smooth-shaven, thin, intellectual, or rather spiritual; the nose long,
the mouth straight, the eyes deep gray, sometimes dreamy and puzzling,
again glowing with an inner fervor. A face of long vigils and the
schooled calmness of repressed energy. You would say a fanatic of God,
with a dash of self-consciousness. Dr. Leigh knew him well. They met
often on their diverse errands, and she liked, when she could, to go to
vespers in the little mission chapel of St. Anselm, where he ministered.
It was not the confessional that attracted her, that was sure; perhaps
not altogether the service, though that was soothing in certain moods;
but it was the noble personality of Father Damon. He was devoted to the
people as she was, he understood them; and for the moment their passion
of humanity assumed the same aspect, though she knew that what he saw, or
thought he saw, lay beyond her agnostic vision.
Father Damon was an Englishman, a member of a London Anglican order, who
had taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, who had
been for some years in New York, and had finally come to live on the East
Side, where his work was. In a way he had identified himself with the
people; he attended their clubs; he was a Christian socialist; he spoke
on the inequalities of taxation; the strikers were pretty sure of his
sympathy; he argued the injustice of the present ownership of land. Some
said that he had joined a lodge of the Knights of Labor. Perhaps it was
these things, quite as much as his singleness of purpose and his
spiritual fervor, that drew Dr. Leigh to him with a feeling that verged
on devotion. The ladies up-town, at whose tables Father Damon was an
infrequent guest, were as fully in sympathy with this handsome and
aristocratic young priest, and thought it beautiful that he should devote
himself to the poor and the sinful; but they did not see why he should
adopt their views.
It was at the mission that Father Damon had first seen the girl. She had
ventured in not long ago at twilight, with her cough and her pale face,
in a silk gown and flower-garden of a hat, and crept into one of the
confessional boxes, and told him her story.
"Do you think, Father," said the girl, looking up wistfully, "that I can
--can be forgiven?"
Father Damon looked down sadly, pitifully. "Yes, my daughter, if you
repent. It is all with our Father. He never refuses."
He knelt down, with his cross in his hand, and in a low voice repeated
the prayer for the dying. As the sweet, thrilling voice went on in
supplication the girl's eyes closed again, and a sweet smile played about
her mouth; it was the innocent smile of the little girl long ago, when
she might have awakened in the morning and heard the singing of birds at
her window.
When Father Damon arose she seemed to be sleeping. They all stood in
silence for a moment.
"You will remain?" he asked the doctor.
"Yes," she said, with the faintest wan smile on her face. "It is I, you
know, who have care of the body."
At the door he turned and said, quite low, "Peace be to this house!"
VI
Father Damon came dangerously near to being popular. The austerity of
his life and his known self-chastening vigils contributed to this effect.
His severely formal, simple ecclesiastical dress, coarse in material but
perfect in its saintly lines, separated him from the world in which he
moved so unostentatiously and humbly, and marked him as one who went
about doing good. His life was that of self-absorption and hardship,
mortification of the body, denial of the solicitation of the senses,
struggling of the spirit for more holiness of purpose--a life of
supplication for the perishing souls about him. And yet he was so
informed with the modern spirit that he was not content, as a zealot
formerly might have been, to snatch souls out of the evil that is in the
world, but he strove to lessen the evil. He was a reformer. It was
probably this feature of his activity, and not his spiritual mission,
that attracted to him the little group of positivists on the East Side,
the demagogues of the labor lodges, the practical workers of the
working-girls' clubs, and the humanitarian agnostics like Dr. Leigh, who
were literally giving their lives without the least expectation of
reward. Even the refined ethical-culture groups had no sneer for Father
Damon. The little chapel of St. Anselm was well known. It was always
open. It was plain, but its plainness was not the barrenness of a
non-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze lamp
attached to one of the pillars scarcely dispelled the obscurity, but cast
an unnatural light upon the gigantic crucifix that hung from a beam in
front of the chancel. There were half a dozen rows of backless benches in
the centre of the chapel. The bronze lamp, and the candles always burning
upon the altar, rather accented than dissipated the heavy shadows in the
vaulted roof. At no hour was it empty, but at morning prayer and at
vespers the benches were apt to be filled, and groups of penitents or
spectators were kneeling or standing on the floor. At vespers there were
sure to be carriages in front of the door, and among the kneeling figures
were ladies who brought into these simple services for the poor something
of the refinement of grace as it is in the higher circles. Indeed, at the
hour set apart for confession, there were in the boxes saints from
up-town as well as sinners from the slums. Sometimes the sinners were
from up-town and the saints from the slums.
When the organ sounded, and through a low door in the chancel the priest
entered, preceded by a couple of acolytes, and advanced swiftly to the
reading-desk, there was an awed hush in the congregation. One would not
dare to say that there was a sentimental feeling for the pale face and
rapt expression of the devotee. It was more than that. He had just come
from some scene of suffering, from the bed of one dying; he was weary
with watching. He was faint with lonely vigils; he was visibly carrying
the load of the poor and the despised. Even Ruth Leigh, who had dropped
in for half an hour in one of her daily rounds--even Ruth Leigh, who had
in her stanch, practical mind a contempt for forms and rituals, and no
faith in anything that she could not touch, and who at times was
indignant at the efforts wasted over the future of souls concerning which
no one knew anything, when there were so many bodies, which had inherited
disease and poverty and shame, going to worldly wreck before so-called
Christian eyes--even she could scarcely keep herself from adoring this
self-sacrificing spirit. The woes of humanity grieved him as they
grieved her, and she used to say she did not care what he believed so
long as he gave his life for the needy.
It was when he advanced to the altar-rail to speak that the man best
appeared. His voice, which was usually low and full of melody, could be
something terrible when it rose in denunciation of sin. Those who had
traveled said that he had the manner of a preaching friar--the simple
language, so refined and yet so homely and direct, the real, the inspired
word, the occasional hastening torrent of words. When he had occasion to
address one of the societies of ladies for the promotion of something
among the poor, his style and manner were simplicity itself. One might
have said there was a shade of contempt in his familiar and not seldom
slightly humorous remarks upon society and its aims and aspirations,
about which he spoke plainly and vigorously. And this was what the
ladies liked. Especially when he referred to the pitifulness of class
distinctions, in the light of the example of our Lord, in our short
pilgrimage in this world. This unveiling and denunciation made them
somehow feel nearer to their work, and, indeed, while they sat there,
co-workers with this apostle of righteousness.
Perhaps there was something in the priestly dress that affected not only
the congregation in the chapel, but all the neighborhood in which Father
Damon lived. There was in the long robe, with its feminine lines, an
assurance to the women that he was set apart and not as others were; and,
on the other hand, the semi-feminine suggestion of the straight-falling
garment may have had for the men a sort of appeal for defense and even
protection. It is certain, at any rate, that Father Damon had the
confidence of high and low, rich and poor. The forsaken sought him out,
the hungry went to him, the dying sent for him, the criminal knocked at
the door of his little room, even the rich reprobate would have opened
his bad heart to him sooner than to any one else. It is evident,
therefore, that Father Damon was dangerously near to being popular.
Human vanity will feed on anything within its reach, and there has been
discovered yet no situation that will not minister to its growth.
Suffering perhaps it prefers, and contumely and persecution. Are not
opposition, despiteful anger, slander even, rejection of men, stripes
even, if such there could be in these days, manna to the devout soul
consciously set apart for a mission? But success, obsequiousness,
applause, the love of women, the concurrent good opinion of all
humanitarians, are these not almost as dangerous as persecution? Father
Damon, though exalted in his calling, and filled with a burning zeal,
was a sincere man, and even his eccentricities of saintly conduct
expressed to his mind only the high purpose of self-sacrifice. Yet he
saw, he could not but see, the spiritual danger in this rising tide of
adulation. He fought against its influence, he prayed against it,
he tried to humiliate himself, and his very humiliations increased the
adulation. He was perplexed, almost ashamed, and examined himself to see
how it was that he himself seemed to be thwarting his own work.
Sometimes he withdrew from it for a week together, and buried himself in
a retreat in the upper part of the island. Alas! did ever a man escape
himself in a retreat? It made him calm for the moment. But why was it,
he asked himself, that he had so many followers, his religion so few?
Why was it, he said, that all the humanitarians, the reformers, the
guilds, the ethical groups, the agnostics, the male and female knights,
sustained him, and only a few of the poor and friendless knocked, by his
solicitation, at the supernatural door of life? How was it that a woman
whom he encountered so often, a very angel of mercy, could do the things
he was doing, tramping about in the misery and squalor of the great city
day and night, her path unilluminated by a ray from the future life?
Perhaps he had been remiss in his duty. Perhaps he was letting a vague
philanthropy take the place of a personal solicitude for individual
souls. The elevation of the race! What had the land question to do with
the salvation of man? Suppose everybody on the East Side should become
as industrious, as self-denying, as unselfish as Ruth Leigh, and yet
without belief, without hope! He had accepted the humanitarian situation
with her, and never had spoken to her of the eternal life. What
unfaithfulness to his mission and to her! It should be so no longer.
It was after one of his weeks of retreat, at the close of vesper service,
that Dr. Leigh came to him. He had been saying in his little talk that
poverty is no excuse for irreligion, and that all aid in the hardship of
this world was vain and worthless unless the sinner laid hold on eternal
life. Dr. Leigh, who was laboring with a serious practical problem,
heard this coldly, and with a certain contempt for what seemed to her a
vague sort of consolation.
"Well," he said, when she came to him in the vestry, with a drop from the
rather austere manner in which he had spoken, "what can I do for you?"
"For me, nothing, Father Damon. I thought perhaps you would go round
with me to see a pretty bad case. It is in your parish."
"Ah, did they send for me? Do they want spiritual help?"
"First the natural, then the spiritual," she replied, with a slight tone
of sarcasm in her voice. "That's just like a priest," she was thinking.
"I do not know what to do, and something must be done."
"Did you report to the Associated Charities?"
"Yes. But there's a hitch somewhere. The machine doesn't take hold.
The man says he doesn't want any charity, any association, treating him
like a pauper. He's off peddling; but trade is bad, and he's been away a
week. I'm afraid he drinks a little."
"Well?"
"The mother is sick in bed. I found her trying to do some fine
stitching, but she was too weak to hold up the muslin. There are five
young children. The family never has had help before."
Father Damon put on his hat, and they went out together, and for some
time picked their way along the muddy streets in silence.
At length he asked, in a softened voice, "Is the mother a Christian?"
"I didn't ask," she replied shortly. "I found her crying because the
children were hungry."
Father Damon, still under the impression of his neglect of duty, did not
heed her warning tone, but persisted, "You have so many opportunities,
Dr. Leigh, in your visits of speaking a word."
"About what?" she asked, refusing to understand, and hardened at the
slightest sign of what she called cant.
"About the necessity of repentance and preparation for another life," he
answered, softly but firmly. "You surely do not think human beings are
created just for this miserable little experience here?"
"I don't know. I have too much to do with the want and suffering I see
to raise anxieties about a world of which no one can possibly know
anything."
"Pardon me," he persisted, "have you no sense of incompleteness in this
life, in your own life? no inward consciousness of an undying
personality?"
The doctor was angry for a moment at this intrusion. It had seemed
natural enough for Father Damon to address his exhortations to the poor
and sinful of his mission. She admired his spirit, she had a certain
sympathy with him; for who could say that ministering to minds diseased
might not have a physical influence to lift these people into a more
decent and prosperous way of living? She had thought of herself as
working with him to a common end. But for him now to turn upon her,
absolutely ignoring the solid, rational, and scientific ground on which
he knew, or should know, she stood, and to speak to her as one of the
"lost," startled her, and filled her with indignation. She had on her
lips a sarcastic reply to the effect that even if she had a soul, she had
not taken up her work in the city as a means of saving it; but she was
not given to sarcasm, and before she spoke she looked at her companion,
and saw in the eyes a look of such genuine humble feeling, contradicting
the otherwise austere expression of his face, that her momentary
bitterness passed away.
"I think, Father Damon," she said, gently, "we had better not talk of
that. I don't have much time for theorizing, you know, nor much
inclination," she added.
The priest saw that for the present he could make no progress, and after
a little silence the conversation went back to the family they were about
to visit.
They found the woman better--at least, more cheerful. Father Damon
noticed that there were medicines upon the stand, and that there were the
remains of a meal which the children had been eating. He turned to the
doctor. "I see that you have been providing for them."
"Oh, the eldest boy had already been out and begged a piece of bread when
I came. Of course they had to have something more at once. But it is
very little that I can do."
He sat down by the bed, and talked with the mother, getting her story,
while the doctor tidied up the room a bit, and then, taking the youngest
child in her lap and drawing the others about her, began to tell a story
in a low voice. Presently she was aware that the priest was on his knees
and saying a prayer. She stopped in her story, and looked out through
the dirty window into the chill and dark area.
"What is he doing?" whispered one of the children.
"I don't know," she said, and a sort of chill came over her heart. It
all seemed a mockery, in these surroundings.
When he rose he said to the woman, "We will see that you do not want till
your husband comes back."
"And I will look in tomorrow," said the doctor.
When they were in the street, Father Damon thanked her for calling his
attention to the case, thanked her a little formally, and said that he
would make inquiries and have it properly attended to. And then he
asked: "Is your work ended for the day? You must be tired."
"Oh, no; I have several visits to make. I'm not tired. I rather think
it is good for me, being out-of-doors so much." She thanked him, and
said good-by.
For a moment he stood and watched the plain, resolute little woman
threading her way through the crowded and unclean street, and then slowly
walked away to his apartment, filled with sadness and perplexity.
The apartment which he occupied was not far from the mission chapel,
and it was the one clean spot among the ill-kept tenements; but as to
comfort, it was not much better than the cell of an anchorite. Of this,
however, he was not thinking as he stretched himself out on his pallet to
rest a little from the exhausting labors of the day. Probably it did not
occur to him that his self-imposed privations lessened his strength for
his work.
He was thinking of Ruth Leigh. What a rare soul! And yet apparently she
did not think or care whether she had a soul. What could be the spring
of her incessant devotion? If ever woman went about doing good in an
unselfish spirit it was she. Yet she confessed her work hopeless. She
had no faith, no belief in immortality, no expectation of any reward,
nothing to offer to anybody beyond this poor life. Was this the
enthusiasm of humanity, of which he heard so much? But she did not seem
to have any illusions, or to be burned up by enthusiasm. She just kept
on. Ah, he thought, what a woman she would be if she were touched by the
fire of faith!
Meantime, Ruth Leigh went on her round. One day was like another, except
that every day the kaleidoscope of misery showed new combinations, new
phases of suffering and incompetence, and there was always a fresh
interest in that. For years now this had been her life, in the chill of
winter and the heat of summer, without rest or vacation. The amusements,
the social duties, the allurements of dress and society, that so much
occupied the thoughts of other women, did not seem to come into her life.
For books she had little time, except the books of her specialty. The
most exciting novels were pale compared with her daily experiences of
real life. Almost her only recreation was a meeting of the
working-girls, a session of her labor lodge, or an assembly at the Cooper
Union, where some fiery orator, perhaps a priest, or a clever agitator, a
working-man glib of speech, who had a mass of statistics at the end of
his tongue, who read and discussed, in some private club of zealots of
humanity, metaphysics, psychology, and was familiar with the whole
literature of labor and socialism, awoke the enthusiasm of the
discontented or the unemployed, and where men and women, in clear but
homely speech, told their individual experiences of wrong and injustice.
There was evidence in all these demonstrations and organizations that the
world was moving, and that the old order must change.
Years and years the little woman had gone on with her work, and she
frankly confessed to Edith, one day when they were together going her
rounds, that she could see no result from it all. The problem of poverty
and helplessness and incapacity seemed to her more hopeless than when she
began. There might be a little enlightenment here and there, but there
was certainly not less misery. The state of things was worse than she
thought at first; but one thing cheered her: the people were better than
she thought. They might be dull and suspicious in the mass, but she
found so much patience, unselfishness, so many people of good hearts and
warm affections.
"They are the people," she said, "I should choose for friends. They are
natural, unsophisticated. And do you know," she went on, "that what most
surprises me is the number of reading, thoughtful people among those who
do manual labor. I doubt if on your side of town the, best books, the
real fundamental and abstruse books, are so read and discussed, or the
philosophy of life is so seriously considered, as in certain little
circles of what you call the working-classes."
"Isn't it all very revolutionary?" asked Edith.
"Perhaps," replied the doctor, dryly. "But they have no more fads than
other people. Their theories seem to them not only practical, but they
try to apply them to actual legislation; at any rate, they discriminate
in vagaries. You would have been amused the other night in a small
circle at the lamentations over a member--he was a car-driver--who was
the authoritative expositor of Schopenhauer, because he had gone off into
Theosophy. It showed such weakness."
"I have heard that the members of that circle were Nihilists."
"The club has not that name, but probably the members would not care to
repudiate the title, or deny that they were Nihilists theoretically--that
is, if Nihilism means an absolute social and political overturning in
order that something better may be built up. And, indeed, if you see
what a hopeless tangle our present situation is, where else can the mind
logically go?"
"It is pitiful enough," Edith admitted. "But all this movement you speak
of seems to me a vague agitation."
"I don't think," the doctor said, after a moment, "that you appreciate
the intellectual force that is in it all, or allow for the fermenting
power in the great discontented mass of these radical theories on the
problem of life."
This was a specimen of the sort of talk that Edith and the doctor often
drifted into in their mission work. As Ruth Leigh tramped along late
this afternoon in the slush of the streets, from one house of sickness
and poverty to another, a sense of her puny efforts in this great mass of
suffering and injustice came over her anew. Her indignation rose against
the state of things. And Father Damon, who was trying to save souls, was
he accomplishing anything more than she? Why had he been so curt with
her when she went to him for help this afternoon? Was he just a
narrow-minded, bigoted priest? A few nights before she had heard him
speak on the single tax at a labor meeting. She recalled his eloquence,
his profound sympathy with the cause of the people, the thrilling,
pathetic voice, the illumination of his countenance, the authority, the
consecration in his attitude and dress; and he was transfigured to her
then, as he was now in her thought, into an apostle of humanity. Alas!
she thought, what a leader he would be if he would break loose from his
superstitious traditions!
VII
The acquaintance between the house of Henderson and the house of Delancy
was not permitted to languish. Jack had his reasons for it, which may
have been financial, and Carmen had her reasons, which were probably
purely social. What was the good of money if it did not bring social
position? and what, on the other hand, was the good of social position if
you could not use it to get money?
In his recent association with the newly rich, Jack's twenty thousand a
year began to seem small. In fact, in the lowering of the rate of
interest and the shrinkage of securities, it was no longer twenty
thousand a year. This would have been a matter of little consequence in
the old order. His lot was not cast among the poor; most of his
relations had solid fortunes, and many of them were millionaires, or what
was equivalent to that, before the term was invented. But they made
little display; none at all merely for the purpose of exhibition, or to
gain or keep social place. In this atmosphere in which he was born Jack
floated along without effort, with no demand upon him to keep up with a
rising standard of living. Even impecuniosity, though inconvenient,
would not have made him lose caste.
All this was changing now. Since the introduction of a new element even
the conservative old millions had begun to feel the stir of uneasiness,
and to launch out into extravagance in rivalry with the new millions.
Even with his relations Jack began to feel that he was poor. It did not
spur him to do anything, to follow the example, for instance, of the
young fellows from the country, who were throwing themselves into Wall
Street with the single purpose of becoming suddenly rich, but it made him
uneasy. And when he was with the Hendersons, or Miss Tavish, whose
father, though not newly rich, was one of the most aggressive of
speculators, and saw how easily every luxurious desire glided into
fulfillment, he felt for the first time in his life the emotion of envy.
It seemed then that only unlimited money could make the world attractive.
Why, even to keep up with the unthinking whims of Miss Tavish would
bankrupt him in six months. That little spread at Wherry's for the
theatre party the other night, though he made light of it to Edith, was
almost the price he couldn't afford to pay for Storm. He had a grim
thought that midwinter flowers made dining as expensive as dying.
Carmen, whom nothing escaped, complimented him on his taste, quite aware
that he couldn't afford it, and, apropos, told him of a lady in Chicago
who, hearing that the fashion had changed, wrote on her dinner cards, "No
flowers." It was only a matter of course for these people to build a new
country-house in any spot that fashion for the moment indicated, to equip
their yachts for a Mediterranean voyage or for loitering down the
Southern coast, to give a ball that was the talk of the town, to make up
a special train of luxurious private cars for Mexico or California. Even
at the clubs the talk was about these things and the opportunities for
getting them.
There was a rumor about town that Henderson was a good deal extended.
It alarmed a hundred people, not on Henderson's account, but their own.
When one of them consulted Uncle Jerry, that veteran smiled.
"Oh, I guess Henderson's all right. But I wouldn't wonder if it meant a
squeeze. Of course if he's extended, it's an excuse for settling up, and
the shorts will squeal. I've seen Henderson extended a good many times,"
and the old man laughed. "Don't you worry about him."
This opinion, when reported, did not seem to quiet Jack's fears, who saw
his own little venture at the mercy of a sweeping Street game. It
occurred to him that he possibly might get a little light on the matter
by dropping in that afternoon and taking a quiet cup of tea with Mrs.
Henderson.
He found her in the library. Outdoors winter was slouching into spring
with a cold drizzle, with a coating of ice on the pavements-animating
weather for the medical profession. Within, there was the glow of warmth
and color that Carmen liked to create for herself. In an entrancing
tea-gown, she sat by a hickory fire, with a fresh magazine in one hand
and a big paper-cutter in the other. She rose at Jack's entrance, and,
extending her hand, greeted him with a most cordial smile. It was so good
of him! She was so lonesome! He could himself see that the lonesomeness
was dissipated, as she seated him in a comfortable chair by the fire, and
then stood a moment looking at him, as if studying his comfort. She was
such a domestic woman!
"You look tired, monsieur," she said, as she passed behind his chair and
rested the tip of her forefinger for a second on his head. "I shall make
you a cup of tea at once."
"Not tired, but bothered," said Jack, stretching out his legs.
"I know," she replied; "it's a bothering world." She was still behind
him, and spoke low, but with sympathy. "I remember, it's only one lump."
He could feel her presence, so womanly and friendly. "I don't care what
people say," he was thinking, "she's a good-hearted little thing, and
understands men." He felt that he could tell her anything, almost
anything that he could tell a man. She was sympathetic and not
squeamish.
"There," she said, handing him the tea and looking down on him.
The cup was dainty, the fragrance of the tea delicious, the woman
exquisite.
"I'm better already," said Jack, with a laugh.
She made a cup for herself, handed him the cigarettes, lit one for
herself, and sat on a low stool not far from him.
"Now what is it?"
"Oh, nothing--a little business worry. Have you heard any Street rumor?"
"Rumor?" she repeated, with a little start. And then, leaning forward,
"Do you mean that about Mr. Henderson in the morning papers?"
"Yes."
Carmen, relieved, gave a liquid little laugh, and then said, with a
change to earnestness: "I'm going to trust you, my friend. Henderson put
it in himself! He told me so this morning when I asked him about it.
This is just between ourselves."
Jack said, "Of course," but he did not look relieved. The clever
creature divined the situation without another word, for there was no
turn in the Street that she was not familiar with. But there was no
apparent recognition of it, except in her sympathetic tone, when she
said: "Well, the world is full of annoyances. I'm bothered myself--and
such a little thing."
"What is it?"
"Oh nothing, not even a rumor. You cannot do anything about it. I don't
know why I should tell you. But I will." And she paused a moment,
looking down in an innocent perplexity. "It's just this: I am on the
Foundlings' Board with Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, and I don't know her, and you
can't think how awkward it is having to meet her every week in that stiff
kind of way." She did not go on to confide to Jack how she had intrigued
to get on the board, and how Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, in the most well-bred
manner, had practically ignored her.
"She's an old friend of mine."
"Indeed! She's a charming woman."
"Yes. We were great cronies when she was Sadie Mack. She isn't a
genius, but she is good-hearted. I suppose she is on all the charity
boards in the city. She patronizes everything," Jack continued, with a
smile.
"I'm sure she is," said Carmen, thinking that however good-hearted she
might be she was very "snubby." "And it makes it all the more awkward,
for I am interested in so many things myself."
"I can arrange all that," Jack said, in an off-hand way. Carmen's look
of gratitude could hardly be distinguished from affection. "That's easy
enough. We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn't
altogether approve of me lately. It's rather nice for a fellow, Mrs.
Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn't it?" asked
Jack, in the tone of a bad boy.
"Yes. Between us all we will make a model of you. I am so glad now that
I told you."
Jack protested that it was nothing. Why shouldn't friends help each
other? Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good deal
about friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman.
This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to say
philosophic. Carmen was a great philosopher in it. She didn't know, but
she believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one man
friend. Jack rose to go.
"So soon?" And it did seem pathetically soon. She gave him her hand, and
then by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to him
in quite a business way.
"Mr. Delancy, don't you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking of.
It will be all right. Trust me."
He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and his
gratitude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.
When he had gone, Carmen sat a long time by the fire reflecting. It
would be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, as
Henderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeter
still to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endured
a good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, and
the sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who had
ignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson only
cared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actually
brutal about it. He seemed to have only one passion. She herself liked
money, but only for what it would bring. Henderson was like an old
Pharaoh, who was bound to build the biggest pyramid ever built to his
memory; he hated to waste a block. But what was the good of that when
one had passed beyond the reach of envy?
Revolving these deep things in her mind, she went to her dressing-room
and made an elaborate toilet for dinner. Yet it was elaborately simple.
That sort needed more study than the other. She would like to be the
Carmen of ten years ago in Henderson's eyes.
Her lord came home late, and did not dress for dinner. It was often so,
and the omission was usually not allowed to pass by Carmen without
notice, to which Henderson was sure to growl that he didn't care to be
always on dress parade. Tonight Carmen was all graciousness and warmth.
Henderson did not seem to notice it. He ate his dinner abstractedly, and
responded only in monosyllables to her sweet attempts at conversation.
The fact was that the day had been a perplexing one; he was engaged in
one of his big fights, a scheme that aroused all his pugnacity and taxed
all his resources. He would win--of course; he would smash everybody,
but he would win. When he was in this mood Carmen felt that she was like
a daisy in the path of a cyclone. In the first year of their marriage he
used to consult her about all his schemes, and value her keen
understanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust even
her, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She was
unruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by her
subtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever the
side was.
In the library she brought him his cigar, and lighted it. She saw that
his coffee was just as he liked it. As she moved about, making things
homelike, Henderson noticed that she was more Carmenish than he had seen
her in a long time. The sweet ways and the simple toilet must be by
intention. And he knew her so well. He began to be amused and softened.
At length he said, in his ordinary tone, "Well, what is it?"
"What is what, dear?"
"What do you want?"
Carmen looked perplexed and sweetly surprised. There is nothing so
pitiful about habitual hypocrisy as that it never deceives anybody.
It was not the less painful now that Carmen knew that Henderson knew her
to the least fibre of her self-seeking soul, and that she felt that there
were currents in his life that she could not calculate. A man is so much
more difficult to understand than a woman, she reflected. And yet he is
so susceptible that he can be managed even when he knows he is being
managed. Carmen was not disconcerted for a moment. She replied, with
her old candor:
"What an idea! You give me everything I want before I know what it is."
"And before I know it either," he responded, with a grim smile. "Well,
what is the news today?"
"Just the same old round. The Foundlings' Board, for one thing."
"Are you interested in foundlings?"
"Not much," said Carmen, frankly. "I'm interested in those that find
them. I told you how hateful that Mrs. Schuyler Blunt is."
"Why don't you cut her? Why don't you make it uncomfortable for her?"
"I can't find out," she said, with a laugh, dropping into the language of
the Street, "anything she is short in, or I would."
"And you want me to get a twist on old Blunt?" and Henderson roared with
laughter at the idea.
"No, indeed. Dear, you are just a goose, socially. It is nothing to
you, but you don't understand what we women have to go through. You
don't know how hard it is--that woman!"
"What has she done?"
"Nothing. That's just it. What do you say in the Street--freeze? Well,
she is trying to freeze me out."
Henderson laughed again. "Oh, I'll back you against the field."
"I don't want to be backed," said Carmen; "I want some sympathy."
"Well, what is your idea?"
"I was going to tell you. Mr. Delancy dropped in this afternoon for a
cup of tea--"
"Oh!"
"Yes, and he knows Mrs. Schuyler Blunt well; they are old friends, and he
is going to arrange it."
"Arrange what?"
"Why, smooth everything out, don't you know. But, Rodney, I do want you
to do something for me; not for me exactly, but about this. Won't you
look out for Mr. Delancy in this deal?"
"Seems to me you are a good deal interested in Jack Delancy," said
Henderson, in a sneering tone. The remark was a mistake, for it gave
Carmen the advantage, and he did not believe it was just. He knew that
Carmen was as passionless as a diamond, whatever even she might pretend
for a purpose.
"Aren't you ashamed!" she cried, with indignation, and her eyes flared
for an instant and then filled with tears. "And I try so hard."
"But I can't look out for all the lame ducks."
"He isn't a duck," said Carmen, using her handkerchief; "I'd hate him for
a duck. It's just to help me, when you know, when you know--and it is so
hard," and the tears came again.
Did Henderson believe? After all, what did it matter? Perhaps, after
all, the woman had a right to her game, as he had to his.
"Oh, well," he said, "don't take on about it. I'll fix it. I'll make a
memorandum this minute. Only don't you bother me in the future with too
many private kites."
Carmen dried her eyes. She did not look triumphant; she just looked
sweet and grateful, like a person who had been helped. She went over and
kissed her lord on the forehead, and sat on the arm of his chair, not too
long, and then patted him on the shoulder, and said he was a good fellow,
and she was a little bother, and so went away like a dutiful little wife.
And Henderson sat looking into the fire and musing, with the feeling that
he had been at the theatre, and that the comedy had been beautifully
played.
His part of the play was carried out next day in good faith. One of the
secrets of Henderson's success was that he always did what he said he
would do. This attracted men to him personally, and besides he found, as
Bismarck did, that it was more serviceable to him than lying, for the
crafty world usually banks upon insincerity and indirectness. But while
he kept his word he also kept his schemes to himself, and executed them
with a single regard to his own interest and a Napoleonic selfishness.
He did not lie to enemy or friend, but he did not spare either when
either was in his way. He knew how to appeal to the self-interest of his
fellows, and in time those who had most to do with him trusted him least
when he seemed most generous in his offers.
When, the next day, his secretary reported to him briefly that Delancy
was greatly elated with the turn things had taken for him, and was going
in again, Henderson smiled sardonically, and said, "It was the worst
thing I could have done for him."
Jack, who did not understand the irony of his temporary rescue, and had
little experience of commercial integrity, so called, was intent on
fulfilling his part of the understanding with Carmen. This could best be
effected by a return dinner to the Hendersons. The subject was broached
at breakfast in an off-hand manner to Edith.
It was not an agreeable subject to Edith, that was evident; but it was
not easy for her to raise objections to the dinner. She had gone to the
Hendersons' to please Jack, in her policy of yielding in order to
influence him; but having accepted the hospitality, she could not object
to returning it. The trouble was in making the list.
"I do not know," said Edith, "who are the Hendersons' friends."
"Oh, that doesn't matter. Ask our friends. If we are going to do a
thing to please them, no use in doing it half-way, so as to offend them,
by drawing social lines against them."
"Well, suggest."
"There's Mavick; he'll be over from Washington next week."
"That's good; and, oh, I'll ask Father Damon."
"Yes; he'll give a kind of flavor to it. I shouldn't wonder if he would
like to meet such a man as Henderson."
"And then the Van Dams and Miss Tavish; they were at Henderson's, and
would help to make it easy."
"Yes; well, let's see. The Schuyler Blunts?"
"Oh, they wouldn't do at all. They wouldn't come. She wouldn't think of
going to the Hendersons'."
"But she would come to us. I don't think she would mind once in a way."
"But why do you want them?"
"I don't want them particularly; but it would no doubt please the
Hendersons more than any other thing we could do-and, well, I don't want
to offend Henderson just now. It's a little thing, anyway. What's the
use of all this social nonsense? We are not responsible for either the
Hendersons or the Blunts being in the world. No harm done if they don't
come. You invite them, and I'll take the responsibility."
So it was settled, against Edith's instinct of propriety, and the dinner
was made up by the addition of the elder Miss Chesney. And Jack did
persuade Mrs. Blunt to accept. In fact, she had a little curiosity to
see the man whose name was in the newspapers more prominently than that
of the President.
It was a bright thought to secure Mr. Mavick. Mr. Thomas Mavick was
socially one of the most desirable young men of the day. Matrimonially
he was not a prize, for he was without fortune and without powerful
connections. He had a position in the State Department. Originally he
came from somewhere in the West, it was said, but he had early obtained
one or two minor diplomatic places; he had lived a good deal abroad;
he had traveled a little--a good deal, it would seem, from his occasional
Oriental allusions. He threw over his past a slight mystery, not too
much; and he always took himself seriously. His salary was sufficient to
set up a bachelor very comfortably who always dined out; he dressed in
the severity of the fashion; he belonged only to the best clubs, where he
unbent more than anywhere else; he was credited with knowing a good deal
more than he would tell. It was believed, in fact, that he had a great
deal of influence. The President had been known to send for him on
delicate personal business with regard to appointments, and there were
certain ticklish diplomatic transactions that he was known to have
managed most cleverly. His friends could see his hand in state papers.
This he disclaimed, but he never denied that he knew the inside of
whatever was going on in Washington. Even those who thought him a snob
said he was clever. He had perfectly the diplomatic manner, and the
reserve of one charged with grave secrets. Whatever he disclosed was
always in confidence, so that he had the reputation of being as discreet
as he was knowing. With women he was of course a favorite, for he knew
how to be confidential without disclosing anything, and the hints he
dropped about persons in power simply showed that he was secretly
manoeuvring important affairs, and could make the most interesting
revelations if he chose. His smile and the shake of his head at the club
when talk was personal conveyed a world of meaning. Tom Mavick was, in
short, a most accomplished fellow. It was evident that he carried on the
State Department, and the wonder to many was that he was not in a
position to do it openly. His social prestige was as mysterious as his
diplomatic, but it was now unquestioned, and he might be considered as
one of the first of a class who are to reconcile social and political
life in this country.
VIII
Looking back upon this dinner of the Delancys, the student of human
affairs can see how Providence uses small means for the accomplishment of
its purposes. Of all our social contrivances, the formal dinner is
probably the cause of more anxiety in the arrangement, of more weariness
in the performance, and usually of less satisfaction in the retrospect
than any other social function. However carefully the guests are
selected, it lacks the spontaneity that gives intellectual zest to the
chance dining together of friends. This Delancy party was made up for
reasons which are well understood, and it seemed to have been admirably
well selected; and yet the moment it assembled it was evident that it
could not be very brilliant or very enjoyable. Doubtless you, madam,
would have arranged it differently, and not made it up of such
incongruous elements.
As a matter of fact, scarcely one of those present would not have had
more enjoyment somewhere else. Father Damon, whose theory was that the
rich needed saving quite as much as the poor, would nevertheless have
been in better spirits sitting down to a collation with the working-women
in Clinton Place. It was a good occasion for the cynical observation of
Mr. Mavick, but it was not a company that he could take in hand and
impress with his mysterious influence in public affairs. Henderson was
not in the mood, and would have had much more ease over a chop and a
bottle of half-and-half with Uncle Jerry. Carmen, socially triumphant,
would have been much more in her element at a petit souper of a not too
fastidious four. Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the unaccustomed position of
having to maintain a not too familiar and not too distant line of
deportment. Edith and Jack felt the responsibility of having put an
incongruous company on thin conventional ice. It was only the easy-going
Miss Tavish and two or three others who carried along their own animal
spirits and love of amusement who enjoyed the chance of a possible
contretemps.
And yet the dinner was providentially arranged. If these people had not
met socially, this history would have been different from what it must
be. The lives of several of them were appreciably modified by this
meeting. It is too much to say that Father Damon's notion of the means
by which such men as Henderson succeed was changed, but personal contact
with the man may have modified his utterances about him, and he may have
turned his mind to the uses to which his wealth might be applied rather
than to the means by which he obtained it. Carmen's ingenuous interest
in his work may have encouraged the hope that at least a portion of this
fortune might be rescued to charitable uses. For Carmen, dining with
Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was a distinct gain, and indirectly opened many other
hitherto exclusive doors. That lady may not have changed her opinion
about Carmen, but she was good-natured and infected by the incoming
social tolerance; and as to Henderson, she declared that he was an
exceedingly well-bred man, and she did not believe half the stories about
him. Henderson himself at once appreciated the talents of Mavick, gauged
him perfectly, and saw what services he might be capable of rendering at
Washington. Mr. Mavick appreciated the advantage of a connection with
such a capitalist, and of having open to him another luxurious house in
New York. At the dinner-table Carmen and Mr. Mavick had not exchanged a
dozen remarks before these clever people felt that they were congenial
spirits. It was in the smoking-room that Henderson and Mavick fell into
an interesting conversation, which resulted in an invitation for Mavick
to drop in at Henderson's office in the morning. The dinner had not been
a brilliant one. Henderson found it not easy to select topics equally
interesting to Mrs. Delancy and Mrs. Blunt, and finally fell into
geographical information to the latter about Mexico and Honduras. For
Edith, the sole relief of the evening was an exchange of sympathy with
Father Damon, and she was too much preoccupied to enjoy that. As for
Carmen, placed between Jack and Mr. Mavick, and conscious that the eyes
of Mrs. Blunt were on her, she was taking a subdued role, which Jack
found much less attractive than her common mood. But this was not her
only self-sacrifice of the evening. She went without her usual
cigarette.
To Edith the dinner was a revelation of new difficulties in the life she
proposed for herself, though they were rather felt than distinctly
reasoned about. The social atmosphere was distasteful; its elements were
out of harmony with her ideals. Not that this society was new to her,
but that she saw it in a new light. Before her marriage all these things
had been indifferent to this high-spirited girl. They were merely
incidents of the social state into which she was born, and she pursued
her way among them, having a tolerably clear conception of what her own
life should be, with little recognition of their tendencies. Were only
her own life concerned, they would still be indifferent to her. But
something had happened. That which is counted the best thing in life had
come to her, that best thing which is the touchstone of character as it
is of all conditions, and which so often introduces inextricable
complications. She had fallen in love with Jack Delancy and married him.
The first effect of this was to awake and enlarge what philosophers would
call her enthusiasm of humanity. The second effect was to show her--and
this was what this little dinner emphasized--that she had put limitations
upon herself and taken on unthought-of responsibilities. To put this
sort of life one side, or make it secondary to her own idea of a useful
and happy life, would have been easy but for one thing--she loved Jack.
This philosophic reasoning about it does her injustice. It did not occur
to her that she could go her way and let him go his way. Nor must it be
supposed that the problem seemed as grave to her as it really was--the
danger of frittering away her own higher nature in faithfulness to one of
the noblest impulses of that nature. Yet this is the way that so many
trials of life come, and it is the greatest test of character. She felt
--as many women do feel--that if she retained her husband's love all would
be well, and the danger involved to herself probably did not cross her
mind.
But what did cross her mind was that these associations meant only evil
for Jack, and that to be absorbed in the sort of life that seemed to
please him was for her to drift away from all her ideals.
A confused notion of all this was in her thoughts when she talked with
Father Damon, while the gentlemen were in the smoking-room. She asked
him about his mission.
"The interest continues," he replied; "but your East Side, Mrs. Delancy,
is a puzzling place."
"How so?"
"Perhaps you'll laugh if I say there is too much intelligence."
Edith did laugh, and then said: "Then you'd better move your mission
over to this side. Here is a field of good, unadulterated worldliness.
But what, exactly, do you mean?"
"Well, the attempt of science to solve the problem of sin and
wretchedness. What can you expect when the people are socialists and
their leaders agnostics?"
"But I thought you were something of a socialist yourself!"
"So I am," he said, frankly, "when I see the present injustice, the
iniquitous laws and combinations that leave these people so little
chance. They are ignorant, and expect the impossible; but they are right
in many things, and I go with them. But my motive is not theirs. I hope
not. There is no hope except in a spiritual life. Materialism down at
the bottom of society is no better than materialism at the top. Do you
know," he went on, with increased warmth, "that pessimism is rather the
rule over that side, and that many of those who labor most among the poor
have the least hope of ever making things substantially better?"
"But such unselfish people as Dr. Leigh do a great deal of good," Edith
suggested.
"Yes," he said reflecting--"yes, I have no doubt. I don't understand it.
She is not hopeful. She sees nothing beyond. I don't know what keeps
her up."
"Love of humanity, perhaps."
"I wish the phrase had never been invented. Religion of humanity!
The work is to save the souls of those people."
"But," said Edith, with a flush of earnestness "but, Father Damon, isn't
human love the greatest power to save?"
The priest looked at the girl. His face softened, and he said, more
gently, "I don't know. Of the soul, yes. But human love is so apt to
stand in the way of the higher life."
In her soul Edith resented this as an ascetic and priestly view; but she
knew his devotion to that humanity which he in vain tried to eliminate
from his austere life, and she turned the talk lightly by saying, "Ah,
that is your theory. But I am coming over soon, and shall expect you and
Dr. Leigh to take me about."
The next morning Mr. Mavick's card gave him instant admission to the
inner office of Mr. Henderson, the approach to whom was more carefully
guarded than that to the President of the United States. This was not
merely necessary to save him from the importunities of cranks who might
carry concealed dynamite arguments, but as well to protect him from
hundreds of business men with whom he was indirectly dealing, and with
whom he wished to evade explanations. He thoroughly understood the
advantages of delay. He also understood the value of the mystery that
attends inaccessibility. Even Mr. Mavick himself was impressed by the
show of ceremony, by the army of clerks, and by the signs of complete
organization. He knew that the visitor was specially favored who
penetrated these precincts so far as to get an interview, usually
fruitless, with Henderson's confidential man. This confidential man was
a very grave and confidence-begetting person, who dealt out dubious hints
and promises, and did not at all mind when Henderson found it necessary
to repudiate as unauthorized anything that had been apparently said in
his name. To be sure, this gave a general impression that Henderson was
an inscrutable man to deal with, but at the same time it was confessed
that his spoken word could be depended on. Anything written might, it is
true, lead to litigation, and this gave rise to a saying in the Street
that Henderson's word was better than his bond.
Henderson was not a politician, but he was a friend of politicians. It
was said that he contributed about equally to both sides in a political
campaign, and that this showed patriotism more than partisanship. It was
for his interest to have friends on both sides in Congress, and friends
in the Cabinet, and it was even hinted that he was concerned to have men
whose economic and financial theories accorded with his own on the
Supreme Bench. He had unlimited confidence in the power of money. His
visitor of the morning was not unlike him in many respects. He also was
not a politician. He would have described himself as a governmental man,
and had a theory of running the government with as little popular
interference as possible. He regarded himself as belonging to the
governing class.
Between these two men, who each had his own interests in view, there was
naturally an apparent putting aside of reserve.
"I was very glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Mavick," said Henderson,
cordially. "I have known of you for a long time."
"Yes? I've been in the employ of the government for some time."
"And I suppose it pays pretty well," said Henderson, smilingly.
"Oh, extravagantly," Mavick rejoined, in the same spirit. "You just
about get your board and clothes out of government. Your washing is
another thing. You are expected, you know, to have your washing done
where you vote."
"Well, it's a sure thing."
"Yes, till you are turned out. You know the theory at Washington is that
virtue is its own reward. Tom Fakeltree says it's enough."
"I wonder how he knows?"
"Observation, probably. Tom startled a dinner table the other day with
the remark that when a man once gives himself up to the full enjoyment of
a virtuous life, it seems strange to him that more people do not follow
his example."
"The trouble with the virtue of Washington is that it always wants to
interfere with other people's business. Fellows like Tom are always
hunting up mares' nests in order to be paid for breaking them up."
"I can't say about Tom," rejoined Mavick. "I suppose it is necessary to
live."
"I suppose so. And that goes along with another proposition--that the
successful have no rights which the unsuccessful are bound to respect.
As soon as a man gets ahead," Henderson continued, with a tone of
bitterness, "the whole pack are trying to pull him down. A capitalist is
a public enemy. Why, look at that Hodge bill! Strikes directly at the
ability of the railways to develop the country. Have you seen it?"
"Yes," Mavick admitted; "the drawer of it was good enough to consult me
on its constitutionality. It's a mighty queer bill."
"It can't get through the Senate," said Henderson; "but it's a bother.
Such schemes are coming up all the time, and they unsettle business.
These fellows need watching."
"And managing," added Mavick.
"Exactly. I can't be in Washington all the time. And I need to know
what is going on every twenty-four hours from the inside. I can't rely
on politicians or lobbyists."
"Well," said Mr. Mavick, in his easiest manner, "that's easy enough.
You want a disinterested friend."
Henderson nodded, but did not even smile, and the talk went on about
other measures, and confidentially about certain men in Washington,
until, after twenty minutes' conversation, the two men came to a perfect
understanding. When Mavick arose to go they shook hands even more
cordially than at first, and Henderson said:
"Well, I expect to hear from you, and remember that our house will always
be your home in the city."
IX
It seemed very fortunate to Jack Delancy that he should have such a
clever woman as Carmen for his confidante, a man so powerful as Henderson
as his backer, and a person so omniscient as Mavick for his friend.
No combination could be more desirable for a young man who proposed to
himself a career of getting money by adroit management and spending it in
pure and simple self-indulgence. There are plenty of men who have taken
advantage of like conditions to climb from one position to another, and
have then kicked down the ladders behind them as fast as they attained a
new footing. It was Jack's fault that he was not one of these. You
could scarcely dignify his character by saying that he had an aim, except
to saunter through life with as little personal inconvenience as
possible. His selfishness was boneless. It was not by any means
negative, for no part of his amiable nature was better developed than
regard for his own care and comfort; but it was not strong enough to give
him Henderson's capacity for hard work and even self-denial, nor Mavick's
cool, persevering skill in making a way for himself in the world.
Why was not Edith his confidante? His respect for her was undoubted; his
love for her was unquestioned; his trust in her was absolute. And yet
with either Carmen or Miss Tavish he fell into confidential revelations
of himself which instinctively he did not make to Edith. The explanation
of this is on the surface, and it is the key to half the unhappiness in
domestic life. He felt that Edith was not in sympathy with the
associations and the life he was leading. The pitiful and hopeless part
of it is that if she had been in sympathy with them, Jack would have gone
on in his frivolous career at an accelerated pace. It was not absence of
love, it was not unfaithfulness, that made Jack enjoy the hours he spent
with Carmen, or with the pleasing and not too fastidious Miss Tavish,
with a zest that was wanting to his hours at home. If he had been upon a
sinking steamboat with the three women, and could have saved only one of
them, he would not have had a moment's hesitation in rescuing Edith and
letting the other two sink out of his life. The character is not
unusual, nor the situation uncommon. What is a woman to do? Her very
virtues are enemies of her peace; if she appears as a constant check and
monitor, she repels; if she weakly acquiesces, the stream will flow over
both of them. The dilemma seems hopeless.
It would be a mistake to suppose that either Edith or Jack put their
relations in any such definite shape as this. He was unthinking. She
was too high-spirited, too confident of her position, to be assailed by
such fears. And it must be said, since she was a woman, that she had the
consciousness of power which goes along with the possession of loveliness
and keen wit. Those who knew her best knew that under her serenity was a
gay temperament, inherited from the original settlers of Manhattan, an
abounding enjoyment of life, and capacity for passion. It was early
discovered in her childhood that little Edith had a will of her own.
Lent was over. It was the time of the twittering of sparrows, of the
opening of windows, of putting in order the little sentimental spots
called "squares," where the poor children get their idea of forests, and
the rich renew their faint recollections of innocence and country life;
when the hawkers go about the streets, and the hand-organs celebrate the
return of spring and the possibility of love. Even the idle felt that it
was a time for relaxation and quiet.
"Have you answered Miss Tavish's invitation?" asked Jack one morning at
the breakfast-table.
"Not yet. I shall decline today for myself."
"Why? It's for charity."
"Well, my charity extends to Miss Tavish. I don't want to see her
dance."
"That leaves me in a nice hole. I said I'd go."
"And why not? You go to a good many places you don't take me--the clubs,
brokers' offices, Stalker's, the Conventional, and--"
"Oh, go on. Why do you object to my going to see this dance?"
"My dear Jack," said Edith, "I haven't objected the least in the world;"
and her animated face sparkled with a smile, which seemed to irritate
Jack more than a frown would have done.
"I don't see why you set yourself up. I'll bet Miss Tavish will raise
more money for the Baxter Street Guild, yes, and do more good, than you
and the priest and that woman doctor slopping about on the East Side in
six months."
"Very likely," replied Edith, still with the same good-humored smile.
"But, Jack, it's delightful to see your philanthropic spirit stirred up
in this way. You ought to be encouraged. Why don't you join Miss Tavish
in this charity? I have no doubt that if it was advertised that Miss
Tavish and Mr. Jack Delancy would dance for the benefit of an East Side
guild in the biggest hall in the city, there wouldn't be standing room."
"Oh, bosh!" said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about the
room, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before.
"I wouldn't be a prude."
Edith's eyes flashed and her face flushed, but her smile came back in a
moment, and she was serene again. "Come here, Jack. Now, old fellow,
look me straight in the eyes, and tell me if you would like to have me
dance the serpentine dance before a drawing-room full of gossiping women,
with, as you say, just a few men peeping in at the doors."
Jack did look, and the serene eyes, yet dancing with amusement at the
incongruous picture, seemed to take a warmer glow of love and pleading.
"Oh, hang it! that's different," and he stooped and gave her an awkward
kiss.
"I'm glad you know it's different," she said, with a laugh that had not a
trace of mockery in it; "and since you do, you'd better go along and do
your charity, and I'll stay at home, and try to be--different when you
come back."
And Jack went; with a little feeling of sheepishness that he would not
have acknowledged at the time, and he found himself in a company where he
was entirely at his ease. He admired the dancing of the blithe, graceful
girl, he applauded her as the rest did with hand-clapping and bravas, and
said it was ravishing. It all suited him perfectly. And somehow, in the
midst of it all, in the sensuous abandon of this electric-light
eccentricity at mid-day, he had a fleeting vision of something very
different, of a womanhood of another sort, and a flush came to his face
for a moment as he imagined Edith in a skirt dance under the gaze of this
sensation-loving society. But this was only for a moment. When he
congratulated Miss Tavish his admiration was entirely sincere; and the
girl, excited with her physical triumph, seemed to him as one emancipated
out of acquired prudishness into the Greek enjoyment of life. Miss
Tavish, who would not for the world have violated one of the social
conventions of her set, longed, as many women do, for the sort of freedom
and the sort of applause which belongs to women who succeed upon the
stage. Not that she would have forfeited her position by dancing at a
theatre for money; but; within limits, she craved the excitement, the
abandon, the admiration, that her grace and passion could win. This was
not at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen Hatshepsu to assume
the dress of a man, but rather that more famous aspiration which led the
daughter of Herodias, in a pleasure-loving court, to imitate and excel
the professional dancing-girls. If in this inclination of the women of
the day, which is not new, but has characterized all societies to which
wealth has brought idleness, there was a note of demoralization, it did
not seem so to Jack, who found the world day by day more pleasing and
more complaisant.
As the months went by, everything prospered with him on his drifting
voyage. Of all voyages, that is the easiest to make which has no port in
view, that depends upon the varying winds, if the winds happen to be soft
and the chance harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to Henderson.
He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in his idle
habits, and with no more attention to business than formerly, money came
to him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion that he was a
favorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance in the financial
world increased enormously, much to the amusement of Mavick, when he was
occasionally in the city, to whom he talked somewhat largely of his
operations, and who knew that he had no more comprehension of the sweep
of Henderson's schemes than a baby has of the stock exchange when he
claps his hands with delight at the click of the ticker.
His prosperity was visible. It showed in the increase of his accounts
at the Union, in his indifference to limits in the game of poker, in a
handsome pair of horses which he insisted on Edith's accepting for her
own use, in an increased scale of living at home, in the hundred ways
that a man of fashion can squander money in a luxurious city. If he did
not haunt the second-hand book-shops or the stalls of dealers in
engravings, or bring home as much bric-a-brac as he once had done, it was
because his mind was otherwise engaged; his tailor's bills were longer,
and there were more expensive lunches at the clubs, at which there was a
great deal of sage talk about stocks and combinations, and much wisdom
exhibited in regard to wines; and then there were the little suppers at
Wherry's after the theatres, which a bird could have eaten and a fish
have drunken, and only a spendthrift have paid for.
"It is absurd," Edith had said one night after their return. "It makes
us ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools." And Jack had flared up
about it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she had
retorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack had
attempted to pass it off lightly, at last, by saying, "Very well then,
dear, if you won't back me, I shall have to rely upon my bankers."
At any rate, neither Carmen nor Miss Tavish took him to task. They
complimented him on his taste, and Carmen made him feel that she
appreciated his independence and his courage in living the life that
suited him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, how
much he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs, and
venturing herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow of
fashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwing
him a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept away by that
undertow.
It was remarked at the Union, and by the men in the Street who knew him,
that Jack was getting rapid. But no one thought the less of him for his
pace--that is, no one appeared to, for this sort of estimate of a man is
only tested by his misfortunes, when the day comes that he must seek
financial backing. In these days he was generally in an expansive mood,
and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There were
those who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack, and
that he had recently come in for something handsome.
But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was to
know to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was a
sort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly how
the Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no one
had ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The name
of Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis, and
the Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursed
little income--an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of the
art of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man in
his generation in those things about which it would be as well not to
know anything.
Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, by
the open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude of
one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, he hailed Jack, who was
just coming down-stairs from a protracted lunch.
"I say, Delancy, what's this I hear?"
"About what?" said Jack, sauntering along to a seat opposite the Major,
and touching a bell on the little table as he sat down. Jack's face was
flushed, but he talked with unusual slowness and distinctness. "What
have you heard, Major?"
"That you have bought Benham's yacht."
"No, I haven't; but I was turning the thing over in my mind," Jack
replied, with the air of a man declining an appointment in the Cabinet.
"He offers it cheap."
"My dear boy, there is no such thing as a cheap yacht, any more than
there is a cheap elephant."
"It's better to buy than build," Jack insisted. "A man's got to have
some recreation."
"Recreation! Why don't you charter a Fifth Avenue stage and take your
friends on a voyage to the Battery? That'll make 'em sick enough." It
was a misery of the Major's life that, in order to keep in with necessary
friends, he had to accept invitations for cruises on yachts, and pretend
he liked it. Though he had the gout, he vowed he would rather walk to
Newport than go round Point Judith in one of those tipping tubs. He had
tried it, and, as he said afterwards, "The devil of it was that Mrs.
Henderson and Miss Tavish sympathized with me. Gad! it takes away a
person's manhood, that sort of thing."
The Major sipped his bitters, and then added: "Or I'll tell you what; if
you must do something, start a newspaper--the drama, society, and
letters, that sort of thing, with pictures. I heard Miss Tavish say she
wished she had a newspaper."
"But," said Jack, with gravity, "I'm not buying a yacht for Miss Tavish."
"I didn't suppose you were. Devilish fine girl, though. I don't care
who you buy it for if you don't buy it for yourself. Why don't you buy
it for Henderson? He can afford it."
"I'd like to know what you mean, Major Fairfax!" cried Jack. "What
business--"
"There!" exclaimed the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softened
expression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack.
I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop.
But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he
used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your
mother--that was a woman!--did me a kindness once when I was in a d---d
tight place, and I never forgot it. See here, Jack, if I had money
enough I'd buy a yacht and put Carmen and Miss Tavish on it, and send
them off on the longest voyage there is."
"Who's been talking?" exclaimed Jack, touched a little, but very much
offended.
"The town, Jack. Don't mind the talk. People always talk. I suppose
people talk about me: At your age I should have been angry too at a hint
even from an old friend. But I've learned. It doesn't pay. I don't get
angry any more. Now there's Henderson--"
"What have you got against Henderson?"
"Nothing. He is a very good fellow, for that sort of man. But, Lord!
Henderson is a big machine. You might as well try to stand in with a
combination of gang-saws, or to make friends with the Department of the
Interior. Look at the men who have gone in with Henderson from time to
time. The ground is strewn with them. He's got no more feeling in
business than a reaper-and-binder."
"I don't know what Henderson's got to do with my having a yacht."
"I beg your pardon, Jack; it's none of my business. Only I do not put my
investments"--Jack smiled faintly, as if the conversation were taking a
humorous turn--"at the mercy of Henderson's schemes. If I did, I
wouldn't try to run a yacht at the same time. I should be afraid that
some day when I got to sea I should find myself out of coal. You know,
my boy, that the good book says you cannot serve two masters."
"Nobody ever accused you of that, Major," retorted Jack, with a laugh.
"But what two have you in mind?"
"Oh, I don't mean anything personal. I just use names as typical. Say
Henderson and Carmen." And the Major leaned back and tapped his fingers
together, as if he were putting a general proposition.
Jack flushed, and then thought a moment--it would be ridiculous to get
angry with old Fairfax--and then said: "Major, if I were you, I wouldn't
have anything to do with either of them. You'll spoil your digestion."
"Umph!" the Major grunted, as he rose from his chair. "This is an age of
impudence. There's no more respect for gray hair than if it were dyed.
I cannot waste any more time on you. I've got an early dinner. Devilish
uphill work trying to encourage people who dine at seven. But, my boy,
think on these things, as the saint says."
And the old fellow limped away. There was one good thing about the
Major. He stood up in church every Sunday and read his prayers, like a
faithful old sinner as he was.
Jack, sobered by the talk, walked home in a very irritated mood, blaming
everybody except himself. For old Fairfax's opinion he didn't care, but
evidently the old fellow represented a lot of gossip. He wished people
would mind their own business. His irritation was a little appeased by
Edith's gay and loving greeting; but she, who knew every shade of his
face, saw it.
"Have you had a worrying day?"
"No; not specially. I've had an hour of old Fairfax, who hasn't any
business of his own to attend to."
"Oh, nobody minds the Major," Edith said, as she gave him a shake and
another kiss; but a sharp pang went through her heart, for she guessed
what had happened, since she had had a visit that afternoon from another
plain-speaking person.
They were staying late in town. Edith, who did not care to travel far,
was going presently to a little cottage by the sea, and Mrs. Schuyler
Blunt had looked in for a moment to say good-by before she went up to her
Lenox house.
"It's only an old farmhouse made over," Mrs. Blunt was saying; "hardly
smart enough to ask anybody to, but we hope to have you and Jack there
some time."
"That would be very nice. I hear Lenox is more beautiful than ever."
"Yes, it is, and about as difficult to get into as the kingdom of heaven.
It's being spoiled for moderate people. The Hendersons and the Van Dams
and that sort are in a race to see who shall build houses with the
biggest rooms, and give the most expensive entertainments. It's all
show. The old flavor has gone."
"But they cannot spoil the scenery.".
"My child, they are the scenery. You can't see anything else. It
doesn't bother me, but some of my old neighbors are just ruining
themselves trying to keep the pace. I do think the Americans are the
biggest fools on earth."
"Father Damon says the trouble is we haven't any middle class for a
balance."
"Yes, that's the English of it. But it's a pity that fashion has got
hold of the country, and is turning our summers into a worry and a
burden. I thought years ago when we went to Lenox that it was a good
thing the country was getting to be the fashion; but now it's
fashionable, and before we know it every desirable spot will be what they
call syndicated. Miss Tavish says she is coming to visit the Hendersons
there."
"I thought she went to Bar Harbor."
"But she is coming down for part of the season. These people don't stay
anywhere. Just long enough in one place to upset everything with their
extravagance. That's the reason I didn't ask you and Jack up this
summer."
"Thank you, we couldn't go, you know," said Edith, simply, and then, with
curiosity in her eyes, asked; "but I don't quite understand what's the
reason."
"Well," said Mrs. Blunt, as if nerving herself up to say what must be
said, "I thought perhaps you wouldn't like to be where they are."
"I don't know why I should or why I should not," Edith replied.
"Nor have Jack with them," continued Mrs. Blunt, stoutly.
"What do you mean, Mrs. Blunt?" cried Edith, her brown eyes flaming.
"Don't turn on me, Edith dear. I oughtn't to have said anything. But I
thought it was my duty. Of course it is only talk."
"Well?"
"That Jack is always with one or the other of those women."
"It is false!" cried Edith, starting up, with tears now in her eyes;
"it's a cruel lie if it means anything wrong in Jack. So am I with those
women; so are you. It's a shame. If you hear any one say such things,
you can tell them for me that I despise them."
"I said it was a shame, all such talk. I said it was nonsense. But,
dear, as a friend, oughtn't I to tell you?" And the kind-hearted gossip
put her arm round Edith, and kept saying that she perfectly understood
it, and that nobody really meant anything. But Edith was crying now,
with a heart both hurt and indignant.
"It's a most hateful world, I know," Mrs, Blunt answered; "but it's the
best we have, and it's no use to fret about it."
When the visitor had gone, Edith sat a long time in misery. It was the
first real shock of her married life. And in her heart she prayed. For
Jack? Oh no. The dear girl prayed for herself, that suspicions might
not enter her heart. She could not endure that the world should talk
thus of him. That was all. And when she had thought it all over and
grown calm, she went to her desk and wrote a note to Carmen. It asked
Mrs. Henderson, as they were so soon to leave town, to do her the favor
to come round informally and lunch with her the next day, and afterwards
perhaps a little drive in the Park.
X
Jack was grateful for Edith's intervention. He comprehended that she had
stepped forward as a shield to him in the gossip about Carmen. He showed
his appreciation in certain lover-like attentions and in a gayety of
manner, but it was not in his nature to feel the sacrifice she had made
or its full magnanimity; he was relieved, and in a manner absolved.
Another sort of woman might have made him very uncomfortable. Instead of
being rebuked he had a new sense of freedom.
"Not one woman in a thousand would have done it," was the comment of
Major Fairfax when he heard of the drive in the Park. "Gad! most of 'em
would have cut Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there would
have been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such a woman
as Jack's mother. If there were not one of them now and then society
would deliquesce." And the Major knew, for his principal experience had
been with a deliquescent society.
Whether Carmen admired Mrs. Delancy or thought her weak it is impossible
to say, but she understood the advances made and responded to them, for
they fell in perfectly with her social plans. She even had the face to
eulogize Mrs. Delancy to Jack, her breadth of view, her lack of
prejudice, and she had even dared to say, "My dear friend, she is too
good for us," and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had accepted
the implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he did
not see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about his
wife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment was that the
comradeship of Miss Tavish and Carmen was agreeable to him. They were no
restraint upon him. So long as they remained in town the exchange of
civilities was kept up. Carmen and Miss Tavish were often at his house,
and there was something reassuring to Jack in the openness with which
affairs went on.
Early in June Edith went down to their rented cottage on the south Long
Island shore. In her delicate health the doctor had recommended the
seaside, and this locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from the
whirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm, namely,
of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in from the
far tropical South with its message of romance to the barren Northern
shore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of tempests
and wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not an
impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like a
tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with barns
and outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden--a place with a salty air
friendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage.
If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and the
low-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination to
fancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled in
the sand, that it had been remodeled and roofed over, and its sides
pierced with casement windows, over which roses had climbed in order to
bind the wanderer to the soil. It had been painted by the sun and the
wind and the salt air, so that its color depended upon the day, and it
was sometimes dull and almost black, or blue-black, under a lowering sky,
and again a golden brown, especially at sunset, and Edith, feeling its
character rather than its appearance to ordinary eyes, had named it the
Golden House. Nature is such a beautiful painter of wood.
With Edith went one of her Baltimore cousins, a young kindergarten
teacher of fine intelligence and sympathetic manner, who brought to her
work a long tradition of gentle breeding and gayety and simplicity
--qualities which all children are sure to recognize. What a hopeful thing
it is, by-the-way, in the world, that all conditions of people know a
lady at sight! Jack found the place delightful. He liked its
quaintness, the primitiveness of the farmer-fisherman neighbors, he liked
the sea. And then he could run up to the city any morning and back at
night. He spent the summer with Edith at the Golden House. This was his
theory. When he went to town in the morning he expected to return at
night. But often he telegraphed in the afternoon that he was detained by
business; he had to see Henderson, or Mavick was over from Washington.
Occasionally, but not often, he missed the train. He had too keen a
sense of the ridiculous to miss the train often. When he was detained
over for two or three days, or the better part of the week, he wrote
Edith dashing, hurried letters, speaking of ever so many places he had
been to and ever so many people he had seen--yes, Carmen and Miss Tavish
and everybody who was in town, and he did not say too much about the hot
city and its discomforts.
Henderson's affairs kept him in town, Miss Tavish still postponed Bar
Harbor, and Carmen willingly remained. She knew the comfort of a big New
York house when the season is over, when no social duties are required,
and one is at leisure to lounge about in cool costumes, to read or dream,
to open the windows at night for the salt breeze from the bay, to take
little excursions by boat or rail, to dine al fresco in the garden of
some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the
town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York
in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were
really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in
the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the
squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt
by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer
theatres, where no one expected anything, and no one was disappointed,
the general air of enjoyment, and the suggestion of intrigue. Sometimes,
when Mavick was over, a party was made up for the East Side, to see the
foreign costumes, the picturesque street markets, the dime museums, and
the serious, tragical theatres of the people. The East Side was left
pretty much to itself, now that the winter philanthropists had gone away,
and was enjoying its summer nights and its irresponsible poverty.
They even looked in at Father Damon's chapel, the dimly lighted fragrant
refuge from the world and from sin. Why not? They were interested in
the morals of the region. Had not Miss Tavish danced for one of the
guilds; and had not Carmen given Father Damon a handsome check in support
of his mission? It was so satisfactory to go into such a place and see
the penitents kneeling here and there, the little group of very plainly
dressed sinners attracted by Father Damon's spiritual face and unselfish
enthusiasm. Carmen said she felt like kneeling at one of the little
boxes and confessing--the sins of her neighbors. And then the four
--Carmen, Miss Tavish, Mavick, and Jack--had a little supper at Wherry's,
which they enjoyed all the more for the good action of visiting the East
Side--a little supper which lasted very late, and was more and more
enjoyed as it went on, and was, in fact, so gay that when the ladies were
set down at their houses, Jack insisted on dragging Mavick off to the
Beefsteak Club and having something manly to drink; and while they drank
he analyzed the comparative attractions of Carmen and Miss Tavish; he
liked that kind of women, no nonsense in them; and presently he wandered
a little and lost the cue of his analysis, and, seizing Mavick by the
arm, and regarding him earnestly, in a burst of confidence declared that,
notwithstanding all appearances, Edith was the dearest girl in the world.
It was at this supper that the famous society was formed, which the
newspapers ridiculed, and which deceived so many excellent people in New
York because it seemed to be in harmony with the philanthropic endeavor
of the time, but which was only an expression of the Mephistophelian
spirit of Carmen--the Society for Supplying Two Suspenders to Those who
have only One.
By the end of June there was no more doubt about the heat of the town
than about its odors. The fashionable residence part was dismantled and
deserted. At least miles and miles of houses seemed to be closed.
Few carriages were seen in this quarter, the throngs of fashion had
disappeared, comparatively few women were about, and those that appeared
in the Sunday promenade were evidently sight-seers and idlers from other
quarters; the throng of devotees was gone from the churches, and indeed
in many of them services were suspended till a more convenient season.
The hotels, to be sure, were full of travelers, and the club-houses had
more habitues than usual, and were more needed by the members whose
families had gone into the country.
Notwithstanding the silence and vacation aspect of up-town, the public
conveyances were still thronged, and a census would have shown no such
diminution of population as seemed. Indeed, while nobody was in town,
except accidentally, the greater portion of it presented a more animated
appearance than usual, especially at night, on account of the open
windows, the groups on door-steps and curb-stones, and the restless
throng in the streets-buyers and sellers and idlers. To most this
outdoor life was a great enjoyment, and to them the unclean streets with
the odors and exhalations of decay were homelike and congenial. Nor did
they seem surprised that a new country should so completely reproduce the
evil smells and nastiness of the old civilization. It was all familiar
and picturesque. Work still went on in the crowded tenement-houses, and
sickness simply changed its character, death showing an increased
friendliness to young children. Some impression was of course made by
the agents of various charities, the guilds and settlements bravely
strove at their posts, some of the churches kept their flags flying on
the borders of the industrial districts, the Good Samaritans of the
Fresh-air Fund were active, the public dispensaries did a thriving
business, and the little band of self-sacrificing doctors, most of them
women, went their rounds among the poor, the sick, and the friendless.
Among them Ruth Leigh was one who never took a vacation. There was no
time for it. The greater the heat, the more noisome the town, the more
people became ill from decaying food and bad air and bad habits, the more
people were hungry from improvidence or lack of work, the more were her
daily visits a necessity; and though she was weary of her monotonous
work, and heart-sick at its small result in such a mass, there never came
a day when she could quit it. She made no reputation in her profession
by this course; perhaps she awoke little gratitude from those she served,
and certainly had not so much of their confidence as the quacks who
imposed upon them and took their money; and she was not heartened much by
hope of anything better in this world or any other; and as for pay, if
there was enough of that to clothe her decently, she apparently did not
spend it on herself.
It was, in short, wholly inexplicable that this little woman should
simply go about doing good, without any ulterior purpose whatever, not
even notoriety. Did she love these people? She did not ever say
anything about that. In the Knights of Labor circle, and in the little
clubs for the study of social questions, which she could only get leisure
to attend infrequently, she was not at all demonstrative about any
religion of humanity. Perhaps she simply felt that she was a part of
these people, and that whether they rejected her or received her, there
was nothing for her to do but to give herself to them. She would
probably have been surprised if Father Damon had told her that she was in
this following a great example, and there might have been a tang of
agnostic bitterness in her reply. When she thought of it the condition
seemed to her hopeless, and the attitude of what was called civilization
towards it so remorseless and indifferent, and that of Christianity so
pharisaical. If she ever lost her temper, it was when she let her mind
run in this nihilistic channel, in bitterness against the whole social
organization, and the total outcome of civilization so far as the mass of
humanity is concerned.
One day Father Damon climbed up to the top of a wretched tenement in
Baxter Street in search of a German girl, an impulsive and pretty girl of
fifteen, whom he had missed for several days at the chapel services.
He had been in the room before. It was not one of the worst, for though
small and containing a cook-stove, a large bed, and a chest of drawers,
there was an attempt to make it tidy. In a dark closet opening out from
it was another large bed. As he knocked and opened the door, he saw that
Gretchen was not at home. Her father sat in a rocking-chair by an open
window, on the sill of which stood a pot of carnations, the Easter gift
of St. George's, a wax-faced, hollow-eyed man of gentle manners, who
looked round wearily at the priest. The mother was washing clothes in a
tub in one corner; in another corner was a half-finished garment from a
slop-shop. The woman alternated the needle at night and the tub in the
daytime. Seated on the bed, with a thin, sick child in her arms, was Dr.
Leigh. As she looked up a perfectly radiant smile illuminated her
usually plain face, an unworldly expression of such purity and happiness
that she seemed actually beautiful to the priest, who stopped,
hesitating, upon the threshold.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid to come in, Father Damon," she cried out; "it
isn't contagious--only rash."
Father Damon, who would as readily have walked through a pestilence as in
a flower-garden, only smiled at this banter, and replied, after speaking
to the sick man, and returning in German the greeting of the woman, who
had turned from the tub, "I've no doubt you are disappointed that it
isn't contagious!" And then, to the mother: "Where is Gretchen? She
doesn't come to the chapel."
"Nein," replied the woman, in a mixture of German and English, "it don't
come any more in dot place; it be in a shtore now; it be good girl."
"What, all day?"
"Yaas, by six o'clock, and abends so spate. Not much it get, but my man
can't earn nothing any more." And the woman, as she looked at him, wiped
her eyes with the corner of her apron.
"But, on Sunday?" Father Damon asked, still further.
"Vell, it be so tired, and goed up by de Park with Dick Loosing and dem
oder girls."
"Don't you think it better, Father Damon," Dr. Leigh interposed, "that
Gretchen should have fresh air and some recreation on Sunday?"
"Und such bootiful tings by de Museum," added the mother.
"Perhaps," said he, with something like a frown on his face, and then
changed the subject to the sick child. He did not care to argue the
matter when Dr. Leigh was present, but he resolved to come again and
explain to the mother that her daughter needed some restraining power
other than her own impulse, and that without religious guidance she was
pretty certain to drift into frivolous and vulgar if not positively bad
ways. The father was a free-thinker; but Father Damon thought he had
some hold on the mother, who was of the Lutheran communion, but had
followed her husband so far as to become indifferent to anything but
their daily struggle for life. Yet she had a mother's instinct about the
danger to her daughter, and had been pleased to have her go to Father
Damon's chapel.
And, besides, he could not bring himself in that presence to seem to
rebuke Ruth Leigh. Was she not practically doing what his Lord did
--going about healing the sick, sympathizing with the poor and the
discouraged, taking upon herself the burden of the disconsolate,
literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery and
sin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to have
seen the woman in her--or was it the saint? and he recalled that
wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautiful
as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms.
It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted a
new pang there that she had no belief in a future life.
It did not occur to him that the sudden joy in her face might have been
evoked by seeing him, for it was a long time since she had seen him. Nor
did he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religious
anxiety. Ah, priest and worldly saint, how subtle and enduring are the
primal instincts of human nature!
"Yes," he said, as they walked away, in reply to her inquiry as to his
absence, "I have been in retreat a couple of weeks."
"I suppose," she said, softly, "you needed the rest; though," and she
looked at him professionally, "if you will allow me to say it, it seems
to me that you have not rested enough."
"I needed strength"--and it was the priest that spoke--"in meditation
and prayer to draw upon resources not my own."
"And in fasting, too, I dare say," she added, with a little smile.
"And why not?" he asked.
"Pardon me," she said; "I don't pretend to know what you need. I need to
eat, though Heaven knows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite down
here. But it is physical endurance you need for the work here. Do you
think fasting strengthens you to go through your work night and day?"
"I know I couldn't do it on my own strength." And Dr. Leigh recalled
times when she had seen him officiating in the chapel apparently
sustained by nothing but zeal and pure spirit, and wondered that he did
not faint and fall. And faint and fall he did, she was sure, when the
service was over.
"Well, it may be necessary to you, but not as an example to these people.
I see enough involuntary fasting."
"We look at these people from different points of view, I fear." And
after a moment he said: "But, doctor, I wanted to ask you about Gretchen.
You see her?"
"Occasionally. She works too many hours, but she seems to be getting on
very well, and brings her mother all she earns."
"Do you think she is able to stand alone?"
Dr. Leigh winced a little at this searching question, for no one knew
better than she the vulgarizing influence of street life and chance
associations upon a young girl, and the temptations. She was even forced
to admit the value in the way of restraint, as a sort of police force,
of the church and priestly influence, especially upon girls at the
susceptible age. But she knew that Father Damon meant something more
than this, and so she answered:
"But people have got to stand alone. She might as well begin."
"But she is so young."
"Yes, I know. She is in the way of temptation, but so long as she works
industriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which the
poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not in
so much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle and
self-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to protect
themselves."
"And you think this is enough, without any sort of religion--that this
East Side can go on without any spiritual life?"
Ruth Leigh made a gesture of impatience. In view of the actual struggle
for existence she saw around her, this talk seemed like cant. And she
said:
"I don't know that anything can go on. Let me ask you a question, Father
Damon. Do you think there is any more spirituality, any more of the
essentials of what you call Christianity, in the society of the other
side than there is on the East Side?"
"It is a deep question, this of spirituality," replied Father Damon, who
was in the depths of his proselyting action a democrat and in sympathy
with the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventional
fashion in religion. "I shouldn't like to judge, but there is a great
body of Christian men and women in this city who are doing noble work."
"Yes," replied the little doctor, bitterly, "trying to save themselves.
How many are trying to save others--others except the distant and foreign
sinners?"
"You surely cannot ignore," replied the father, still speaking mildly,
"the immense amount of charitable work done by the churches!"
"Yes, I know; charity, charity, the condescension of the rich to the
poor. What we want are understanding, fellowship, and we get alms!
If there is so much spirituality as you say, and Christianity is what you
say it is today, how happens it that this side is left in filth and
misery and physical wretchedness? You know what it is, and you know the
luxury elsewhere. And you think to bridge over the chasm between classes
with flowers, in pots, yes, and Bible-readers and fashionable visitors
and little aid societies--little palliatives for an awful state of
things. Why, look at it! Last winter the city authorities hauled off
the snow and the refuse from the fashionable avenues, and dumped it down
in the already blockaded and filthy side streets, and left us to struggle
with the increased pneumonia and diphtheria, and general unsanitary
conditions. And you wonder that the little nihilist groups and labor
organizations and associations of agnostics, as you call them, meeting to
study political economy and philosophy, say that the existing state of
things has got to be overturned violently, if those who have the power
and the money continue indifferent."
"I do not wonder," replied Father Damon, sadly. "The world is evil, and I
should be as despairing as you are if I did not know there was another
life and another world. I couldn't bear it. Nobody could."
"And all you've got to offer, then, to this mass of wretchedness,
poverty, ignorance, at close quarters with hunger and disease, is to grin
and bear it, in hope of a reward somewhere else!"
"I think you don't quite--"
The doctor looked up and saw a look of pain on the priest's face.
"Oh," she hastened to say, almost as impetuously as she had spoken
before, "I don't mean you--I don't mean you. I know what you do. Pardon
me for speaking so. I get so discouraged sometimes." They stood still a
moment, looking up and down the hot, crowded, odorful street they were
in, with its flaunting rags of poverty and inefficiency. "I see so
little result of what I can do, and there is so little help."
"I know," said the father, as they moved along. "I don't see how you
can bear it alone."
This touched a sore spot, and aroused Ruth Leigh's combativeness.
It seemed to her to approach the verge of cant again. But she knew the
father's absolute sincerity; she felt she had already said too much; and
she only murmured, as if to herself, "If we could only know." And then,
after a moment, she asked, "Do you, Father Damon, see any sign of
anything better here?"
"Yes, today." And he spoke very slowly and hesitatingly. "If you will
excuse the personality of it. When I entered that room today, and saw
you with that sick child in your arms, and comprehended what it all
meant, I had a great wave of hope, and I knew, just then, that there is
coming virtue enough in the world to redeem it."
Ruth was confounded. Her heart seemed to stand still, and then the hot
blood flowed into her face in a crimson flood. "Ah," escaped from her
lips, and she walked on more swiftly, not daring to look up. This from
him! This recognition from the ascetic father! If one of her dispensary
comrades had said it, would she have been so moved?
And afterwards, when she had parted from him, and gone to her little
room, the hot flush again came to her neck and brow, and she saw his
pale, spiritual face, and could hear the unwonted tenderness of his
voice. Yes, Father Damon had said it of her.
XI
The question has been very much discussed whether the devil, in temperate
latitudes, is busier in the summer or in the winter. When Congress and
the various State legislatures are in session, and the stock and grain
exchanges are most active, and society is gayest, and the churches and
benevolent and reformatory associations are most aggressive--at this
season, which is the cool season, he seems to be most animated and
powerful.
But is not this because he is then most opposed? The stream may not flow
any faster because it is dammed, but it exhibits at the obstructed points
greater appearance of agitation. Many people are under the impression
that when they stop fighting there is a general truce: There is reason to
believe that the arch enemy is pleased with this impression, that he
likes a truce, and that it is his best opportunity, just as the weeds in
the garden, after a tempest, welcome the sun and the placidity of the
elements. It is well known that in summer virtue suffers from inertia,
and that it is difficult to assemble the members of any vigilant
organization, especially in cities, where the flag of the enemy is never
lowered. But wherever the devil is there is always a quorum present for
business. It is not his plan to seek an open fight, and many observers
say that he gains more ground in summer than in any other season, and
this notwithstanding people are more apt to lose their tempers, and even
become profane, in the aggravations of what is known as spring than at
any other time. The subject cannot be pursued here, but there is ground
for supposing that the devil prefers a country where the temperature is
high and pretty uniform.
At any rate, it is true that the development of character is not arrested
by any geniality or languor of nature. By midsummer the Hendersons were
settled in Lenox, where the Blunts had long been, and Miss Tavish and her
party of friends were at Bar Harbor. Henderson was compelled to be in
the city most of the time, and Jack Delancy fancied that business
required his presence there also; but he had bought a yacht, and
contemplated a voyage, with several of the club men, up the Maine coast.
"No, I thank you," Major Fairfax had said; "I know an easier way to get
to Bar Harbor."
Jack was irritable and restless, to be sure, in the absence of the sort
of female society he had become accustomed to; but there were many
compensations in his free-and-easy bachelor life, in his pretense of
business, which consisted in watching the ticker, as it is called,
in an occasional interview with Henderson, and in the floating summer
amusements of the relaxed city. There was nothing unusual in this life
except that he needed a little more stimulation, but this was not strange
in the summer, and that he devoted more time to poker--but everybody
knows that a person comes out about even in the game of poker if he keeps
at it long enough--there was nothing unusual in this, only it was giving
Jack a distaste for the quiet and it seemed to him the restraint of the
Golden House down by the sea. And he was more irritable there than
elsewhere. It is so difficult to estimate an interior deterioration of
this sort, for Jack was just as popular with his comrades as ever, and
apparently more prosperous.
It is true that Jack had had other ideas when he was courting Edith
Fletcher, and at moments, at any rate, different aspirations from any he
had now. With her at that time there had been nobler aspirations about
life. But now she was his wife. That was settled. And not only that,
but she was the best woman he knew; and if she were not his wife, he
would spare no effort to win her. He felt sure of that. He did not put
it to himself in the way an Oriental would do, "That is finished"; but it
was an act done--a good act--and here was his world again, with a hundred
interests, and there were people besides Edith to be thought of, other
women and men, and affairs. Because a man was married, was he to be shut
up to one little narrow career, that of husband? Probably it did not
occur to him that women take a different view of this in the singleness
of their purpose and faith. Edith, for instance, knew or guessed that
Jack had no purpose in life that was twenty-four hours old; but she had
faith--and no amount of observation destroys this faith in women--that
marriage would inspire him with energy and ambition to take a man's place
in the world.
With most men marriage is un fait accompli. Jack had been lucky, but
there was, no doubt, truth in an observation of Mavick's. One night as
they sat at the club Jack had asked him a leading question, apropos of
Henderson's successful career: "Mavick, why don't you get married?"
"I have never," he replied, with his usual cynical deliberation, "been
obliged to. The fact is, marriage is a curb-bit. Some horses show off
better with it, and some are enraged and kick over the traces. I cannot
decide which I would be."
"That's true enough," said Jack, "from a bachelor's point of view of
independence, but it's really a question of matching."
"The most difficult thing in the world--in horses. Just about impossible
in temperament and movement, let alone looks. Most men are lucky if they
get, like Henderson, a running mate."
"I see," said Jack, who knew something about the Henderson household,
"your idea of a pair is that they should go single."
Mavick laughed, and said something about the ideas of women changing so
much lately that nobody could tell what the relation of marriage would
become, and Jack, who began to feel that he was disloyal, changed the
subject. To do him justice, he would have been ashamed for Edith to hear
this sort of flippant and shallow talk, which wouldn't have been at all
out of place with Carmen or Miss Tavish.
"I wanted to ask you, Mavick, as a friend, do you think Henderson is
square?"
"How square?"
"Well, safe?"
"Nobody is safe. Henderson is as safe as anybody. You can rely on what
he says. But there's a good deal he doesn't say. Anything wrong?"
"Not that I know. I've been pretty lucky. But the fact is, I've gone in
rather deep."
"Well, it's a game. Henderson plays it, as everybody does, for himself.
I like Henderson. He plays to win, and generally does. But, you know,
if one man wins, somebody else has got to lose in this kind of industry."
"But Henderson looks out for his friends?"
"Yes--when it doesn't cost too much. Times may come when a man has to
look out for himself. Wealth isn't made out of nothing. There must be
streams into the reservoir. These great accumulations of one--you can
see that--must be made up of countless other men's small savings.
There's Uncle Jerry. He operates a good deal with Henderson, and they'd
incline to help each other out. But Uncle Jerry says he's got a small
pond of his own, and he's careful not to connect it with Henderson's
reservoir."
"What do you think of Missouri?"
"What do I think of the Milky Way? It doesn't much matter to me what
becomes of Missouri, unless Henderson should happen to get smashed in it,
and that isn't what he is there for. But when you look at the
combinations, and the dropping-off of roads that have been drained,
and the scaling down in refunding, and the rearranging, and the strikes,
how much chance do you think the small fry stand? I don't doubt that
Henderson will make a big thing out of it, and there will be lots of
howling by those who were not so smart, and the newspapers will say that
Henderson was too strong for them. What we respect nowadays are
adroitness and strength."
"It's an exciting game," Mavick continued, after a moment's pause.
"Let me know if you get uneasy. But I'll tell you what it is, Jack;
if I had a comfortable income, I wouldn't risk it in any speculation.
There is a good deal that is interesting going on in this world, and I
like to be in it; but the best plan for a man who has anything is, as
Uncle Jerry says, to sail close and salt down."
The fact was that Mavick's connection with Henderson was an appreciable
addition to his income, and it was not a bad thing for Henderson.
Mavick's reputation for knowing the inside of everything and being
close-mouthed actually brought him confidences; that which at first was a
clever assumption became a reality, and his reputation was so established
for being behind the scenes that he was not believed when he honestly
professed ignorance of anything. His modest disclaimer merely increased
the impression that he was deep. Henderson himself had something of the
Bismarck trait of brutal, contemptuous frankness. Mavick was never
brutal and never contemptuous, but he had a cynical sort of frankness,
which is a good deal more effectual in a business way than the oily,
plausible manner which on 'Change, as well as in politics, is distrusted
as hypocrisy. Now Uncle Jerry Hollowell was neither oily nor frank; he
was long-headed and cautious, and had a reputation for shrewdness and
just enough of plasticity of conscience to remove him out of the list of
the impracticable and over-scrupulous. This reputation that business men
and politicians acquire would be a very curious study. The world is very
complacent, and apparently worships success and votes for smartness,
but it would surprise some of our most successful men to know what a real
respect there is in the community, after all, for downright integrity.
Even Jack, who fell into the current notion of his generation of young
men that the Henderson sort of morality was best adapted to quick
success, evinced a consciousness of want of nobility in the course he was
pursuing by not making Edith his confidante. He would have said, of
course, that she knew nothing about business, but what he meant was that
she had a very clear conception of what was honest. All the evidences of
his prosperity, shown in his greater freedom of living, were sore trials
to her. She belonged to that old class of New-Yorkers who made trade
honorable, like the merchants of Holland and Venice, and she knew also
that Jack's little fortune had come out of honest toil and strict
business integrity. Could there be any happiness in life in any other
course?
It seemed cruel to put such a problem as this upon a young woman hardly
yet out of girlhood, in the first flush of a new life, which she had
dreamed should be so noble and high and so happy, in the period which is
consecrated by the sweetest and loveliest visions and hopes that ever
come into a woman's life.
As the summer wore on to its maximum of heat and discomfort in the city,
Edith, who never forgot to measure the hardships of others by her own
more fortunate circumstances, urged Dr. Leigh to come away from her
labors and rest a few days by the sea. The reply was a refusal, but
there was no complaint in the brief business-like note. One might have
supposed that it was the harvest-time of the doctor, if he had not known
that she gathered nothing for herself. There had never been so much
sickness, she wrote, and such an opportunity for her. She was learning a
great deal, especially about some disputed contagious diseases. She
would like to see Mrs. Delancy, and she wouldn't mind a breath of air
that was more easily to be analyzed than that she existed in, but nothing
could induce her to give up her cases. All that appeared in her letter
was her interest in her profession.
Father Damon, who had been persuaded by Edith's urgency to go down with
Jack for a few days to the Golden House, seemed uncommonly interested in
the reasons of Dr. Leigh's refusal to come.
"I never saw her," he said, "so cheerful. The more sickness there is,
the more radiant she is. I don't mean," he added, laughing, "in apparel.
Apparently she never thinks of herself, and positively she seems to take
no time to eat or sleep. I encounter her everywhere. I doubt if she
ever sits down, except when she drops in at the mission chapel now and
then, and sits quite unmoved on a bench by the door during vespers."
"Then she does go there?" said Edith.
"That is a queer thing. She would promptly repudiate any religious
interest. But I tell her she is a bit of a humbug. When I speak about
her philanthropic zeal, she says her interest is purely scientific."
"Anyway, I believe," Jack put in, "that women doctors are less mercenary
than men. I dare say they will get over that when the novelty of coming
into the profession has worn off."
"That is possible," said Father Damon; "but that which drives women into
professions now is the desire to do something rather than the desire to
make something. Besides, it is seldom, in their minds, a finality;
marriage is always a possibility."
"Yes," replied Edith, "and the probability of having to support a husband
and family; then they may be as mercenary as men are."
"Still, the enthusiasm of women," Father Damon insisted, "in hospital and
outdoor practice, the singleness of their devotion to it, is in contrast
to that of the young men-doctors. And I notice another thing in the
city: they take more interest in philanthropic movements, in the
condition of the poor, in the labor questions; they dive eagerly into
philosophic speculations, and they are more aggressively agnostics.
And they are not afraid of any social theories. I have one friend,
a skillful practitioner they tell me, a linguist, and a metaphysician,
a most agreeable and accomplished woman, who is in theory an extreme
nihilist, and looks to see the present social and political order upset."
"I don't see," Jack remarked, "what women especially are to gain by such
a revolution."
"Perhaps independence, Jack," replied Edith. "You should hear my club of
working-girls, who read and think much on these topics, talk of these
things."
"Yes," said Father Damon, "you toss these topics about, and discuss them
in the magazines, and fancy you are interested in socialistic movements.
But you have no idea how real and vital they are, and how the dumb
discontent of the working classes is being formulated into ideas.
It is time we tried to understand each other."
Not all the talk was of this sort at the Golden House. There were three
worlds here--that of Jack, to which Edith belonged by birth and tradition
and habit; that of which we have spoken, to which she belonged by
profound sympathy; and that of Father Damon, to which she belonged by
undefined aspiration. In him was the spiritual element asserting itself
in a mediaeval form, in a struggle to mortify and deny the flesh and yet
take part in modern life. Imagine a celibate and ascetic of the
fifteenth century, who knew that Paradise must be gained through poverty
and privation and suffering, interesting himself in the tenement-house
question, in labor leagues, and the single tax.
Yet, hour after hour, in those idle summer days, when nature was in a
mood that suggested grace and peace, when the waves lapsed along the
shore and the cicada sang in the hedge, did Father Damon unfold to Edith
his ideas of the spiritualization of modern life through a conviction of
its pettiness and transitoriness. How much more content there would be
if the poor could only believe that it matters little what happens here
if the heart is only pure and fixed on the endless life.
"Oh, Father Damon," replied Edith, with a grave smile, "I think your
mission ought to be to the rich."
"Yes," he replied, for he also knew his world, "if I wanted to make my
ideas fashionable; but I want to make them operative. By-and-by," he
added, also with a smile, "we will organize some fishermen and carpenters
and tailors on a mission to the rich."
Father Damon's visit was necessarily short, for his work called him back
to town, and perhaps his conscience smote him a little for indulging in
this sort of retreat. By the middle of August Jack's yacht was ready,
and he went with Mavick and the Van Dams and some other men of the club
on a cruise up the coast. Edith was left alone with her Baltimore
friend.
And yet not alone. As she lay in her hammock in those dreamy days a new
world opened to her. It was not described in the chance romance she took
up, nor in the volume of poems she sometimes held in her hand, with a
finger inserted in the leaves. Of this world she felt herself the centre
and the creator, and as she mused upon its mysteries, life took a new,
strange meaning to her. It was apt to be a little hazy off there in the
watery horizon, and out of the mist would glide occasionally a boat,
and the sun would silver its sails, and it would dip and toss for half an
hour in the blue, laughing sea, and then disappear through the mysterious
curtain. Whence did it come? Whither had it gone? Was life like that?
Was she on the shore of such a sea, and was this new world into which she
was drifting only a dream? By her smile, by the momentary illumination
that her sweet thoughts made in her lovely, hopeful face, you knew that
it was not. Who can guess the thoughts of a woman at such a time? Are
the trees glad in the spring, when the sap leaps in their trunks, and the
buds begin to swell, and the leaves unfold in soft response to the
creative impulse? The miracle is never old nor commonplace to them, nor
to any of the human family. The anticipation of life is eternal. The
singing of the birds, the blowing of the south wind, the sparkle of the
waves, all found a response in Edith's heart, which leaped with joy. And
yet there was a touch of melancholy in it all, the horizon was so vast,
and the mist of uncertainty lay along it. Literature, society,
charities, all that she had read and experienced and thought, was nothing
to this, this great unknown anxiety and bliss, this saddest and sweetest
of all human experiences. She prayed that she might be worthy of this
great distinction, this responsibility and blessing.
And Jack, dear Jack, would he love her more?
XII
Although Father Damon had been absent from his charge only ten days, it
was time for him to return. If he had not a large personal following, he
had a wide influence. If comparatively few found their way to his
chapel, he found his way to many homes; his figure was a familiar one in
the streets, and his absence was felt by hundreds who had no personal
relations with him, but who had become accustomed to seeing him go about
on his errands of encouragement, and probably had never realized how much
the daily sight of him had touched them. The priestly dress, which may
once have provoked a sneer at his effeminacy, had now a suggestion of
refinement, of unselfish devotion, of consecration to the service of the
unfortunate, his spiritual face appealed to their better natures, and the
visible heroism that carried his frail figure through labors that would
have worn out the stoutest physique stirred in the hearts of the rudest
some comprehension of the reality of the spirit.
It may not have occurred to them that he was of finer clay than they
--perhaps he was not--but his presence was in their minds a subtle
connection and not a condescending one, rather a confession of
brotherhood, with another world and another view of life. They may not
have known that their hearts were stirred because he had the gift of
sympathy.
And was it an unmanly trait that he evoked in men that sentiment of
chivalry which is never wanting in the roughest community for a pure
woman? Wherever Father Damon went there was respect for his purity and
his unselfishness, even among those who would have been shamefaced if
surprised in any exhibition of softness.
And many loved him, and many depended on him. Perhaps those who most
depended on him were the least worthy, and those who loved him most were
least inclined to sacrifice their own reasonable view of life to his own
sublimated spiritual conception. It was the spirit of the man they
loved, and not the creed of the priest. The little chapel in its subdued
lights and shadows, with confessionals and crosses and candles and
incense, was as restful a refuge as ever to the tired and the dependent;
but wanting his inspiring face and voice, it was not the same thing, and
the attendance always fell away when he was absent. There was needed
there more than elsewhere the living presence.
He was missed, and the little world that missed him was astray. The
first day of his return his heart was smitten by the thinness of the
congregation. Had he, then, accomplished nothing; had he made no
impression, established in his shifting flock no habit of continuance in
well-doing that could survive even his temporary withdrawal? The fault
must be his. He had not sufficiently humiliated and consecrated himself,
and put under all strength of the flesh and trust in worldly
instrumentalities. There must be more prayer, more vigils, more fasting,
before the power would come back to him to draw these wandering minds to
the light. And so in the heat of this exhausting August, at the time
when his body most needed re-enforcement for the toil he required of it,
he was more rigid in his spiritual tyranny and contempt of it.
Ruth Leigh was not dependent upon Father Damon, but she also learned how
long ten days could be without a sight of him. When she looked into his
chapel occasionally she realized, as never before, how much in the air
his ceremonies and his creed were. There was nothing there for her
except his memory. And she knew when she stepped in there, for her cool,
reasoning mind was honest, that it was the thought of him that drew her
to the place, and that going there was a sentimental indulgence. What
she would have said was that she admired, loved Father Damon on account
of his love for humanity. It was a common saying of all the professional
women in her set, and of the working-girls, that they loved Father Damon.
It is a comfort to women to be able to give their affection freely where
conventionalities and circumstances make the return of it in degree
unlikely.
At the close of a debilitating day Dr. Leigh found herself in the
neighborhood of the mission chapel. She was tired and needed to rest
somewhere. She knew that Father Damon had returned, but she had not seen
him, and a double motive drew her steps. The attendance was larger than
it had been recently, and she found a stool in a dark corner, and
listened, with a weary sort of consciousness of the prayers and the
singing, but not without a deeper feeling of peace in the tones of a
voice every inflection of which she knew so well. It seemed to her that
the reading cost him an effort, and there was a note of pathos in the
voice that thrilled her. Presently he advanced towards the altar rail
--he was accustomed to do this with his little flock--and placing one hand
on the lectern, began to speak.
At first, and this was not usual, he spoke about himself in a strain of
sincere humility, taking blame upon himself for his inability to do
effectively the great service his Master had set him to do. He meant to
have given himself more entirely to the dear people among whom he
labored; he hoped to show himself more worthy of the trust they had given
him; he was grateful for the success of his mission, but no one knew so
well as he how far short it came of being what he ought to have made it.
He knew indeed how weak he was, and he asked the aid of their sympathy
and encouragement. It seemed to be with difficulty that he said this,
and to Ruth's sympathetic ear there was an evidence of physical
exhaustion in his tone. There was in it, also, for her, a confession of
failure, the cry of the preacher, in sorrow and entreaty, that says,
"I have called so long, and ye would not listen."
As he went on, still with an effort and feebly, there came over the
little group a feeling of awe and wonderment, and the silence was
profound. Still steadying himself by the reading-desk, he went on to
speak of other things, of those of his followers who listened, of the
great mass swirling about them in the streets who did not listen and did
not care; of the little life that now is so full of pain and hardship and
disappointment, of good intentions frustrated, of hopes that deceive,
and of fair prospects that turn to ashes, of good lives that go wrong, of
sweet natures turned to bitterness in the unaided struggle. His voice
grew stronger and clearer, as his body responded to the kindling theme in
his soul. He stepped away from the desk nearer the rail, the bowed head
was raised. "What does it matter?" he said. "It is only for a little
while, my children." Those who heard him that day say that his face
shone like that of an angel, and that his voice was like a victorious
clarion, so clear, so sweet, so inspiring, as he spoke of the life that
is to come, and the fair certainty of that City where he with them all
wished to be.
As he closed, some were kneeling, many were crying; all, profoundly
moved, watched him as, with the benediction and the sign of the cross, he
turned and walked swiftly to the door of the sacristy. It opened, and
then Ruth Leigh heard a cry, "Father Damon! Father Damon!" and there was
a rush into the chancel. Hastening through the throng, which promptly
made way for the doctor, she found Father Damon lying across the
threshold, as he had fallen, colorless and unconscious. She at once took
command of the situation. The body was lifted to the plain couch in the
room, a hasty examination was made of pulse and heart, a vial of brandy
was produced from her satchel, and messengers were despatched for things
needed, and especially for beef-tea.
"Is he dead, Dr. Leigh? Is he any better, doctor? What is the matter,
doctor?"
"Want of nourishment," replied Dr. Leigh, savagely.
The room was cleared of all except a couple of stout lads and a friendly
German woman whom the doctor knew. The news of the father's sudden
illness had spread rapidly, with the report that he had fallen dead while
standing at the altar; and the church was thronged, and the street
rapidly blocked up with a hushed crowd, eager for news and eager to give
aid. So great was the press that the police had to interfere, and push
back the throng from the door. It was useless to attempt to disperse it
with the assurance that Father Damon was better; it patiently waited to
see for itself. The sympathy of the neighborhood was most impressive,
and perhaps the thing that the public best remembers about this incident
is the pathetic solicitude of the people among whom Father Damon labored
at the rumor of his illness, a matter which was greatly elaborated by the
reporters from the city journals and the purveyors of telegraphic news
for the country.
With the application of restoratives the patient revived. When he opened
his eyes he saw figures in the room as in a dream, and his mind struggled
to remember where he was and what had happened; but one thing was not a
dream: Dr. Leigh stood by his bedside, with her left hand on his brow
and the right grasping his own right hand, as if to pull him back to
life. He saw her face, and then he lost it again in sheer weariness at
the effort. After a few moments, in a recurring wave of strength, he
looked up again, still bewildered, and said, faintly:
"Where am I?"
"With friends," said the doctor. "You were a little faint, that is all;
you will be all right presently."
She quickly prepared some nourishment, which was what he most needed, and
fed him from time to time, as he was able to receive it. Gradually he
could feel a little vigor coming into his frame; and regaining control of
himself, he was able to hear what had happened. Very gently the doctor
told him, making light of his temporary weakness.
"The fact is, Father Damon," she said, "you've got a disease common in
this neighborhood--hunger."
The father smiled, but did not reply. It might be so. For the time he
felt his dependence, and he did not argue the point. This dependence
upon a woman--a sort of Sister of Charity, was she not?--was not
altogether unpleasant. When he attempted to rise, but found that he was
too weak, and she said "Not yet," he submitted, with the feeling that to
be commanded with such gentleness was a sort of luxury.
But in an hour's time he declared that he was almost himself again,
and it was decided that he was well enough to be removed to his own
apartments in the neighborhood. A carriage was sent for, and the
transfer was made, and made through a crowd in the streets, which stood
silent and uncovered as his carriage passed through it. Dr. Leigh
remained with him for an hour longer, and then left him in charge
of a young gentleman from the Neighborhood Guild, who gladly volunteered
to watch for the night.
Ruth walked slowly home, weary now that the excitement was over, and
revolving many things in her mind, as is the custom of women. She heard
again that voice, she saw again that inspired face; but the impression
most indelible with her was the prostrate form, the pallid countenance,
the helplessness of this man whose will had before been strong enough to
compel the obedience of his despised body. She had admired his strength;
but it was his weakness that drew upon her woman's heart, and evolved a
tenderness dangerous to her peace of mind. Yet it was the doctor and not
the woman that replied to the inquiries at the dispensary.
"Yes, it was fasting and overwork. Men are so stupid; they think they
can defy all the laws of nature, especially priests." And she determined
to be quite plain with him next day.
And Father Damon, lying weary in his bed, before he fell asleep, saw the
faces in the dim chapel turned to him in strained eagerness the moment
before he lost consciousness; but the most vivid image was that of a
woman bending over him, with eyes of tenderness and pity, and the smile
with which she greeted his awakening. He could feel yet her hand upon
his brow.
When Dr. Leigh called next day, on her morning rounds, she found a
brother of the celibate order, Father Monies, in charge. He was sitting
by the window reading, and when the doctor came up the steps he told her
in a low voice to enter without knocking. Father Damon was better, much
better; but he had advised him not to leave his bed, and the patient had
been dozing all the morning. The doctor asked if he had eaten anything,
and how much. The apartment was small and scantily furnished--a sort of
anchorite cell. Through the drawn doors of the next room the bed was in
sight. As they were talking in low voices there came from this room a
cheerful:
"Good-morning, doctor."
"I hope you ate a good breakfast," she said, as she arose and went to his
bedside.
"I suppose you mean better than usual," he replied, with a faint attempt
at a smile. "No doubt you and Father Monies are satisfied, now you've
got me laid up."
"That depends upon your intentions."
"Oh, I intend to get up tomorrow."
"If you do, without other change in your intentions, I am going to report
you to the Organized Charity as a person who has no visible means of
support."
She had brought a bunch of violets, and as they talked she had filled a
glass with water and put them on a stand by the head of the bed. Then
--oh, quite professionally--she smoothed out his pillows and straightened
the bedclothes, and, talking all the time, and as if quite unconscious of
what she was doing, moved about the room, putting things to rights, and
saying, in answer to his protest, that perhaps she should lose her
reputation as a physician in his eyes by appearing to be a professional
nurse.
There was a timid knock at the door, and a forlorn little figure, clad in
a rumpled calico, with an old shawl over her head, half concealing an
eager and pretty face, stood in the doorway, and hesitatingly came in.
"Meine Mutter sent me to see how Father Damon is," she explained; "she
could not come, because she washes."
She had a bunch of flowers in her hand, and encouraged by the greeting of
the invalid, she came to the bedside and placed them in his outstretched
hand--a faded blossom of scarlet geranium, a bachelor's button, and a
sprig of parsley, probably begged of a street dealer as she came along.
"Some blooms," she said.
"Bless you, my dear," said Father Damon; "they are very pretty."
"Dey smells nice," the child exclaimed, her eyes dancing with pleasure at
the reception of her gift. She stood staring at him, and then, her eye
catching the violets, she added, "Dose is pooty, too."
"If you can stay half an hour or so, I should like to step round to the
chapel," Father Monies said to the doctor in the front room, taking up
his hat.
The doctor could stay. The little girl had moved a chair up to the
bedside, and sat quite silent, her grimy little hand grasped in the
father's. Ruth, saying that she hoped the father wouldn't mind, began to
put in order the front room, which the incidents of the night had
somewhat disturbed. Father Damon, holding fast by that little hand to
the world of poverty to which he had devoted his life, could not refrain
from watching her, as she moved about with the quick, noiseless way that
a woman has when she is putting things to rights. This was indeed a
novel invasion of his life. He was still too weak to reason about it
much. How good she was, how womanly! And what a sense of peace and
repose she brought into his apartment! The presence of Brother Monies
was peaceful also, but hers was somehow different. His eyes had not
cared to follow the brother about the room. He knew that she was
unselfish, but he had not noticed before that her ways were so graceful.
As she turned her face towards him from time to time he thought its
expression beautiful. Ruth Leigh would have smiled grimly if any one had
called her beautiful, but then she did not know how she looked sometimes
when her feelings were touched. It is said that the lamp of love can
illumine into beauty any features of clay through which it shines. As he
gazed, letting himself drift as in a dream, suddenly a thought shot
through his mind that made him close his eyes, and such a severe priestly
look came upon his face that the little girl, who had never taken her
eyes off him, exclaimed:
"It is worse?"
"No, my dear," he replied, with a reassuring smile; "at least, I hope
not."
But when the doctor, finishing her work, drew a chair into the doorway,
and sat by the foot of his bed, the stern look still remained on his pale
face. And the doctor, she also was the doctor again, as matter of fact
as in any professional visit.
"You are very kind," he said.
There was a shade of impatience on her face as she replied, "But you must
be a little kind to yourself."
"It doesn't matter."
"But it does matter. You defeat the very work you want to do. I'm going
to report you to your order." And then she added, more lightly, "Don't
you know it is wrong to commit suicide?"
"You don't understand," he replied. "There is more than one kind of
suicide; you don't believe in the suicide of the soul. Ah, me!" And a
shade of pain passed over his face.
She was quick to see this. "I beg your pardon, Father Damon. It is none
of my business, but we are all so anxious to have you speedily well
again."
Just then Father Monies returned, and the doctor rose to go. She took
the little girl by the hand and said, "Come, I was just going round to
see your father. Good-by. I shall look in again tomorrow."
"Thank you--thank you a thousand times. But you have so much to do that
you must not bother about me."
Whether he said this to quiet his own conscience, secretly hoping that he
might see her again on the morrow, perhaps he himself could not have
decided.
Late the next afternoon, after an unusually weary round of visits, made
in the extreme heat and in a sort of hopeless faithfulness, Dr. Leigh
reached the tenement in which Father Damon lodged: In all the miserable
scenes of the day it had been in her mind, giving to her work a pleasure
that she did not openly acknowledge even to herself, that she should see
him.
The curtains were down, and there was no response to her knock, except
from a door in the passage opposite. A woman opened the door wide enough
to show her head and to make it evident that she was not sufficiently
dressed to come out, and said that Father Damon had gone. He was very
much better, and his friend had taken him up-town. Dr. Leigh thanked
her, and said she was very glad.
She was so glad that, as she walked away, scarcely heeding her steps or
conscious of the chaffing, chattering crowd, all interest in her work and
in that quarter of the city seemed dead.
XIII
It is well that there is pleasure somewhere in the world. It is possible
for those who have a fresh-air fund of their own to steam away in a
yacht, out of the midsummer ennui and the weary gayety of the land.
It is a costly pleasure, and probably all the more enjoyed on that
account, for if everybody had a yacht there would be no more feeling of
distinction in sailing one than in going to any of the second-rate
resorts on the coast. There is, to be sure, some ennui in yachting on a
rainy coast, and it might be dull but for the sensation created by
arrivals at watering-places and the telegraphic reports of these
sensations.
If there was any dullness on the Delancy yacht, means were taken to
dispel it. While still in the Sound a society was formed for the
suppression of total abstinence, and so successful was this that Point
Judith was passed, in a rain and a high and chopping sea, with a kind of
hilarious enjoyment of the commotion, which is one of the things desired
at sea. When the party came round to Newport it declared that it had had
a lovely voyage, and inquiry brought out the great general principle,
applicable to most coast navigation for pleasure, that the enjoyable way
to pass Point Judith is not to know you are passing Point Judith.
Except when you land, and even after you have got your sea-legs on, there
is a certain monotony in yachting, unless the weather is very bad, and
unless there are women aboard. A party of lively women make even the sea
fresh and entertaining. Otherwise, the game of poker is much what it is
on land, and the constant consulting of charts and reckoning of speed
evince the general desire to get somewhere--that is, to arrive at a
harbor. In the recollections of this voyage, even in Jack's
recollections of it after he had paid the bills, it seemed that it had
been simply glorious, free from care, generally a physical setting-up
performance, and a lark of enormous magnitude. And everybody envied the
fortunate sailors.
Mavick actually did enjoy it, for he had that brooding sort of nature,
that self-satisfied attitude, that is able to appropriate to its own uses
whatever comes. And being an unemotional and very tolerable sailor,
he was able to be as cynical at sea as on land, and as much of an oracle,
in his wholly unobtrusive way. The perfect personal poise of Mavick,
which gave him an air of patronizing the ocean, and his lightly held
skeptical view of life, made his company as full of flavor on ship as it
was on shore. He didn't know anything more about the weather than the
Weather Bureau knows, yet the helmsman of the yacht used to consult him
about the appearances of the sky and a change of wind with a confidence
in his opinion that he gave to no one else on board. And Mavick never
forfeited this respect by being too positive. It was so with everything;
he evidently knew a great deal more than he cared to tell. It is
pleasing to notice how much credit such men as Mavick obtain in the world
by circumspect reticence and a knowing manner. Jack, blundering along in
his free-hearted, emotional way, and never concealing his opinion, was
really right twice where Mavick was right once, but he never had the
least credit for wisdom.
It was late in August that the Delancy yacht steamed into the splendid
Bar Harbor, making its way slowly through one of the rare fogs which are
sometimes seen by people who do not own real estate there. Even before
they could see an island those on board felt the combination of mountain
and sea air that makes this favored place at once a tonic and a sedative
to the fashionable world.
The party were expected at Bar Harbor. It had been announced that the
yacht was on its way, and some of the projected gayeties were awaiting
its coming, for the society reenforcement of the half-dozen men on board
was not to be despised. The news went speedily round that Captain
Delancy's flag was flying at the anchorage off the landing.
Among the first to welcome them as they landed and strolled up to the
hotel was Major Fairfax.
"Oh yes," he said; "we are all here--that is, all who know where they
ought to be at the right moment."
To the new-comers the scene was animated. The exotic shops sparkled with
cheap specialties; landaus, pony-phaetons, and elaborate buckboards
dashed through the streets; aquatic and law-tennis costumes abounded.
If there was not much rowing and lawn-tennis, there was a great deal of
becoming morning dressing for these sports, and in all the rather aimless
idleness there was an air of determined enjoyment. Even here it was
evident that there was a surplus of women. These lovers of nature, in
the summer season, who had retired to this wild place to be free from the
importunities of society, betrayed, Mavick thought, the common instinct
of curiosity over the new arrival, and he was glad to take it as an
evidence that they loved not nature less but man more. Jack tripped up
this ungallant speech by remarking that if Mavick was in this mood he did
not know why he came ashore. And Van Dam said that sooner or later all
men went ashore. This thin sort of talk was perhaps pardonable after the
weariness of a sea voyage, but the Major promptly said it wouldn't do.
And the Major seemed to be in charge of the place.
"No epigrams are permitted. We are here to enjoy ourselves. I'm ordered
to bring the whole crew of you to tea at the Tavish cottage."
"Anybody else there?" asked Jack, carelessly.
"Well, it's the most curious coincidence, but Mrs. Henderson arrived last
night; Henderson has gone to Missouri."
"Yes, he wrote me to look out for his wife on this coast," said Mavick.
"You kept mighty still about it," said Jack.
"So did you," retorted Mavick.
"It is very curious," the Major explained, "how fashionable intelligence
runs along this coast, apparently independent of the telegraph; everybody
knows where everybody else is."
The Tavish cottage was a summer palace of the present fashion, but there
was one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believe
balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were spacious,
and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun
could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was,
in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment.
It was furnished luxuriously but gayly, and with its rugs and portieres
and divans it reminded Mavick of an Oriental marquee. Miss Tavish called
it her tepee, an evolution of the aboriginal dwelling. She liked to
entertain, and she never appeared to better advantage than when her house
was full, and something was going on continually-lively breakfasts and
dinners, dances, theatricals, or the usual flowing in and out of callers
and guests, chattering groups, and flirtatious couples. It was her idea
of repose from the winter's gayety, and in it she sustained the role of
the non-fatigueable society girl. It is a performance that many
working-girls regard with amazement.
There was quite a flutter in the cottage, as there always is when those
who know each other well meet under new circumstances after a short
separation.
"We are very glad to see you," Miss Tavish said, cordially; "we have been
awfully dull."
"That is complimentary to me," said the Major.
"You can judge the depths we have been in when even the Major couldn't
pull us out," she retorted. "Without him we should have simply died."
"And it would have been the liveliest obsequies I ever attended."
Carmen was not effusive in her greeting; she left that role to Miss
Tavish, taking for herself that of confidential friend. She was almost
retiring in her manner, but she made Jack feel that she had a strong
personal interest in his welfare, and she asked a hundred questions about
the voyage and about town and about Edith.
"I'm going to chaperon you up here," she said, "for Miss Tavish will lead
you into all sorts of wild adventures."
There was that in the manner of the demure little woman when she made
this proposal that convinced Jack that under her care he would be
perfectly safe--from Miss Tavish.
After cigarettes were lighted she contrived to draw Mavick away to the
piazza. She was very anxious to know what Henderson's latest moves were.
Mavick was very communicative, and told her nothing that he knew she did
not already know. And she was clever enough to see, without any apparent
distrust, that whatever she got from him must be in what he did not say.
As to Jack's speculations, she made little more progress. Jack gave
every sign of being prosperous; he entertained royally on his yacht.
Mavick himself was puzzled to know whether Carmen really cared for Jack,
or whether she was only interested as in a game, one of the things that
amused her life to play, to see how far he would go, and to watch his
ascension or his tumble. Mavick would have been surprised if he had
known that as a result of this wholly agreeable and confidential talk,
Carmen wrote that night in a letter to her husband:
"Your friend Mavick is here. What a very clever man he is! If I were
you I would keep an eye on him."
A dozen plans were started at the tea for relieving the tedium of the
daily drives and the regulation teas and receptions. For one thing,
weather permitting, they would all breakfast at twelve on the yacht, and
then sail about the harbor, and come home in the sunset.
The day was indeed charming, so stimulating as to raise the value of real
estate, and incite everybody to go off in search of adventure, in wagons,
in walking parties, in boats. There is no happiness like the
anticipation of pleasure begot by such a morning. Those who live there
said it was regular Bar Harbor weather.
Captain Delancy was on deck to receive his guests, who came out in small
boats, chattering and fluttering and "ship-ahoying," as gay in spirits as
in apparel. Anything but high spirits and nonsense would be unpardonable
on such a morning. Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning, in
sight of the mountains, the green islands, the fringe of breaking sea in
the distant opening, the shimmer and sparkle of the harbor, the white
sails of pleasure-boats, the painted canoes, the schooners and coal-boats
and steamers swinging at anchor just enough to make all the scene alive.
"This is my idea," said the Major, "of going to sea in a yacht; it would
be perfect if we were tied up at the dock."
"I move that we throw the Major overboard," cried Miss Tavish.
"No," Jack exclaimed; "it is against the law to throw anything into the
harbor."
"Oh, I expected Miss Tavish would throw me overboard when Mavick
appeared."
Mavick raised his glass and proposed the health of Miss Tavish.
"With all my heart," the Major said; "my life is passed in returning good
for evil."
"I never knew before," and Miss Tavish bowed her acknowledgments, "the
secret of the Major's attractions."
"Yes," said Carmen, sweetly, "he is all things to all women."
"You don't appear to have a friend here, Major," Mavick suggested.
"No; my friends are all foul-weather friends; come a bright day, they are
all off like butterflies. That comes of being constant."
"That's no distinction," Carmen exclaimed; "all men are that till they
get what they want."
"Alas! that women also in these days here become cynical! It was not so
when I was young. Here's to the ever young," and he bowed to Carmen and
Miss Tavish.
"He's been with Ponce de Leon!" cried Miss Tavish.
"He's the dearest man living, except a few," echoed Carmen. "The Major's
health."
The yellow wine sparkled in the glasses like the sparkling sea, the wind
blew softly from the south, the sails in the bay darkened and flashed,
and the breakfast, it seemed to go along of itself, and erelong the
convives were eating ambrosia and sipping nectar. Van Dam told a shark
story. Mavick demonstrated its innate improbability. The Major sang a
song--a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment. Jack, whose
cheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sang
when he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen and
Miss Tavish joined in the chorus.
"I like the sea," the Major declared. They all liked it. The breakfast
lasted a long time, and when they rose from the table Jack said that
presently they would take a course round the harbor. The Major remarked
that that would suit him. He appeared to be ready to go round the world.
While they were preparing to start, Carmen and Jack strolled away to the
bow, where she perched herself, holding on by the rigging. He thought he
had never seen her look so pretty as at that moment, in her trim nautical
costume, sitting up there, swinging her feet like a girl, and regarding
him with half-mocking, half-admiring eyes.
What were they saying? Heaven only knows. What nonsense do people so
situated usually talk? Perhaps she was warning him against Miss Tavish.
Perhaps she was protesting that Julia Tavish was a very, very old friend.
To an observer this admirable woman seemed to be on the defensive--her
most alluring attitude. It was not, one could hear, exactly sober talk;
there was laughter and raillery and earnestness mingled. It might be
said that they were good comrades. Carmen professed to like good
comradeship and no nonsense. But she liked to be confidential.
Till late in the afternoon they cruised about among the islands, getting
different points of view of the coast, and especially different points of
view of each other, in the freedom of talk and repartee permitted on an
excursion. Before sunset they were out in the open, and could feel the
long ocean swell. The wind had risen a little, and there was a low band
of clouds in the south. The skipper told Mr. Delancy that it would be
much fresher with the sinking of the sun, but Jack replied that it
wouldn't amount to anything; the glass was all right.
"Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray."
Miss Tavish was in the wheel-house, and had taken the wheel. This clever
girl knew her right hand from her left, instantly, without having to stop
and think and look at her rings, and she knew what port and starboard
meant, as orders, and exactly how to meet a wave with a turn of the
wheel.
"I say, Captain Delancy," she cried out, "the steamer is about due.
Let's go down and meet her, and race in."
"All right," replied Jack. "We can run round her three times and then
beat her in."
The steamer's smoke was seen at that instant, and the yacht was headed
for it. The wind was a little fresher, but the tight little craft took
the waves like a duck, and all on board enjoyed the excitement of the
change, except the Major, who said he didn't mind, but he didn't believe
the steamer needed any escort.
By the time the steamer was reached the sun was going down in a band of
clouds. There was no gale, but the wind increased in occasional puffs of
spite, and the waves were getting up. The skipper took the wheel to turn
the yacht in a circle to her homeward course. As this operation created
strange motions, and did not interest the Major, he said he would go
below and reflect.
In turning, the yacht came round on the seaward side of the steamer, but
far behind. But the little craft speedily showed her breeding and
overhauled her big rival, and began to forge ahead. The little group on
the yacht waved their handkerchiefs as if in good-by, and the passengers
on the steamer cheered. As the wind was every moment increasing, the
skipper sheered away to allow plenty of sea-room between the boats. The
race appeared to be over.
"It's a pity," said Miss Tavish.
"Let's go round her," said Jack; "eh, skipper?"
"If you like, sir," responded the skipper. "She can do it."
The yacht was well ahead, but the change in the direction brought the
vessels nearer together. But there was no danger. The speed they were
going would easily bring her round away ahead of the steamer.
But just then something happened. The yacht would not answer to her
helm. The wheel flew around without resistance. The wind, hauled now
into the east, struck her with violence and drove her sideways. The
little thing was like a chip on the sea. The rudder-chain had broken.
The yacht seemed to fly towards the long, hulking steamer. The danger
was seen there, and her helm was put hard down, and her nose began to
turn towards the shore. But it was too late. It seemed all over in an
instant. The yacht dashed bow on to the side of the steamer, quivered an
instant, and then dropped away. At the same moment the steamer slowed
down and began to turn to assist the wounded.
The skipper of the yacht and a couple of hands rushed below. A part of
the bow had been carried away and a small hole made just above the
waterline, through which the water spurted whenever she encountered a
large wave. It was enough to waterlog her and sink her in such a sea.
The two seamen grasped whatever bedding was in reach below, rammed it
into the opening, and held it there. The skipper ran on deck, and by the
aid of the men hauled out a couple of sails and dropped them over the
bow. These would aid in keeping out the water. They could float now,
but where were they going? "Going ashore," said Mavick, grimly. And so
they were.
"Was there a panic on board?" it was asked afterwards. Not exactly.
Among well-bred people a panic is never good form. But there were white
faces and trembling knees and anxious looks. The steamer was coming
towards them, and all eyes were fixed on that rather than on the rocks of
the still distant shore.
The most striking incident of the moment--it seemed so to some of those
who looked back upon it--was a singular test of character, or rather of
woman's divination of character. Carmen instinctively flew to Jack and
grasped and held his arm. She knew, without stopping to reason about it,
that he would unhesitatingly imperil his life to save that of any woman.
Whatever judgment is passed upon Jack, this should not be forgotten.
And Miss Tavish; to whom did she fly in this peril? To the gallant
Major? No. To the cool and imperturbable Mavick, who was as strong and
sinewy as he was cool? No. She ran without hesitation to Van Dam, and
clung to him, recognizing instinctively, with the woman's feeling, the
same quality that Jack had. There are such men, who may have no great
gifts, but who will always fight rather than run under fire, and who will
always protect a woman.
Mavick saw all this, and understood it perfectly, and didn't object to it
at the time--but he did not forget it.
The task of rescue was not easy in that sea and wind, but it was
dexterously done. The steamer approached and kept at a certain distance
on the windward side. A boat was lowered, and a line was brought to the
yacht, which was soon in tow with a stout cable hitched to the steamer's
anchor windlass.
It was all done with much less excitement than appeared from the
telegraphic accounts, and while the party were being towed home the peril
seemed to have been exaggerated, and the affair to look like an ordinary
sea incident. But the skipper said that it was one escape in a hundred.
The captain of the steamer raised his hat gravely in reply to the little
cheer from the yacht, when Carmen and Miss Tavish fluttered their
handkerchiefs towards him. The only chaff from the steamer was roared
out by a fat Boston man, who made a funnel of his hands and shouted, "The
race is not always to the swift."
As soon as Jack stepped ashore he telegraphed to Edith that the yacht had
had an accident in the harbor, but that no one was hurt. When he reached
the hotel he found a letter from Edith of such a tenor that he sent
another despatch, saying that she might expect him at once, leaving the
yacht behind. There was a buzz of excitement in the town, and there were
a hundred rumors, which the sight of the yacht and its passengers landed
in safety scarcely sufficed to allay.
When Jack called at the Tavish cottage to say good-by, both the ladies
were too upset to see him. He took a night train, and as he was whirled
away in the darkness the events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemed
like a dream. Even the voyage up the coast was a little unreal--an
insubstantial episode in life. And the summer city by the sea, with its
gayety and gossip and busy idleness, sank out of sight like a phantom.
He drew his cap over his eyes, and was impatient that the rattling train
did not go faster, for Edith, waiting there in the Golden House, seemed
to stretch out her arms for him to come. Still behind him rose a picture
of that bacchanalian breakfast--the Major and Carmen and Mavick and Miss
Tavish dancing a reel on the sloping deck, then the rising wind, the
reckless daring of the race, and a vision of sudden death. He shuddered
for the first time in a quick realization of how nearly it came to being
all over with life and its pleasures.
XIV
Edith had made no appeal to Jack to come home. His going, therefore, had
the merit in his eyes of being a voluntary response to the promptings of
his better nature. Perhaps but for the accident at Mount Desert he might
have felt that his summer pleasure was needlessly interfered with, but
the little shock of that was a real, if still temporary, moral
turning-point for him. For the moment his inclination seemed to run with
his duty, and he had his reward in Edith's happiness at his coming, the
loving hunger in her eyes, the sweet trust that animated her face, the
delightful appropriation of him that could scarcely brook a moment's
absence from her sight. There could not be a stronger appeal to his
manhood and his fidelity.
"Yes, Jack dear, it was a little lonesome." She was swinging in her
hammock on the veranda in sight of the sea, and Jack sat by her with his
cigar. "I don't mind telling you now that there were times when I longed
for you dreadfully, but I was glad, all the same, that you were enjoying
yourself, for it is tiresome down here for a man with nothing to do but
to wait."
"You dear thing!" said Jack, with his hand on her head, smoothing her
glossy hair and pushing it back from her forehead, to make her look more
intellectual--a thing which she hated. "Yes, dear, I was a brute to go
off at all."
"But you wanted to comeback?" And there was a wistful look in her eyes.
"Indeed I did," he answered, fervently, as he leaned over the hammock to
kiss the sweet eyes into content; and he was quite honest in the
expression of a desire that was nearly forty-eight hours old, and by a
singular mental reaction seemed to have been always present with him.
"It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the newspaper."
"Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;" and he made
light of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be capable
of shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major's seafaring
qualities, and Carmen's and Miss Tavish's chaff of the gallant old beau.
Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a
retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand
was as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.
The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety and
made grave by a new interest. It could not well be but that the prospect
of the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should create a
little uneasiness in Jack's mind as to his own career. Of this future
they talked much, and in Jack's attitude towards her Edith saw, for the
first time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it came
naturally in the contemplation of their future life that she should
encourage his discontent at having no occupation. Facing, in this
waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon
him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, and
that idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck of
society women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimate
ennui. To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune,
who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personal
satisfaction; but they did not seem to be of much account except in the
little circle that they ornamented. Speaking of one of them one day,
Father Damon had said that it seemed a pity a fellow of such family and
capacity and fortune should go to the devil merely for the lack of an
object in life. In this closer communion with Edith, whose ideas he
began to comprehend, Jack dimly apprehended this view, and for the moment
impulsively accepted it.
"I'm half sorry," he said one day, "that I didn't go in for a profession.
But it is late now. Law, medicine, engineering, architecture, would take
years of study."
"There was Armstrong," Edith suggested, "who studied law after he was
married."
"But it looks sort of silly for a fellow who has a wife to go to school,
unless," said Jack, with a laugh, "he goes to school to his wife. Then
there's politics. You wouldn't like to see me in that."
"I rather think, Jack"--she spoke musingly--"if I were a man I should go
into politics."
"You would have nice company!"
"But it's the noblest career--government, legislation, trying to do
something to make the world better. Jack, I don't see how the men of New
York can stand it to be governed by the very worst elements."
"My dear, you have no idea what practical politics is."
"I've an idea what I'd make it. What is the good of young men of leisure
if they don't do anything for the country? Too fine to do what Hamilton
did and Jay did! I wish you could have heard my father talk about it.
Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!"
"Or a yacht," suggested Jack.
"Well, I don't see why a man cannot own a yacht and still care something
about the decent management of his city."
"There's Mavick in politics."
"Not exactly. Mavick is in office for what he can make. No, I will not
say that. No doubt he is a good civil servant, and we can't expect
everybody to be unselfish. At any rate, he is intelligent. Do you
remember what Mr. Morgan said last winter?" And Edith lifted herself up
on her elbow, as if to add the weight of her attitude to her words, as
Jack was still smiling at her earnestness.
"No; you said he was a delightful sort of pessimist."
"Mr. Morgan said that the trouble with the governing and legislation now
in the United States is that everybody is superficially educated, and
that the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, and
that we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories and
crudities on the statute-book. And then educated people say that
politics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to do
with it."
"And how far do you think we could get, my dear, in the crusade you
propose?"
"I don't know that you would get anywhere. Yet I should think the young
men of New York could organize its intelligence and do something. But
you think I'm nothing but a woman." And Edith sank back, as if
abandoning the field.
"I had thought that; but it is hard to tell, these days. Never mind,
when we go back to town I'll stir round; you'll see."
This was an unusual sort of talk. Jack had never heard Edith break out
in this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning to
think of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties.
Not many in his set, he was sure. If Edith had urged him to go into
Neighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that. Women and
ethical cranks were interested in that. And women were getting queerer
every day, beginning, as Mavick said, to take notice. However, it was
odd, when you thought over it, that the city should be ruled by the
slums.
It was easy to talk about these things; in fact, Jack talked a great deal
about them in the clubs, and occasionally with a knot of men after dinner
in a knowing, pessimistic sort of way. Sometimes the discussions were
very animated and even noisy between these young citizens. It seemed,
sometimes, about midnight, that something might be done; but the
resolution vanished next morning when another day, to be lived through,
confronted them. They illustrated the great philosophic observation that
it is practically impossible for an idle man who has nothing to do to
begin anything today.
To do Jack justice, this enforced detention in the country he did not
find dull exactly. To be sure it was vacation-time, and his whole life
was a vacation, and summer was rather more difficult to dispose of than
winter, for one had to make more of an effort to amuse himself. But
Edith was never more charming than in this new dependence, and all his
love and loyalty were evoked in caring for her. This was occupation
enough, even if he had been the busiest man in the world-to watch over
her, to read to her, to anticipate her fancies, to live with her in that
dream of the future which made life seem almost ideal. There came a time
when he looked back upon this month at the Golden House as the happiest
in his life.
The talk about an occupation was not again referred to. Edith seemed
entirely happy to have Jack with her, more entirely her own than he had
ever been, and to have him just as he was. And yet he knew, by a sure
instinct, that she saw him as she thought he would be, with some aim and
purpose in life. And he made many good resolutions.
That which was nearest him attracted him most, and very feeble now were
the allurements of the life and the company he had just left. Not that
he would break with it exactly; it was not necessary to do that; but he
would find something to do, something worth a man's doing, or, at any
rate, some occupation that should tax his time and his energies. That,
he knew, would make Edith happy, and to make her happy seemed now very
much like a worthy object in life. She was so magnanimous, so
unsuspicious, so full of all nobility. He knew she would stand by him
whatever happened. Down here her attitude to life was no longer a rebuke
to him nor a restraint upon him. Everything seemed natural and
wholesome. Perhaps his vanity was touched, for there must be something
in, him if such a woman could love him. And probably there was, though
he himself had never yet had a chance to find it out. Brought up in the
expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his
highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take
life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of
"good-for-nothings" in our modern life? If there had been war, he had
spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to
hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or
the highlands of Central Asia. Something uncommon he might do if
opportunity offered.
About his operations with Henderson he had never told Edith, and he did
not tell her now. Perhaps she divined it, and he rather wondered that
she had never asked him about his increased expenditures, his yacht, and
all that. He used to look at her steadily at times, as if he were trying
to read the secrets of her heart.
"What are you looking at, Jack?"
"To see if I can find out how much you know, you look so wise."
"Do I? I was just thinking about you. I suppose that made me look so."
"No; about life and the world generally."
"Mighty little, Jack, except--well, I study you."
"Do you? Then you'll presently lose your mind:"
Jack and most men have little idea that they are windows through which
their wives see the world; and how much more of the world they know in
that way than men usually suspect or wives ever tell!
He did not tell her about Henderson, but he almost resolved that when his
present venture was over he would let stocks alone as speculations, and
go into something that he could talk about to his wife as he talked about
stocks to Carmen.
From the stranded mariners at Bar Harbor Captain Jack had many and
facetious letters. They wanted to know if his idea was that they should
stick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if he
expected them to walk home. He had already given orders to the skipper
to patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised his
correspondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in the
larder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on any
vessel that would take able-bodied seamen. He must be excused from
commanding, because he had been assigned to shore duty. Carmen and Miss
Tavish wrote that it was unfair to leave them to sustain all the
popularity and notoriety of the shipwreck, and that he owed it to the
public to publish a statement, in reply to the insinuations of the
newspapers, in regard to the sea-worthiness of the yacht and the object
of this voyage. Jack replied that the only object of the voyage was to
relieve the tedium of Bar Harbor, and, having accomplished this, he would
present the vessel to Miss Tavish if she would navigate it back to the
city.
The golden autumn days by the sea were little disturbed by these echoes
of another life, which seemed at the moment to be a very shallow one.
Yet the time was not without its undertone of anxieties, of grave perils
that seemed to sanctify it and heighten its pleasures of hope. Jack saw
and comprehended for the first time in his life the real nature of a pure
woman, the depths of tenderness and self-abnegation, the heroism and calm
trust and the nobility of an unworldly life. No wonder that he stood a
little in awe of it, and days when he wandered down on the beach, with
only the waves for company, or sat smoking in the arbor, with an unread
book in his hand, his own career seemed petty and empty. Such moods,
however, are not uncommon in any life, and are not of necessity fruitful.
It need not be supposed that Jack took it too seriously, on the one hand,
or, on the other, that a vision of such a woman's soul is ever without
influence.
By the end of October they returned to town, Jack, and Edith with a new
and delicate attractiveness, and young Fletcher Delancy the most
wonderful and important personage probably who came to town that season.
It seemed to Edith that his advent would be universally remarked, and
Jack felt relieved when the boy was safely housed out of the public gaze.
Yes, to Edith's inexpressible joy it was a boy, and while Jack gallantly
said that a girl would have suited him just as well, he was conscious of
an increased pride when he announced the sex to his friends. This
undervaluation of women at the start is one of the mysteries of life.
And until women themselves change their point of view, it is to be feared
that legislation will not accomplish all that many of them wish.
"So it is a boy. I congratulate you," was the exclamation of Major
Fairfax the first time Jack went down to the Union.
"I'm glad, Major, to have your approval."
"Oh, it's what is expected, that's all. For my part, I prefer girls.
The announcement of boys is more expensive."
Jack understood, and it turned out in all the clubs that he had hit upon
the most expensive sex in the view of responding to congratulations.
"It used to seem to me," said the Major, "that I must have a male heir to
my estates. But, somehow, as the years go on, I feel more like being an
heir myself. If I had married and had a boy, he would have crowded me
out by this time; whereas, if it had been a girl, I should no doubt have
been staying at her place in Lenox this summer instead of being
shipwrecked on that desert island. There is nothing, my dear boy, like a
girl well invested."
"You speak with the feelings of a father."
"I speak, sir, from observation. I look at society as it is, not as it
would be if we had primogeniture and a landed aristocracy. A daughter
under our arrangements is more likely to be a comfort to her parent in
his declining years than a son."
"But you seem, Major, to have preferred a single life?"
"Circumstances--thank you, just a drop more--we are the creatures of
circumstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation and
misunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property was
encumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I have
reason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-blooded
in those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. She
was, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I have never seen
her equal."
This was more than the Major had ever revealed about his private life
before. He had created an illusion about himself which society accepted,
and in which he lived in apparent enjoyment of metropolitan existence.
This was due to a sanguine temperament and a large imagination. And he
had one quality that made him a favorite--a hearty enjoyment of the
prosperity of others. With regard to himself, his imagination was
creative, and Jack could not now tell whether this "most beautiful woman
of Virginia" was not evoked by the third glass, about which the Major
remarked, as he emptied it, that only this extraordinary occasion could
justify such an indulgence at this time of day.
The courtly old gentleman had inquired about madam--indeed, the second
glass had been dedicated to "mother and child"--and he exhibited a
friendly and almost paternal interest, as he always did, in Jack.
"By-the-way," he said, after a silence, "is Henderson in town?"
"I haven't heard. Why?"
"There's been a good deal of uneasiness in the Street as to what he is
doing. I hope you haven't got anything depending on him."
"I've got something in his stocks, if that is what you mean; but I don't
mind telling you I have made something."
"Well, it's none of my business, only the Henderson stocks have gone off
a little, as you know."
Jack knew, and he asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything
further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy,
for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the club he
wrote to Mavick.
He carried home with him a certain disquiet, to which he had been for
months a stranger. Even the sight of Edith, who met him with a happy
face, and dragged him away at once to see how lovely the baby looked
asleep, could not remove this. It seemed strange that such a little
thing should make a change, introduce an alien element into this domestic
peace. Jack was like some other men who lose heart not when they are
doing a doubtful thing, but when they have to face the consequences
--cases of misplaced conscience. The peace and content that he had left in
the house in the morning seemed to have gone out of it when he returned
at night.
Next day came a reassuring letter from Mavick.
Henderson was going on as usual. It was only a little bear movement,
which wouldn't amount to anything. Still, day after day, the bears kept
clawing down, and Jack watched the stock-list with increasing eagerness.
He couldn't decide to sacrifice anything as long as he had a margin of
profit.
In this state of mind it was impossible to consider any of the plans he
had talked over with Edith before the baby was born. Inquiries he did
make about some sort of position or regular occupation, and these he
reported to Edith; but his heart was not in it.
As the days went by there was a little improvement in his stocks, and his
spirits rose. But this mood was no more favorable than the other for
beginning a new life, nor did there seem to be, as he went along, any
need of it. He had an appearance of being busy every day; he rose late
and went late to bed. It was the old life. Stocks down, there was a
necessity of bracing up with whomever he met at any of the three or four
clubs in which he lounged in the afternoon; and stocks up, there was
reason for celebrating that fact in the same way.
It was odd how soon he became accustomed to consider himself and to be
regarded as the father of a family. That, also, like his marriage,
seemed something done, and in a manner behind him. There was a
commonplaceness about the situation. To Edith it was a great event. To
Jack it was a milestone in life. He was proud of the boy; he was proud
of Edith. "I tell you, fellows," he would say at the club, "it's a great
thing," and so on, in a burst of confidence, and he was quite sincere in
this. But he preferred to be at the club and say these things rather
than pass the same hours with his adorable family. He liked to think
what he would do for that family--what luxuries he could procure for
them, how they should travel and see the world. There wasn't a better
father anywhere than Jack at this period. And why shouldn't a man of
family amuse himself? Because he was happy in his family he needn't
change all the habits of his life.
Presently he intended to look about him for something to do that would
satisfy Edith and fill up his time; but meantime he drifted on,
alternately anxious and elated, until the season opened. The Blunts and
the Van Dams and the Chesneys and the Tavishes and Mrs. Henderson had
called, invitations had poured in, subscriptions were asked, studies and
gayeties were projected, and the real business of life was under way.
XV
To the nurse of the Delancy boy and to his mother he was by no means an
old story or merely an incident of the year. He was an increasing
wonder--new every morning, and exciting every evening. He was the centre
of a world of solicitude and adoration. It would be scarcely too much to
say that his coming into the world promised a new era, and his traits,
his likes and dislikes, set a new standard in his court. If he had
apprehended his position his vanity would have outgrown his curiosity
about the world, but he displayed no more consciousness of his royalty
than a kicking Infanta of Spain. This was greatly to his credit in the
opinion of the nurse, who devoted herself to the baby with that
enthusiasm of women for infants which fortunately never fails, and won
the heart of Edith by her worship. And how much they found to say about
this marvel! To hear from the nurse, over and over again, what the baby
had done and had not done, in a given hour, was to Edith like a fresh
chapter out of an exciting romance.
And the boy's biographer is inclined to think that he had rare powers of
discrimination, for one day when Carmen had called and begged to be
permitted to go up into the nursery, and had asked to take him in her
arms just for a moment, notwithstanding her soft dress and her caressing
manner, Fletcher had made a wry face and set up a howl. "How much he
looks like his father" (he didn't look like anything), Carmen said,
handing him over to the nurse. What she thought was that in manner and
disposition he was totally unlike Jack Delancy.
When they came down-stairs, Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the drawing-room.
"I've had such a privilege, Mrs. Blunt, seeing the baby!" cried Carmen,
in her sweetest manner.
"It must have been," that lady rejoined, stiffly.
Carmen, who hated to be seen through, of all things, did not know whether
to resent this or not. But Edith hastened to the rescue of her guest.
"I think it's a privilege."
"And you know, Mrs. Blunt," said Carmen, recovering herself and smiling,
"that I must have some excitement this dull season."
"I see," said Mrs. Blunt, with no relaxation of her manner; "we are all
grateful to Mrs. Delancy."
"Mrs. Henderson does herself injustice," Edith again interposed. "I can
assure you she has a great talent for domesticity."
Carmen did not much fancy this apology for her, but she rejoined: "Yes,
indeed. I'm going to cultivate it."
"How is this privileged person?" Mrs. Blunt asked.
"You shall see," said Edith. "I am glad you came, for I wanted very much
to consult you. I was going to send for you."
"Well, here I am. But I didn't come about the baby. I wanted to consult
you. We miss you, dear, every day." And then Mrs. Blunt began to speak
about some social and charitable arrangements, but stopped suddenly."
I'll see the baby first. Good-morning, Mrs. Henderson." And she left
the room.
Carmen felt as much left out socially as about the baby, and she also
rose to go.
"Don't go," said Edith. "What kind of a summer have you had?"
"Oh, very good. Some shipwrecks."
"And Mr. Henderson? Is he well?"
"Perfectly. He is away now. Husbands, you know, haven't so much talent
for domesticity as we have."
"That depends," Edith replied, simply, but with that spirit and air of
breeding before which Carmen always inwardly felt defeat--"that depends
very much upon ourselves."
Naturally, with this absorption in the baby, Edith was slow to resume her
old interests. Of course she knew of the illness of Father Damon, and
the nurse, who was from the training-school in which Dr. Leigh was an
instructor, and had been selected for this important distinction by the
doctor, told her from time to time of affairs on the East Side. Over
there the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open;
work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained and
rent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only a
climatic increase of hardships. Even an epidemic scare does not
essentially vary the daily monotony, which is accepted with a dogged
fatality:
There had been no vacation for Ruth Leigh, and she jokingly said, when at
length she got a half-hour for a visit to Edith, that she would hardly
know what to do with one if she had it.
"We have got through very well," she added. "We always dread the summer,
and we always dread the winter. Science has not yet decided which is the
more fatal, decayed vegetables or unventilated rooms. City residence
gives both a fair chance at the poor."
"Are not the people learning anything?" Edith asked.
"Not much, except to bear it, I am sorry to say. Even Father Damon--"
"Is he at work again? Do you see him often?"
"Yes, occasionally."
"I should so like to see him. But I interrupted you."
"Well, Father Damon has come to see that nothing can be done without
organization. The masses"--and there was an accent of bitterness in her
use of the phrase--"must organize and fight for anything they want."
"Does Father Damon join in this?"
"Oh, he has always been a member of the Labor League. Now he has been at
work with the Episcopal churches of the city, and got them to agree, when
they want workmen for any purpose, to employ only union men."
"Isn't that," Edith exclaimed, "a surrender of individual rights and a
great injustice to men not in the unions?"
"You would see it differently if you were in the struggle. If the
working-men do not stand by each other, where are they to look for help?
What have the Christians of this city done?" and the little doctor got up
and began to pace the room. "Charities? Yes, little condescending
charities. And look at the East Side! Is its condition any better?
I tell you, Mrs. Delancy, I don't believe in charities--in any
charities."
"It seems to me," said Edith, with a smile calculated to mollify this
vehemence, "that you are a standing refutation of your own theory."
"Me? No, indeed. I'm paid by the dispensary. And I make my patients
pay--when they are able."
"So I have heard," Edith retorted. "Your bills must be a terror to the
neighborhood."
"You may laugh. But I'm establishing a reputation over there as a
working-woman, and if I have any influence, or do any little good, it's
owing to that fact. Do you think they care anything about Father Damon's
gospel?"
"I should be sorry to think they did not," Edith said, gravely.
"Well, very little they care. They like the man because they think he
shares their feelings, and does not sympathize with them because they are
different from him. That is the only kind of gospel that is good for
anything over there."
"I don't think Father Damon would agree with you in that."
"Of course he would not. He's as mediaeval as any monk. But then he is
not blind. He sees that it is never anything but personal influence that
counts. Poor fellow," and the doctor's voice softened, "he'll kill
himself with his ascetic notions. He is trying to take up the burden of
this life while struggling under the terror of another."
"But he must be doing a great deal of good."
"Oh, I don't know. Nothing seems to do much good. But his presence is
a great comfort. That is something. And I'm glad he is going about now
rousing opposition to what is, rather than all the time preaching
submission to the lot of this life for the sake of a reward somewhere
else. That's a gospel for the rich."
Edith was accustomed to hear Ruth Leigh talk in this bitter strain when
this subject was introduced, and she contrived to turn the conversation
upon what she called practical work, and then to ask some particulars of
Father Damon's sudden illness.
"He did rest," the doctor said, "for a little, in his way. But he will
not spare himself, and he cannot stand it. I wish you could induce him
to come here often--to do anything for diversion. He looks so worn."
There was in the appeal to Edith a note of personal interest which her
quick heart did not fail to notice. And the thought came to her with a
painful apprehension. Poor thing! Poor Father Damon!
Does not each of them have to encounter misery enough without this?
Doesn't life spare anybody?
She told her apprehension to Jack when he came home.
Jack gave a long whistle. "That is a deadlock!"
"His vows, and her absolute materialism! Both of them would go to the
stake for what they believe, or don't believe. It troubles me very
much."
"But," said Jack, "it's interesting. It's what they call a situation.
There. I didn't mean to make light of it. I don't believe there is
anything in it. But it would be comical, right here in New York."
"It would be tragical."
"Comedy usually is. I suppose it's the human nature in it. That is so
difficult to get rid of. But I thought the missionary business was safe.
Though, do you know, Edith, I should think better of both of them for
having some human feeling. By-the-way, did Dr. Leigh say anything about
Henderson?"
"No. What?"
"He has given Father Damon ten thousand dollars. It's in strict secrecy,
but Father Damon said I might tell you. He said it was providential."
"I thought Mr. Henderson was wholly unscrupulous and cold as ice."
"Yes, he's got a reputation for freeze-outs. If the Street knew this it
would say it was insurance money. And he is so cynical that he wouldn't
care what the Street said."
"Do you think it came about through Mrs. Henderson?"
"I don't think so. She was speaking of Father Damon this morning in the
Loan Exhibition. I don't believe she knows anything about it. Henderson
is a good deal shut up in himself. They say at the Union that years ago
he used to do a good many generous things--that he is a great deal harder
than he used to be."
This talk was before dinner. She did not ask anything now about Carmen,
though she knew that Jack had fallen into his old habit of seeing much of
her. He was less and less at home, except at dinner-time, and he was
often restless, and, she saw, often annoyed. When he was at home he
tried to make up for his absence by extra tenderness and consideration
for Edith and the boy. And this effort, and its evidence of a double if
not divided life, wounded her more than the neglect. One night, when he
came home late, he had been so demonstrative about the baby that Edith
had sent the nurse out of the room until she could coax Jack to go into
his own apartment. His fits of alternate good-humor and depression she
tried to attribute to his business, to which he occasionally alluded
without confiding in her.
The next morning Father Damon came in about luncheon-time. He apologized
for not coming before since her return, but he had been a little upset,
and his work was more and more interesting. His eyes were bright and his
manner had quite the usual calm, but he looked pale and thinner, and so
exhausted that Edith ran immediately for a glass of wine, and began to
upbraid him for not taking better care of himself.
"I take too much care of myself. We all do. The only thing I've got to
give is myself."
"But you will not last."
"That is of little moment; long or short, a man can only give himself.
Our Lord was not here very long." And then Father Damon smiled, and said
"My dear friend, I'm really doing very well. Of course I get tired.
Then I come up again. And every now and then I get a lift. Did Jack
tell you about Henderson?"
"Yes. Wasn't it strange?"
"I never was more surprised. He sent for me to come to his office.
Without any circumlocution, he asked me how I was getting on, and, before
I could answer, he said, in the driest business way, that he had been
thinking over a little plan, and perhaps I could help him. He had a
little money he wanted to invest--
"'In our mission chapel?' I asked.
"'No,' he said, without moving a muscle. 'Not that. I don't know much
about chapels, Father Damon. But I've been hearing what you are doing,
and it occurred to me that you must come across a good many cases not in
the regular charities that you could help judiciously, get them over hard
spots, without encouraging dependence. I'm going to put ten thousand
dollars into your hands, if you'll be bothered with it, to use at your
discretion.'
"I was taken aback, and I suppose I showed it, and I said that was a
great deal of money to intrust to one man.
"Henderson showed a little impatience. It depended upon the man. That
was his lookout. The money would be deposited, he said, in bank to my
order, and he asked me for my signature that he could send with the
deposit.
"Of course I thanked him warmly, and said I hoped I could do some good
with it. He did not seem to pay much attention to what I was saying. He
was looking out of the window to the bare trees in the court back of his
office, and his hands were moving the papers on his table aimlessly
about.
"'I shall know,' he said, 'when you have drawn this out. I've got a
fancy for keeping a little fund of this sort there.' And then he added,
still not looking at me, but at the dead branches, 'You might call it the
Margaret Fund.'"
"That was the name of his first wife!" Edith exclaimed.
"Yes, I remember. I said I would, and began to thank him again as I rose
from my chair. He was still looking away, and saying, as if to himself,
'I think she would like that.' And then he turned, and, in his usual
abrupt office manner, said: 'Good-morning, good-morning. I am very much
obliged to you.'"
"Wasn't it all very strange!" Edith spoke, after a moment. "I didn't
suppose he cared. Do you think it was just sentiment?"
"I shouldn't wonder. Men like Henderson do queer things. In the hearts
of such hardened men there are sometimes roots of sentiment that you
wouldn't suspect. But I don't know. The Lord somehow looks out for his
poor."
Notwithstanding this windfall of charity, Father Damon seemed somewhat
depressed. "I wish," he said, after a pause, "he had given it to the
mission. We are so poor, and modern philanthropy all runs in other
directions. The relief of temporary suffering has taken the place of the
care of souls."
"But Dr. Leigh said that you were interesting the churches in the labor
unions."
"Yes. It is an effort to do something. The church must put herself into
sympathetic relations with these people, or she will accomplish nothing.
To get them into the church we must take up their burdens. But it is a
long way round. It is not the old method of applying the gospel to men's
sins."
"And yet," Edith insisted, "you must admit that such people as Dr. Leigh
are doing a good work."
Father Damon did not reply immediately. Presently he asked: "Do you
think, Mrs. Delancy, that Dr. Leigh has any sympathy with the higher
life, with spiritual things? I wish I could think so."
"With the higher life of humanity, certainly."
"Ah, that is too vague. I sometimes feel that she and those like her are
the worst opponents to our work. They substitute humanitarianism for the
gospel."
"Yet I know of no one who works more than Ruth Leigh in the
self-sacrificing spirit of the Master."
"Whom she denies!" The quick reply came with a flush in his pale face,
and he instantly arose and walked away to the window and stood for some
moments in silence. When he turned there was another expression in his
eyes and a note of tenderness in his voice that contradicted the severity
of the priest. It was the man that spoke. "Yes, she is the best woman I
ever knew. God help me! I fear I am not fit for my work."
This outburst of Father Damon to her, so unlike his calm and trained
manner, surprised Edith, although she had already some suspicion of his
state of mind. But it would not have surprised her if she had known more
of men, the necessity of the repressed and tortured soul for sympathy,
and that it is more surely to be found in the heart of a pure woman than
elsewhere.
But there was nothing that she could say, as she took his hand to bid him
good-by, except the commonplace that Dr. Leigh had expressed anxiety that
he was overworking, and that for the sake of his work he must be more
prudent. Yet her eyes expressed the sympathy she did not put in words.
Father Damon understood this, and he went away profoundly grateful for
her forbearance of verbal expression as much as for her sympathy. But he
did not suspect that she needed sympathy quite as much as he did, and
consequently he did not guess the extent of her self-control. It would
have been an immense relief to have opened her heart to him--and to whom
could she more safely do this than to a priest set apart from all human
entanglements?--and to have asked his advice. But Edith's peculiar
strength--or was it the highest womanly instinct?--lay in her discernment
of the truth that in one relation of life no confidences are possible
outside of that relation except to its injury, and that to ask
interference is pretty sure to seal its failure. As its highest joys
cannot be participated in, so its estrangements cannot be healed by any
influence outside of its sacred compact. To give confidence outside is
to destroy the mutual confidence upon which the relation rests, and
though interference may patch up livable compromises, the bloom of love
and the joy of life are not in them. Edith knew that if she could not
win her own battle, no human aid could win it for her.
And it was all the more difficult because it was vague and indefinite, as
the greater part of domestic tragedies are. For the most part life goes
on with external smoothness, and the public always professes surprise
when some accident, a suit at law, a sudden death, a contested will, a
slip from apparent integrity, or family greed or feminine revenge, turns
the light of publicity upon a household, to find how hollow the life has
been; in the light of forgotten letters, revealing check-books, servants'
gossip, and long-established habits of aversion or forbearance, how much
sordidness and meanness!
Was not everything going on as usual in the Delancy house and in the
little world of which it was a part? If there had been any open neglect
or jealousy, any quarrel or rupture, or any scene, these could be
described. These would have an interest to the biographer and perhaps to
the public. But at this period there was nothing of this sort to tell.
There were no scenes. There were no protests or remonstrances or
accusations, nor to the world was there any change in the daily life of
these two.
It was more pitiful even than that. Here was a woman who had set her
heart in all the passionate love of a pure ideal, and day by day she felt
that the world, the frivolous world, with its low and selfish aims, was
too strong for her, and that the stream was wrecking her life because it
was bearing Jack away from her. What could one woman do against the
accepted demoralizations of her social life? To go with them, not to
care, to accept Jack's idle, good-natured, easy philosophy of life and
conduct, would not that have insured a peaceful life? Why shouldn't she
conform and float, and not mind?
To be sure, a wise woman, who has been blessed or cursed with a long
experience of life, would have known that such a course could not
forever, or for long, secure happiness, and that a man's love ultimately
must rest upon a profound respect for his wife and a belief in her
nobility. Perhaps Edith did not reason in this way. Probably it was her
instinct for what was pure and true-showing, indeed, the quality of her
love-that guided her.
To Jack's friends he was much the same as usual. He simply went on in
his ante-marriage ways. Perhaps he drank a little more, perhaps he was a
little more reckless at cards, and it was certain that his taste for
amusing himself in second-hand book-shops and antiquity collections had
weakened. His talked-of project for some regular occupation seemed to
have been postponed, although he said to himself that it was only
postponed until his speculations, which kept him in a perpetual fever,
should put him in a position to command a business.
Meantime he did not neglect social life--that is, the easy, tolerant
company which lived as he liked to live. There was at first some
pretense of declining invitations which Edith could not accept, but he
soon fell into the habit of a man whose family has temporarily gone
abroad, with the privileges of a married man, without the
responsibilities of a bachelor. Edith could see that he took great
credit to himself for any evenings he spent at home, and perhaps he had a
sort of support in the idea that he was sacrificing himself to his
family. Major Fairfax, whom Edith distrusted as a misleader of youth,
did not venture to interfere with Jack again, but he said to himself that
it was a blank shame that with such a wife he should go dangling about
with women like Carmen and Miss Tavish, not that the Major himself had
any objection to their society, but, hang it all, that was no reason why
Jack should be a fool.
In midwinter Jack went to Washington on business. It was necessary to
see Mavick, and Mr. Henderson, who was also there. To spend a few weeks
at the capital, in preparation for Lent, has become a part of the program
of fashion. There can be met people like-minded from all parts of the
Union, and there is gayety, and the entertainment to be had in new
acquaintances, without incurring any of the responsibilities of social
continuance. They meet there on neutral ground. Half Jack's set had
gone over or were going. Young Van Dam would go with him. It will be
only for a few days, Jack had said, gayly, when he bade Edith good-by,
and she must be careful not to let the boy forget him.
It was quite by accident, apparently, that in the same train were the
Chesneys, Miss Tavish, and Carmen going over to join her husband. This
gave the business expedition the air of an excursion. And indeed at the
hotel where they stayed this New York contingent made something of an
impression, promising an addition to the gayety of the season, and
contributing to the importance of the house as a centre of fashion.
Henderson's least movements were always chronicled and speculated on,
and for years he had been one of the stock subjects, out of which even
the dullest interviewers, who watch the hotel registers in all parts of
the country, felt sure that they could make an acceptable paragraph. The
arrival of his wife, therefore, was a newspaper event.
They said in Washington at the time that Mrs. Henderson was one of the
most fascinating of women, amiable, desirous to please, approachable, and
devoted to the interests of her husband. If some of the women, residents
in established society, were a little shy of her, if some, indeed,
thought her dangerous--women are always thinking this of each other,
and surely they ought to know-nothing of this appeared in the reports.
The men liked her. She had so much vivacity, such esprit, she understood
men so well, and the world, and could make allowances, and was always an
entertaining companion. More than one Senator paid marked court to her,
more than one brilliant young fellow of the House thought himself
fortunate if he sat next her at dinner, and even cabinet officers waited
on her at supper. It could not be doubted that a smile and a
confidential or a witty remark from Mrs. Henderson brightened many an
evening. Wherever she went her charming toilets were fully described,
and the public knew as well as her jewelers the number and cost of her
diamonds, her necklaces, her tiaras. But this was for the world and for
state occasions. At home she liked simplicity. And this was what
impressed the reporters when, in the line of their public duty, they were
admitted to her presence. With them she was very affable, and she made
them feel that they could almost be classed with her friends, and that
they were her guardians against the vulgar publicity, which she disliked
and shrank from.
There went abroad, therefore, an impression of her amiability,
her fabulous wealth in jewels and apparel, her graciousness and her
cleverness and her domesticity. Her manners seemed to the reporters
those of a "lady," and of this both her wit and freedom from prudishness
and her courteous treatment of them convinced them. And the best of all
this was that while it was said that Henderson was one of the boldest and
shrewdest of operators, and a man to be feared in the Street, he was in
his family relations one of the most generous and kind-hearted of men.
Henderson himself had not much time for the frivolities of the season,
and he evaded all but the more conspicuous social occasions, at which
Carmen, sometimes with a little temper, insisted that he should accompany
her. "You would come here," he once said, "when you knew I was immersed
in most perplexing business."
"And now I am here," she had replied, in a tone equally wanting in
softness, "you have got to make the best of me."
Was Jack happy in the whirl he was in? Some days exceedingly so. Some
days he sulked, and some days he threw himself with recklessness born of
artificial stimulants into the always gay and rattling moods of Miss
Tavish. Somehow he could get no nearer to Henderson or to Mavick than
when he was in New York. Not that he could accuse Mavick of trying to
conceal anything; Mavick bore to him always the open, "all right"
attitude, but there were things that he did not understand.
And then Carmen? Was she a little less dependent on him, in this wide
horizon, than in New York? And had he noticed a little disposition to
patronize on two or three occasions? It was absurd. He laughed at
himself for such an idea. Old Eschelle's daughter patronize him!
And yet there was something. She was very confidential with Mavick.
They seemed to have a great deal in common. It so happened that even in
the little expeditions of sightseeing these two were thrown much
together, and at times when the former relations of Jack and Carmen
should have made them comrades. They had a good deal to say to each
other, and momentarily evidently serious things, and at receptions Jack
had interrupted their glances of intelligence. But what stuff this was!
He jealous of the attentions of his friend to another man's wife! If she
was a coquette, what did it matter to him? Certainly he was not jealous.
But he was irritated.
One day after a round of receptions, in which Jack had been specially
disgruntled, and when he was alone in the drawing-room of the hotel with
Carmen, his manner was so positively rude to her that she could not but
notice it. There was this trait of boyishness in Jack, and it was one of
the weaknesses that made him loved, that he always cried out when he was
hurt.
Did Carmen resent this? Did she upbraid him for his manner? Did she
apologize, as if she had done anything to provoke it? She sank down
wearily in a chair and said:
"I'm so tired. I wish I were back in New York."
"You don't act like it," Jack replied, gruffly.
"No. You don't understand. And now you want to make me more miserable.
See here, Mr. Delancy," and she started up in her seat and turned to him,
"you are a man of honor. Would you advise me to make an enemy of Mr.
Mavick, knowing all that he does know about Mr. Henderson's affairs?"
"I don't see what that has got to do with it," said Jack, wavering.
"Lately your manner--"
"Nonsense!" cried Carmen, springing up and approaching Jack with a smile
of animation and trust, and laying her hand on his shoulder. "We are
old, old friends. And I have just confided to you what I wouldn't to any
other living being. There!" And looking around at the door, she tapped
him lightly on the cheek and ran out of the room.
Whatever you might say of Carmen, she had this quality of a wise person,
that she never cut herself loose from one situation until she was
entirely sure of a better position.
For one reason or another Jack's absence was prolonged. He wrote often,
he made bright comments on the characters and peculiarities of the
capital, and he said that he was tired to death of the everlasting whirl
and scuffle. People plunged in the social whirlpool always say they are
weary of it, and they complain bitterly of its exactions and its tax on
their time and strength. Edith judged, especially from the complaints,
that her husband was enjoying himself. She felt also that his letters
were in a sense perfunctory, and gave her only the surface of his life.
She sought in vain in them for those evidences of spontaneous love, of
delight in writing to her of all persons in the world, the eagerness of
the lover that she recalled in letters written in other days. However
affectionate in expression, these were duty letters. Edith was not
alone. She had no lack of friends, who came and went in the common round
of social exchange, and for many of them she had a sincere affection.
And there were plenty of relatives on the father's and on the mother's
side. But for the most part they were old-fashioned, home-keeping
New-Yorkers, who were sufficient to themselves, and cared little for the
set into which Edith's marriage had more definitely placed her. In any
real trouble she would not have lacked support. She was deemed fortunate
in her marriage, and in her apparent serene prosperity it was believed
that she was happy. If she had had mother or sister or brother, it is
doubtful if she would have made either a confidant of her anxieties, but
high-spirited and self-reliant as she was, there were days when she
longed with intolerable heartache for the silent sympathy of a mother's
presence.
It is singular how lonely a woman of this nature can be in a gay and
friendly world. She had her interests, to be sure. As she regained her
strength she took up her social duties, and she tried to resume her
studies, her music, her reading, and she occupied herself more and more
with the charities and the fortunes of her friends who were giving their
lives to altruistic work. But there was a sense of unreality in all
this. The real thing was the soul within, the longing, loving woman
whose heart was heavy and unsatisfied. Jack was so lovable, he had in
his nature so much nobility, if the world did not kill it, her life might
be so sweet, and so completely fulfill her girlish dreams. All these
schemes of a helpful, altruistic life had been in her dream, but how
empty it was without the mutual confidence, the repose in the one human
love for which she cared.
Though she was not alone, she had no confidant. She could have none.
What was there to confide? There was nothing to be done. There was no
flagrant wrong or open injustice. Some women in like circumstances
become bitter and cynical. Others take their revenge in a career
reckless, but within social conventions, going their own way in a sort of
matrimonial truce. These are not noticeable tragedies. They are things
borne with a dumb ache of the heart. There are lives into which the show
of spring comes, but without the song of birds or the scent of flowers.
They are endured bravely, with a heroism for which the world does not
often give them credit. Heaven only knows how many noble women-noble in
this if in nothing else--carry through life this burden of an unsatisfied
heart, mocked by the outward convention of love.
But Edith had one confidant--the boy. And he was perfectly safe; he
would reveal nothing. There were times when he seemed to understand,
and whether he did or not she poured out her heart to him. Often in the
twilight she sat by him in this silent communion. If he were asleep--and
he was not troubled with insomnia--he was still company. And when he was
awake, his efforts to communicate the dawning ideas of the queer world
into which he had come were a never-failing delight. He wanted so many
more things than he could ask for, which it was his mother's pleasure to
divine; later on he would ask for so many things he could not get. The
nurse said that he had uncommon strength of will.
These were happy hours, imagining what the boy would be, planning what
she would make his life, hours enjoyed as a traveler enjoys wayside
flowers, snatched before an approaching storm. It is a pity, the nurse
would say, that his father cannot see him now. And at the thought Edith
could only see the child through tears, and a great weight rested on her
heart in all this happiness.
XVI
When Father Damon parted from Edith he seemed to himself strengthened in
his spirit. His momentary outburst had shown him where he stood-the
strength of his fearful temptation. To see it was to be able to conquer
it. He would humiliate himself; he would scourge himself; he would fast
and pray; he would throw himself more unreservedly into the service of
his Master. He had been too compromising with sin and sinners, and with
his own weakness and sin, the worst of all.
The priest walked swiftly through the wintry streets, welcoming as a sort
of penance the biting frost which burned his face and penetrated his
garments. He little heeded the passers in the streets, those who hurried
or those who loitered, only, if he met or passed a woman or a group of
girls, he instinctively drew himself away and walked more rapidly. He
strode on uncompromisingly, and his clean-shaved face was set in rigid
lines. Those who saw him pass would have said that there went an ascetic
bent on judgment. Many who did know him, and who ordinarily would have
saluted him, sure of a friendly greeting, were repelled by his stern face
and determined air, and made no sign. The father had something on his
mind.
As he turned into Rivington Street there approached him from the opposite
direction a girl, walking slowly and undecidedly. When he came near her
she looked up, with an appealing recognition. In a flash of the quick
passing he thought he knew her--a girl who had attended his mission and
whom he had not seen for several months-but he made no sign and passed
on.
"Father Damon!"
He turned about short at the sound of the weak, pleading voice, but with
no relaxation of his severe, introverted mood. "Well?"
It was the girl he remembered. She wore a dress of silk that had once
been fine, and over it an ample cloak that had quite lost its freshness,
and a hat still gay with cheap flowers. Her face, which had a sweet and
almost innocent expression, was drawn and anxious. The eyes were those
of a troubled and hunted animal.
"I thought," she said, hesitatingly, "you didn't know me."
"Yes, I know you. Why haven't you been at the mission lately?"
"I couldn't come. I--"
"I'm afraid you have fallen into bad ways."
She did not answer immediately. She looked away, and, still avoiding his
gaze, said, timidly: "I thought I would tell you, Father Damon, that I'm
--that I'm in trouble. I don't know what to do."
"Have you repented of your sin?" asked he, with a little softening of his
tone. "Did you want to come to me for help?"
"He's deserted me," said the girl, looking down, absorbed in her own
misery, and not heeding his question.
"Ah, so that is what you are sorry for?" The severe, reproving tone had
come back to his voice.
"And they don't want me in the shop any more."
The priest hesitated. Was he always to preach against sin, to strive to
extirpate it, and yet always to make it easy for the sinner? This girl
must realize her guilt before he could do her any good. "Are you sorry
for what you have done?"
"Yes, I'm sorry," she replied. Wasn't to be in deep trouble to be
sorry? And then she looked up, and continued with the thought in her
mind, "I didn't know who else to go to."
"Well, my child, if you are sorry, and want to lead a different life,
come to me at the mission and I will try to help you."
The priest, with a not unkindly good-by, passed on. The girl stood a
moment irresolute, and then went on her way heavily and despondent.
What good would it do her to go to the mission now?
Three days later Dr. Leigh was waiting at the mission chapel to speak
with the rector after the vesper service. He came out pale and weary,
and the doctor hesitated to make known her errand when she saw how
exhausted he was.
"Did you wish me for anything?" he asked, after the rather forced
greeting.
"If you feel able. There is a girl at the Woman's Hospital who wants to
see you."
"Who is it?"
"It is the girl you saw on the street the other afternoon; she said she
had spoken to you."
"She promised to come to the mission."
"She couldn't. I met the poor thing the same afternoon. She looked so
aimless and forlorn that, though I did not remember her at first, I
thought she might be ill, and spoke to her, and asked her what was the
matter. At first she said nothing except that she was out of work and
felt miserable; but the next moment she broke down completely, and said
she hadn't a friend in the world."
"Poor thing!" said the priest, with a pang of self-reproach.
"There was nothing to do but to take her to the hospital, and there she
has been."
"Is she very ill?"
"She may live, the house surgeon says. But she was very weak for such a
trial."
Little more was said as they walked along, and when they reached the
hospital, Father Damon was shown without delay into the ward where the
sick girl lay. Dr. Leigh turned back from the door, and the nurse took
him to the bedside. She lay quite still in her cot, wan and feeble, with
every sign of having encountered a supreme peril.
She turned her head on the low pillow as Father Damon spoke, saying he
was very glad he could come to her, and hoped she was feeling better.
"I knew you would come," she said, feebly. "The nurse says I'm better.
But I wanted to tell you--" And she stopped.
"Yes, I know," he said. "The Lord is very good. He will forgive all
your sins now, if you repent and trust Him."
"I hope--" she began. "I'm so weak. If I don't live I want him to know."
"Want whom to know?" asked the father, bending over her.
She signed for him to come closer, and then whispered a name.
"Only if I never see him again, if you see him, you will tell him that I
was always true to him. He said such hard words. I was always true."
"I promise," said the father, much moved. "But now, my child, you ought
to think of yourself, of your--"
"He is dead. Didn't they tell you? There is nothing any more."
The nurse approached with a warning gesture that the interview was too
prolonged.
Father Damon knelt for a moment by the bedside, uttering a hardly
articulate prayer. The girl's eyes were closed. When he rose she opened
them with a look of gratitude, and with the sign of blessing he turned
away.
He intended to hasten from the house. He wanted to be alone. His
trouble seemed to him greater than that of the suffering girl. What had
he done? What was he in thought better than she? Was this intruding
human element always to cross the purpose of his spiritual life?
As he was passing through the wide hallway the door of the reception-room
was open, and he saw Dr. Leigh seated at the table, with a piece of work
in her hands. She looked up, and stopped him with an unspoken inquiry in
her face. It was only civil to pause a moment and tell her about the
patient, and as he stepped within the room she rose.
"You should rest a moment, Father Damon. I know what these scenes are."
Yielding weakly, as he knew, he took the offered chair. But he raised
his hand in refusal of the glass of wine which she had ready for him on
the table, and offered before he could speak.
"But you must," she said, with a smile. "It is the doctor's
prescription."
She did not look like a doctor. She had laid aside the dusty
walking-dress, the business-jacket, the ugly little hat of felt, the
battered reticule. In her simple house costume she was the woman,
homelike, sympathetic, gentle, with the everlasting appeal of the strong
feminine nature. It was not a temptress who stood before him, but a
helpful woman, in whose kind eyes-how beautiful they were in this moment
of sympathy--there was trust--and rest--and peace.
"So," she said, when he had taken the much-needed draught; "in the
hospital you must obey the rules, one of which is to let no one sink in
exhaustion."
She had taken her seat now, and resumed her work. Father Damon was
looking at her, seeing the woman, perhaps, as he never had seen her
before, a certain charm in her quiet figure and modest self-possession,
while the thought of her life, of her labors, as he had seen her now for
months and months of entire sacrifice of self, surged through his brain
in a whirl of emotion that seemed sweeping him away. But when he spoke
it was of the girl, and as if to himself.
"I was sorry to let her go that day. Friendless, I should have known.
I did know. I should have felt. You--"
"No," she said, gently, interrupting him; "that was my business. You
should not accuse yourself. It was a physician's business."
"Yes, a physician--the great Physician. The Master never let the sin
hinder his compassion for the sinner."
To this she could make no reply. Presently she looked up and said: "But
I am sure your visit was a great comfort to the poor girl! She was very
eager to see you."
"I do not know."
His air was still abstracted. He was hardly thinking of the girl, after
all, but of himself, of the woman who sat before him. It seemed to him
that he would have given the world to escape--to fly from her, to fly
from himself. Some invisible force held him--a strong, new, and yet not
new, emotion, a power that seemed to clutch his very life. He could not
think clearly about it. In all his discipline, in his consecration, in
his vows of separation from the world, there seemed to have been no
shield prepared for this. The human asserted itself, and came in,
overwhelming his guards and his barriers like a strong flood in the
spring-time of the year, breaking down all artificial contrivances.
"They reckon ill who leave me out," is the everlasting cry of the human
heart, the great passion of life, incarnate in the first man and the
first woman.
With a supreme effort of his iron will--is the Will, after all, stronger
than Love?--Father Damona rose. He stretched out his hand to say
farewell. She also stood, and she felt the hand tremble that held hers.
"God bless you!" he said. "You are so good."
He was going. He took her other hand, and was looking down upon her
face. She looked up, and their eyes met. It was for an instant, a
flash, glance for glance, as swift as the stab of daggers.
All the power of heaven and earth could not recall that glance nor undo
its revelations. The man and the woman stood face to face revealed.
He bent down towards her face. Affrighted by his passion, scarcely able
to stand in her sudden emotion, she started back. The action, the
instant of time, recalled him to himself. He dropped her hands, and was
gone. And the woman, her knees refusing any longer to support her, sank
into a chair, helpless, and saw him go, and knew in that moment the
height of a woman's joy, the depth of a woman's despair.
It had come to her! Steeled by her science, shielded by her
philanthropy, schooled in indifference to love, it had come to her!
And it was hopeless. Hopeless? It was absurd. Her life was determined.
In no event could it be in harmony with his opinions, with his religion,
which was dearer to him than life. There was a great gulf between them
which she could not pass unless she ceased to be herself. And he?
A severe priest! Vowed and consecrated against human passion! What a
government of the world--if there were any government--that could permit
such a thing! It was terrible.
And yet she was loved! That sang in her heart with all the pain, with
all the despair. And with it all was a great pity for him, alone, gone
into the wilderness, as it would seem to him, to struggle with his fierce
temptation.
It had come on darker as she sat there. The lamps were lighted, and she
was reminded of some visits she must make. She went, mechanically,
to her room to prepare for going. The old jacket, which she took up, did
look rather rusty. She went to the press--it was not much of a wardrobe
--and put on the one that was reserved for holidays. And the hat? Her
friends had often joked her about the hat, but now for the first time she
seemed to see it as it might appear to others. As she held it in her
hand, and then put it on before the mirror, she smiled a little, faintly,
at its appearance. And then she laid it aside for her better hat. She
never had been so long in dressing before. And in the evening, too, when
it could make no difference! It might, after all, be a little more
cheerful for her forlorn patients. Perhaps she was not conscious that
she was making selections, that she was paying a little more attention to
her toilet than usual. Perhaps it was only the woman who was conscious
that she was loved.
It would be difficult to say what emotion was uppermost in the mind of
Father Damon as he left the house--mortification, contempt of himself,
or horror. But there was a sense of escape, of physical escape, and the
imperative need of it, that quickened his steps almost into a run.
In the increasing dark, at this hour, in this quarter of the town, there
were comparatively few whose observation of him would recall him to
himself. He thought only of escape, and of escape from that quarter of
the city that was the witness of his labors and his failure. For the
moment to get away from this was the one necessity, and without reasoning
in the matter, only feeling, he was hurrying, stumbling in his haste,
northward. Before he went to the hospital he had been tired, physically
weary. He was scarcely conscious of it now; indeed, his body, his hated
body, seemed lighter, and the dominant spirit now awakened to contempt of
it had a certain pleasure in testing it, in drawing upon its vitality, to
the point of exhaustion if possible. It should be seen which was master.
His rapid pace presently brought him into one of the great avenues
leading to Harlem. That was the direction he wished to go. That was
where he knew, without making any decision, he must go, to the haven of
the house of his order, on the heights beyond Harlem. A train was just
clattering along on the elevated road above him. He could see the faces
at the windows, the black masses crowding the platforms. It went
pounding by as if it were freight from another world. He was in haste,
but haste to escape from himself. That way, bearing him along with other
people, and in the moving world, was to bring him in touch with humanity
again, and so with what was most hateful in himself. He must be alone.
But there was a deeper psychological reason than that for walking,
instead of availing himself of the swiftest method of escape. He was not
fleeing from justice or pursuit. When the mind is in torture and the
spirit is torn, the instinctive effort is to bodily activity, to force
physical exertion, as if there must be compensation for the mental strain
in the weariness of nature. The priest obeyed this instinct, as if it
were possible to walk away from himself, and went on, at first with
almost no sense of weariness.
And the shame! He could not bear to be observed. It seemed to him that
every one would see in his face that he was a recreant priest, perjured
and forsworn. And so great had been his spiritual pride! So removed he
had deemed himself from the weakness of humanity! And he had yielded at
the first temptation, and the commonest of all temptations! Thank God,
he had not quite yielded. He had fled. And yet, how would it have been
if Ruth Leigh had not had a moment of reserve, of prudent repulsion!
He groaned in anguish. The sin was in the intention. It was no merit of
his that he had not with a kiss of passion broken his word to his Lord
and lost his soul.
It was remorse that was driving him along the avenue; no room for any
other thought yet, or feeling. Perhaps it is true in these days that the
old-fashioned torture known as remorse is rarely experienced except under
the name of detection. But it was a reality with this highly sensitive
nature, with this conscience educated to the finest edge of feeling. The
world need never know his moment's weakness; Ruth Leigh he could trust as
he would have trusted his own sister to guard his honor--that was all
over--never, he was sure, would she even by a look recall the past;
but he knew how he had fallen, and the awful measure of his lapse from
loyalty to his Master. And how could he ever again stand before erring,
sinful men and women and speak about that purity which he had violated?
Could repentance, confession, penitence, wipe away this stain?
As he went on, his mind in a whirl of humiliation, self-accusation, and
contempt, at length he began to be conscious of physical weariness.
Except the biscuit and the glass of wine at the hospital, he had taken
nothing since his light luncheon. When he came to the Harlem Bridge he
was compelled to rest. Leaning against one of the timbers and half
seated, with the softened roar of the city in his ears, the lights
gleaming on the heights, the river flowing dark and silent, he began to
be conscious of his situation. Yes, he was very tired. It seemed
difficult to go on without help of some sort. At length he crossed the
bridge. Lights were gleaming from the saloons along the street. He
paused in front of one, irresolute. Food he could not taste, but
something he must have to carry him on. But no, that would not do; he
could not enter that in his priest's garb. He dragged himself along
until he came to a drug-shop, the modern saloon of the respectably
virtuous. That he entered, and sat down on a stool by the soda-water
counter. The expectant clerk stared at him while waiting the order,
his hand tentatively seeking one of the faucets of refreshment.
"I feel a little feverish," said the father. "You may give me five
grains of quinine in whisky."
"That'll put you all right," said the boy as he handed him the mixture.
"It's all the go now."
It seemed to revive him, and he went out and walked on towards the
heights. Somehow, seeing this boy, coming back to common life, perhaps
the strong and unaccustomed stimulant, gave a new shade to his thoughts.
He was safe. Presently he would be at the Retreat. He would rest, and
then gird up his loins and face life again. The mood lasted for some
time. And when the sense of physical weariness came back, that seemed to
dull the acuteness of his spiritual torment. It was late when he reached
the house and rang the night-bell. No one of the brothers was up except
Father Monies, and it was he who came to the door.
"You! So late! Is anything the matter?"
"I needed to come," the father said, simply, and he grasped the
door-post, steadying himself as he came in.
"You look like a ghost."
"Yes. I'm tired. I walked."
"Walked? From Rivington Street?"
"Nearly. I felt like it."
"It's most imprudent. You dined first?"
"I wasn't hungry."
"But you must have something at once." And Father Monies hurried away,
heated some bouillon by a spirit-lamp, and brought it, with bread, and
set it before his unexpected guest.
"There, eat that, and get to bed as soon as you can. It was great
nonsense."
And Father Damon obeyed. Indeed, he was too exhausted to talk.
XVII
Father Damon slept the sleep of exhaustion. In this for a time the mind
joined in the lethargy of the body. But presently, as the vital currents
were aroused, the mind began to play its fantastic tricks. He was a
seminary student, he was ordained, he was taking his vows before the
bishop, he was a robust and consecrated priest performing his first
service, shining, it seemed to him, before the congregation in the purity
of his separation from the world. How strong he felt. And then came
perplexities, difficulties, interests, and conflicting passions in life
that he had not suspected, good that looked like evil, and evil that had
an alloy of virtue, and the way was confused. And then there was a
vision of a sort of sister of charity working with him in the evil and
the good, drawing near to him, and yet repelling him with a cold,
scientific skepticism that chilled him like blasphemy; but so patient was
she, so unconscious of self, that gradually he lost this feeling of
repulsion and saw only the woman, that wonderful creation, tender,
pitiful comrade, the other self. And then there was darkness and
blindness, and he stood once more before his congregation, speaking words
that sounded hollow, hearing responses that mocked him, stared at by
accusing eyes that knew him for a hypocrite. And he rushed away and left
them, hearing their laughter as he went, and so into the street--plainly
it was Rivington Street--and faces that he knew had a smile and a sneer,
and he heard comments as he passed "Hulloa, Father Damon, come in and
have a drink." "I say, Father Damon, I seen her going round into Grand
Street."
When Father Monies looked in, just before daylight, Father Damon was
still sleeping, but tossing restlessly and muttering incoherently; and he
did not arouse him for the early devotions.
It was very late when he awoke, and opened his eyes to a confused sense
of some great calamity. Father Monies was standing by the bedside with a
cup of coffee.
"You have had a good sleep. Now take this, and then you may get up. The
breakfast will wait for you."
Father Damon started up. "Why didn't you call me? I am late for the
mission."
"Oh, Bendes has gone down long ago. You must take it easy; rest today.
You'll be all right. You haven't a bit of fever."
"But," still declining the coffee, "before I break my fast, I have
something to say to you. I--"
"Get some strength first. Besides, I have an engagement. I cannot wait.
Pull yourself together; I may not be back before evening."
So it was fated that he should be left still with himself. After his
coffee he dressed slowly, as if it were not he, but some one else going
through this familiar duty, as if it were scarcely worth while to do
anything any more. And then, before attempting his breakfast, he went
into the little oratory, and remained long in the attitude of prayer,
trying to realize what he was and what he had done. He prayed for
himself, for help, for humility, and he prayed for her; he had been used
of late to pray for her guidance, now he prayed that she might be
sustained.
When he came forth it was in a calmer frame of mind. It was all clear
now. When Father Monies returned he would confess, and take his penance,
and resolutely resume his life. He understood life better now. Perhaps
this blow was needed for his spiritual pride.
It was a mild winter day, bright, and with a touch of summer, such as
sometimes gets shuffled into our winter calendar. The book that he took
up did not interest him; he was in no mood for the quiet meditation that
it usually suggested to him, and he put it down and strolled out,
directing his steps farther up the height, and away from the suburban
stir. As he went on there was something consonant with his feelings in
the bare wintry landscape, and when he passed the ridge and walked along
the top of the river slope, he saw, as it seemed to him he had not seen
it before, that lovely reach of river, the opposite wooded heights, the
noble pass above, the peacefulness and invitation of nature. Had he a
new sense to see all this? There was a softness in the distant outline,
villas peeped out here and there, carriages were passing in the road
below, there was a cheerful life in the stream--there was a harmony in
the aspect of nature and humanity from this height. Was not the world
beautiful? and human emotion, affection, love, were they alien to the
Divine intention?
She loved beauty; she was fond of flowers; often she had spoken to him of
her childish delight in her little excursions, rarely made, into the
country. He could see her now standing just there and feasting her eyes
on this noble panorama, and he could see her face all aglow, as she might
turn to him and say, "Isn't it beautiful, Father Damon?" And she
was down in those reeking streets, climbing about in the foul
tenement-houses, taking a sick child in her arms, speaking a word
of cheer--a good physician going about doing good!
And it might have been! Why was it that this peace of nature should
bring up her image, and that they should seem in harmony? Was not the
love of beauty and of goodness the same thing? Did God require in His
service the atrophy of the affections? As long as he was in the world
was it right that he should isolate himself from any of its sympathies
and trials? Why was it not a higher life to enter into the common lot,
and suffer, if need be, in the struggle to purify and ennoble all?
He remembered the days he had once passed in the Trappist monastery of
Gethsemane. The perfect peace of mind of the monks was purchased at the
expense of the extirpation of every want, all will, every human interest.
Were these men anything but specimens in a Museum of Failures? And yet,
for the time being, it had seemed attractive to him, this simple
vegetable existence, whose only object was preparation for death by the
extinction of all passion and desire. No, these were not soldiers of the
Lord, but the fainthearted, who had slunk into the hospital.
All this afternoon he was drifting in thought, arraigning his past life,
excusing it, condemning it, and trying to forecast its future. Was this
a trial of his constancy and faith, or had he made a mistake, entered
upon a slavish career, from which he ought to extricate himself at any
cost of the world's opinion? But presently he was aware that in all
these debates with himself her image appeared. He was trying to fit his
life to the thought of her. And when this became clearer in his tortured
mind, the woman appeared as a temptation. It was not, then, the love of
beauty, not even the love of humanity, and very far from being the
service of his Master, that he was discussing, but only his desire for
one person. It was that, then, that made him, for that fatal instant,
forget his vow, and yield to the impulse of human passion. The thought
of that moment stung him with confusion and shame. There had been
moments in this afternoon wandering--when it had seemed possible for him
to ask for release, and to take up a human, sympathetic life with her, in
mutual consecration in the service of the Lord's poor. Yes, and by love
to lead her into a higher conception of the Divine love. But this
breaking a solemn vow at the dictates of passion was a mortal sin--there
was no other name for it--a sin demanding repentance and expiation.
As he at last turned homeward, facing the great city and his life there,
this became more clear to him. He walked rapidly. The lines of his face
became set in a hard judgment of himself. He thought no more of escaping
from himself, but of subduing himself, stamping out the appeals of his
lower nature. It was in this mood that he returned.
Father Monies was awaiting him, and welcomed him with that look of
affection, of more than brotherly love, which the good man had for the
younger priest.
"I hope your walk has done you good."
"Perhaps," Father Damon replied, without any leniency in his face; "but
that does not matter. I must tell you what I could not last night. Can
you hear me?"
They went together into the oratory. Father Damon did not spare himself.
He kept nothing back that could heighten the enormity of his offense.
And Father Monies did not attempt to lessen the impression upon himself
of the seriousness of the scandal. He was shocked. He was exceedingly
grave, but he was even more pitiful. His experience of life had been
longer than that of the penitent. He better knew its temptations. His
own peace had only been won by long crucifixion of the natural desires.
"I have nothing to say as to your own discipline. That you know. But
there is one thing. You must face this temptation, and subdue it."
"You mean that I must go back to my labor in the city?"
"Yes. You can rest here a few days if you feel too weak physically."
"No; I am well enough." He hesitated. "I thought perhaps some other
field, for a time?"
"There is no other field for you. It is not for the moment the question
of where you can do most good. You are to reinstate yourself. You are a
soldier of the Lord Jesus, and you are to go where the battle is most
dangerous."
That was the substance of it all. There was much affectionate counsel
and loving sympathy mingled with all the inflexible orders of obedience,
but the sin must be faced and extirpated in presence of the enemy.
On the morrow Father Damon went back to his solitary rooms, to his
chapel, to the round of visitations, to his work with the poor, the
sinful, the hopeless. He did not seek her; he tried not to seem to avoid
her, or to seem to shun the streets where he was most likely to meet her,
and the neighborhoods she frequented. Perhaps he did avoid them a
little, and he despised himself for doing it. Almost involuntarily he
looked to the bench by the chapel door which she occasionally occupied at
vespers. She was never there, and he condemned himself for thinking that
she might be; but yet wherever he walked there was always the expectation
that he might encounter her. As the days went by and she did not appear,
his expectation became a kind of torture. Was she ill, perhaps? It
could not be that she had deserted her work.
And then he began to examine himself with a morbid introspection. Had
the hope that he should see her occasionally influenced him at all in his
obedience to Father Monies? Had he, in fact, a longing to be in the
streets where she had walked, among the scenes that had witnessed her
beautiful devotion? Had his willingness to take up this work again been
because it brought him nearer to her in spirit?
No, she could not be ill. He heard her spoken of, here and there, in his
calls and ministrations to the sick and dying. Evidently she was going
about her work as usual. Perhaps she was avoiding him. Or perhaps she
did not care, after all, and had lost her respect for him when he
discovered to her his weakness. And he had put himself on a plane so
high above her.
There was no conscious wavering in his purpose. But from much dwelling
upon the thought, from much effort rather to put it away, his desire only
to see her grew stronger day by day. He had no fear. He longed to test
himself. He was sure that he would be impassive, and be all the stronger
for the test. He was more devoted than ever in his Work. He was more
severe with himself, more charitable to others, and he could not doubt
that he was gaining a hold-yes, a real hold-upon the lives of many about
him. The attendance was better at the chapel; more of the penitent and
forlorn came to him for help. And how alone he was! My God, never even
to see her!
In fact, Ruth Leigh was avoiding him. It was partly from a womanly
reserve--called into expression in this form for the first time--and
partly from a wish to spare him pain. She had been under no illusion
from the first about the hopelessness of the attachment. She
comprehended his character so thoroughly that she knew that for him any
fall from his ideal would mean his ruin. He was one of the rare spirits
of faith astray in a skeptical age. For a time she had studied curiously
his efforts to adapt himself to his surroundings. One of these was
joining a Knights of Labor lodge. Another was his approach to the
ethical-culture movement of some of the leaders in the Neighborhood
Guild. Another was his interest in the philanthropic work of agnostics
like herself. She could see that he, burning with zeal to save the souls
of men, and believing that there was no hope for the world except in the
renunciation of the world, instinctively shrank from these contacts,
which, nevertheless, he sought in the spirit of a Jesuit missionary to a
barbarous tribe.
It was possible for such a man to be for a time overmastered by human
passion; it was possible even that he might reason himself temporarily
into conduct that this natural passion seemed to justify; yet she never
doubted that there would follow an awakening from that state of mind as
from a horrible delusion. It was simply because Ruth Leigh was guided by
the exercise of reason, and had built up her scheme of life upon facts
that she believed she could demonstrate, that she saw so clearly their
relations, and felt that the faith, which was to her only a vagary of the
material brain, was to him an integral part of his life.
Love, to be sure, was as unexpected in her scheme of life as it was in
his; but there was on her part no reason why she should not yield to it.
There was every reason in her nature and in her theory why she should,
for, bounded as her vision of life was by this existence, love was the
highest conceivable good in life. It had been with a great shout of joy
that the consciousness had come to her that she loved and was loved.
Though she might never see him again, this supreme experience for man or
woman, this unsealing of the sacred fountain of life, would be for her an
enduring sweetness in her lonely and laborious pilgrimage. How strong
love is they best know to whom it is offered and denied.
And why, so far as she was concerned, should she deny it? An ordinary
woman probably would not. Love is reason enough. Why should artificial
conventions defeat it? Why should she sacrifice herself, if he were
willing to brave the opinion of the world for her sake? Was it any new
thing for good men to do this? But Ruth Leigh was not an ordinary woman.
Perhaps if her intellect had not been so long dominant over her heart it
would have been different. But the habit of being guided by reason was
second nature. She knew that not only his vow, but the habit of life
engendered by the vow, was an insuperable barrier. And besides, and this
was the touchstone of her conception of life and duty, she felt that if
he were to break his vow, though she might love him, her respect for him
would be impaired.
It was a singular phenomenon--very much remarked at the time--that the
women who did not in the least share Father Damon's spiritual faith, and
would have called themselves in contradistinction materialists, were
those who admired him most, were in a way his followers, loved to attend
his services, were inspired by his personality, and drawn to him in a
loving loyalty. The attraction to these very women was his
unworldliness, his separateness, his devotion to an ideal which in their
reason seemed a delusion. And no women would have been more sensitive
than they to his fall from his spiritual pinnacle.
It was easy with a little contrivance to avoid meeting him. She did not
go to the chapel or in its neighborhood when he was likely to be going to
or from service. She let others send for him when in her calls his
ministration was required, and she was careful not to linger where he was
likely to come. A little change in the time of her rounds was made
without neglecting her work, for that she would not do, and she trusted
that if accident threw him in her way, circumstances would make it
natural and not embarrassing. And yet his image was never long absent
from her thoughts; she wondered if he were dejected, if he were ill, if
he were lonely, and mostly there was for him a great pity in her heart, a
pity born, alas! of her own sense of loneliness.
How much she was repressing her own emotions she knew one evening when
she returned from her visits and found a letter in his handwriting. The
sight of it was a momentary rapture, and then the expectation of what it
might contain gave her a feeling of faintness. The letter was long. Its
coming needs a word of explanation.
Father Damon had begun to use the Margaret Fund. He found that its
judicious use was more perplexing than he had supposed. He needed
advice, the advice of those who had more knowledge than he had of the
merits of relief cases. And then there might be many sufferers whom he
in his limited field neglected. It occurred to him that Dr. Leigh would
be a most helpful co-almoner. No sooner did this idea come to him than
he was spurred to put it into effect. This common labor would be a sort
of bond between them, a bond of charity purified from all personal alloy.
He went at once to Mr. Henderson's office and told him his difficulties,
and about Dr. Leigh's work, and the opportunities she would have. Would
it not be possible for Dr. Leigh to draw from the fund on her own checks
independent of him? Mr. Henderson thought not. Dr. Leigh was no doubt a
good woman, but he didn't know much about woman visitors and that sort;
their sympathies were apt to run away with them, and he should prefer at
present to have the fund wholly under Father Damon's control. Some time,
he intimated, he might make more lasting provisions with trustees. It
would be better for Father Damon to give Dr. Leigh money as he saw she
needed it.
The letter recited this at length; it had a check endorsed, and the
writer asked the doctor to be his almoner. He dwelt very much upon the
relief this would be to him, and the opportunity it would give her in
many emergencies, and the absolute confidence he had in her discretion,
as well as in her quick sympathy with the suffering about them. And also
it would be a great satisfaction to him to feel that he was associated
with her in such a work.
In its length, in its tone of kindliness, of personal confidence,
especially in its length, it was evident that the writing of it had been
a pleasure, if not a relief, to the sender. Ruth read it and reread it.
It was as if Father Damon were there speaking to her. She could hear the
tones of his voice. And the glance of love--that last overmastering
appeal and cry thrilled through her soul.
But in the letter there was no love; to any third person it would have
read like an ordinary friendly philanthropic request. And her reply,
accepting gratefully his trust, was almost formal, only the writer felt
that she was writing out of her heart.
XVIII
The Roman poet Martial reckons among the elements of a happy life "an
income left, not earned by toil," and also "a wife discreet, yet blythe
and bright." Felicity in the possession of these, the epigrammatist
might have added, depends upon content in the one and full appreciation
of the other.
Jack Delancy returned from Washington more discontented than when he
went. His speculation hung fire in a most tantalizing way; more than
that, it had absorbed nearly all the "income not earned by toil," which
was at the hazard of operations he could neither control nor comprehend.
And besides, this little fortune had come to seem contemptibly
inadequate. In his associations of the past year his spendthrift habits
had increased, and he had been humiliated by his inability to keep pace
with the prodigality of those with whom he was most intimate. Miss
Tavish was an heiress in her own right, who never seemed to give a
thought to the cost of anything she desired; the Hendersons, for any
whim, drew upon a reservoir of unknown capacity; and even Mavick began to
talk as if he owned a flock of geese that laid golden eggs.
To be sure, it was pleasant coming home into an atmosphere of sincerity,
of worship--was it not? It was very flattering to his self-esteem. The
master had come! The house was in commotion. Edith flew to meet him,
hugged him, shook him, criticised his appearance, rallied him for a
recreant father. How well she looked-buoyant, full of vivacity, running
over with joy, asking a dozen questions before he could answer one,
testifying her delight, her affection, in a hundred ways. And the boy!
He was so eager to see his papa. He could converse now--that is, in his
way. And that prodigy, when Jack was dragged into his presence, and also
fell down with Edith and worshiped him in his crib, did actually smile,
and appear to know that this man belonged to him, was a part of his
worldly possessions.
"Do you know," said Edith, looking at the boy critically, "I think of
making Fletcher a present, if you approve."
"What's that?"
"He'll want some place to go to in the summer. I want to buy that old
place where he was born and give it to him. Don't you think it would be
a good investment?"
"Yes, permanent," replied Jack, laughing at such a mite of a real-estate
owner.
"I know he would like it. And you don't object?"
"Not in the least. It's next to an ancestral feeling to be the father of
a land-owner."
They were standing close to the crib, his arm resting lightly across her
shoulders. He drew her closer to him, and kissed her tenderly. "The
little chap has a golden-hearted mother. I don't know why he should not
have a Golden House."
Her eyes filled with sudden tears. She could not speak. But both arms
were clasped round his neck now. She was too happy for words. And the
baby, looking on with large eyes, seemed to find nothing unusual in the
proceeding. He was used to a great deal of this sort of nonsense
himself.
It was a happy evening. In truth, after the first surprise, Jack was
pleased with this contemplated purchase. It was something removed beyond
temptation. Edith's property was secure to her, and it was his honorable
purpose never to draw it into his risks. But he knew her generosity, and
he could not answer for himself if she should offer it, as he was sure
she would do, to save him from ruin.
There was all the news to tell, the harmless gossip of daily life, which
Edith had a rare faculty of making dramatically entertaining, with her
insight and her feeling for comedy. There had been a musicale at the
Blunts'--oh, strictly amateur--and Edith ran to the piano and imitated
the singers and took off the players, until Jack declared that it beat
the Conventional Club out of sight. And she had been to a parlor
mind-cure lecture, and to a Theosophic conversation, and to a Reading
Club for the Cultivation of a Feeling for Nature through Poetry. It was
all immensely solemn and earnest. And Jack wondered that the managers did
not get hold of these things and put them on the stage. Nothing could
draw like them. Not burlesques, though, said Edith; not in the least. If
only these circles would perform in public as they did in private, how
they would draw!
And then Father Damon had been to consult her about his fund. He had
been ill, and would not stay, and seemed more severe and ascetic than
ever. She was sure something was wrong. For Dr. Leigh, whom she had
sought out several times, was reserved, and did not voluntarily speak of
Father Damon; she had heard that he was throwing himself with more than
his usual fervor into his work. There was plenty to talk about.
The purchase of the farm by the sea had better not be delayed; Jack might
have to go down and see the owner. Yes, he would make it his first
business in the morning. Perhaps it would be best to get some
Long-Islander to buy it for them.
By the time it was ten o'clock, Jack said he thought he would step down
to the Union a moment. Edith's countenance fell. There might be
letters, he explained, and he had a little matter of business; he
wouldn't be late.
It was very agreeable, home was, and Edith was charming. He could
distinctly feel that she was charming. But Jack was restless. He felt
the need of talking with somebody about what was on his mind. If only
with Major Fairfax. He would not consult the Major, but the latter was
in the way of picking up all sorts of gossip, both social and Street
gossip.
And the Major was willing to unpack his budget. It was not very
reassuring, what he had to tell; in fact, it was somewhat depressing, the
general tightness and the panicky uncertainty, until, after a couple of
glasses of Scotch, the financial world began to open a little and seem
more hopeful.
"The Hendersons are going to build," Jack said at length, after a remark
of the Major's about that famous operator.
"Build? What for? They've got a palace."
"Carmen says it's for an object-lesson. To show New York millionaires
how to adorn their city."
"It's like that little schemer. What does Henderson say?"
"He appears to be willing. I can't get the hang of Henderson. He
doesn't seem to care what his wife does. He's a cynical cuss. The other
night, at dinner, in Washington, when the thing was talked over, he said:
'My dear, I don't know why you shouldn't do that as well as anything.
Let's build a house of gold, as Nero did; we are in the Roman age.'
Carmen looked dubious for a moment, but she said, 'You know, Rodney, that
you always used to say that some time you would show New York what a
house ought to be in this climate.' 'Well, go on,' and he laughed.
'I suppose lightning will not strike that sooner than anything else.'"
"Seems to me," said the Major, reflectively, reaching out his hand for
the brown mug, "the way he gives that woman her head, and doesn't care
what she does, he must have a contempt for her."
"I wish somebody had that sort of contempt for me," said Jack, filling up
his glass also.
"But, I tell you," he continued, "Mrs. Henderson has caught on to the new
notions. Her idea is the union of all the arts. She has already got the
refusal of a square 'way up-town, on the rise opposite the Park, and has
been consulting architects about it. It is to be surrounded with the
building, with a garden in the interior, a tropical garden, under glass
in the winter. The facades are to be gorgeous and monumental. Artists
and sculptors are to decorate it, inside and out. Why shouldn't there be
color on the exterior, gold and painting, like the Fugger palaces in
Augsburg, only on a great scale? The artists don't see any reason why
there should not. It will make the city brilliant, that sort of thing,
in place of our monotonous stone lanes. And it's using her wealth for
the public benefit-the architects and artists all say that. Gad, I don't
know but the little woman is beginning to regard herself as a public
benefactor."
"She is that or nothing," echoed the Major, warmly.
"And do you know," continued Jack, confidentially, "I think she's got the
right idea. If I have any luck--of course I sha'n't do that--but if I
have any luck, I mean to build a house that's got some life in it--color,
old boy--something unique and stunning."
"So you will," cried the Major, enthusiastically, and, raising his glass,
"Here's to the house that Jack built!"
It was later than he thought it would be when he went home, but Jack was
attended all the way by a vision of a Golden House--all gold wouldn't be
too good, and he will build it, damme, for Edith and the boy.
The next morning not even the foundations of this structure were visible.
The master of the house came down to a late breakfast, out of sorts with
life, almost surly. Not even Edith's bright face and fresh toilet and
radiant welcome appealed to him. No one would have thought from her
appearance that she had waited for him last night hour after hour, and
had at last gone to bed with a heavy heart, and not to sleep-to toss, and
listen, and suffer a thousand tortures of suspense. How many tragedies
of this sort are there nightly in the metropolis, none the less tragic
because they are subjects of jest in the comic papers and on the stage!
What would be the condition of social life if women ceased to be anxious
in this regard, and let loose the reins in an easy-going indifference?
What, in fact, is the condition in those households where the wives do
not care? One can even perceive a tender sort of loyalty to women in the
ejaculation of that battered old veteran, the Major, "Thank God, there's
nobody sitting up for me!"
Jack was not consciously rude. He even asked about the baby. And he
sipped his coffee and glanced over the morning journal, and he referred
to the conversation of the night before, and said that he would look
after the purchase at once. If Edith had put on an aspect of injury, and
had intimated that she had hoped that his first evening at home might
have been devoted to her and the boy, there might have been a scene, for
Jack needed only an occasion to vent his discontent. And for the
chronicler of social life a scene is so much easier to deal with, an
outburst of temper and sharp language, of accusation and recrimination,
than the well-bred commonplace of an undefined estrangement.
And yet estrangement is almost too strong a word to use in Jack's case.
He would have been the first to resent it. But the truth was that Edith,
in the life he was leading, was a rebuke to him; her very purity and
unworldliness were out of accord with his associations, with his
ventures, with his dissipations in that smart and glittering circle where
he was more welcome the more he lowered his moral standards. Could he
help it if after the first hours of his return he felt the restraint of
his home, and that the life seemed a little flat? Almost unconsciously
to himself, his interests and his inclinations were elsewhere.
Edith, with the divination of a woman, felt this. Last night her love
alone seemed strong enough to hold him, to bring him back to the purposes
and the aspirations that only last summer had appeared to transform him.
Now he was slipping away again. How pitiful it is, this contest of a
woman who has only her own love, her own virtue, with the world and its
allurements and seductions, for the possession of her husband's heart!
How powerless she is against these subtle invitations, these unknown and
all-encompassing temptations! At times the whole drift of life, of the
easy morality of the time, is against her. The current is so strong that
no wonder she is often swept away in it. And what could an impartial
observer of things as they are say otherwise than that John Delancy was
leading the common life of his kind and his time, and that Edith was only
bringing trouble on herself by being out of sympathy with it?
He might not be in at luncheon, he said, when he was prepared to go
down-town. He seldom was. He called at his broker's. Still suspense. He
wrote to the Long Island farmer. At the Union he found a scented note
from Carmen. They had all returned from the capital. How rejoiced she
was to be at home! And she was dying to see him; no, not dying, but very
much living; and it was very important. She should expect him at the
usual hour. And could he guess what gown she would wear?
And Jack went. What hold had this woman on him? Undoubtedly she had
fascinations, but he knew--knew well enough by this time--that her
friendship was based wholly on calculation. And yet what a sympathetic
comrade she could be! How freely he could talk with her; there was no
subject she did not adapt herself to. No doubt it was this adaptability
that made her such a favorite. She did not demand too much virtue or
require too much conventionality. The hours he was with her he was
wholly at his ease. She made him satisfied with himself, and she didn't
disturb his conscience.
"I think," said Jack--he was holding both her hands with a swinging
motion--when she came forward to greet him, and looking at her
critically--"I think I like you better in New York than in Washington."
"That is because you see more of me here."
"Oh, I saw you enough in Washington."
"But that was my public manner. I have to live up to Mr. Henderson's
reputation."
"And here you only have to live up to mine?"
"I can live for my friends," she replied, with an air of candor, giving a
very perceptible pressure with her little hands. "Isn't that enough?"
Jack kissed each little hand before he let it drop, and looked as if he
believed.
"And how does the house get on?"
"Famously. The lot is bought. Mr. Van Brunt was here all the morning.
It's going to be something Oriental, mediaeval, nineteenth-century,
gorgeous, and domestic. Van Brunt says he wants it to represent me."
"How?" inquired Jack; "all the four facades different?"
"With an interior unity--all the styles brought to express an individual
taste, don't you know. A different house from the four sides of
approach, and inside, home--that's the idea."
"It appears to me," said Jack, still bantering, "that it will look like
an apartment-house."
"That is just what it will not--that is, outside unity, and inside a
menagerie. This won't look gregarious. It is to have not more than
three stories, perhaps only two. And then exterior color, decoration,
statuary."
"And gold?"
"Not too much--not to give it a cheap gilded look. Oh, I asked him about
Nero's house. As I remember it, that was mostly caverns. Mr. Van Brunt
laughed, and said they were not going to excavate this house. The Roman
notion was barbarous grandeur. But in point of beauty and luxury, this
would be as much superior to Nero's house as the electric light is to a
Roman lamp."
"Not classic, then?"
"Why, all that's good in classic form, with the modern spirit. You ought
to hear Mr. Van Brunt talk. This country has never yet expressed itself
in domestic inhabitation."
"It's going to cost! What does Mr. Henderson say?"
"I think he rather likes it. He told Mr. Van Brunt to consult me and go
ahead with his plans. But he talks queerly. He said he thought he would
have money enough at least for the foundation. Do you think, Jack,"
asked Carmen, with a sudden change of manner, "that Mr. Henderson is
really the richest man in the United States?"
"Some people say so. Really, I don't know how any one can tell. If he
let go his hand from his affairs, I don't know what a panic would do."
Carmen looked thoughtful. "He said to me once that he wasn't afraid of
the Street any more. I told him this morning that I didn't want to begin
this if it was going to incommode him."
"What did he say?"
"He was just going out. He looked at me a moment with that speculative
sort of look-no, it isn't cynical, as you say; I know it so well--and
then said: 'Oh, go ahead. I guess it will be all right. If anything
happens, you can turn it into a boardinghouse. It will be an excellent
sanitarium.' That was all. Anyway, it's something to do. Come, let's
go and see the place." And she started up and touched the bell for the
carriage. It was more than something to do. In those days before her
marriage, when her mother was living, and when they wandered about
Europe, dangerously near to the reputation of adventuresses, the girl had
her dream of chateaux and castles and splendor. Her chance did not come
in Europe, but, as she would have said, Providence is good to those who
wait.
The next day Jack went to Long Island, and the farm was bought, and the
deed brought to Edith, who, with much formality, presented it to the boy,
and that young gentleman showed his appreciation of it by trying to eat
it. It would have seemed a pretty incident to Jack, if he had not been
absorbed in more important things.
But he was very much absorbed, and apparently more idle than ever. As
the days went on, and the weeks, he was less and less at home, and in a
worse humor--that is, at home. Carmen did not find him ill-humored, nor
was there any change towards the fellows at the Union, except that it was
noticed that he had his cross days. There was nothing specially to
distinguish him from a dozen others, who led the same life of vacuity, of
mild dissipation, of enforced pleasure. A wager now and then on an
"event"; a fictitious interest in elections; lively partisanship in
society scandals: Not much else. The theatres were stale, and only
endurable on account of the little suppers afterwards; and really there
wasn't much in life except the women who made it agreeable.
Major Fairfax was not a model; there had not much survived out of his
checkered chances and experiences, except a certain instinct of being a
gentleman, sir; the close of his life was not exactly a desirable goal;
but even the Major shook his head over Jack.
XIX
The one fact in which men universally agree is that we come into the
world alone and we go out of the world alone; and although we travel in
company, make our pilgrimage to Canterbury or to Vanity Fair in a great
show of fellowship, and of bearing one another's burdens, we carry our
deepest troubles alone. When we think of it, it is an awful lonesomeness
in this animated and moving crowd. Each one either must or will carry
his own burden, which he commonly cannot, or by pride or shame will not,
ask help in carrying.
Henderson drew more and more apart from confidences, and was alone in
building up the colossal structure of his wealth. Father Damon was
carrying his renewed temptation alone, after all his brave confession and
attempt at renunciation. Ruth Leigh plodded along alone, with her secret
which was the joy and the despair of her life--the opening of a gate into
the paradise which she could never enter. Jack Delancy, the confiding,
open-hearted good fellow, had come to a stage in his journey where he
also was alone. Not even to Carmen could he confess the extent of his
embarrassments, nor even in her company, nor in the distraction of his
increasingly dissipated life, could he forget them. Not only had his
investments been all transferred to his speculations, but his home had
been mortgaged, and he did not dare tell Edith of the lowering cloud that
hung over it; and that his sole dependence was the confidence of the
Street, which any rumor might shatter, in that one of Henderson's schemes
to which he had committed himself. Edith, the one person who could have
comforted him, was the last person to whom he could have told this, for
he had the most elementary, and the common conception of what marriage
is.
But Edith's lot was the most pitiful of all. She was not only alone, but
compelled to inaction. She saw the fair fabric of her life dissolving,
and neither by cries nor tears, by appeals nor protest, by show of anger
nor by show of suffering, could she hinder the dissolution. Strong in
herself and full of courage, day by day and week by week she felt her
powerlessness. Heaven knows what it cost her--what it costs all women in
like circumstances--to be always cheerful, never to show distrust. If
her love were not enough, if her attractions were not enough, there was
no human help to which she could appeal.
And what, pray, was there to appeal? There was no visible neglect, no
sufficient alienation for gossip to take hold of. If there was a little
talk about Jack's intimacy elsewhere, was there anything uncommon in
that? Affairs went on as usual. Was it reasonable to suppose that
society should notice that one woman's heart was full of foreboding,
heavy with a sense of loss and defeat, and with the ruin of two lives?
Could simple misery like this rise to the dignity of tragedy in a world
that has its share of tragedies, shocking and violent, but is on the
whole going on decorously and prosperously?
The season wore on. It was the latter part of May. Jack had taken Edith
and the boy down to the Long Island house, and had returned to the city
and was living at his club, feverishly waiting for some change in his
affairs. It was a sufficient explanation of his anxiety that money was
"tight," that failures were daily announced, and that there was a general
fear of worse times. It was fortunate for Jack and other speculators
that they could attribute their ill-luck to the general financial
condition. There were reasons enough for this condition. Some
attributed it to want of confidence, others to the tariff, others to the
action of this or that political party, others to over-production, others
to silver, others to the action of English capitalists in withdrawing.
their investments. It could all be accounted for without referring to
the fact that most of the individual sufferers, like Jack, owed more than
they could pay.
Henderson was much of the time absent--at the West and at the South.
His every move was watched, his least sayings were reported as
significant, and the Street was hopeful or depressed as he seemed to be
cheerful or unusually taciturn. Uncle Jerry was the calmest man in town,
and his observation that Henderson knew what he was about was reassuring.
His serenity was well founded. The fact was that he had been pulling in
and lowering canvas for months. Or, as he put it, he hadn't much hay
out. . . "It's never a good plan," said Uncle Jerry, "to put off raking
up till the shower begins."
It seems absurd to speak of the East Side in connection with the
financial situation. But that was where the pinch was felt, and felt
first. Work was slack, and that meant actual hunger for many families.
The monetary solidarity of the town is remarkable. No one flies a kite
in Wall Street that somebody in Rivington Street does not in consequence
have to go without his dinner. As Dr. Leigh went her daily rounds she
encountered painful evidence of the financial disturbance. Increased
number of cases for the doctor followed want of sufficient food and the
eating of cheap, unwholesome food. She was often obliged to draw upon
the Margaret Fund, and to invoke the aid of Father Damon when the
responsibility was too great for her. And Father Damon found that his
ministry was daily diverted from the cure of souls to the care of bodies.
Among all those who came to the mission as a place of refuge and rest,
and to whom the priest sought to offer the consolations of religion and
of his personal sympathy, there were few who did not have a tale of
suffering to tell that wrung his heart. Some of them were actually ill,
or had at home a sick husband or a sick daughter. And such cases had to
be reported to Dr. Leigh.
It became necessary, therefore, that these two, who had shunned each
other for months, should meet as often as they had done formerly. This
was very hard for both, for it meant only the renewal of heart-break,
regret, and despair. And yet it had been almost worse when they did not
see each other. They met; they talked of nothing but their work; they
tried to forget themselves in their devotion to humanity. But the human
heart will not be thus disposed of. It was impossible that some show of
personal interest, some tenderness, should not appear. They were walking
towards Fourth Avenue one evening--the priest could not resist the
impulse to accompany her a little way towards her home--after a day of
unusual labor and anxiety.
"You are working too hard," he said, gently; "you look fatigued."
"Oh no," she replied, looking up cheerfully; "I'm a regular machine.
I get run down, and then I wind up. I get tired, and then I get rested.
It isn't the work," she added, after a moment, "if only I could see any
good of it. It seems so hopeless."
"From your point of view, my dear doctor," he answered, but without any
shade of reproof in his tone. "But no good deed is lost. There is
nothing else in the world--nothing for me." The close of the sentence
seemed wholly accidental, and he stopped speaking as if he could not
trust himself to go on.
Ruth Leigh looked up quickly. "But, Father Damon, it is you who ought to
be rebuked for overwork. You are undertaking too much. You ought to go
off for a vacation, and go at once."
The father looked paler and thinner than usual, but his mouth was set in
firm lines, and he said: "It cannot be. My duty is here. And"--he
turned, and looked her full in the face--"I cannot go."
No need to explain that simple word. No need to interpret the swift
glance that their eyes exchanged--the eager, the pitiful glance. They
both knew. It was not the work. It was not the suffering of the world.
It was the pain in their own hearts, and the awful chasm that his holy
vows had put between them. They stood so only an instant. He was
trembling in the extort to master himself, and in a second she felt the
hot blood rising to her face. Her woman's wit was the first to break the
hopeless situation. She turned, and hailed a passing car. "I cannot
walk any farther. Good-night." And she was gone.
The priest stood as if a sudden blow had struck him, following the
retreating car till it was out of sight, and then turned homeward, dazed,
and with feeble steps. What was this that had come to him to so shake
his life? What devil was tempting him to break his vows and forsake his
faith? Should he fly from the city and from his work, or should he face
what seemed to him, in the light of his consecration, a monstrous
temptation, and try to conquer himself? He began to doubt his power to
do this. He had always believed that it was easy to conquer nature.
And now a little brown woman had taught him that he reckons ill who
leaves out the strongest human passion. And yet suppose he should break
his solemn vows and throw away his ideal, and marry Ruth Leigh,
would he ever be happy? Here was a mediaeval survival confronted by a
nineteenth-century skepticism. The situation was plainly insoluble. It
was as plainly so to the clear mind of the unselfish little woman without
faith as it was to him. Perhaps she could not have respected him if he
had yielded. Strangely enough, the attraction of the priest for her and
for other women who called themselves servants of humanity was in his
consecration, in his attitude of separation from the vanities and
passions of this world. They believed in him, though they did not share
his faith. To Ruth Leigh this experience of love was as unexpected as it
was to the priest. Perhaps because her life was lived on a less exalted
plane she could bear it with more equanimity. But who knows? The habit of
her life was endurance, the sturdy meeting of the duty of every day, with
at least only a calm regard of the future. And she would go on. But who
can measure the inner change in her life? She must certainly be changed
by this deep experience, and, terrible as it was, perhaps ennobled by it.
Is there not something supernatural in such a love itself? It has a
wonderful transforming power. It is certain that a new light, a tender
light, was cast upon her world. And who can say that some time, in the
waiting and working future, this new light might not change life
altogether for this faithful soul?
There was one person upon whom the tragedy of life thus far sat lightly.
Even her enemies, if she had any, would not deny that Carmen had an
admirable temperament. If she had been a Moslem, it might be predicted
that she would walk the wire 'El Serat' without a tremor. In these days
she was busy with the plans of her new house. The project suited her
ambition and her taste. The structure grew in her mind into barbaric
splendor, but a barbaric splendor refined, which reveled in the exquisite
adornment of the Alhambra itself. She was in daily conferences with her
architect and her artists, she constantly consulted Jack about it, and
Mavick whenever he was in town, and occasionally she awakened the
interest of Henderson himself, who put no check upon her proceedings,
although his mind was concerned with a vaster structure of his own.
She talked of little else, until in her small world there grew up a vast
expectation of magnificence, of which hints appeared from time to time in
the newspapers, mysterious allusions to Roman luxury, to Nero and his
Golden House. Henderson read these paragraphs, as he read the paragraphs
about his own fortune, with a grim smile.
"Your house is getting a lot of free advertising," he said to Carmen one
evening after dinner in the library, throwing the newspaper on the table
as he spoke.
"They all seem to like the idea," replied Carmen. "Did you see what one
of the papers said about the use of wealth in adorning the city? That's
my notion."
"I suppose," said Henderson, with a smile, "that you put that notion into
the reporter's head."
"But he thought he suggested it to me."
"Let's look over the last drawing." Henderson half rose from his chair
to pull the sheet towards him, but instantly sank back, and put his hand
to his heart. Carmen saw that he was very pale, and ran round to his
chair.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," he said, taking a long breath. "Just a stitch. Indigestion.
It must have been the coffee."
Carmen ran to the dining-room, and returned with a wineglass of brandy.
"There, take that."
He drank it. "Yes, that's better. I'm all right now." And he sat
still, slowly recovering color and control of himself.
"I'm going to send for the doctor."
"No, no; nonsense. It has all passed," and he stretched out his arms
and threw them back vigorously. "It was only a moment's faintness. It's
quite gone."
He rose from his chair and took a turn or two about the room. Yes, he
was quite himself, and he patted Carmen's head as he passed and took his
seat again. For a moment or two there was silence. Then he said, still
as if reflecting:
"Isn't it queer? In that moment of faintness all my life flashed through
my mind."
"It has been a very successful life," Carmen said, by way of saying
something.
"Yes, yes; but I wonder if it was worth while?"
"If I were a man, I should enjoy the power you have, the ability to do
what you will."
"I suppose I do. That is all there is. I like to conquer obstacles, and
I like to command. And money; I never did care for money in itself.
But there is a fascination in building up a great fortune. It is like
conducting a political or a military campaign. Now, I haven't much
interest in anything else."
As he spoke he looked round upon the crowded shelves of his library, and,
getting up, went to the corner where there was a shelf of rare editions
and took down a volume.
"Do you remember when I got this, Carmen? It was when I was a bachelor.
It was rare then. I saw it quoted the other day as worth twice the price
I gave for it."
He replaced it carefully, and walked along the shelves looking at the
familiar titles.
"I used to read then. And you read still; you have time."
"Not those books," she replied, with a laugh. "Those belong to the last
generation."
"That is where I belong," he said, smiling also. "I don't think I have
read a book, not really read it, in ten years. This modern stuff that
pretends to give life is so much less exciting than my own daily
experience that I cannot get interested in it. Perhaps I could read
these calm old books."
"It is the newspapers that take your time," Carmen suggested.
"Yes, they pass the time when I am thinking. And they are full of
suggestions. I suppose they are as accurate about other things as about
me. I used to think I would make this library the choicest in the city.
It is good as far as it goes. Perhaps I will take it up some day--if I
live." And he turned away from the shelves and sat down. Carmen had
never seen him exactly in this humor and was almost subdued by it.
He began to talk again, philosophizing about life generally and his own
life. He seemed to like to recall his career, and finally said: "Uncle
Jerry is successful too, and he never did care for anything else--except
his family. There is a clerk in my office on five thousand a year who is
never without a book when he comes to the office and when I see him on
the train. He has a wife and a nice little family in Jersey. I ask him
sometimes about his reading. He is collecting a library, but not of rare
books; says he cannot afford that. I think he is successful too, or will
be if he never gets more than five thousand a year, and is content with
his books and his little daily life, coming and going to his family.
Ah, well! Everybody must live his life. I suppose there is some
explanation of it all."
"Has anything gone wrong?" asked Carmen, anxiously.
"No, not at all. Nothing to interfere with the house of gold." He spoke
quite gently and sincerely. "I don't know what set me into this
moralizing. Let's look at the plans."
The next day--it was the first of June--in consultation with the
architect, a project was broached that involved such an addition of cost
that Carmen hesitated. She declared that it was a question of ways and
means, and that she must consult the chairman. Accordingly she called
her carriage and drove down to Henderson's office.
It was a beautiful day, a little warm in the narrow streets of the lower
city, but when she had ascended by the elevator to the high story that
Henderson occupied in one of the big buildings that rise high enough to
give a view of New York Harbor, and looked from the broad windows upon
one of the most sparkling and animated scenes in the world, it seemed
to her appreciative eyes a day let down out of Paradise.
The clerks all knew Mrs. Henderson, and they rose and bowed as she
tripped along smiling towards her husband's rooms. It did not seem to be
a very busy day, and she found no one waiting in the anteroom, and passed
into the room of his private secretary.
"Is Mr. Henderson in?"
"Yes, madam."
"And busy?"
"Probably busy," replied the secretary, with a smile, "but he is alone.
No one has disturbed him for over half an hour."
"Then I will go in."
She tapped lightly at the door. There was no response. She turned the
knob softly and looked in, and then, glancing back at the secretary, with
a finger uplifted, "I think he is asleep," opened the door, stepped in,
and closed it carefully.
The large room was full of light, and through the half-dozen windows
burst upon her the enchanting scene of the Bay, Henderson sat at his
table, which was covered with neatly arranged legal documents, but bowed
over it, his head resting upon his arms.
"So, Rodney, this is the way, old boy, that you wear yourself out in
business!"
She spoke laughingly, but he did not stir, and she tiptoed along to
awaken him.
She touched his hand. It moved heavily away from her hand. The left
arm, released, dropped at his side.
She started back, her eyes round with terror, and screamed.
Instantly the secretary was at her side, and supported her, fainting, to
a seat. Other clerks rushed in at the alarm. Henderson was lifted from
his chair and laid upon a lounge. When the doctor who had been called
arrived, Carmen was in a heap by the low couch, one arm thrown across the
body, and her head buried in the cushion close to his.
The doctor instantly applied restoratives; he sent for an electric
battery; everything was done that science could suggest. But all was of
no avail. There was no sign of life. He must have been dead half an
hour, said the doctor. It was evidently heart-failure.
Before the doctor had pronounced his verdict there was a whisper in the
Stock Exchange.
"Henderson is dead!"
"It is not possible," said one.
"I saw him only yesterday," said another.
"I was in his office this morning," said a third. "I never saw him
looking in better health."
The whisper was confirmed. There was no doubt of it. Henderson's
private secretary had admitted it. Yet it seemed incredible. No
provision had been made for it. Speculation had not discounted it.
A panic set in. No one knew what to do, for no one knew well the state
of Henderson's affairs. In the first thirty minutes there was a
tremendous drop in Henderson stocks. Then some of them rallied, but
before the partial recovery hundreds of men had been ruined. It was a
wild hour in the Exchange. Certain stocks were hopelessly smashed for
the time, and some combinations were destroyed; among them was one that
Uncle Jerry had kept out of; and Jack Delancy was hopelessly ruined.
The event was flashed over the wires of the continent; it was bulletined;
it was cried in the streets; it was the all-absorbing talk of the town.
Already, before the dead man was removed to his own house, people were
beginning to moralize about him and his career. Perhaps the truest thing
was said by the old broker in the board whose reputation for piety was
only equaled by his reputation of always having money to loan at
exorbitant rates in a time of distress. He said to a group of downcast
operators, "In the midst of life we are in death."
XX
The place that Rodney Henderson occupied in the mind of the public was
shown by the attention the newspapers paid to his death. All the great
newspapers in all the cities of importance published long and minute
biographies of him, with pictorial illustrations, and day after day
characteristic anecdotes of his remarkable career. Nor was there, it is
believed, a newspaper in the United States, secular, religious, or
special, that did not comment upon his life. This was the more
remarkable in that he was not a public man in the common use of the word:
he had never interested himself in politics, or in public affairs,
municipal or State or national; he had devoted himself entirely to
building up his private fortune. If this is the duty of a citizen, he
had discharged it with singleness of purpose; but no other duty of the
citizen had he undertaken, if we except his private charities. And yet
no public man of his day excited more popular interest or was the subject
of more newspaper comment.
And these comments were nearly all respectful, and most of them kindly.
There was some justice in this, for Henderson had been doing what
everybody else was trying to do, usually without his good-fortune.
If he was more successful than others in trying to get rich, surely a
great deal of admiration was mingled with the envy of his career. To be
sure, some journals were very severe upon his methods, and some revived
the old stories of his unscrupulousness in transactions which had laid
him open to criminal prosecution, from the effects of which he was only
saved by uncommon adroitness and, some said, by legal technicalities.
His career also was denounced by some as wholly vicious in its effect
upon the youth of the republic, and as lowering the tone of public
morals. And yet it was remembered that he had been a frank, open-hearted
friend, kind to his family, and generous in contrast with some of his
close-fisted contemporaries. There was nothing mean about him; even his
rascalities, if you chose to call his transactions by that name, were on
a grand scale. To be sure, he would let nothing stand between him and
the consummation of his schemes--he was like Napoleon in that--but those
who knew him personally liked him. The building up of his colossal
fortune--which the newspapers were saying was the largest that had been
accumulated in one lifetime in America--had ruined thousands of people,
and carried disaster into many peaceful houses, and his sudden death had
been a cyclone of destruction for an hour. But it was hardly fair, one
journal pointed out, to hold Henderson responsible for his untimely
death.
Even Jack Delancy, when the crushing news was brought him at the club,
where he sat talking with Major Fairfax, although he saw his own ruin in
a flash, said, "It wouldn't have happened if Henderson had lived."
"Not so soon," replied the Major, hesitatingly.
"Do you mean to say that Henderson and Mavick and Mrs. Henderson would
have thrown me over?"
"Why, no, not exactly; but a big machine grinds on regardless, and when
the crash comes everybody looks out for himself."
"I think I'll telegraph to Mavick."
"That wouldn't do any good now. He couldn't have stopped the panic.
I tell you what, you'd better go down to your brokers and see just how
matters stand."
And the two went down to Wall Street. It was after hours, but the
brokers' office was full of excitement. No one knew what was left from
the storm, nor what to expect. It was some time before Jack could get
speech with one of the young men of the firm.
"How is it?" he asked.
"It's been a----of a time."
"And Henderson?"
"Oh, his estate is all right, so far as we know. He was well out of the
Missouris."
"And the Missouri?"
"Bottom dropped out; temporarily, anyway."
"And my account?"
"Wiped out, I am sorry to say. Might come up by-and-by, if you've got a
lot of money to put up, and wait."
"Then it's all up," said Jack, turning to the Major. He was very pale.
He knew now that his fortune was gone absolutely--house, everything.
Few words were exchanged as they made their way back to the club. And
here the Major did a most unusual thing for him. He ordered the drinks.
But he did this delicately, apologetically.
"I don't know as you care for anything, but Wall Street has made me
thirsty. Eh?"
"I don't mind if I do," Jack replied.
And they sat down.
The conversation was not cheerful; it was mainly ejaculatory. After a
second glass, Jack said, "I don't suppose it would do any good, but I
should like to see Mavick." And then, showing the drift of his thoughts,
"I wonder what Carmen will do?"
"I should say that will depend upon the will," replied the Major.
"She is a good-hearted woman," and Jack's tone was one of inquiry.
"She hasn't any, Jack. Not the least bit of a heart. And I believe
Henderson found it out. I shall be surprised if his will doesn't show
that he knew it."
A servant came to the corner where they were sitting and handed Jack a
telegram.
"What's this? Mavick?" He tore it open. "No; Edith." He read it with
something like a groan, and passed it over to the Major.
What he read was this: "Don't be cast down, Jack. The boy and I are
well. Come. Edith."
"That is splendid; that is just like her," cried the Major. "I'd be out
of this by the first train."
"It is no use," replied Jack gloomily. "I couldn't 'face Edith now.
I couldn't do it. I wonder how she knew?"
He called back the servant, and penned as reassuring a message as he
could, but said that it was impossible to leave town. She must not worry
about him. This despatched, they fell again into a talk about the
situation. After another glass Jack was firm in his resolution to stay
and watch things. It seemed not impossible that something might turn up.
On the third day after, both the Major and Jack attended the funeral at
the house. Carmen was not visible. The interment was private. The day
following, Jack left his card of condolence at the door; but one day
passed, and another and another, and no word of acknowledgment came from
the stricken widow. Jack said to himself that it was not natural to
expect it. But he did expect it, and without reason, for he should have
known that Carmen was not only overwhelmed with the sudden shock of her
calamity, but that she would necessarily be busy with affairs that even
grief would not permit her to neglect. Jack heard that Mavick had been
in the city, and that he went to the Henderson house, but he had not
called at the club, and the visit must have been a flying one.
A week passed, and Jack received no message from Carmen. His note
offering his services if she needed the services of any one had not been
answered.
Carmen was indeed occupied. It could not be otherwise. The state of
Henderson's affairs could not wait upon conventionalities. The day after
the funeral Mr. Henderson's private secretary came to the house, and had
a long interview with Mrs. Henderson. He explained to her that the
affairs should be immediately investigated, the will proved, and the
estate put into the hands of the executors. It would be best for Mrs.
Henderson herself to bring his keys down to the office, and to see the
opening of his desk and boxes. Meantime it would be well for her to see
if there were any papers of importance in the house; probably everything
was in the office safe.
The next morning Carmen nerved herself to the task. With his keys in
hand she went alone into the library and opened his writing-desk.
Everything was in perfect order; letters and papers filed and labeled,
and neatly arranged in drawers and pigeonholes. There lay his
letter-book as he had last used it, and there lay fresh memoranda of his
projects and engagements. She found in one of the drawers some letters
of her own, mostly notes, and most of them written before her marriage.
In another drawer were some bundles of letters, a little yellow with age,
endorsed with the name of "Margaret." She shut the drawer without
looking at them. She continued to draw papers from the pigeon-holes and
glance at them. Most of them related to closed transactions. At length
she drew out one that instantly fixed her attention. It was endorsed,
"Last Will and Testament." She looked first at the date at the end--it
was quite recent--and then leaned back in her chair and set herself
deliberately to read it.
The document was long and full of repetitions and technicalities, but the
purport of it was plain. As she read on she was at first astonished,
then she was excited to trembling, and felt herself pale and faint; but
when she had finished and fully comprehended it her pretty face was
distorted with rage. The great bulk of the property was not for her.
She sprang up and paced the floor. She came back and took up the
document with a motion of tearing it in pieces. No--it would be better
to burn it. Of course there must be another will deposited in the safe.
Henderson had told her so. It was drawn up shortly after their marriage.
It could not be worse for her than this. She lighted the gas-jet by the
fireplace, and held the paper in her hand. Then a thought struck her.
What if somebody knew of this will, and its execution could be proved!
She looked again at the end. It was signed and sealed. There were the
names of two witnesses. One was the name of their late butler, who had
been long in Henderson's service, and who had died less than a month ago.
The other name was Thomas Mavick. Evidently the will had been signed
recently, on some occasion when Mavick was in the house. And Henderson's
lawyer probably knew it also!
She folded the document carefully, put it back in the pigeon-hole, locked
the desk, and rang the bell for her carriage. She was ready when the
carriage came to the door, and told the coachman to drive to the office
of Mr. Sage in Nassau Street. Mr. Sage had been for many years
Henderson's most confidential lawyer.
He received Carmen in his private office, with the subdued respect due to
her grief and the sudden tragedy that had overtaken her. He was a man
well along in years, a small man, neat in his dress, a little formal and
precise in his manner, with a smoothly shaven face and gray eyes, keen,
but not unkindly in expression. He had the reputation, which he
deserved, for great ability and integrity. After the first salutations
and words of condolence were spoken, Carmen said, "I have come to consult
you, Mr. Sage, about my husband's affairs."
"I am quite at your service, madam."
"I wanted to see you before I went to the office with the keys of his
safe."
"Perhaps," said Mr. Sage, "I could spare you that trouble."
"Oh no; his secretary thought I had better come myself, if I could."
"Very well," said Mr. Sage.
Carmen hesitated a moment, and then said, in an inquiring tone,
"I suppose the first thing is the will. He told me long ago that his
will was made. I suppose it is in the safe. Didn't you draw it, Mr.
Sage?"
"Oh yes," the lawyer replied, leaning back in his chair, "I drew that;
a long time ago; shortly after your marriage. And about a year ago I
drew another one. Did he ever speak of that?"
"No," Carmen replied, with a steady voice, but trembling inwardly at her
narrow escape.
"I wonder," continued Mr. Sage, "if it was ever executed? He took it,
and said he would think it over."
"Executed?" queried Carmen, looking up. "How do you mean, before a
magistrate?"
"Oh, no; signed and witnessed. It is very simple. The law requires two
witnesses; the testator and the witnesses must declare that they sign in
the presence of each other. The witnesses prove the will, or, if they
are dead, their signatures can be proved. I was one of the witnesses of
the first will, and a clerk of Henderson's, who is still in his office,
was the other."
"The last one is probably in the safe if it was executed."
"Probably," the lawyer assented. "If not, you'd better look for it in
the house."
"Of course. Whether it exists or not, I want to carry out my husband's
intention," Carmen said, sweetly. "Have you any memorandum of it?"
"I think so, somewhere, but the leading provisions are in my mind. It
would astonish the public."
"Why?" asked Carmen.
"Well, the property was greater than any of us supposed, and--perhaps I
ought not to speak to you of this now, Mrs. Henderson."
"I think I have a right to know what my husband's last wishes were,"
Carmen answered, firmly.
"Well, he had a great scheme. The greater part of his property after the
large legacies--" The lawyer saw that Carmen looked pale, and he
hesitated a moment, and then said, in a cheery manner: "Oh, I assure you,
madam, that this will gave you a great fortune; all the establishment,
and a very great fortune. But the residue was in trust for the building
and endowment of an Industrial School on the East Side, with a great
library and a reading-room, all to be free. It was a great scheme, and
carefully worked out."
"I am so glad to know this," said Carmen. "Was there anything else?"
"Only some legacies." And Mr. Sage went on, trying to recall details
that his attentive listener already knew. There were legacies to some of
his relatives in New Hampshire, and there was a fund, quite a handsome
fund, for the poor of the city, called the "Margaret Fund." And there
was something also for a relative of the late Mrs. Henderson.
Carmen again expressed her desire to carry out her husband's wishes in
everything, and Mr. Sage was much impressed by her sweet manner. When
she had found out all that he knew or remembered of the new will, and
arose to go, Mr. Sage said he would accompany her to the office. And
Carmen gratefully accepted his escort, saying that she had wished to ask
him to go with her, but that she feared to take up so much of his time.
At the office the first will was found, but no other. The lawyer glanced
through it, and then handed it to Mrs. Henderson, with the remark, "It
leaves you, madam, pretty much everything of which he died possessed."
Carmen put it aside. She did not care to read it now. She would go home
and search for the other one.
"If no other is found," said Mr. Sage, in bidding her good-morning,"
this one ought to be proved tomorrow. I may tell you that you and Mr.
Hollowell are named as executors."
On her way home Carmen stopped at a telegraph station, and sent a message
to Mavick, in Washington, to take an afternoon train and come to New
York.
When Carmen reached home she was in a serious but perfectly clear frame
of mind. The revelation in the last will of Henderson's change of mind
towards her was mortifying to a certain extent. It was true that his
fortune was much increased since the first will was made, and that it
justified his benevolent scheme. But he might have consulted her about
it. If she had argued the matter with her conscience, she would have
told her conscience that she would carry out this new plan in her own way
and time. She was master of the situation, and saw before her a future
of almost unlimited opportunity and splendor, except for one little
obstacle. That obstacle was Mr. Mavick. She believed that she
understood him thoroughly, but she could not take the next step until she
had seen him. It was true that no one except herself positively knew
that a second will now existed, but she did not know how much he might
choose to remember.
She was very impatient to see Mr. Mavick. She wandered about the house,
restless and feverish. Presently it occurred to her that it would be
best to take the will wholly into her own keeping. She unlocked the
desk, took it out with a trembling hand, but did not open it again.
It was not necessary. A first reading had burned every item of it into
her brain. It seemed to be a sort of living thing. She despised herself
for being so agitated, and for the furtive feeling that overcame her as
she glanced about to be sure that she was alone, and then she ran up
stairs to her room and locked the document in her own writing-desk.
What was that? Oh, it was only the door-bell. But who could it be?
Some one from the office, from her lawyer? She could see nobody. In two
minutes there was a rap at her door. It was only the servant with a
despatch. She took it and opened it without haste.
"Very well, Dobson; no answer. I expect Mr. Mavick on business at ten.
I am at home to no one else."
At ten o'clock Mr. Mavick came, and was shown into the library, where
Carmen awaited him.
"It was very good of you to come," she said, as she advanced to meet him
and gave him her hand in the natural subdued manner that the
circumstances called for.
"I took the first train after I received your despatch."
"I am sorry to inconvenience you so," she said, after they were seated,
"but you know so much of Mr. Henderson's affairs that your advice will be
needed. His will is to be proved tomorrow."
"Yes?" said Mavick.
"I went to see--Mr. Sage today, and he went with me to the office. The
will was in the safe. I did not read it, but Mr. Sage said that it left
everything to me except a few legacies."
"Yes?"
"He said it should be proved tomorrow, unless a later will turned up."
"Was there a later will?"
"That is what he did not know. He had drawn a new will about a year ago,
but he doubted if it had ever been executed. Mr. Henderson was
considering it. He thought he had a memorandum of it somewhere, but he
remembered the principal features of it."
"Was it a great change from the first?" Mavick asked.
"Yes, considerable. In fact, the greater part of his property, as far as
I could make out, was to go to endow a vast training-school, library, and
reading-room on the East Side. Of course that would be a fine thing."
"Of course," said Mavick. "And no such will has been found?"
"I've looked everywhere," replied Carmen, simply; "all over the house.
It should be in that desk if anywhere. We can look again, but I feel
pretty sure there is no such document there."
She took in her hand the bunch of keys that lay on the table, as if she
were about to rise and unlock the desk. Then she hesitated, and looked
Mavick full in the face.
"Do you think, Mr. Mavick, that will was ever executed?"
For a moment they looked steadily at each other, and then he said,
deliberately, their eyes squarely meeting, "I do not think it was."
And in a moment he added, "He never said anything to me about such a
disposition of his property."
Two things were evident to Carmen from this reply. He saw her interests
as she saw them, and it was pretty certain that the contents of the will
were not made known to him when he witnessed it. She experienced an
immense feeling of relief as she arose and unlocked the desk. They sat
down before it together, and went over its contents. Mavick made a note
of the fresh business memoranda that might be of service next day, since
Mrs. Henderson had requested him to attend the proving of the will, and
to continue for the present the business relations with her that he had
held with Mr. Henderson.
It was late when he left the house, but he took with him a note to Mr.
Sage to drop into the box for morning delivery. The note said that she
had searched the house, that no second will existed there, and that she
had telegraphed to Mr. Mavick, who had much knowledge of Mr. Henderson's
affairs, to meet him in the morning. And she read the note to Mavick
before she sealed it.
Before the note could have been dropped into the box, Carmen was in her
room, and the note was literally true. No second will existed.
The will was proved, and on the second day its contents were in all the
newspapers. But with it went a very exciting story. This was the rumor
of another will, and of Henderson's vast scheme of benevolence. Mr. Sage
had been interviewed and Carmen had been interviewed. The memorandum
(which was only rough and not wholly legible notes) had been found and
sent to Carmen. There was no concealment about it. She gave the
reporters all the details, and to every one she said that it was her
intention to carry out her husband's wishes, so far as they could be
ascertained from this memorandum, when his affairs had been settled.
The thirst of the reporters for information amused even Carmen, who had
seen much of this industrious tribe. One of them, to whom she had
partially explained the situation, ended by asking her, "Are you going to
contest the will?"
"Contest the will?" cried Carmen. "There is nothing to contest."
"I didn't know," said the young man, whose usual occupation was reporting
sports, and who had a dim idea that every big will must be contested.
Necessarily the affair made a great deal of talk. The newspapers
discussed it for days, and turned over the scheme in every light, the
most saying that it was a noble gift to the city that had been intended,
while only one or two doubted if charity institutions of this sort really
helped the poor. Regret, of course, was expressed that the second will
had never been executed, but with this regret was the confidence that the
widow would carry out, eventually, Henderson's plans.
This revelation modified the opinion in regard to Henderson. He came to
be regarded as a public benefactor, and his faithful wife shared the
credit of his noble intention.
XXI
Waiting for something to turn up, Jack found a weary business. He had
written to Mavick after the newspaper report that that government officer
had been in the city on Henderson's affairs, and had received a very
civil and unsatisfactory reply. In the note Mavick had asked him to come
to Washington and spend a little time, if he had nothing better on hand,
as his guest. Perhaps no offense was intended, but the reply enraged
Jack. There was in the tone of the letter and in the manner of the
invitation a note of patronage that was unendurable.
"Confound the fellow's impudence!" said Jack to himself; and he did not
answer the invitation.
Personally his situation was desperate enough, but he was not inclined to
face it. In a sort of stupor he let the law take its course. There was
nothing left of his fortune, and his creditors were in possession of his
house and all it contained. "Do not try to keep anything back that
legally belongs to them," Edith had written when he informed her of this
last humiliation. Of course decency was observed. Jack's and Edith's
wardrobes, and some pieces of ancestral furniture that he pointed out as
belonging to his wife, were removed before the auction flag was hung out.
When this was over he still temporized. Edith's affectionate entreaties
to him to leave the dreadful city and come home were evaded on one plea
or another. He had wild schemes of going off West or South
--of disappearing. Perhaps he would have luck somewhere. He couldn't ask
aid or seek occupation of his friends, but some place where he was not
known he felt that he might do something to regain his position, get some
situation, or make some money--lots of men had done it in a new country
and reinstate himself in Edith's opinion.
But he did not go, and days and weeks went by in irresolution. No word
came from Carmen, and this humiliated Jack more than anything else--not
the loss of her friendship, but the remembrance that he had ever danced
attendance on her and trusted her. He was getting a good many wholesome
lessons in these days.
One afternoon he called upon Miss Tavish. There was no change in her.
She received him with her usual gay cordiality, and with no affectation.
"I didn't know what had become of you," she said.
"I've been busy," he replied, with a faint attempt at a smile.
"Yes, I know. It's been an awful time, what with Henderson's death and
everything else. Almost everybody has been hit. But," and she looked at
him cheerfully, "they will come up again; up and down; it is always so.
Why, even I got a little twist in that panic." The girl was doing what
she could in her way to cheer him up.
"I think of going off somewhere to seek my fortune," said Jack, with a
rueful smile.
"Oh, I hope not; your friends wouldn't like that. There is no place like
New York, I'm sure." And there was a real note of friendliness and
encouragement in her tone. "Only," and she gave him another bright
smile, "I think of running away from it myself, for a time. It's a
secret yet. Carmen wants me to go abroad with her."
"I have not seen Mrs. Henderson since her husband's death. How is she?"
"Oh, she bears up wonderfully. But then she has so much to do, poor
thing. And then the letters she gets, the begging letters. You've no
idea. I don't wonder she wants to go abroad. Don't stay away so long
again," she said as Jack rose to go. "And, oh, can't you come in to
dinner tomorrow night--just Carmen--I think I can persuade her--and
nobody else?"
"I'm sorry that I have an engagement," Jack answered.
"Well, some other time. Only soon."
This call did Jack temporarily a world of good. It helped his
self-esteem. But it was only temporary. The black fact stared him in the
face every morning that he was ruined. And it came over him gradually
that he was a useless member of society. He never had done anything; he
was not trained or fitted to do anything. And this was impressed upon
him in the occasional attempts he made to get employment. He avoided as
much as possible contact with those who knew him. Shame prevented him
from applying to them for occupation, and besides he very well knew that
to those who knew him his idle career was no recommendation. Yet he
formed a habit of going down-town every day and looking for work. His
appearance commanded civility, but everywhere he met with refusal, and he
began to feel like a well-bred tramp. There had been in his mind before
no excuse for tramps. He could see now how they were made.
It was not that he lacked capacity. He knew a great deal, in an
amateurish way, about pictures, books, bric-a-brac, and about society.
Why shouldn't he write? He visited the Loan Exhibition, and wrote a
careful criticism on the pictures and sent it to a well-known journal.
It was returned with thanks: the journal had its own art critic. He
prepared other articles about curious books, and one about porcelain and
pottery. They were all returned, except one which gave the history of a
rare bit of majolica, which had been picked up forty cents and then sold
for five hundred dollars, and was now owned by a collector who had paid
four thousand dollars for it. For that the newspaper sent him five
dollars. That was not encouraging, and his next effort for the same
journal was returned. Either he hadn't the newspaper knack, or the
competition was too great.
He had ceased going to his club. It was too painful to meet his
acquaintances in his altered circumstances, and it was too expensive.
It even annoyed him to meet Major Fairfax. That philosopher had not
changed towards him any more than Miss Tavish had, but it was a
melancholy business to talk of his affairs, and to listen to the repeated
advice to go down to the country to Edith, and wait for some good
opening. That was just what he could not do. His whole frivolous life
he began now to see as she must have seen it. And it seemed to him that
he could only retain a remnant of his self-respect by doing something
that would reinstate him in her opinion.
"Very well," said the Major, at the close of the last of their talks at
the club; "what are you going to do?"
"I'm going into some business," said Jack, stiffly.
"Have you spoken to any of your friends?"
"No. It's no use," he said, bitterly; "they are all like me, or they
know me."
"And hasn't your wife some relations who are in business?"
"The last people I should apply to. No. I'm going to look around.
Major, do you happen to know a cheap lodging-house that is respectable?"
"I don't know any that is not respectable," the Major replied, in a huffy
manner.
"I beg your pardon," said Jack. "I want to reduce expenses."
The Major did know of a place in the neighborhood where he lived.
He gave Jack the address, and thereafter the club and his usual resorts
knew him no more.
As the days went by and nothing happened to break the monotony of his
waiting and his fruitless search, he became despondent. Day after day he
tramped about the city, among the business portions, and often on the
East Side, to see misery worse than his own. He had saved out of the
wreck his ample wardrobe, his watch, and some jewelry, and upon these he
raised money for his cheap lodgings and his cheap food. He grew careless
of his personal appearance. Every morning he rose and went about the
city, always with less hope, and every night he returned to his lodging,
but not always sober.
One day he read the announcement that Mrs. Rodney Henderson and Miss
Tavish had sailed for Europe. That ended that chapter. What exactly he
had expected he could not say. Help from Carmen? Certainly not. But
there had never been a sign from her, nor any word from Mavick lately.
There evidently was nothing. He had been thrown over. Carmen evidently
had no more use for him. She had other plans. The thought that he had
been used and duped was almost more bitter than his loss.
In after-days Jack looked back upon this time with a feeling akin to
thankfulness for Carmen's utter heartlessness in regard to his affairs.
He trembled to think what might have happened to him if she had sent for
him and consulted him and drawn him again into the fatal embrace of her
schemes and her fascinations. Now he was simply enraged when he thought
of her, and irritated with himself.
These were dark days, days to which he looked back with a shudder.
He wrote to Edith frequently--a brief note. He was straightening out his
affairs; he was busy. But he did not give her his address, and he only
got her letters when the Major forwarded them from the club, which was
irregularly. A stranger, who met him at his lodgings or elsewhere, would
have said that he was an idle and rather dissipated-looking man. He was
idle, except in his feeble efforts to get work; he was worn and
discouraged, but he was not doing anything very bad. In his way of
looking at it, he was carrying out his notion of honor. He was only
breaking a woman's heart.
He was conscious of little except his own misfortunes and misery. He did
not yet apprehend his own selfishness nor her nobility. He did not yet
comprehend the unselfishness of a good woman's love.
On the East Side one day, as he was sauntering along Grand Street, he
encountered Dr. Leigh, his wife's friend, whom he had seen once at his
house. She did not at first recognize him until he stopped and spoke his
name.
"Oh," she said, with surprise at seeing him, and at his appearance,
"I didn't expect to see you here. I thought everybody had gone from the
city. Perhaps you are going to the Neighborhood Guild?"
"No," and Jack forced a little laugh, "I'm not so good as that. I'm kept
in town on business. I strolled over here to see how the other side of
life looks."
"It doesn't improve. It is one of the worst summers I ever saw. Since
Mr. Henderson's death--"
"What difference did Henderson's death make over here?"
"Why, he had deposited a little fund for Father Damon to draw on, and the
day after his death the bank returned a small check with the notice that
there was no deposit to draw on. It had been such a help in
extraordinary cases. Perhaps you saw some allusion to it in the
newspapers?"
"Wasn't it the Margaret Fund?"
"Yes. Father Damon dropped a note to Mrs. Henderson explaining about it.
No reply came."
"As he might have expected." Dr. Leigh looked up quickly as if for an
explanation, but Jack ignored the query, and went on. "And Father Damon,
is he as active as ever?"
"He has gone."
"What, left the city, quit his work? And the mission?"
"I don't suppose he will ever quit his work while he lives, but he is
much broken down. The mission chapel is not closed, but a poor woman
told me that it seemed so."
"And he will not return? Mrs. Delancy will be so sorry."
"I think not. He is in retreat now, and I heard that he might go to
Baltimore. I thought of your wife. She was so interested in his work.
Is she well this summer?"
"Yes, thank you," said Jack, and they parted. But as she went on her way
his altered appearance struck her anew, and she wondered what had
happened.
This meeting with Mr. Delancy recalled most forcibly Edith, her interest
in the East Side work, her sympathy with Father Damon and the mission,
the first flush of those days of enthusiasm. When Father Damon began his
work the ladies used to come in their carriages to the little chapel with
flowers and money and hearts full of sympathy with the devoted priest.
Alone of all these Edith had been faithful in her visits, always, when
she was in town. And now the whole glittering show of charity had
vanished for the time, and Father Damon--The little doctor stopped,
consulted a memorandum in her hand-bag, looked up at the tenement-house
she was passing, and then began to climb its rickety stairway.
Yes, Father Damon had gone, and Ruth Leigh simply went on with her work
as before. Perhaps in all the city that summer there was no other person
whose daily life was so little changed as hers. Others were driven away
by the heat, by temporary weariness, by the need of a vacation and change
of scene. Some charities and some clubs and schools were temporarily
suspended; other charities, befitting the name, were more active, the
very young children were most looked after, and the Good Samaritans of
the Fresh-Air Funds went about everywhere full of this new enthusiasm of
humanity. But the occupation of Ruth Leigh remained always the same,
in a faithful pertinacity that nothing could wholly discourage, in a
routine that no projects could kindle into much enthusiasm. Day after
day she went about among the sick and the poor, relieving and counseling
individuals, and tiring herself out in that personal service, and more
and more conscious, when she had time, at night, for instance, to think,
of the monstrous injustice somewhere, and at times in a mood of fierce
revolt against the social order that made all this misery possible and
hopeless.
Yet a great change had come into her life--the greatest that can come to
any man or woman in the natural order. She loved and she was loved.
An ideal light had been cast upon her commonplace existence, the depths
of her own nature had been revealed to herself. In this illuminating
light she walked about in the misery of this world. This love must be
denied, this longing of the heart for companionship could never be
gratified, yet after all it was a sweet self-sacrifice, and the love
itself brought its own consolation. She had not to think of herself as
weak, and neither was her lover's image dimmed to her by any surrender of
his own principle or his own ideal. She saw him, as she had first seen
him, a person consecrated and set apart, however much she might disagree
with his supernatural vagaries--set apart to the service of humanity.
She had bitter thoughts sometimes of the world, and bitter thoughts of
the false system that controlled his conduct, but never of him.
It was unavoidable that she should recall her last interview with him,
and that the image of his noble, spiritual face should be ever distinct
in her mind. And there was even a certain comfort in this recollection.
Father Damon had indeed striven, under the counsel of his own courage and
of Brother Monies, to conquer himself on the field of his temptation.
But with his frail physique it was asking too much. This at last was so
evident that the good brother advised him, and the advice was in the
nature of a command in his order, to retire for a while, and then take up
his work in a fresh field.
When this was determined on, his desire was nearly irresistible to see
Ruth Leigh; he thought it would be cowardly to disappear and not say
good-by. Indeed, it was necessary to see her and explain the stoppage of
help from the Margaret Fund. The check that he had drawn, which was
returned, had been for one of Dr. Leigh's cases. With his failure to
elicit any response from Mrs. Henderson, the hope, raised by the
newspaper comments on the unexecuted will, that the fund would be renewed
was dissipated.
In the interview which Father Damon sought with Dr. Leigh at the Women's
Hospital all this was explained, and ways and means were discussed for
help elsewhere.
"I wanted to talk this over with you," said Father Damon, "because I am
going away to take a rest."
"You need it, Father Damon," was Ruth's answer, in a professional manner.
"And--and," he continued, with some hesitation, "probably I shall not
return to this mission."
"Perhaps that will be best," she said, simply, but looking up at him now,
with a face full of tender sympathy.
"I am sure of it," he replied, turning away from her gaze. "The fact is,
doctor, I am a little hipped--overworked, and all that. I shall pull
myself together with a little rest. But I wanted to tell you how much I
appreciate your work, and--and what a comfort you have been to me in my
poor labors. I used to hope that some time you would see this world in
relation to the other, and--"
"Yes, I know," she interrupted, hastily, "I cannot think as you do,
but--" And she could not go on for a great lump in her throat.
Involuntarily she rose from her seat. The interview was too trying.
Father Damon rose also. There was a moment's painful silence as they
looked in each other's faces. Neither could trust the voice for speech.
He took her hand and pressed it, and said "God bless you!" and went out,
closing the door softly.
A moment after he opened it again and stood on the threshold. She was in
her chair, her head bowed upon her arms on the table. As he spoke she
looked up, and she never forgot the expression of his face.
"I want to say, Ruth"--he had never before called her by her first name,
and his accent thrilled her--"that I shall pray for you as I pray for
myself, and though I may never see you again in this world, the greatest
happiness that can come to me in this life will be to hear that you have
learned to say Our Father which art in heaven."
As she looked he was gone, and his last words remained a refrain in her
mind that evening and afterwards--"Our Father which art in heaven"
--a refrain recurring again and again in all her life, inseparable from the
memory of the man she loved.
XXII
Along the Long Island coast lay the haze of early autumn. It was the
time of lassitude. In the season of ripening and decay Nature seemed to
have lost her spring, and lay in a sort of delicious languor. Sea and
shore were in a kind of truce, and the ocean south wind brought cool
refreshment but no incentive.
From the sea the old brown farmhouse seemed a snug haven of refuge; from
the inland road it appeared, with its spreading, sloping roofs, like an
ancient sea-craft come ashore, which had been covered in and then
embowered by kindly Nature with foliage. In those days its golden-brown
color was in harmony with the ripening orchards and gardens.
Surely, if anywhere in the world, peace was here. But to its owner this
very peace and quietness was becoming intolerable. The waiting days were
so long, the sleepless nights of uncertainty were so weary. When her
work was done, and Edith sat with a book or some sewing under the arbor
where the grape clusters hung, growing dark and transparent, and the boy
played about near her, she had a view of the blue sea, and about her were
the twitter of birds and the hum of the cicada. The very beauty made her
heart ache. Seaward there was nothing--nothing but the leaping little
waves and the sky. From the land side help might come at any hour, and
at every roll of wheels along the road her heart beat faster and hope
sprang up anew. But day after day nothing came.
Perhaps there is no greater bravery than this sort of waiting, doing the
daily duty and waiting. Endurance is woman's bravery, and Edith was
enduring, with an almost broken but still with a courageous heart. It
was all so strange. Was it simply shame that kept him away, or had he
ceased to love her? If the latter, there was no help for her. She had
begged him to come, she had offered to leave the boy with her cousin
companion and go to him. Perhaps it was pride only. In one of his short
letters he had said, "Thank God, your little fortune is untouched."
If it were pride only, how could she overcome it? Of this she thought
night and day. She thought, and she was restless, feverish, and growing
thin in her abiding anxiety.
It was true that her own fortune was safe and in her control. But with
the usual instinct of women who know they have an income not likely to be
ever increased, she began to be economical. She thought not of herself;
but of the boy. It was the boy's fortune now. She began to look sharply
after expenses; she reduced her household; she took upon herself the care
of the boy, and other household duties. This was all well for her, for
it occupied her time, and to some extent diverted her thoughts.
So the summer passed--a summer of anxiety, longing, and dull pain for
Edith. The time came when the uncertainty of it could no longer be
endured. If Jack had deserted her, even if he should die, she could
order her life and try to adjust her heavy burden. But this uncertainty
was quite beyond her power to sustain.
She made up her mind that she would go to the city and seek him. It was
what he had written that she must not on any account do, but nothing that
could happen to her there could be so bad as this suspense. Perhaps she
could bring him back. If he refused, and was angry at her interference,
that even would be something definite. And then she had carefully
thought out another plan. It might fail, but some action had now become
for her a necessity.
Early one morning--it was in September-she prepared for a journey to the
city. This little trip, which thousands of people made daily, took on
for her the air of an adventure. She had been immured so long that it
seemed a great undertaking. And when she bade good-by to the boy for the
day she hugged him and kissed him again and again, as if it were to be an
eternal farewell. To her cousin were given the most explicit directions
for his care, and after she had started for the train she returned to
give further injunctions. So she told herself, but it was really for one
more look at the boy.
But on the whole there was a certain exhilaration in the preparation and
the going, and her spirits rose as they had not done in months before.
Arrived in the city, she drove at once to the club Jack most frequented.
"He is not in," the porter said; "indeed, Mr. Delancy has not been here
lately."
"Is Major Fairfax in?" Edith asked.
Major Fairfax was in, and he came out immediately to her carriage.
From him she learned Jack's address, and drove to his lodging-house.
The Major was more than civil; he was disposed to be sympathetic, but he
had the tact to see that Mrs. Delancy did not wish to be questioned, nor
to talk.
"Is Mr. Delancy at home?" she asked the small boy who ran the elevator.
"No'me."
"And he did not say where he was going?"
"No'me."
"Is he not sometimes at home in the daytime?"
"No'me."
"And what time does he usually come home in the evening?"
"Don't know. After I've gone, I guess."
Edith hesitated whether she should leave a card or a note, but she
decided not to do either, and ordered the cabman to take her to Pearl
Street, to the house of Fletcher & Co.
Mr. Fletcher, the senior partner, was her cousin, the son of her father's
elder brother, and a man now past sixty years. Circumstances had carried
the families apart socially since the death of her father and his
brother, but they were on the most friendly terms, and the ties of blood
were not in any way weakened. Indeed, although Edith had seen Gilbert
Fletcher only a few times since her marriage, she felt that she could go
to him any time if she were in trouble, with the certainty of sympathy
and help. He had the reputation of the old-fashioned New York merchants,
to whom her father belonged, for integrity and conservatism.
It was to him that she went now. The great shop, or wholesale warehouse
rather, into which she entered from the narrow and cart-encumbered
street, showed her at once the nature of the business of Fletcher & Co.
It was something in the twine and cordage way. There were everywhere
great coils of ropes and bales of twine, and the dark rooms had a tarry
smell. Mr. Fletcher was in his office, a little space partitioned off
in the rear, with half a dozen clerks working by gaslight, and a little
sanctum where the senior partner was commonly found at his desk.
Mr. Fletcher was a little, round-headed man, with a shrewd face, vigorous
and cheerful, thoroughly a man of business, never speculating, and who
had been slowly gaining wealth by careful industry and cautious extension
of his trade. Certain hours of the day--from ten to three--he gave to
his business. It was a habit, and it was a habit that he enjoyed. He
had now come back, as he told Edith, from a little holiday at the sea,
where his family were, to get into shape for the fall trade.
Edith was closeted with him for a full hour. When she came out her eyes
were brighter and her step more elastic. At sundown she reached home,
almost in high spirits. And when she snatched up the boy and hugged him,
she whispered in his ear, "Baby, we have done it, and we shall see."
One night when Jack returned from his now almost aimless tramping about
the city he found a letter on his table. It seemed from the printing on
the envelope to be a business letter; and business, in the condition he
was in--and it was the condition in which he usually came home--did not
interest him. He was about to toss the letter aside, when the name of
Fletcher caught his eye, and he opened it.
It was a brief note, written on an office memorandum, which simply asked
Mr. Delancy to call at the office as soon as it was convenient, as the
writer wished to talk with him on a matter of business, and it was signed
"Gilbert Fletcher."
"Why don't he say what his business is?" said Jack, throwing the letter
down impatiently. "I am not going to be hauled over the coals by any of
the Fletchers." And he tumbled into bed in an injured and yet
independent frame of mind.
But the next morning he reread the formal little letter in a new light.
To be sure, it was from Edith's cousin. He knew him very well; he was
not a person to go out of his way to interfere with anybody, and more
than likely it was in relation to Edith's affairs that he was asked to
call. That thought put a new aspect on the matter. Of course if it
concerned her interests he ought to go. He dressed with unusual care for
him in these days, breakfasted at the cheap restaurant which he
frequented, and before noon was in the Fletcher warehouse in Pearl
Street.
He had never been there before, and he was somewhat curious to see what
sort of a place it was where Gilbert carried on the string business,
as he used to call it when speaking to Edith of her cousin's occupation.
It was a much more dingy and smelly place than he expected, but the carts
about the doors, and the bustle of loading and unloading, of workmen
hauling and pulling, and of clerks calling out names and numbers to be
registered and checked, gave him the impression that it was not a dull
place.
Mr. Fletcher received him in the little dim back office with a cordial
shake of the hand, gave him a chair, and reseated himself, pushing back
the papers in front of him with the air of a very busy man who was
dropping for a moment one thing in order to give his mind promptly to
another.
"Our fall trade is just starting up," he said, "and it keeps us all
pretty busy."
"Yes," said Jack. "I could drop in any other time--"
"No, no," interrupted Mr. Fletcher; "it is just because I am busy that I
wanted to see you. Are you engaged in anything?"
"Nothing in particular," replied Jack, hesitating. "I'd thought of going
into some business." And then, after a pause: "It's no use to mince
matters. You know--everybody knows, I suppose--that I got hit in that
Henderson panic."
"So did lots of others," replied Mr. Fletcher, cheerfully. "Yes, I know
about it. And I'm not sure but it was a lucky thing for me." He spoke
still more cheerfully, and Jack looked at him inquiringly.
"Are you open to an offer?"
"I'm open to almost anything," Jack answered, with a puzzled look.
"Well," and Mr. Fletcher settled back in his chair, "I can give you the
situation in five minutes. I've been in this business over thirty years
--yes; over thirty-five years. It has grown, little by little, until
it's a pretty big business. I've a partner, a first-rate man--he is in
Europe now--who attends to most of the buying. And the business keeps
spreading out, and needs more care. I'm not as young as I was I shall be
sixty-four in October--and I can't work right along as I used to. I find
that I come later and go away earlier. It isn't the 'work exactly, but
the oversight, the details; and the fact is that I want somebody near me
whom I can trust, whether I'm here or whether I'm away. I've got good,
honest, faithful clerks--if there was one I did not trust, I wouldn't
have him about. But do you know, Jack," it was the first time in the
interview that he had used this name--"there is something in blood."
"Yes," Jack assented.
"Well, I want a confidential clerk. That's it."
"Me?" he asked. He was thinking rapidly while Mr. Fletcher had been
speaking; something like a revolution was taking place in his mind, and
when he asked this, the suggestion took on a humorous aspect--a humorous
view of anything had not occurred to him in months.
"You are just the man."
"I can be confidential," Jack rejoined, with the old smile on his face
that had been long a stranger to it, "but I don't know that I can be a
clerk."
Mr. Fletcher was good enough to laugh at this pleasantry.
"That's all right. It isn't much of a position. We can make the salary
twenty-five hundred dollars for a starter. Will you try it?"
Jack got up and went to the area window, and looked out a moment upon the
boxes in the dim court. Then he came back and stood by Mr. Fletcher, and
put his hand on the desk.
"Yes, I'll try."
"Good. When will you begin?"
"Now."
"That's good. No time like now. Wait a bit, and I'll show you about the
place before we go to lunch. You'll get hold of the ropes directly."
This was Mr. Fletcher's veteran joke.
At three o'clock Mr. Fletcher closed his desk. It was time to take his
train. "Tomorrow, then," he said, "we will begin in earnest."
"What are the business hours here?" asked Jack.
"Oh, I am usually here from ten to three, but the business hours are from
nine till the business is done. By-the-way, why not run out with me and
spend the night, and we can talk the thing over?"
There was no reason why he should not go, and he went. And that was the
way John Corlear Delancy was initiated in the string business in the old
house of Fletcher & Co.
XXII
Few battles are decisive, and perhaps least of all those that are won by
a sudden charge or an accident, and not as the result of long-maturing
causes. Doubtless the direction of a character or a career is often
turned by a sudden act of the will or a momentary impotence of the will.
But the battle is not over then, nor without long and arduous fighting,
often a dreary, dragging struggle without the excitement of novelty.
It was comparatively easy for Jack Delancy in Mr. Fletcher's office to
face about suddenly and say yes to the proposal made him. There was on
him the pressure of necessity, of his own better nature acting under a
sense of his wife's approval; and besides, there was a novelty that
attracted him in trying something absolutely new to his habits.
But it was one thing to begin, and another, with a man of his
temperament, to continue. To have regular hours, to attend to the
details of a traffic that was to the last degree prosaic, in short, to
settle down to hard work, was a very different thing from the "business"
about which Jack and his fellows at the club used to talk so much, and to
fancy they were engaged in. When the news came to the Union that Delancy
had gone into the house of Fletcher & Co. as a clerk, there was a general
smile, and a languid curiosity expressed as to how long he would stick to
it.
In the first day or two Jack was sustained not only by the original
impulse, but by a real instinct in learning about business ways and
details that were new to him. To talk about the business and about the
markets, to hear plans unfolded for extension and for taking advantage of
fluctuations in prices, was all very well; but the drudgery of details
--copying, comparing invoices, and settling into the routine of a clerk's
life, even the life of a confidential clerk--was contrary to the habits
of his whole life. It was not to be expected that these habits would be
overcome without a long struggle and many back-slidings.
The little matter of being at his office desk at nine o'clock in the
morning began to seem a hardship after the first three or four days.
For Mr. Fletcher not to walk into his shop on the stroke of ten would
have been such a reversal of his habits as to cause him as much annoyance
as it caused Jack to be bound to a fixed hour. It was only the
difference in training. But that is saying everything.
Besides, while the details of his work, the more he got settled in them,
were not to his taste, he was daily mortified to find himself ignorant of
matters which the stupidest clerk in the office seemed to know by
instinct. This acted, however, as a sort of stimulus, and touched his
pride. He determined that he would not be humiliated in this way, and
during office hours he worked as diligently as Mr. Fletcher could have
desired. He had pledged himself to the trial, and he summoned all his
intelligence to back his effort.
And it is true that the satisfaction of having a situation, of doing
something, the relief to the previous daily anxiety and almost despair,
raised his spirits. It was only when he thought of the public opinion of
his little world, of some other occupation more befitting his education,
of the vast change from his late life of ease and luxury to this of daily
labor with a clerk's pay, that he had hours of revolt and cursed his
luck.
No, Jack's battle was not won in a day, or a week, or a year. And before
it was won he needed more help than his own somewhat irresolute will
could give. It is the impression of his biographer that he would have
failed in the end if he had been married to a frivolous and selfish
woman.
Mr. Fletcher was known as a very strict man of business, and as little
else. But he was a good judge of character, and under his notions of
discipline and of industry he was a kindly man, as his clerks, who feared
his sharp oversight, knew. And besides, he had made a compact with
Edith, for whom he had something more than family affection, and he
watched Jack's efforts to adjust himself to the new life with sympathy.
If it was an experiment for Jack, it was also an experiment for him,
the result of which gave him some anxiety. The situation was not a very
heroic one, but a life is often decided for good or ill by as
insignificant a matter as Jack's ability to persevere in learning about
the twine and cordage trade. This was a day of trial, and the element of
uncertainty in it kept both Mr. Fletcher and Jack from writing of the new
arrangement to Edith, for fear that only disappointment to her would be
the ultimate result. Jack's brief notes to her were therefore, as usual,
indefinite, but with the hint that he was beginning to see a way out of
his embarrassment.
After the passage of a couple of weeks, during which Mr. Fletcher had
been quietly studying his new clerk, he suddenly said to him, one
Saturday morning, after they had looked over and estimated the orders by
the day's mail, "Jack, I think you'd better let up a little, and run down
and see Edith."
"Oh!" said Jack, a little startled by the proposal, but recovering
himself; "I didn't suppose the business could spare me."
"I didn't mean a vacation, but run down for over Sunday. It must be
lovely there, and the change will make you as keen as a brier for
business. It always does me. Stay over Monday if the weather is good.
I have to be away myself the week after." As Jack hesitated and did not
reply, Mr. Fletcher continued:
"I really think you'd better go, Jack. You have hardly had a breath of
fresh air this summer. There's plenty of time to go up-town and get your
grip and catch the afternoon train."
Jack was still silent. The thought of seeing Edith created a tumult in
his mind. It seemed as if he were not quite ready, not exactly settled.
He had been procrastinating so long, putting off going, on one pretext or
another, that he had fallen into a sort of fear of going. At first,
absorbed in his speculations, enthralled by the company of Carmen and the
luxurious, easy-going view of life that her society created for him; he
had felt Edith and his house as an irritating restraint. Later, when the
smash came, he had been still more relieved that she was out of town.
And finally he had fallen into a reckless apathy, and had made himself
believe that he never would see her again until some stroke of fortune
should set him on his feet and restore his self-respect.
But since he had been with Fletcher & Co. his feelings had gradually
undergone a change. With a regular occupation and regular hours, and in
contact with the sensible mind and business routine of Mr. Fletcher, he
began to have saner views of life, and to realize that Edith would
approve what he was now attempting to do much more than any effort to
relieve himself by speculation.
As soon as he felt himself a little more firmly established, a little
more sure of himself, he would go to Edith, and confess everything, and
begin life anew. This had been his mood, but he was still irresolute,
and it needed some outside suggestion to push him forward to overcome his
lingering reluctance to go home.
But this had come suddenly. It seemed to him at first thought that he
needed time to prepare for it. Mr. Fletcher pulled out his watch.
"There is a later train at four. Take that, and we will get some lunch
first."
An hour of postponement was such a relief! Why, of course he could go at
four. And instantly his heart leaped up with desire.
"All right," he said, as he rose and closed his desk. "But I think I'd
better not stay for lunch. I want to get something for the boy on my way
uptown."
"Very good. Tuesday, then. My best regards to Edith."
As Jack came down the stairway from the elevated road at Twenty-third
Street he ran against a man who was hurrying up--a man in a pronounced
traveling-suit, grip-sack and umbrella in hand, and in haste. It was
Mavick. Recognition was instantaneous, and it was impossible for either
to avoid the meeting if he had desired to do so.
"You in town!" said Mavick.
"And you!" Jack retorted.
"No, not really. I'm just going to catch the steamer. Short leave. We
have all been kept by that confounded Chile business."
"Going for the government?"
"No, not publicly. Of course shall confer with our minister in London.
Any news here?"
"Yes; Henderson's dead." And Jack looked Mavick squarely in the face.
"Ah!" And Mavick smiled faintly, and then said, gravely: "It was an awful
business. So sudden, you know, that I couldn't do anything." He made a
movement to pass on. "I suppose there has been no--no--"
"I suppose not," said Jack, "except that Mrs. Henderson has gone to
Europe."
"Ah!" And Mr. Mavick didn't wait for further news, but hurried up, with a
"Good-by."
So Mavick was following Carmen to Europe. Well, why not? What an unreal
world it all was, that of a few months ago! The gigantic Henderson;
Jack's own vision of a great fortune; Carmen and her house of Nero; the
astute and diplomatic Mavick, with his patronizing airs! It was like a
scene in a play.
He stepped into a shop and selected a toy for the boy. It was a real
toy, and it was for a real boy. Jack experienced a genuine pleasure at
the thought of pleasing him. Perhaps the little fellow would not know
him.
And then he thought of Edith--not of Edith the mother, but of Edith the
girl in the days of his wooing. And he went into Maillard's.
The pretty girl at the counter knew him. He was an old customer, and she
had often filled orders for him. She had despatched many a costly box to
addresses he had given her. It was in the recollection of those
transactions that he said: "A box of marrons glaces, please. My wife
prefers that."
"Shall I send it?" asked the girl, when she had done it up.
"No, thanks; we are not in town."
"Of course," she said, beaming upon him; "nobody is yet."
And this girl also seemed a part of the old life, with her little
affectation of familiarity with its ways.
He went to his room--it seemed a very mean little room now--packed his
bag, told the janitor he should be absent a few days, and hurried to the
ferry and the train as if he feared that some accident would delay him.
When he was seated and the train moved off, his thoughts took another
turn. He was in for it now.
He began to regret that he had not delayed, to think it all out more
thoroughly; perhaps it would have been better to have written.
He bought an evening journal, but he could not read it. What he read
between the lines was his own life. What a miserable failure! What a
mess he had made of his own affairs, and how unworthy of such a woman as
Edith he had been! How indifferent he had been to her happiness in the
pursuit of his own pleasure! How would she receive him? He could hardly
doubt that; but she must know, she must have felt cruelly his
estrangement. What if she met him with a royal forgiveness, as if he
were a returned prodigal? He couldn't stand that. If now he were only
going back with his fortune recovered, with brilliant prospects to spread
before her, and could come into the house in his old playful manner, with
the assumed deference of the master, and say: "Well, Edith dear, the
storm is over. It's all right now. I am awfully glad to get home.
Where's the rascal of an heir?"
Instead of that, he was going with nothing, humiliated, a clerk in a
twine-store. And not much of a clerk at that, he reflected, with his
ready humorous recognition of the situation.
And yet he was for the first time in his life earning his living. Edith
would like that. He had known all along that his idle life had been a
constant grief to her. No, she would not reproach him; she never did
reproach him. No doubt she would be glad that he was at work. But, oh,
the humiliation of the whole thing! At one moment he was eager to see
her, and the next the rattling train seemed to move too fast, and he
welcomed every wayside stop that delayed his arrival. But even the Long
Island trains arrive some time, and all too soon the cars slowed up at
the familiar little station, and Jack got out.
"Quite a stranger in these parts, Mr. Delancy," was the easy salutation
of the station-keeper.
"Yes. I've been away. All right down here?"
"Right as a trivet. Hot summer, though. Calculate it's goin' to be a
warm fall--generally is."
It was near sunset. When the train had moved on, and its pounding on the
rails became a distant roar and then was lost altogether, the country
silence so impressed Jack, as he walked along the road towards the sea,
that he became distinctly conscious of the sound of his own footsteps.
He stopped and listened. Yes, there were other sounds--the twitter of
birds in the bushes by the roadside, the hum of insects, and the faint
rhythmical murmur of lapsing waves on the shore.
And now the house came in view--first the big roof, and then the latticed
windows, the balconies, where there were pots of flowers, and then the
long veranda with its hammocks and climbing vines. There was a pink tone
in the distant water answering to the flush in the sky, and away to the
west the sand-dune that made out into the Sound was a point of light.
But the house! Jack's steps were again arrested. The level last rays of
the disappearing sun flashed upon the window-panes so that they glowed
like painted windows illuminated from within, with a reddish lustre, and
the roofs and the brown sides of the building, painted by those great
masters in color, the sun and the sea-wind, in that moment were like
burnished gold. Involuntarily Jack exclaimed:
"It is the Golden House!"
He made his way through the little fore yard. No one was about. The
veranda was deserted. There was Edith's work-basket; there were the
baby's playthings. The door stood open, and as he approached it he heard
singing--not singing, either, but a fitful sort of recitation, with the
occasional notes of an accompaniment struck as if in absence of mind.
The tune he knew, and as he passed through the first room towards the
sitting-room that looked on the sea he caught a line:
"Wely, wely, but love is bonny, for a little while--when it is new."
It was an old English ballad, the ballad of the "Cockle-shells," that
Edith used to sing often in the old days, when its note of melancholy
seemed best to express her happiness. It was only that line, and the
voice seemed to break, and there was silence.
He stole along and looked in. There was Edith, seated, her head bowed on
her hands, at the piano.
In an instant, before she could turn to the sound of his quick footsteps,
he was at her side, kneeling, his head bowed in the folds of her dress.
"Edith! I've been such a fool!"
She turned, slid from her seat, and was kneeling also, with her arms
thrown about his neck.
"Oh, Jack! You've come. Thank God! Thank God!"
And presently they stood, and his arms were still around her, and she was
looking up into his face, with her hands on his shoulders, and saying
"You've come to stay."
"Yes, dear, forever."
XXIV
The whole landscape was golden, the sea was silver, on that October
morning. It was the brilliant decline of the year. Edith stood with
Jack on the veranda. He had his grip-sack in hand and was equipped for
town. Both were silent in the entrancing scene.
The birds, twittering in the fruit-trees and over the vines, had the air
of an orchestra, the concerts of the season over, gathering their
instruments and about to depart. One could detect in the lapse of the
waves along the shore the note of weariness preceding the change into the
fretfulness and the tumult of tempests. In the soft ripening of the
season there was peace and hope, but it was the hope of another day. The
curtain was falling on this.
Was life beginning, then, or ending? If life only could change and renew
itself like the seasons, with the perpetually recurring springs! But
youth comes only once, and thereafter the man gathers the fruit of it,
sweet or bitter.
Jack was not given to moralizing, but perhaps a subtle suggestion of this
came to him in the thought that an enterprise, a new enterprise, might
have seemed easier in May, when the forces of nature were with him, than
in October. There was something, at least, that fell in with his mood, a
mood of acquiescence in failure, in this closing season of the year, when
he stood empty-handed in the harvest-time.
"Edith," he said, as they paced down the walk which was flaming with
scarlet and crimson borders, and turned to look at the peaceful brown
house, "I hate to go."
"But you are not going," said Edith, brightly. "I feel all the time as
if you were just coming back. Jack, do you know," and she put her hand
on his shoulder, "this is the sweetest home in the world now!"
"It is the only one, dear;" and Jack made the statement with a humorous
sense of its truth. "Well, there's the train, and I'm off with the other
clerks."
"Clerk, indeed!" cried Edith, putting up her face to his; "you are going
to be a Merchant Prince, Jack, that is what you are going to be."
On the train there was an atmosphere of business. Jack felt that he was
not going to the New York that he knew--not to his New York, but to a
city of traffic; down into the streets of commercial enterprise, not at
all to the metropolis of leisure, of pleasure, to the world of clubs and
drawing-rooms and elegant loiterings and the rivalries of society life.
That was all ended. Jack was hurrying to catch the down-town car for the
dingy office of Fletcher & Co. at an hour fixed.
It was ended, to be sure, but the struggle with Jack in his new life was
not ended, his biographer knows, for months and years.
It was long before he could pass his club windows without a pang of
humiliation, or lift his hat to a lady of his acquaintance in her passing
carriage without a vivid feeling of separateness from his old life. For
the old life--he could see that any day in the Avenue, any evening by the
flaming lights--went by in its gilded chariots and entrancing toilets,
the fascinating whirl of Vanity Fair crowned with roses and with ennui.
Did he regret it? No doubt. Not to regret would have been to change his
nature, and that were a feat impossible for his biographer to accomplish.
In a way his life was gone, and to build up a new life, serene and
enduring, was not the work of a day.
One thing he did not regret in the shock he had received, and that was
the absence of Carmen and her world. When he thought of her he had a
sense of escape. She was still abroad, and he heard from time to time
that Mavick was philandering about from capital to capital in her train.
Certainly he would have envied neither of them if he had been aware, as
the reader is aware, of the guilty secret that drew them together and
must be forever their torment. They knew each other.
But this glittering world, to attain a place in which is the object of
most of the struggles and hungry competition of modern life, seemed not
so real nor so desirable when he was at home with Edith, and in his
gradually growing interest in nobler pursuits. They had decided to take
a modest apartment in town for the winter, and almost before the lease
was signed, Edith, in her mind, had transformed it into a charming home.
Jack used to rally her on her enthusiasm in its simple furnishing; it
reminded him, he said, of Carmen's interest in her projected house of
Nero. It was a great contrast, to be sure, to their stately house by the
Park, but it was to them both what that had never been. To one who knows
how life goes astray in the solicitations of the great world, there was
something pathetic in Edith's pleasure. Even to Jack it might some day
come with the force of keen regret for years wasted, that it is enough to
break a body's heart to see how little a thing can make a woman happy.
It was another summer. Major Fairfax had come down with Jack to spend
Sunday at the Golden House. Edith was showing the Major the view from
the end of the veranda. Jack was running through the evening paper.
"Hi!" he cried; "here's news. Mavick is to have the mission to Rome, and
it is rumored that the rich and accomplished Mrs. Henderson, as the wife
of the minister, will make the Roman season very gay."
"It's too bad," said Edith. "Nothing is said about the training-school?"
"Nothing." "Poor Henderson!" was the Major's comment. "It was for this
that he drudged and schemed and heaped up his colossal fortune! His life
must look to him like a burlesque."
THAT FORTUNE
By Charles Dudley Warner
On a summer day, long gone among the summer days that come but to go, a
lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of a tall
hickory, the advance picket of a mountain forest. The tree was on the
edge of a steep declivity of rocky pasture-land that fell rapidly down to
the stately chestnuts, to the orchard, to the cornfields in the narrow
valley, and the maples on the bank of the amber river, whose loud,
unceasing murmur came to the lad on his aerial perch like the voice of
some tradition of nature that he could not understand.
He had climbed to the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree in order
to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with the
western wind. There was something exhilarating in this elemental battle
of the forces that urge and the forces that resist, and the harder the
wind blew, and the wider circles he took in the free air, the more
stirred the boy was in the spring of his life. Nature was taking him by
the hand, and it might be that in that moment ambition was born to
achieve for himself, to conquer.
If you had asked him why he was there, he would very likely have said,
"To see the world." It was a world worth seeing. The prospect might be
limited to a dull eye, but not to this lad, who loved to climb this
height, in order to be with himself and indulge the dreams of youth.
Any pretense would suffice for taking this hour of freedom: to hunt for
the spicy checker-berries and the pungent sassafras; to aggravate the
woodchucks, who made their homes in mysterious passages in this gravelly
hillside; to get a nosegay of columbine for the girl who spelled against
him in school and was his gentle comrade morning and evening along the
river road where grew the sweet-flag and the snap-dragon and the barberry
bush; to make friends with the elegant gray squirrel and the lively red
squirrel and the comical chipmunk, who were not much afraid of this
unarmed naturalist. They may have recognized their kinship to him,
for he could climb like any squirrel, and not one of them could have
clung more securely to this bough where he was swinging, rejoicing in the
strength of his lithe, compact little body. When he shouted in pure
enjoyment of life, they chattered in reply, and eyed him with a primeval
curiosity that had no fear in it. This lad in short trousers, torn
shirt, and a frayed straw hat above his mobile and cheerful face, might
be only another sort of animal, a lover like themselves of the beech-nut
and the hickory-nut.
It was a gay world up here among the tossing branches. Across the river,
on the first terrace of the hill, were weather-beaten farmhouses, amid
apple orchards and cornfields. Above these rose the wooded dome of Mount
Peak, a thousand feet above the river, and beyond that to the left the
road wound up, through the scriptural land of Bozrah, to high and
lonesome towns on a plateau stretching to unknown regions in the south.
There was no bar to the imagination in that direction. What a gracious
valley, what graceful slopes, what a mass of color bathing this lovely
summer landscape! Down from the west, through hills that crowded on
either side to divert it from its course, ran the sparkling Deerfield,
from among the springs and trout streams of the Hoosac, merrily going on
to the great Connecticut. Along the stream was the ancient highway, or
lowway, where in days before the railway came the stage-coach and the big
transport-wagons used to sway and rattle along on their adventurous
voyage from the gate of the Sea at Boston to the gate of the West at
Albany.
Below, where the river spread wide among the rocks in shallows, or eddies
in deep, dark pools, was the ancient, long, covered, wooden bridge,
striding diagonally from rock to rock on stone columns, a dusky tunnel
through the air, a passage of gloom flecked with glints of sunlight, that
struggled in crosscurrents through the interstices of the boards, and set
dancing the motes and the dust in a golden haze, a stuffy passage with
odors a century old--who does not know the pungent smell of an old
bridge?--a structure that groaned in all its big timbers when a wagon
invaded it. And then below the bridge the lad could see the historic
meadow, which was a cornfield in the eighteenth century, where Captain
Moses Rice and Phineas Arms came suddenly one summer day to the end of
their planting and hoeing. The house at the foot of the hill where the
boy was cultivating his imagination had been built by Captain Rice, and
in the family burying-ground in the orchard above it lay the body of this
mighty militia-man, and beside him that of Phineas Arms, and on the
headstone of each the legend familiar at that period of our national
life, "Killed by the Indians." Happy Phineas Arms, at the age of
seventeen to exchange in a moment the tedium of the cornfield for
immortality.
There was a tradition that years after, when the Indians had disappeared
through a gradual process of intoxication and pauperism, a red man had
been seen skulking along the brow of this very hill and peering down
through the bushes where the boy was now perched on a tree, shaking his
fist at the hated civilization, and vengefully, some said pathetically,
looking down into this valley where his race had been so happy in the
natural pursuits of fishing, hunting, and war. On the opposite side of
the river was still to be traced an Indian trail, running to the western
mountains, which the boy intended some time to follow; for this highway
of warlike forays, of messengers of defiance, along which white maidens
had been led captive to Canada, appealed greatly to his imagination.
The boy lived in these traditions quite as much as in those of the
Revolutionary War into which they invariably glided in his perspective of
history, the redskins and the redcoats being both enemies of his
ancestors. There was the grave of the envied Phineas Arms--that ancient
boy not much older than he--and there were hanging in the kitchen the
musket and powder-horn that his great-grandfather had carried at Bunker
Hill, and did he not know by heart the story of his great-grandmother,
who used to tell his father that she heard when she was a slip of a girl
in Plymouth the cannonading on that awful day when Gage met his
victorious defeat?
In fact, according to his history-book there had been little but wars in
this peaceful nation: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the incessant
frontier wars with the Indians, the Kansas War, the Mormon War, the War
for the Union. The echoes of the latter had not yet died away. What a
career he might have had if he had not been born so late in the world!
Swinging in this tree-top, with a vivid consciousness of life, of his own
capacity for action, it seemed a pity that he could not follow the drum
and the flag into such contests as he read about so eagerly.
And yet this was only a corner of the boy's imagination. He had many
worlds and he lived in each by turn. There was the world of the Old
Testament, of David and Samson, and of those dim figures in the dawn of
history, called the Patriarchs. There was the world of Julius Caesar and
the Latin grammar, though this was scarcely as real to him as the Old
Testament, which was brought to his notice every Sunday as a necessity of
his life, while Caesar and AEneas and the fourth declension were made to
be a task, for some mysterious reason, a part of his education. He had
not been told that they were really a part of the other world which
occupied his mind so much of the time, the world of the Arabian Nights
and Robinson Crusoe, and Coleridge and Shelley and Longfellow, and
Washington Irving and Scott and Thackeray, and Pope's Iliad and
Plutarch's Lives. That this was a living world to the boy was scarcely
his fault, for it must be confessed that those were very antiquated
book-shelves in the old farmhouse to which he had access, and the news
had not been apprehended in this remote valley that the classics of
literature were all as good as dead and buried, and that the human mind
had not really created anything worth modern notice before about the
middle of the nineteenth century. It was not exactly an ignorant valley,
for the daily newspapers were there, and the monthly magazine, and the
fashion-plate of Paris, and the illuminating sunshine of new science, and
enough of the uneasy throb of modern life. Yet somehow the books that
were still books had not been sent to the garret, to make room for the
illustrated papers and the profound physiological studies of sin and
suffering that were produced by touching a scientific button. No, the boy
was conscious in a way of the mighty pulsation of American life, and he
had also a dim notion that his dreams in his various worlds would come to
a brilliant fulfillment when he was big enough to go out and win a name
and fame. But somehow the old books, and the family life, and the sedate
ways of the community he knew, had given him a fundamental and not
unarmed faith in the things that were and had been.
Every Sunday the preacher denounced the glitter and frivolity and
corruption of what he called Society, until the boy longed to see this
splendid panorama of cities and hasting populations, the seekers of
pleasure and money and fame, this gay world which was as fascinating as
it was wicked. The preacher said the world was wicked and vain. It did
not seem so to the boy this summer day, not at least the world he knew.
Of course the boy had no experience. He had never heard of Juvenal nor
of Max Nordau. He had no philosophy of life. He did not even know that
when he became very old the world would seem to him good or bad according
to the degree in which he had become a good or a bad man.
In fact, he was not thinking much about being good or being bad, but of
trying his powers in a world which seemed to offer to him infinite
opportunities. His name--Philip Burnett--with which the world, at least
the American world, is now tolerably familiar, and which he liked to
write with ornamental flourishes on the fly-leaves of his schoolbooks,
did not mean much to him, for he had never seen it in print, nor been
confronted with it as something apart from himself. But the Philip that
he was he felt sure would do something in the world. What that something
should be varied from day to day according to the book, the poem, the
history or biography that he was last reading. It would not be difficult
to write a poem like "Thanatopsis" if he took time enough, building up a
line a day. And yet it would be better to be a soldier, a man who could
use the sword as well as the pen, a poet in uniform. This was a pleasing
imagination. Surely his aunt and his cousins in the farmhouse would have
more respect for him if he wore a uniform, and treat him with more
consideration, and perhaps they would be very anxious about him when he
was away in battles, and very proud of him when he came home between
battles, and went quite modestly with the family into the village church,
and felt rather than saw the slight flutter in the pews as he walked down
the aisle, and knew that the young ladies, the girl comrades of the
district school, were watching him from the organ gallery, curious to see
Phil, who had gone into the army. Perhaps the preacher would have a
sermon against war, and the preacher should see how soldierlike he would
take this attack on him. Alas! is such vanity at the bottom of even a
reasonable ambition? Perhaps his town would be proud of him if he were a
lawyer, a Representative in Congress, come back to deliver the annual
oration at the Agricultural Fair. He could see the audience of familiar
faces, and hear the applause at his witty satires and his praise of the
nobility of the farmer's life, and it would be sweet indeed to have the
country people grasp him by the hand and call him Phil, just as they used
to before he was famous. What he would say, he was not thinking of, but
the position he would occupy before the audience. There were no
misgivings in any of these dreams of youth.
II
The musings of this dreamer in a tree-top were interrupted by the
peremptory notes of a tin horn from the farmhouse below. The boy
recognized this not only as a signal of declining day and the withdrawal
of the sun behind the mountains, but as a personal and urgent
notification to him that a certain amount of disenchanting drudgery
called chores lay between him and supper and the lamp-illumined pages of
The Last of the Mohicans. It was difficult, even in his own estimation,
to continue to be a hero at the summons of a tin horn--a silver clarion
and castle walls would have been so different--and Phil slid swiftly down
from his perch, envying the squirrels who were under no such bondage of
duty.
Recalled to the world that now is, the lad hastily gathered a bouquet of
columbine and a bunch of the tender leaves and the red berries of the
wintergreen, called to "Turk," who had been all these hours watching a
woodchuck hole, and ran down the hill by leaps and circuits as fast as
his little legs could carry him, and, with every appearance of a lad who
puts duty before pleasure, arrived breathless at the kitchen door, where
Alice stood waiting for him. Alice, the somewhat feeble performer on the
horn, who had been watching for the boy with her hand shading her eyes,
called out upon his approach:
"Why, Phil, what in the world--"
"Oh, Alice!" cried the boy, eagerly, having in a moment changed in his
mind the destination of the flowers; "I've found a place where the
checker-berries are thick as spatter." And Phil put the flowers and the
berries in his cousin's hand. Alice looked very much pleased with this
simple tribute, but, as she admired it, unfortunately asked--women always
ask such questions:
"And you picked them for me?"
This was a cruel dilemma. Phil was more devoted to his sweet cousin than
to any one else in the world, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings,
and he hated to tell a lie. So he only looked a lie, out of his
affectionate, truthful eyes, and said:
"I love to bring you flowers. Has uncle come home yet?"
"Yes, long ago. He called and looked all around for you to unharness the
horse, and he wanted you to go an errand over the river to Gibson's.
I guess he was put out."
"Did he say anything?"
"He asked if you had weeded the beets. And he said that you were the
master boy to dream and moon around he ever saw." And she added, with a
confidential and mischievous smile: "I think you'd better brought a
switch along; it would save time."
Phil had a great respect for his uncle Maitland, but he feared him almost
more than he feared the remote God of Abraham and Isaac. Mr. Maitland
was not only the most prosperous man in all that region, but the man of
the finest appearance, and a bearing that was equity itself. He was the
first selectman of the town, and a deacon in the church, and however much
he prized mercy in the next world he did not intend to have that quality
interfere with justice in this world. Phil knew indeed that he was a man
of God, that fact was impressed upon him at least twice a day, but he
sometimes used to think it must be a severe God to have that sort of man.
And he didn't like the curt way he pronounced the holy name--he might as
well have called Job "job."
Alice was as unlike her father, except in certain race qualities of
integrity and common-sense, as if she were of different blood. She was
the youngest of five maiden sisters, and had arrived at the mature age of
eighteen. Slender in figure, with a grace that was half shyness, soft
brown hair, gray eyes that changed color and could as easily be sad as
merry, a face marked with a moving dimple that every one said was lovely,
retiring in manner and yet not lacking spirit nor a sly wit of her own.
Now and then, yes, very often, out of some paradise, no doubt, strays
into New England conditions of reticence and self-denial such a sweet
spirit, to diffuse a breath of heaven in its atmosphere, and to wither
like a rose ungathered. These are the New England nuns, not taking any
vows, not self-consciously virtuous, apparently untouched by the vanities
of the world. Marriage? It is not in any girl's nature not to think of
that, not to be in a flutter of pleasure or apprehension at the
attentions of the other sex. Who has been able truly to read the
thoughts of a shrinking maiden in the passing days of her youth and
beauty? In this harmonious and unselfish household, each with decided
individual character, no one ever intruded upon the inner life of the
other. No confidences were given in the deep matters of the heart, no
sign except a blush over a sly allusion to some one who had been
"attentive." If you had stolen a look into the workbasket or the secret
bureau-drawer, you might have found a treasured note, a bit of ribbon, a
rosebud, some token of tenderness or of friendship that was growing old
with the priestess who cherished it. Did they not love flowers, and
pets, and had they not a passion for children? Were there not moonlight
evenings when they sat silent and musing on the stone steps, watching the
shadows and the dancing gleams on the swift river, when the air was
fragrant with the pink and the lilac? Not melancholy this, nor
poignantly sad, but having in it nevertheless something of the pathos of
life unfulfilled. And was there not sometimes, not yet habitually,
coming upon these faces, faces plain and faces attractive, the shade of
renunciation?
Phil loved Alice devotedly. She was his confidante, his defender, but he
feared more the disapproval of her sweet eyes when he had done wrong than
the threatened punishment of his uncle.
"I only meant to be gone just a little while," Phil went on to say.
"And you were away the whole afternoon. It is a pity the days are so
short. And you don't know what you lost."
"No great, I guess."
"Celia and her mother were here. They stayed all the afternoon."
"Celia Howard? Did she wonder where I was?"
"I don't know. She didn't say anything about it. What a dear little
thing she is!"
"And she can say pretty cutting things."
"Oh, can she? Perhaps you'd better run down to the village before dark
and take her these flowers."
"I'm not going. I'd rather you should have the flowers." And Phil spoke
the truth this time.
Celia, who was altogether too young to occupy seriously the mind of a lad
of twelve, had nevertheless gained an ascendancy over him because of her
willful, perverse, and sometimes scornful ways, and because she was
different from the other girls of the school. She had read many more
books than Phil, for she had access to a library, and she could tell him
much of a world that he only heard of through books and newspapers, which
latter he had no habit of reading. He liked, therefore, to be with
Celia, not withstanding her little airs of superiority, and if she
patronized him, as she certainly did, probably the simple-minded young
gentleman, who was unconsciously bred in the belief that he and his own
kin had no superiors anywhere, never noticed it. To be sure they
quarreled a good deal, but truth to say Phil was never more fascinated
with the little witch, whom he felt himself strong enough to protect,
than when she showed a pretty temper. He rather liked to be ordered
about by the little tyrant. And sometimes he wished that Murad Ault, the
big boy of the school, would be rude to the small damsel, so that he
could show her how a knight would act under such circumstances. Murad
Ault stood to Phil for the satanic element in his peaceful world. He was
not only big and strong of limb and broad of chest, but he was very
swarthy, and had closely curled black hair. He feared nothing, not even
the teacher, and was always doing some dare-devil thing to frighten the
children. And because he was dark, morose, and made no friends, and
wished none, but went solitary his own dark way, Phil fancied that he
must have Spanish blood in his veins, and would no doubt grow up to be a
pirate. No other boy in the winter could skate like Murad Ault, with
such strength and grace and recklessness--thin ice and thick ice were all
one to him, but he skated along, dashing in and out, and sweeping away up
and down the river in a whirl of vigor and daring, like a black marauder.
Yet he was best and most awesome in the swimming pond in summer--though
it was believed that he dared go in in the bitter winter, either by
breaking the ice or through an air-hole, and there was a story that he
had ventured under the ice as fearless as a cold fish. No one could dive
from such a height as he, or stay so long under water; he liked to stay
under long enough to scare the spectators, and then appear at a distance,
thrashing about in the water as if he were rescuing himself from
drowning, sputtering out at the same time the most diabolical noises
--curses, no doubt, for he had been heard to swear. But as he skated alone
he swam alone, appearing and disappearing at the swimming-place silently,
with never a salutation to any one. And he was as skillful a fisher as
he was a swimmer. No one knew much about him. He lived with his mother
in a little cabin up among the hills, that had about it scant patches of
potatoes and corn and beans, a garden fenced in by stumproots, as
ill-cared for as the shanty. Where they came from no one knew. How they
lived was a matter of conjecture, though the mother gathered herbs and
berries and bartered them at the village store, and Murad occasionally
took a hand in some neighbor's hay-field, or got a job of chopping wood
in the winter. The mother was old and small and withered, and they said
evil-eyed. Probably she was no more evil-eyed than any old woman who had
such a hard struggle for existence as she had. An old widow with an only
son who looked like a Spaniard and acted like an imp! Here was another
sort of exotic in the New England life.
Celia had been brought to Rivervale by her mother about a year before
this time, and the two occupied a neat little cottage in the village,
distinguished only by its neatness and a plot of syringas, and pinks, and
marigolds, and roses, and bachelor's-buttons, and boxes of the tough
little exotics, called "hen-and-chickens," in the door-yard, and a
vigorous fragrant honeysuckle over the front porch. She only dimly
remembered her father, who had been a merchant in a small way in the
city, and dying left to his widow and only child a very moderate fortune.
The girl showed early an active and ingenious mind, and an equal love for
books and for having her own way; but she was delicate, and Mrs. Howard
wisely judged that a few years in a country village would improve her
health and broaden her view of life beyond that of cockney provincialism.
For, though Mrs. Howard had more refinement than strength of mind, and
passed generally for a sweet and inoffensive little woman, she did not
lack a certain true perception of values, due doubtless to the fact that
she had been a New England girl, and, before her marriage and emigration
to the great city, had passed her life among unexciting realities, and
among people who had leisure to think out things in a slow way. But the
girl's energy and self-confidence had no doubt been acquired from her
father, who was cut off in mid-career of his struggle for place in the
metropolis, or from some remote ancestor. Before she was eleven years
old her mother had listened with some wonder and more apprehension to the
eager forecast of what this child intended to do when she became a woman,
and already shrank from a vision of Celia on a public platform, or the
leader of some metempsychosis club. Through her affections only was the
child manageable, but in opposition to her spirit her mother was
practically powerless. Indeed, this little sprout of the New Age always
spoke of her to Philip and to the Maitlands as "little mother."
The epithet seemed peculiarly tender to Philip, who had lost his father
before he was six years old, and he was more attracted to the timid and
gentle little widow than to his equable but more robust Aunt Eusebia,
Mrs. Maitland, his father's elder sister, whom Philip fancied not a bit
like his father except in sincerity, a quality common to the Maitlands
and Burnetts. Yet there was a family likeness between his aunt and a
portrait of his father, painted by a Boston artist of some celebrity,
which his mother, who survived her husband only three years, had saved
for her boy. His father was a farmer, but a man of considerable
cultivation, though not college-bred--his last request on his death-bed
was that Phil should be sent to college--a man who made experiments in
improving agriculture and the breed of cattle and horses, read papers now
and then on topics of social and political reform, and was the only
farmer in all the hill towns who had what might be called a library.
It was all scattered at the time of the winding up of the farm estate,
and the only jetsam that Philip inherited out of it was an annotated copy
of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Young's Travels in France, a copy of
The Newcomes, and the first American edition of Childe Harold. Probably
these odd volumes had not been considered worth any considerable bid at
the auction. From his mother, who was fond of books, and had on more
than one occasion, of the failure of teachers, taught in the village
school in her native town before her marriage, Philip inherited his love
of poetry, and he well remembered how she used to try to inspire him with
patriotism by reading the orations of Daniel Webster (she was very fond
of orations), and telling him war stories about Grant and Sherman and
Sheridan and Farragut and Lincoln. He distinctly remembered also
standing at her knees and trying, at intervals, to commit to memory the
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He had learned it all since, because he
thought it would please his mother, and because there was something in it
that appealed to his coming sense of the mystery of life. When he
repeated it to Celia, who had never heard of it, and remarked that it was
all made up, and that she never tried to learn a long thing like that
that wasn't so, Philip could see that her respect for him increased a
little. He did not know that the child got it out of the library the
next day and never rested till she knew it by heart. Philip could repeat
also the books of the Bible in order, just as glibly as the
multiplication-table, and the little minx, who could not brook that a
country boy should be superior to her in anything, had surprised her
mother by rattling them all off to her one Sunday evening, just as if she
had been born in New England instead of in New York. As to the other
fine things his mother read him, out of Ruskin and the like; Philip
chiefly remembered what a pretty glow there was in his mother's face when
she read them, and that recollection was a valuable part of the boy's
education.
Another valuable part of his education was the gracious influence in his
aunt's household, the spirit of candor, of affection, and the sane
common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith
and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in
it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read.
Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the
limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England
households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle
and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the family
had developed traits and even eccentricities enough to make it a sort of
microcosm of life. There, for instance, was Patience, the maiden aunt,
his father's sister, the news-monger of the fireside, whose powers of
ratiocination first gave Philip the Greek idea and method of reasoning to
a point and arriving at truth by the process of exclusion. It did not
excite his wonder at the time, but afterwards it appeared to him as one
of the New England eccentricities of which the novelists make so much.
Patience was a home-keeping body and rarely left the premises except to
go to church on Sunday, although her cheerfulness and social helpfulness
were tinged by nothing morbid. The story was--Philip learned it long
afterwards--that in her very young and frisky days Patience had one
evening remained out at some merry-making very late, and in fact had been
escorted home in the moonlight by a young gentleman when the tall,
awful-faced clock, whose face her mother was watching, was on the
dreadful stroke of eleven. For this delinquency her mother had reproved
her, the girl thought unreasonably, and she had quickly replied, "Mother,
I will never go out again." And she never did. It was in fact a
renunciation of the world, made apparently without rage, and adhered to
with cheerful obstinacy.
But although for many years Patience rarely left her home, until the
habit of seclusion had become as fixed as that of a nun who had taken the
vows, no one knew so well as she the news and gossip of the neighborhood,
and her power of learning or divining it seemed to increase with her
years. She had a habit of sitting, when her household duties permitted,
at a front window, which commanded a long view of the river road, and
gathering the news by a process peculiar to herself. From this peep-hole
she studied the character and destination of all the passers-by that came
within range of her vision, and made her comments and deductions, partly
to herself, but for the benefit of those who might be listening.
"Why, there goes Thomas Henry," she would say (she always called people
by their first and middle names). "Now, wherever can he be going this
morning in the very midst of getting in his hay? He can't be going to
the Browns' for vegetables, for they set great store by their own raising
this year; and they don't get their provisions up this way either,
because Mary Ellen quarreled with Simmons's people last year. No!" she
would exclaim, rising to a climax of certainty on this point, "I'll be
bound he is not going after anything in the eating line!"
Meantime Thomas Henry's wagon would be disappearing slowly up the sandy
road, giving Patience a chance to get all she could out of it, by
eliminating all the errands Thomas Henry could not possibly be going to
do in order to arrive at the one he must certainly be bound on.
"They do say he's courting Eliza Merritt," she continued, "but Eliza
never was a girl to make any man leave his haying. No, he's never going
to see Eliza, and if it isn't provisions or love it's nothing short of
sickness. Now, whoever is sick down there? It can't be Mary Ellen,
because she takes after her father's family and they are all hearty. It
must be Mary Ellen's little girls, and the measles are going the rounds.
It must be they've all got the measles."
If the listeners suggested that possibly one of the little girls might
have escaped, the suggestion was decisively put aside.
"No; if one of them had been well, Mary Ellen would have sent her for the
doctor."
Presently Thomas Henry's cart was heard rumbling back, and sure enough he
was returning with the doctor, and Patience hailed him from the gate and
demanded news of Mary Ellen.
"Why, all her little girls have the measles," replied Thomas Henry, "and
I had to leave my haying to fetch the doctor."
"I want to know," said Patience.
Being the eldest born, Patience had appropriated to herself two rooms in
the rambling old farmhouse before her brother's marriage, from which
later comers had never dislodged her, and with that innate respect for
the rights and peculiarities of others which was common in the household,
she was left to express her secluded life in her own way. As the habit
of retirement grew upon her she created a world of her own, almost as
curious and more individually striking than the museum of Cluny. There
was not a square foot in her tiny apartment that did not exhibit her
handiwork. She was very fond of reading, and had a passion for the
little prints and engravings of "foreign views," which she wove into her
realm of natural history. There was no flower or leaf or fruit that she
had seen that she could not imitate exactly in wax or paper. All over
the walls hung the little prints and engravings, framed in wreaths of
moss and artificial flowers, or in elaborate square frames made of
pasteboard. The pasteboard was cut out to fit the picture, and the
margins, daubed with paste, were then strewn with seeds of corn and
acorns and hazelnuts, and then the whole was gilded so that the effect
was almost as rich as it was novel. All about the rooms, in nooks and on
tables, stood baskets and dishes of fruit-apples and plums and peaches
and grapes-set in proper foliage of most natural appearance, like enough
to deceive a bird or the Sunday-school scholars, when on rare occasions
they were admitted into this holy of holies. Out of boxes, apparently
filled with earth in the corners of the rooms, grew what seemed to be
vines trained to run all about the cornices and to festoon the pictures,
but which were really strings, colored in imitation of the real vine, and
spreading out into paper foliage. To complete the naturalistic character
of these everlasting vines, which no scale-bugs could assail, there were
bunches of wonderful grapes depending here and there to excite the
cupidity of both bird and child. There was no cruelty in the nature of
Patience, and she made prisoners of neither birds nor squirrels, but
cunning cages here and there held most lifelike counterfeits of their
willing captives. There was nothing in the room that was alive, except
the dainty owner, but it seemed to be a museum of natural history. The
rugs on the floor were of her own devising and sewing together, and
rivaled in color and ingenuity those of Bokhara.
But Patience was a student of the heavens as well as of the earth, and it
was upon the ceiling that her imagination expanded. There one could see
in their order the constellations of the heavens, represented by
paper-gilt stars, of all magnitudes, most wonderful to behold. This part
of her decorations was the most difficult of all. The constellations were
not made from any geography of the heavens, but from actual nightly
observation of the positions of the heavenly bodies. Patience confessed
that the getting exactly right of the Great Dipper had caused her most
trouble. On the night that was constructed she sat up till three o'clock
in the morning, going out and studying it and coming in and putting up
one star at a time. How could she reach the high ceiling? Oh, she took a
bean-pole, stuck the gilt star on the end of it, having paste on the
reverse side, and fixed it in its place. That was easy, only it was
difficult to remember when she came into the house the correct positions
of the stars in the heavens. What the astronomer and the botanist and the
naturalist would have said of this little kingdom is unknown, but
Patience herself lived among the glories of the heavens and the beauties
of the earth which she had created. Probably she may have had a humorous
conception of this, for she was not lacking in a sense of humor. The
stone step that led to her private door she had skillfully painted with
faint brown spots, so that when visitors made their exit from this part
of the house they would say, "Why, it rains!" but Patience would laugh
and say, "I guess it is over by now."
III
"I'm not going to follow you about any more through the brush and
brambles, Phil Burnett," and Celia, emerging from the thicket into a
clearing, flung herself down on a knoll under a beech-tree.
Celia was cross. They were out for a Saturday holiday on the hillside,
where Phil said there were oceans of raspberries and blueberries,
beginning to get ripe, and where you could hear the partridges drumming
in the woods, and see the squirrels.
"Why, I'm not a bit tired," said Phil; "a boy wouldn't be." And he threw
himself down on the green moss, with his heels in the air, much more
intent on the chatter of a gray squirrel in the tree above him than on
the complaints of his comrade.
"Why don't you go with a boy, then?" asked Celia, in a tone intended to
be severe and dignified.
"A boy isn't so nice," said Philip, with the air of stating a general
proposition, but not looking at her.
"Oh," said Celia, only half appeased, "I quite agree with you." And she
pulled down some beech leaves from a low, hanging limb and began to plait
a wreath.
"Who are you making that for?" asked Philip, who began to be aware that a
cloud had come over his holiday sky.
"Nobody in particular; it's just a wreath." And then there was silence,
till Philip made another attempt.
"Celia, I don't mind staying here if you are tired. Tell me something
about New York City. I wish we were there."
"Much you know about it," said Celia, but with some relaxation of her
severity, for as she looked at the boy in his country clothes and glanced
at her own old frock and abraded shoes, she thought what a funny
appearance the pair would make on a fashionable city street.
"Would you rather be there?" asked Philip. "I thought you liked living
here."
"Would I rather? What a question! Everybody would. The country is
a good place to go to when you are tired, as mamma is. But the city! The
big fine houses, and the people all going about in a hurry; the streets
all lighted up at night, so that you can see miles and miles of lights;
and the horses and carriages, and the lovely dresses, and the churches
full of nice people, and such beautiful music! And once mamma took me to
the theatre. Oh, Phil, you ought to see a play, and the actors, all
be-a-u-ti-fully dressed, and talking just like a party in a house, and
dancing, and being funny, and some of it so sad as to make you cry, and
some of it so droll that you had to laugh--just such a world as you read
of in books and in poetry. I was so excited that I saw the stage all
night and could hardly sleep." The girl paused and looked away to the
river as if she saw it all again, and then added in a burst of
confidence:
"Do you know, I mean to be an actress some day, when mamma will let me."
"Play-actors are wicked," said Phil, in a tone of decision; "our minister
says so, and my uncle says so."
"Fudge!" returned Celia. "Much they know about it. Did Alice say so?"
"I never asked her, but she said once that she supposed it was wrong, but
she would like to see a play."
"There, everybody would. Mamma says the people from the country go to
the theatre always, a good deal more than the people in the city go. I
should like to see your aunt Patience in a theatre and hear what she said
about it. She's an actress if ever there was one."
Philip opened his eyes in protest.
"Mamma says it is as good as a play to hear her go on about people, and
what they are like, and what they are going to do, and then her little
rooms are just like a scene on a stage. If they were in New York
everybody would go to see them and to hear her talk."
This was such a new view of his home life to Philip that he could neither
combat it nor assent to it, further than to say, that his aunt was just
like everybody else, though she did have some peculiar ways.
"Well, she acts," Celia insisted, "and most people act. Our minister
acts all the time, mamma says." Celia had plenty of opinions of her own,
but when she ventured a startling statement she had the habit of going
under the shelter of "little mother," whose casual and unconsidered
remarks the girl turned to her own uses. Perhaps she would not have
understood that her mother merely meant that the minister's sacerdotal
character was not exactly his own character. Just as Philip noticed
without being able to explain it that his uncle was one sort of a man in
his religious exercises and observances and another sort of man in his
dealings with him. Children often have recondite thoughts that do not
get expression until their minds are more mature; they even accept
contradictory facts in their experience. There was one of the deacons
who was as kind as possible, and Philip believed was a good and pious
man, who had the reputation of being sharp and even tricky in a
horse-trade. And Philip used to think how lucky it was for him that
he had been converted and was saved!
"Are you going to stay here always?" asked Philip, pursuing his own train
of thought about the city.
"Here? I should think not. If I were a boy I wouldn't stay here,
I can tell you. What are you going to do, Phil, what are you going to
be?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Philip, turning over on his back and looking up
into the blue world through the leaves; "go to college, I suppose."
Children are even more reticent than adults about revealing their inner
lives, and Philip would not, even to Celia, have confessed the splendid
dreams about his career that came to him that day in the hickory-tree,
and that occupied him a great deal.
"Of course," said this wise child, "but that's nothing. I mean, what are
you going to do? My cousin Jim has been all through college, and he
doesn't do a thing except wear nice clothes and hang around and talk.
He says I'm a little chatter-box. I hate the sight of him."
"If he doesn't like you, then I don't like him," said Philip, as if he
were making a general and not a personal assertion. "Oh, I should like
to travel."
"So should I, and see things and find things. Jim says he's going to be
an explorer. He never will. He wouldn't find anything. He twits me,
and wants to know what is the good of my reading about Africa and such
things. Phil, don't you love to read about Africa, and the desert, and
the lions and the snakes, and bananas growing, and palm-trees, and the
queerest black men and women, real dwarfs some of them? I just love it."
"So do I," said Philip, "as far as I have read. Alice says it's awful
dangerous--fevers and wild beasts and savages and all that. But I
shouldn't mind."
"Of course you wouldn't. But it costs like everything to go to Africa,
or anywhere."
"I'd make a book about it, and give lectures, and make lots of money."
"I guess," said Celia, reflecting upon this proposition, "I'd be an
engineer or a railroad man, or something like that, and make a heap of
money, and then I could go anywhere I liked. I just hate to be poor.
There!"
"Is Jim poor?"
"No; he can do what he pleases. I asked him, then, why he didn't go to
Africa, and he wanted to know what was the good of finding Livingstone,
anyway. I'll bet Murad Ault would go to Africa."
"I wish he would," said Philip; and then, having moved so that he could
see Celia's face, "Do you like Murad Ault?"
"No," replied Celia, promptly; "he's horrid, but he isn't afraid of
anything."
"Well, I don't care," said Philip, who was nettled by this implication.
And Celia, who had shown her power of irritating, took another tack.
"You don't think I'd be seen going around with him? Aren't we having a
good time up here?"
"Bully!" replied Philip. And not seeing the way to expand this topic
any further, he suddenly said:
"Celia, the next time I go on our hill I'll get you lots of sassafras."
"Oh, I love sassafras, and sweet-flag!"
"We can get that on the way home. I know a place." And then there was a
pause. "Celia, you didn't tell me what you are going to do when you grow
up."
"Go to college."
"You? Why, girls do, don't they? I never thought of that."
"Of course they do. I don't know whether I'll write or be a doctor. I
know one thing--I won't teach school. It's the hatefulest thing there
is! It's nice to be a doctor and have your own horse, and go round like
a man. If it wasn't for seeing so many sick people! I guess I'll write
stories and things."
"So would I," Philip confessed, "if I knew any."
"Why, you make 'em up. Mamma says they are all made up. I can make 'em
in my head any time when I'm alone."
"I don't know," Philip said, reflectively, "but I could make up a story
about Murad Ault, and how he got to be a pirate and got in jail and was
hanged."
"Oh, that wouldn't be a real story. You have got to have different
people in it, and have 'em talk, just as they do in books; and somebody
is in love and somebody dies, and the like of that."
"Well, there are such stories in The Pirate's Own Book, and it's awful
interesting."
"I'd be ashamed, Philip Burnett, to read such a cruel thing, all about
robbers and murders."
"I didn't read it through; Alice said she was going to burn it up. I
shouldn't wonder if she did."
"Boys make me tired!" exclaimed this little piece of presumption; and
this attitude of superiority exasperated Philip more than anything else
his mentor had said or done, and he asserted his years of seniority by
jumping up and saying, decidedly, "It's time to go home. Shall I carry
your wreath?"
"No, I thank you!" replied Celia, with frigid politeness.
"Down in the meadow," said Philip, making one more effort at
conciliation, "we can get some tigerlilies, and weave them in and make a
beautiful wreath for your mother."
"She doesn't like things fussed up," was the gracious reply. And then
the children trudged along homeward, each with a distinct sense of
injury.
IV
Traits that make a child disagreeable are apt to be perpetuated in the
adult. The bumptious, impudent, selfish, "hateful" boy may become a man
of force, of learning, of decided capacity, even of polish and good
manners, and score success, so that those who know him say how remarkable
it is that such a "knurly" lad should have turned out so well. But some
exigency in his career, it may be extraordinary prosperity or bitter
defeat, may at any moment reveal the radical traits of the boy, the
original ignoble nature. The world says that it is a "throwing back"; it
is probably only a persistence of the original meanness under all the
overlaid cultivation and restraint.
Without bothering itself about the recondite problems of heredity or the
influence of environment, the world wisely makes great account of
"stock." The peasant nature, which may be a very different thing from
the peasant condition, persists, and shows itself in business affairs, in
literature, even in the artist. No marriage is wisely contracted without
consideration of "stock." The admirable qualities which make a union one
of mutual respect and enduring affection--the generosities, the
magnanimities, the courage of soul, the crystalline truthfulness, the
endurance of ill fortune and of prosperity--are commonly the persistence
of the character of the stock.
We can get on with surface weaknesses and eccentricities, and even
disagreeable peculiarities, if the substratum of character is sound.
There is no woman or man so difficult--to get on with, whatever his or
her graces or accomplishments, as the one "you don't know where to find,"
as the phrase is. Indeed, it has come to pass that the highest and final
eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life, is that he
is one "you can tie to." And when you find a woman of that sort you do
not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator in making
the most attractive and fascinating sex.
The traits, good and bad, persist; they may be veneered or restrained,
they are seldom eradicated. All the traits that made the great Napoleon
worshiped, hated, and feared existed in the little Bonaparte, as
perfectly as the pea-pod in the flower. The whole of the First Empire
was smirched with Corsican vulgarity. The world always reckons with
these radical influences that go to make up a family. One of the first
questions asked by an old politician, who knew his world thoroughly,
about any man becoming prominent, when there was a discussion of his
probable action, was, "Whom did he marry?"
There are exceptions to this general rule, and they are always noticeable
when they occur--this deviation from the traits of the earliest years
--and offer material fox some of the subtlest and most interesting studies
of the novelist.
It was impossible for those who met Philip Burnett after he had left
college, and taken his degree in the law-school, and spent a year, more
or less studiously, in Europe, to really know him if they had not known
the dreaming boy in his early home, with all the limitations as well as
the vitalizing influences of his start in life. And on the contrary, the
error of the neighbors of a lad in forecasting his career comes from the
fact that they do not know him. The verdict about Philip would probably
have been that he was a very nice sort of a boy, but that he would never
"set the North River on fire." There was a headstrong, selfish, pushing
sort of boy, one of Philip's older schoolmates, who had become one of the
foremost merchants and operators in New York, and was already talked of
for mayor. This success was the sort that fulfilled the rural idea of
getting on in the world, whereas Philip's accomplishments, seen through
the veneer of conceit which they had occasioned him to take on, did not
commend themselves as anything worth while. Accomplishments rarely do
unless they are translated into visible position or into the currency of
the realm. How else can they be judged? Does not the great public
involuntarily respect the author rather for the sale of his books than
for the books themselves?
The period of Philip's novitiate--those most important years from his
acquaintance with Celia Howard to the attainment of his professional
degree--was most interesting to him, but the story of it would not detain
the reader of exciting fiction. He had elected to use his little
patrimony in making himself instead of in making money--if merely
following his inclination could be called an election. If he had
reasoned about it he would have known that the few thousands of dollars
left to him from his father's estate, if judiciously invested in
business, would have grown to a good sum when he came of age, and he
would by that time have come into business habits, so that all he would
need to do would be to go on and make more money. If he had reasoned
more deeply he would have seen that by this process he would become a man
of comparatively few resources for the enjoyment of life, and a person of
very little interest to himself or to anybody else. So perhaps it was
just as well that he followed his instincts and postponed the making of
money until he had made himself, though he was to have a good many bitter
days when the possession of money seemed to him about the one thing
desirable.
It was Celia, who had been his constant counselor and tormentor, about
the time when she was beginning to feel a little shy and long-legged, in
her short skirts, who had, in a romantic sympathy with his tastes,
opposed his going into a "store" as a clerk, which seemed to the boy at
one time an ideal situation for a young man.
"A store, indeed!" cried the young lady; "pomatum on your hair, and a
grin on your face; snip, snip, snip, calico, ribbons, yard-stick; 'It's
very becoming, miss, that color; this is only a sample, only a remnant,
but I shall have a new stock in by Friday; anything else, ma'am, today?'
Sho! Philip, for a man!"
Fortunately for Philip there lived in the village an old waif, a
scholarly oddity, uncommunicative, whose coming to dwell there had
excited much gossip before the inhabitants got used to his odd ways.
Usually reticent and rough of speech--the children thought he was an old
bear--he was nevertheless discovered to be kindly and even charitable in
neighborhood emergencies, and the minister said he was about the most
learned man he ever knew. His history does not concern us, but he was
doubtless one of the men whose talents have failed to connect with
success in anything, who had had his bout with the world, and retired
into peaceful seclusion in an indulgence of a mild pessimism about the
world generally.
He lived alone, except for the rather neutral presence of Aunt Hepsy, who
had formerly been a village tailoress, and whose cottage he had bought
with the proviso that the old woman should continue in it as "help."
With Aunt Hepsy he was no more communicative than with anybody else. "He
was always readin', when he wasn't goin' fishin' or off in the woods with
his gun, and never made no trouble, and was about the easiest man to get
along with she ever see. You mind your business and he'll mind his'n."
That was the sum of Aunt Hepsy's delivery about the recluse, though no
doubt her old age was enriched by constant "study" over his probable
history and character. But Aunt Hepsy, since she had given up tailoring,
was something of a recluse herself.
The house was full of books, mostly queer books, "in languages nobody
knows what," as Aunt Hepsy said, which made Philip open his eyes when he
went there one day to take to the old man a memorandum-book which he had
found on Mill Brook. The recluse took a fancy to the ingenuous lad when
he saw he was interested in books, and perhaps had a mind not much more
practical than his own; the result was an acquaintance, and finally an
intimacy--at which the village wondered until it transpired that Philip
was studying with the old fellow, who was no doubt a poor shack of a
school-teacher in disguise.
It was from this gruff friend that Philip learned Greek and Latin enough
to enable him to enter college, not enough drill and exact training in
either to give him a high stand, but an appreciation of the literatures
about which the old scholar was always enthusiastic. Philip regretted
all his life that he had not been severely drilled in the classics and
mathematics, for he never could become a specialist in anything. But
perhaps, even in this, fate was dealing with him according to his
capacities. And, indeed, he had a greater respect for the scholarship of
his wayside tutor than for the pedantic acquirements of many men he came
to know afterwards. It was from him that Philip learned about books and
how to look for what he wanted to know, and it was he who directed
Philip's taste to the best. When he went off to college the lad had not
a good preparation, but he knew a great deal that would not count in the
entrance examinations.
"You will need all the tools you can get the use of, my boy, in the
struggle," was the advice of his mentor, "and the things you will need
most may be those you have thought least of. I never go fishing without
both fly and bait."
Philip was always grateful that before he entered college he had a fine
reading knowledge of French, and that he knew enough German to read and
enjoy Heine's poems and prose, and that he had read, or read in, pretty
much all the English classics.
He used to recall the remark of a lad about his own age, who was on a
vacation visit to Rivervale, and had just been prepared for college at
one of the famous schools. The boys liked each other and were much
together in the summer, and talked about what interested them during
their rambles, carrying the rod or the fowling-piece. Philip naturally
had most to say about the world he knew, which was the world of books
--that is to say, the stored information that had accumulated in the world.
This more and more impressed the trained student, who one day exclaimed:
"By George! I might have known something if I hadn't been kept at school
all my life."
Philip's career in college could not have been called notable. He was
not one of the dozen stars in the class-room, but he had a reputation of
another sort. His classmates had a habit of resorting to him if they
wanted to "know anything" outside the text-books, for the range of his
information seemed to them encyclopaedic. On the other hand, he escaped
the reputation of what is called "a good fellow." He was not so much
unpopular as he was unknown in the college generally, but those who did
know him were tolerant of the fact that he cared more for reading than
for college sports or college politics. It must be confessed that he
added little to the reputation of the university, since his name was
never once mentioned in the public prints--search has been made since the
public came to know him as a writer--as a hero in any crew or team on any
game field. Perhaps it was a little selfish that his muscle developed in
the gymnasium was not put into advertising use for the university. The
excuse was that he had not time to become an athlete, any more than he
had time to spend three years in the discipline of the regular army,
which was in itself an excellent thing.
Celia, in one of her letters--it was during her first year at a woman's
college, when the development of muscle in gymnastics, running, and the
vigorous game of ball was largely engaging the attention of this
enthusiastic young lady--took him to task for his inactivity. "This is
the age of muscle," she wrote; "the brain is useless in a flabby body,
and probably the brain itself is nothing but concentrated intelligent
muscle. I don't know how men are coming out, but women will never get
the position they have the right to occupy until they are physically the
equals of men."
Philip had replied, banteringly, that if that were so he had no desire to
enter in a physical competition with women, and that men had better look
out for another field.
But later on, when Celia had got into the swing of the classics, and was
training for a part in the play of "Antigone," she wrote in a different
strain, though she would have denied that the change had any relation to
the fact that she had strained her back in a rowing-match. She did not
apologize for her former advice, but she was all aglow about the Greek
drama, and made reference to Aspasia as an intellectual type of what
women might become. "I didn't ever tell you how envious I used to be
when you were studying Greek with that old codger in Rivervale, and could
talk about Athens and all that. Next time we meet, I can tell you, it
will be Greek meets Greek. I do hope you have not dropped the classics
and gone in for the modern notion of being real and practical. If I ever
hear of your writing 'real' poetry--it is supposed to be real if it is in
dialect or misspelled! never will write you again, much less speak to
you."
Whatever this decided young woman was doing at the time she was sure was
the best for everybody to do, and especially for Master Phil.
Now that the days of preparation were over, and Philip found himself in
New York, face to face with the fact that he had nowhere to look for
money to meet the expense of rent, board, and clothes except to his own
daily labor, and that there was another economy besides that which he had
practiced as to luxuries, there were doubtless hours when his faith
wavered a little in the wisdom of the decision that had invested all his
patrimony in himself. He had been fortunate, to be sure, in securing a
clerk's desk in the great law-office of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle, and he had
the kindly encouragement of the firm that, with close application to
business, he would make his way. But even in this he had his misgivings,
for a great part of his acquirements, and those he most valued, did not
seem to be of any use in his office-work. He had a lofty conception of
his chosen profession, as the right arm in the administration of justice
between man and man. In practice, however, it seemed to him that the
object was to win a case rather than to do justice in a case.
Unfortunately, also, he had cultivated his imagination to the extent that
he could see both sides of a case. To see both sides is indeed the
requisite of a great lawyer, but to see the opposite side only in order
to win, as in looking over an opponent's hand in a game of cards. It
seemed to Philip that this clear perception would paralyze his efforts
for one side if he knew it was the wrong side. The argument was that
every cause a man's claim or his defense--ought to be presented in its
fullness and urged with all the advocate's ingenuity, and that the
decision was in the bosom of an immaculate justice on the bench and the
unbiased intelligence in the jury-box. This might be so. But Philip
wondered what would be the effect on his own character and on his
intellect if he indulged much in the habit of making the worse appear the
better cause, and taking up indifferently any side that paid. For
himself, he was inclined always to advise clients to "settle," and he
fancied that if the occupation of the lawyer was to explain the case to
people ignorant of it, and to champion only the right side, as it
appeared to an unprejudiced, legally trained mind, and to compose instead
of encouraging differences, the law would indeed be a noble profession,
and the natural misunderstandings, ignorance, and different points of
view would make business enough.
"Stuff!" said Mr. Sharp. "If you begin by declining causes you
disapprove of, the public will end by letting you alone in your
self-conceited squeamishness. It's human nature you've got to deal with,
not theories about law and justice. I tell you that men like litigation.
They want to have it out with somebody. And it is better than
fisticuffs."
From Mr. Hunt, who moved in the serener upper currents of the law, Philip
got more satisfaction.
"Of course, Mr. Burnett, there are miserable squabbles in the law
practice, and contemptible pettifoggers and knaves, and men who will sell
themselves for any dirty work, as there are in most professions and
occupations, but the profession could not exist for a day if it was not
on the whole on the side of law and order and justice.
"No doubt it needs from time to time criticism and reformation.
So does the church. You look at the characters of the really great
lawyers! And there is another thing. In dealing with the cases of our
complex life, there is no accomplishment, no learning in science, art, or
literature, that the successful practitioner will not find it very
advantageous to possess. And a lawyer will never be eminent who has not
imagination."
Philip thought he had a very good chance of exercising his imagination in
the sky chamber where he slept--a capital situation from which to observe
the world. There could not have been an uglier view created--a shapeless
mass of brick and stone and painted wood, a collected, towering
monstrosity of rectangular and inharmonious lines, a realized dream of
hideousness--but for the splendid sky, always changing and doing all that
was possible in the gleams and shadows and the glowing colors of morning
and evening to soften the ambitious work of man; but for the wide
horizon, with patches of green shores and verdant flats washed by the
kindly tide; but for the Highlands and Staten Island, the gateway to the
ocean; but for the great river and the mighty bay shimmering and
twinkling and often iridescent, and the animated life of sails and
steamers, the leviathans of commerce and the playthings of pleasure, and
the beetle-like, monstrous ferry-boats that pushed their noses through
all the confusion, like intelligent, business-like saurians that knew how
to keep an appointed line by a clumsy courtesy of apparent yielding.
Yes, there was life enough in all this, and inspiration, if one only knew
what to be inspired about.
When Philip came home from the office at sunset, through the bustling
streets, and climbed up to his perch, he insensibly brought with him
something of the restless energy and strife of the city, and in this mood
the prospect before him took on a certain significance of great things
accomplished, of the highest form of human energy and achievement; he was
a part of this exuberant, abundant life, to succeed in the struggle
seemed easy, and for the moment he possessed what he saw.
The little room had space enough for a cot bed, a toilet-stand,
a couple of easy-chairs--an easy-chair is the one article of furniture
absolutely necessary to a reflecting student--some well-filled
book-shelves, a small writing-desk, and a tiny closet quite large enough
for a wardrobe which seemed to have no disposition to grow. Except for
the books and the writing-desk, with its heterogeneous manuscripts,
unfinished or rejected, there was not much in the room to indicate the
taste of its occupant, unless you knew that his taste was exhibited
rather by what he excluded from the room than by what it contained. It
must be confessed that, when Philip was alone with his books and his
manuscripts, his imagination did not expand in the directions that would
have seemed profitable to the head of his firm. That life of the town
which was roaring in his ears, that panorama of prosperity spread before
him, related themselves in his mind not so much as incitements to engage
in the quarrels of his profession as something demanding study and
interpretation, something much more human than processes and briefs and
arguments. And it was a dark omen for his success that the world
interested him much more for itself than for what he could make out of
it. Make something to be sure he must--so long as he was only a law
clerk on a meagre salary--and it was this necessity that had much to do
with the production of the manuscripts. It was a joke on Philip in his
club--by-the-way, the half-yearly dues were not far off--that he was
doing splendidly in the law; he already had an extensive practice in
chambers!
The law is said to be a jealous mistress, but literature is a young lady
who likes to be loved for herself alone, and thinks permission to adore
is sufficient reward for her votary. Common-sense told Philip that the
jealous mistress would flout him and land him in failure if he gave her a
half-hearted service; but the other young lady, the Helen of the
professions, was always beckoning him and alluring him by the most subtle
arts, occupying all his hours with meditations on her grace and beauty,
till it seemed the world were well lost for her smile. And the
fascinating jade never hinted that devotion to her brought more drudgery
and harassment and pain than any other service in the world. It would
not have mattered if she had been frank, and told him that her promise of
eternal life was illusory and her rewards commonly but a flattering of
vanity. There was no resisting her enchantments, and he would rather
follow her through a world of sin and suffering, pursuing her radiant
form over bog and moor, in penury and heartache, for one sunrise smile
and one glimpse of her sunset heaven, than to walk at ease with a
commonplace maiden on any illumined and well-trod highway.
V
It is the desire of every ambitious soul to, enter Literature by the
front door, and the few who have patience and money enough to live
without the aid of the beckoning Helen may enter there. But a side
entrance is the destiny of most aspirants, even those with the golden key
of genius, and they are a long time in working their way to be seen
coming out, of the front entrance. It is true that a man can attract
considerable and immediate attention by trying to effect an entrance
through the sewer, but he seldom gains the respect of the public whom he
interests, any more than an exhibitor of fireworks gains the reputation
of an artist that is accorded to the painter of a good picture.
Philip was waiting at the front door, with his essays and his prose
symphonies and his satirical novel--the satire of a young man is apt to
be very bitter--but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher
and not the muse of literature kept the door.
There was a fellow-boarder with Philip, whose acquaintance he had made at
the common table in the basement, who appeared to be free of the world of
letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed little fellow,
who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight years in the
study of life, in gaining assurance and confidence in himself, and also
presented himself as one who knew the nether world completely but was not
of it. He would have said of himself that he knew it profoundly, that he
frequented it for "material," but that his home was in another sphere.
The impression was that he belonged among those brilliant guerrillas of
both sexes, in the border-land of art and society, who lived daintily and
talked about life with unconventional freedom. Slight in figure, with
very black hair, and eyes of cloudy gray, an olive complexion, and
features trained to an immobility proof against emotion or surprise, the
whole poised as we would say in the act of being gentlemanly, it is
needless to say that he took himself seriously. His readiness,
self-confidence, cocksureness, Philip thought all expressed in his name
--Olin Brad.
Mr. Brad was not a Bohemian--that is, not at all a Bohemian of the
recognized type. His fashionable dress, closely trimmed hair, and dainty
boots took him out of that class. He belonged to the new order, which
seems to have come in with modern journalism--that is, Bohemian in
principle, but of the manners and apparel of the favored of fortune. Mr.
Brad was undoubtedly clever, and was down as a bright young man in the
list of those who employed talent which was not dulled by conscientious
scruples. He had stood well in college, during three years in Europe he
had picked up two or three languages, dissipated his remaining small
fortune, acquired expensive tastes, and knowledge, both esoteric and
exoteric, that was valuable to him in his present occupation. Returning
home fully equipped for a modern literary career, and finding after some
bitter experience that his accomplishments were not taken or paid for at
their real value by the caterers for intellectual New York, he had
dropped into congenial society on the staff of the Daily Spectrum, a
mighty engine of public opinion, which scattered about the city and
adjacent territory a million of copies, as prodigally as if they had been
auctioneers' announcements. Fastidious people who did not read it gave
it a bad name, not recognizing the classic and heroic attitude of those
engaged in pitchforking up and turning over the muck of the Augean
stables under the pretense of cleaning them.
Mr. Brad had a Socratic contempt for this sort of fault-finding. It was
answer enough to say, "It pays. The people like it or they wouldn't buy
it. It commands the best talent in the market and can afford to pay for
it; even clergymen like to appear in its columns--they say it's a
providential chance to reach the masses. And look at the "Morning GooGoo"
(this was his nickname for one of the older dailies), it couldn't pay
its paper bills if it hadn't such a small circulation."
Mr. Brad, however, was not one of the editors, though the acceptance of
an occasional short editorial, sufficiently piquant and impudent and
vivid in language--to suit, had given him hopes. He was salaried, but
under orders for special service, and was always in the hope that the
execution of each new assignment would bring him into popular notice,
which would mean an advance of position and pay.
Philip was impressed with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the
facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance
improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in the
profession.
"It isn't an easy thing," said Mr. Brad, "to cater to a public that gets
tired of anything in about three days. But it is just as well satisfied
with a contradiction as with the original statement. It calls both news.
You have to watch out and see what the people want, and give it to 'em.
It is something like the purveying of the manufacturers and the dry-goods
jobber for the changing trade in fashions; only the newspaper has the
advantage that it can turn a somersault every day and not have any
useless stock left on hand.
"The public hasn't any memory, or, if it has, this whirligig process
destroys it. What it will not submit to is the lack of a daily surprise.
Keep that in your mind and you can make a popular newspaper. Only,"
continued Mr. Brad, reflectively, "you've got to hit a lot of different
tastes."
"You'd laugh," this artist in emotions went on, after a little pause, "at
some of my assignments. There was a run awhile ago on elopements, and my
assignment was to have one every Monday morning. The girl must always be
lovely and refined and moving in the best society; elopement with the
coachman preferred, varied with a teacher in a Sunday-school. Invented?
Not always. It was surprising how many you could find ready made, if you
were on the watch. I got into the habit of locating them in the interior
of Pennsylvania as the safest place, though Jersey seemed equally
probable to the public. Did I never get caught? That made it all the
more lively and interesting. Denials, affidavits, elaborate
explanations, two sides to any question; if it was too hot, I could
change the name and shift the scene to a still more obscure town. Or it
could be laid to the zeal of a local reporter, who could give the most
ingenious reasons for his story. Once I worked one of those imaginary
reporters up into such prominence for his clever astuteness that my boss
was taken in, and asked me to send for him and give him a show on the
paper.
"Oh, yes, we have to keep up the domestic side. A paper will not go
unless the women like it. One of the assignments I liked was 'Sayings of
Our Little Ones.' This was for every Tuesday morning. Not more than
half a column. These always got copied by the country press solid. It
is really surprising how many bright things you can make children of five
and six years say if you give your mind to it. The boss said that I
overdid it sometimes and made them too bright instead of 'just cunning.'
"'Psychological Study of Children' had a great run. This is the age of
science. Same with animals, astronomy--anything. If the public wants
science, the papers will give it science.
"After all, the best hold for a lasting sensation is an attack upon some
charity or public institution; show up the abuses, and get all the
sentimentalists on your side. The paper gets sympathy for its
fearlessness in serving the public interests. It is always easy to find
plenty of testimony from ill-used convicts and grumbling pensioners."
Undoubtedly Olin Brad was a clever fellow, uncommonly well read in the
surface literatures of foreign origin, and had a keen interest in what he
called the metaphysics of his own time. He had many good qualities,
among them friendliness towards men and women struggling like himself to
get up the ladder, and he laid aside all jealousy when he advised Philip
to try his hand at some practical work on the Spectrum. What puzzled
Philip was that this fabricator of "stories" for the newspaper should
call himself a "realist." The "story," it need hardly be explained, is
newspaper slang for any incident, true or invented, that is worked up for
dramatic effect. To state the plain facts as they occurred, or might
have occurred, and as they could actually be seen by a competent
observer, would not make a story. The writer must put in color, and
idealize the scene and the people engaged in it, he must invent dramatic
circumstances and positions and language, so as to produce a "picture."
And this picture, embroidered on a commonplace incident, has got the name
of "news." The thread of fact in this glittering web the reader must
pick out by his own wits, assisted by his memory of what things usually
are. And the public likes these stories much better than the unadorned
report of facts. It is accustomed to this view of life, so much so that
it fancies it never knew what war was, or what a battle was, until the
novelists began to report them.
Mr. Brad was in the story stage of his evolution as a writer. His light
facility in it had its attraction for Philip, but down deep in his nature
he felt and the impression was deepened by watching the career of several
bright young men and women on the press--that indulgence in it would
result in such intellectual dishonesty as to destroy the power of
producing fiction that should be true to life. He was so impressed by
the ability and manifold accomplishments of Mr. Brad that he thought it a
pity for him to travel that road, and one day he asked him why he did not
go in for literature.
"Literature!" exclaimed Mr. Brad, with some irritation; "I starved on
literature for a year. Who does live on it, till he gets beyond the
necessity of depending on it? There is a lot of humbug talked about it.
You can't do anything till you get your name up. Some day I will make a
hit, and everybody will ask, 'Who is this daring, clever Olin Brad?'
Then I can get readers for anything I choose to write. Look at Champ
Lawson. He can't write correct English, he never will, he uses
picturesque words in a connection that makes you doubt if he knows what
they mean. But he did a dare-devil thing picturesquely, and now the
publishers are at his feet. When I met him the other day he affected to
be bored with so much attention, and wished he had stuck to the
livery-stable. He began at seventeen by reporting a runaway from the
point of view of the hostler."
"Well," said Philip, "isn't it quite in the line of the new movement that
we should have an introspective hostler, who perhaps obeys Sir Philip
Sidney's advice, 'Look into your heart and write'? I chanced the other
night in a company of the unconventional and illuminated, the 'poster'
set in literature and art, wild-eyed and anaemic young women and
intensely languid, 'nil admirari' young men, the most advanced products
of the studios and of journalism. It was a very interesting conclave.
Its declared motto was, 'We don't read, we write.' And the members were
on a constant strain to say something brilliant, epigrammatic, original.
The person who produced the most outre sentiment was called 'strong.'
The women especially liked no writing that was not 'strong.' The
strongest man in the company, and adored by the women, was the
poet-artist Courci Cleves, who always seems to have walked straight out
of a fashion-plate, much deferred to in this set, which affects to defer
to nothing, and a thing of beauty in the theatre lobbies. Mr. Cleves
gained much applause for his well-considered wish that all that has been
written in the world, all books and libraries, could be destroyed, so as
to give a chance to the new men and the fresh ideas of the new era."
"My dear sir," said Brad, who did not like this caricature of his
friends, "you don't make any allowance for the eccentricities of genius."
"You would hit it nearer if you said I didn't make allowance for the
eccentricities without genius," retorted Philip.
"Well," replied Mr. Brad, taking his leave, "you don't understand your
world. You go your own way and see where you will come out."
And when Philip reflected on it, he wondered if it were not rash to
offend those who had the public ear, and did up the personals and minor
criticisms for the current prints. He was evidently out of view. No
magazine paper of his had gained the slightest notice from these
sublimated beings, who discovered a new genius every month.
A few nights after this conversation Mr. Brad was in uncommon spirits at
dinner.
"Anything special turned up?" asked Philip.
"Oh, nothing much. I've thrown away the chance of the biggest kind of a
novel of American life. Only it wouldn't keep. You look in the Spectrum
tomorrow morning. You'll see something interesting."
"Is it a--" and Philip's incredulous expression supplied the word.
"No, not a bit. And the public is going to be deceived this time, sure,
expecting a fake. You know Mavick?"
"I've heard of him--the operator, a millionaire."
"A good many times. Used to be minister or consul or something at Rome.
A great swell. It's about his daughter, Evelyn, a stunning girl about
sixteen or seventeen--not out yet."
"I hope it's no scandal."
"No, no; she's all right. It's the way she's brought up--shows what
we've come to. They say she's the biggest heiress in America and a
raving beauty, the only child. She has been brought up like the
Kohinoor, never out of somebody's sight. She has never been alone one
minute since she was born. Had three nurses, and it was the business of
one of them, in turn, to keep an eye on her. Just think of that. Never
was out of the sight of somebody in her life. Has two maids now--always
one in the room, night and day."
"What for?"
"Why, the parents are afraid she'll be kidnapped, and held for a big
ransom. No, I never saw her, but I've got the thing down to a dot.
Wouldn't I like to interview her, though, get her story, how the world
looks to her. Under surveillance for sixteen years! The 'Prisoner of
Chillon' is nothing to it for romance."
"Just the facts are enough, I should say."
"Yes, facts make a good basis, sometimes. I've got 'em all in, but of
course I've worked the thing up for all it is worth. You'll see.
I kept it one day to try and get a photograph. We've got the house and
Mavick, but the girl's can't be found, and it isn't safe to wait. We are
going to blow it out tomorrow morning."
VI
The Mavick mansion was on Fifth Avenue in the neighborhood of Central
Park. It was one of the buildings in the city that strangers were always
taken to see. In fact, this was a palace not one kind of a palace, but
all kinds of a palace. The clever and ambitious architect of the house
had grouped all the styles of architecture he had ever seen, or of which
he had seen pictures. Here was not an architectural conception, like a
sonnet or a well-constructed novel, but if all the work could have been
spread out in line, in all its variety, there would have been produced a
panorama. The sight of the mansion always caused wonder and generally
ignorant admiration. Its vastness and splendor were felt to be somehow
typical of the New World and of the cosmopolitan city.
The cost, in the eyes of the spectators, was a great part of its merits.
No doubt this was a fabulous sum. "You can form a little idea of it,"
said a gentleman to his country friend, "when I tell you that that little
bit there, that little corner of carving and decoration, cost two hundred
thousand dollars! I had this from the architect himself."
"My!"
The interior was as fully representative of wealth and of the ambition to
put under one roof all the notable effects of all the palaces in the
world. But it had, what most palaces have not, all the requisites for
luxurious living. The variety of styles in the rooms was bewildering.
Artists of distinction, both foreign and native, had vied with each other
in the decoration of the rooms given over to the display of their genius.
All paganism and all Christianity, history, myth, and the beauties of
nature were spread upon the walls and ceilings. Rare woods, rare
marbles, splendid textures, the product of ancient handiwork and modern
looms, added a certain dignity to the more airy creations of the artists.
Many of the rooms were named from the nations whose styles of decoration
and furnishing were imitated in them, but others had the simple
designation of the gold room, the silver room, the lapis-lazuli room, and
so on. It was not only the show-rooms, the halls, passages, stairways,
and galleries (both of pictures and of curios) that were thus enriched,
but the boudoirs, retiring-rooms, and more private apartments as well.
It was not simply a house of luxury, but of all the comfort that modern
invention can furnish. It was said that the money lavished upon one or
two of the noble apartments would have built a State-house (though not at
Albany), and that the fireplace in the great hall cost as much as an
imitation mediaeval church. These were the things talked about, and yet
the portions of this noble edifice, rich as they were, habitually
occupied by the family had another character--the attractions and
conveniences of what we call a home. Mrs. Mavick used to say that in her
apartments she found refuge in a sublimated domesticity. Mavick's own
quarters--not the study off the library where he received visitors whom
it was necessary to impress--had an executive appearance, and were, in
the necessary appliances, more like the interior bureau of a board of
trade. In fact, the witty brokers who were admitted to its mysteries
called it the bucket-shop.
Mr. Brad's article on "A Prisoned Millionaire" more than equaled Philip's
expectations. No such "story" had appeared in the city press in a long
time. It was what was called, in the language of the period, a work of
art--that is, a sensation, heightened by all the words of color in the
language, applied not only to material things, but to states and
qualities of mind, such as "purple emotions" and "scarlet intrepidity."
It was also exceedingly complimentary. Mavick himself was one of the
powers and pillars of American society, and the girl was an exquisite
exhibition of woodland bloom in the first flush of spring-time. As he
read it over, Philip thought what a fine advertisement it is to every
impecunious noble in Europe.
That morning, before going to his office, Philip strolled up Fifth Avenue
to look at that now doubly, famous mansion. Many others, it appeared,
were moved by the same curiosity. There was already a crowd assembled.
A couple of policemen, on special duty, patrolled the sidewalk in front
in order to keep a passage open, and perhaps to prevent a too impudent
inspection. Opposite the house, on the sidewalk and on door-steps, was a
motley throng, largely made up of toughs and roughs from the East Side,
good-natured spectators who merely wanted to see this splendid prison,
and a moving line of gentlemen and ladies who simply happened to be
passing that way at this time. The curbstone was lined with a score of
reporters of the city journals, each with his note-book. Every window
and entrance was eagerly watched. It was hoped that one of the family
might be seen, or that some servant might appear who could be
interviewed. Upon the windows supposed by the reporters to be those from
which the heiress looked, a strict watch was kept. The number, form, and
location of these windows were accurately noted, the stuff of the
curtains described in the phrase of the upholsterer, and much good
language was devoted to the view from these windows. The shrewdest of
the reporters had already sought information as to the interior from the
flower dealers, from upholsterers, from artists who had been employed in
the decorations, and had even assailed, in the name of the rights of the
public whom they represented, the architects of the building; but their
chief reliance was upon the waiters furnished by the leading caterers on
occasions of special receptions and great dinners, and milliners and
dress-makers, who had penetrated the more domestic apartments. By reason
of this extraordinary article in the newspaper, the public had acquired
the right to know all about the private life of the Mavick family.
This right was not acknowledged by Mr. Mavick and his family. Of course
the object of the excitement was wholly ignorant of the cause of it, as
no daily newspaper was ever seen by her that had not been carefully
inspected by the trusted and intelligent governess. The crowd in front
of the mansion was accounted for by the statement that a picture of it
had appeared in one of the low journals, and there was naturally a
curiosity to see it. And Evelyn was told that this was one of the
penalties a man paid for being popular.
Mrs. Mavick, who seldom lost her head, was thoroughly frightened and
upset, and it was a rare occasion that could upset the equanimity of the
late widow, Mrs. Carmen Henderson. She gave way to her passion and
demanded that the offending editor should be pursued with the utmost
rigor of the law. Mr. Mavick was not less annoyed and angry, but he
smiled when his wife talked of pursuing the press with the utmost rigor
of the law, and said that he would give the matter prompt attention.
That day he had an interview with the editor of the Daily Spectrum; which
was satisfactory to both parties. The editor would have said that Mavick
behaved like a gentleman. The result of the interview appeared in the
newspaper of the following morning.
Mr. Mavick had requested that the offending reporter should be cautioned;
he was too wise to have further attention called to the matter by
demanding his dismissal. Accordingly the reporter was severely
reprimanded, and then promoted.
The editorial, which was written by Mr. Olin Brad, and was in his best
Macaulay style, began somewhat humorously by alluding to the curious
interest of the public in ancient history, citing Mr. Froude and Mr.
Carlyle, and the legend of Casper Hauser. It was true, gradually
approaching the case in point, that uncommon precautions had been taken
in the early years of the American heiress, and it was the romance of the
situation that had been laid before the readers of the Spectrum. But
there had been really no danger in our chivalrous, free American society,
and all these precautions were long a thing of the past (which was not
true). In short, with elaboration and great skill, and some humor, the
exaggerations of the former article were minimized, and put in an airy
and unsubstantial light. And then this friend of the people, this
exposer of abuses and champion of virtue, turned and justly scored the
sensational press for prying into the present life of one of the first
families in the country.
Incidentally, it was mentioned that the ladies of the family had before
this incident bespoken their passage for their annual visit to Europe,
and that this affair had not disturbed their arrangements (which also was
not true). This casual announcement was intended to draw away attention
from the Fifth Avenue house, and to notify the roughs that it would be
useless to lay any plans.
The country press, which had far and wide printed the interesting story,
softened it in accordance with the later development. Possibly no
intelligent person was deceived, but in the estimation of the mass of the
people the Spectrum increased its reputation for enterprise and smartness
and gave also an impression of its fairness. The manager, told Mr. Brad
that the increased sales of the two days permitted the establishment to
give him a vacation of two weeks on full pay, and during these weeks the
manager himself set up a neat and modest brougham.
All of which events, only partially understood, Mr. Philip Burnett
revolved in his mind, and wondered if what was called success was worth
the price paid for it.
VII
The name of Thomas Mavick has lost the prominence and significance it had
at the time the events recorded in this history were taking place. It
seems incredible that the public should so soon have lost interest in
him. His position in the country was most conspicuous. No name was more
frequently in the newspapers. No other person not in official life was
so often interviewed. The reporters instinctively turned to him for
information in matters financial, concerning deals, and commercial, which
were so commonly connected with political, enterprises. No loan was
negotiated without consulting him, no operation was considered safe
without knowing how he was affected towards it, and to ascertain what
Mavick was doing or thinking was a constant anxiety in the Street. Of
course the opinion of a man so powerful was very important in politics,
and any church or sect would be glad to have his support. The fact that
he and his family worshiped regularly at St. Agnes's was a guarantee of
the stability of that church, and incidentally marked the success of the
Christian religion in the metropolis.
But the condition of the presence in the public mind of the name of a
great operator and accumulator of money who is merely that is either that
he go on accumulating, so that the magnitude of his wealth has few if any
rivals, or that his name become synonymous with some gigantic cleverness,
if not rascality, so that it is used as an adjective after he and his
wealth have disappeared from the public view. It is different with the
reputation of an equally great financier who has used his ability for the
service of his country. There is no Valhalla for the mere accumulators
of money. They are fortunate if their names are forgotten, and not
remembered as illustrations of colossal selfishness.
Mavick may have been the ideal of many a self-made man, but he did not
make his fortune--he married it. And it was suspected that the
circumstances attending that marriage put him in complete control of it.
He came into possession, however, with cultivated shrewdness and tact and
large knowledge of the world, the world of diplomacy as well as of
business. And under his manipulation the vast fortune so acquired was
reported to have been doubled. It was at any rate almost fabulous in the
public estimation.
When the charming widow of the late Rodney Henderson, then sojourning in
Rome, placed her attractive self and her still more attractive fortune in
the hands of Mr. Thomas Mavick, United States Minister to the Court of
Italy, she attained a position in the social world which was in accord
with her ambition, and Mavick acquired the means of making the mission,
in point of comparison with the missions of the other powers at the
Italian capital, a credit to the Great Republic. The match was therefore
a brilliant one, and had a sort of national importance.
Those who knew Mrs. Mavick in the remote past, when she was the
fascinating and not definitely placed Carmen Eschelle, and who also knew
Mr. Mavick when he was the confidential agent of Rodney Henderson, knew
that their union was a convenient and material alliance, in which the
desire of each party to enjoy in freedom all the pleasures of the world
could be gratified while retaining the social consideration of the world.
Both had always been circumspect. And it may be added, for the
information of strangers, that they thoroughly knew each other, and were
participants in a knowledge that put each at disadvantage, so that their
wedded life was a permanent truce. This bond of union was not ideal, and
not the best for the creation of individual character, but it avoided an
exhibition of those public antagonisms which so grieve and disturb the
even flow of the current of society, and give occasion to so much witty
comment on the institution of marriage itself.
When, some two years after Mr. Mavick relinquished the mission to Italy
to another statesman who had done some service to the opposite party, an
heiress was born to the house of Mavick, her appearance in the world
occasioned some disappointment to those who had caused it. Mavick
naturally wished a son to inherit his name and enlarge the gold
foundation upon which its perpetuity must rest; and Mrs. Mavick as
naturally shrank from a responsibility that promised to curtail freedom
of action in the life she loved. Carmen--it was an old saying of the
danglers in the time of Henderson--was a domestic woman except in her own
home.
However, it is one of the privileges of wealth to lighten the cares and
duties of maternity, and the enlarged household was arranged upon a basis
that did not interfere with the life of fashion and the charitable
engagements of the mother. Indeed, this adaptable woman soon found that
she had become an object of more than usual interest, by her latest
exploit, in the circles in which she moved, and her softened manner and
edifying conversation showed that she appreciated her position. Even the
McTavishes, who were inclined to be skeptical, said that Carmen was
delightful in her new role. This showed that the information Mrs. Mavick
got from the women who took care of her baby was of a kind to touch the
hearts of mothers and spinsters.
Moreover, the child was very pretty, and early had winning ways.
The nurse, before the baby was a year old, discovered in her the
cleverness of the father and the grace and fascination of the mother.
And it must be said that, if she did not excite passionate affection at
first, she enlisted paternal and maternal pride in her career.
It dawned upon both parents that a daughter might give less cause for
anxiety than a son, and that in an heiress there were possibilities of an
alliance that would give great social distinction. Considering,
therefore, all that she represented, and the settled conviction of Mrs.
Mavick that she would be the sole inheritor of the fortune, her safety
and education became objects of the greatest anxiety and precaution.
It happened that about the time Evelyn was christened there was a sort of
epidemic of stealing children, and of attempts to rob tombs of occupants
who had died rich or distinguished, in the expectation of a ransom. The
newspapers often chronicled mysterious disappearances; parents whose
names were conspicuous suffered great anxiety, and extraordinary
precautions were taken in regard to the tombs of public men. And this
was the reason that the heiress of the house of Mavick became the object
of a watchful vigilance that was probably never before exercised in a
republic, and that could only be paralleled in the case of a sole
heir-apparent of royalty.
These circumstances resulted in an interference with the laws of nature
which it must be confessed destroyed one of the most interesting studies
in heredity that was ever offered to an historian of social life. What
sort of a child had we a right to expect from Thomas Mavick, diplomatist
and operator, successor to the rights and wrongs of Rodney Henderson, and
Carmen Mavick, with the past of Carmen Eschelle and Mrs. Henderson?
Those who adhered to the strictest application of heredity, in
considering the natural development of Evelyn Mavick, sought refuge in
the physiological problem of the influence of Rodney Henderson, and
declared that something of his New England sturdiness and fundamental
veracity had been imparted to the inheritor of his great fortune.
But the visible interference took the form of Ann McDonald, a Scotch
spinster, to whom was intrusted the care of Evelyn as soon as she was
christened. It was merely a piece of good fortune that brought a person
of the qualifications of Ann McDonald into the family, for it is not to
be supposed that Mrs. Mavick had given any thought to the truth that the
important education of a child begins in its cradle, or that in selecting
a care-taker and companion who should later on be a governess she was
consulting her own desire of freedom from the duties of a mother. It was
enough for her that the applicant for the position had the highest
recommendations, that she was prepossessing in appearance, and it was
soon perceived that the guardian was truthful, faithful, vigilant, and of
an affectionate disposition and an innate refinement.
Ann McDonald was the only daughter of a clergyman of the Scotch Church,
and brought up in the literary atmosphere common in the most cultivated
Edinburgh homes. She had been accurately educated, and always with the
knowledge that her education might be her capital in life. After the
death of her mother, when she was nineteen, she had been her father's
housekeeper, and when in her twenty-fourth year her father relinquished
his life and his salary, she decided, under the advice of influential
friends, to try her fortune in America. And she never doubted that it
was a providential guidance that brought her into intimate relations with
the infant heiress. It seemed probable that a woman so attractive and so
solidly accomplished would not very long remain a governess, but in fact
her career was chosen from the moment she became interested in the
development of the mind and character of the child intrusted to her care.
It is difficult to see how our modern life would go on as well as it does
if there were not in our homes a good many such faithful souls. It
sometimes seems, in this shifting world, that about the best any of us
can do is to prepare some one else for doing something well.
Miss McDonald had a pretty comprehensive knowledge of English literature
and history, and, better perhaps than mere knowledge, a discriminating
and cultivated taste. If her religious education had twisted her view
of the fine arts, she had nevertheless a natural sympathy for the
beautiful, and she would not have been a Scotchwoman if she had not had
a love for the romances of her native land and at heart a "ballad"
sentiment for the cavaliers. If Evelyn had been educated by her
in Edinburgh, she might have been in sentiment a young Jacobite. She had
through translations a sufficient knowledge of the classics to give her
the necessary literary background, and her study of Latin had led her
into the more useful acquisition of French.
If she had been free to indulge her own taste, she would have gone far in
natural history, as was evident from her mastery of botany and her
interest in birds.
She inspired so much confidence by her good sense, clear-headedness, and
discretion, that almost from the first Evelyn was confided to her sole
care, with only the direction that the baby was never for an instant,
night or day, to be left out of the sight of a trusty attendant. The
nurse was absolutely under her orders, she selected the two maids, and no
person except the parents and the governess could admit visitors to the
nursery. This perfect organization was maintained for many years, and
though it came to be relaxed in details, it was literally true that the
heiress was never alone, and never out of the sight of some trusted
person responsible for her safety. But whatever the changes or
relaxation, in holidays, amusements, travel, or education, the person who
formed her mind was the one who had taught her to obey, to put words
together into language, and to speak the truth, from infancy.
It is not necessary to consider Ann McDonald as a paragon. She was
simply an intelligent, disciplined woman, with a strong sense of duty.
If she had married and gone about the ordinary duties of life at the age
of twenty-four, she would probably have been in no marked way
distinguished among women. Her own development was largely due to the
responsibility that was put upon her in the training of another person.
In this sense it was true that she had learned as much as she had
imparted. And in nothing was this more evident than in the range of her
literary taste and judgment. Whatever risks, whatever latitude she might
have been disposed to take with regard to her own mind, she would not
take as to the mind of another, and as a consequence her own standards
rose to meet the situation. That is to say, in a conscientious selection
of only the best for Evelyn, she became more fastidious as to the food
for her own mind. Or, to put it in still another way, in regard to
character and culture generally, the growth of Miss McDonald could be
measured by that of Evelyn.
When, from the time Evelyn was seven years old, it became necessary in
her education to call in special tutors in the languages and in
mathematics, and in certain arts that are generally called
accomplishments, Miss McDonald was always present when the
lessons were given, so that she maintained her ascendency and her
influence in the girl's mind. It was this inseparable companionship, at
least in all affairs of the mind, that gave to this educational
experiment an exceptional interest to students of psychology.
Nothing could be more interesting than to come into contact with a mind
that from infancy onward had dwelt only upon what is noblest in
literature, and from which had been excluded all that is enervating and
degrading. A remarkable illustration of this is the familiar case of
Helen Keller, whose acquisitions, by reason of her blindness and
deafness, were limited to what was selected for her, and that mainly by
one person, and she was therefore for a long time shielded from a
knowledge of the evil side of life. Yet all vital literature is so close
to life, and so full of its passion and peril, that it supplies all the
necessary aliment for the growth of a sound, discriminating mind; and
that knowledge of the world, as knowledge of evil is euphemistically
called, can be safely left out of a good education. This may be admitted
without going into the discussion whether good principles and standards
in literature and morals are a sufficient equipment for the perils of
life.
This experiment, of course, was limited in Evelyn's case. She came in
contact with a great deal of life. Her little world was fairly
representative, for it contained her father, her mother, her governess,
the maids and the servants, and occasional visitors, whom she saw freely
as she grew older. The interesting fact was that she was obliged to
judge this world according to the standards of literature, morals, and
manners that had been implanted in her mainly by the influence of one
person. The important part of this experiment of partial exclusion, in
which she was never alone' an experiment undertaken solely for her safety
and not for her training-was seen in her when she became conscious of its
abnormal character, and perceived that she was always under surveillance.
It might have made her exceedingly morbid, aside from its effect of
paralyzing her self-confidence and power of initiation, had it not been
for the exceptionally strong and cheerful nature of her companion. A
position more hateful, even to a person not specially socially inclined,
cannot be imagined than that of always being watched, and never having
any assured privacy. And under such a tutelage and dependence, how in
any event could she be able to take care of herself? What weapons had
this heiress of a great fortune with which to defend herself? What sort
of a girl had this treatment during seventeen years produced?
VIII
To the private apartment of Mr. Mavick, in the evening of the second
eventful day, where, over his after-dinner cigar, he was amusing himself
with a French novel, enters, after a little warning tap, the mistress of
the house, for, what was a rare occurrence, a little family chat.
"So you didn't horsewhip and you didn't prosecute. You preferred to
wriggle out!"
"Yes," said Mavick, too much pleased with the result to be belligerent,
"I let the newspaper do the wriggling."
"Oh, my dear, I can trust you for that. Have you any idea how it got
hold of the details?"
"No; you don't think McDonald--"
"McDonald! I'd as soon suspect myself. So would you."
"Well, everybody knew it already, for that matter. I only wonder that
some newspaper didn't get on to it before. What did Evelyn say?"
"Nothing more than what you heard at dinner. She thought it amusing that
there should be such a crowd to gaze at the house, simply because a
picture of it had appeared in a newspaper. She thought her father must
be a very important personage. I didn't undeceive her. At times, you
know, dear, I think so myself."
"Yes, I've noticed that," said Mavick, with a good-natured laugh, in
which Carmen joined, "and those times usually coincide with the times
that you want something specially."
"You ought to be ashamed to take me up that way. I just wanted to talk
about the coming-out reception. You know I had come over to your opinion
that seventeen was perhaps better than eighteen, considering Evelyn's
maturity. When I was seventeen I was just as good as I am now."
"I don't doubt it," said Mavick, with another laugh.
"But don't you see this affair upsets all our arrangements? It's very
vexatious."
"I don't see it exactly. By-the-way, what do you think of the escape
suggested by the Spectrum, in the assertion that you and Evelyn had
arranged to go to Europe? The steamer sails tomorrow."
"Think!" exclaimed Carmen. "Do you think I am going to be run, as you
call it, by the newspapers? They run everything else. I'm not politics,
I'm not an institution, I'm not even a revolution. No, I thank you. It
answers my purpose for them to say we have gone."
"I suppose you can keep indoors a few days. As to the reception, I had
arranged my business for it. I may be in Mexico or Honolulu the
following winter."
"Well, we can't have it now. You see that."
"Carmen, I don't care a rap what the public thinks or says. The child's
got to face the world some time, and look out for herself. I fancy she
will not like it as much as you did."
"Very likely. Perhaps I liked it because I had to fight it. Evelyn
never will do that."
"She hasn't the least idea what the world is like."
"Don't you be too sure of that, my dear; you don't understand yet what a
woman feels and knows. You think she only sees and thinks what she is
told. The conceit of men is most amusing about this. Evelyn is deeper
than you think. The discrimination of that child sometimes positively
frightens me--how she sees into things. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if
she actually knew her father and mother!"
"Then she beats me," said Mavick, with another laugh, "and I've been at
it a long time. Carmen, just for fun, tell me a little about your early
life."
"Well"--there was a Madonna-like smile on her lips, and she put out the
toe of her slender foot and appeared to study it for a moment--"
I was intended to be a nun."
"Spanish or French?"
"Just a plain nun. But mamma would not hear of it. Mamma was just a bit
worldly."
"I never should have suspected it," said Mavick, with equal gravity.
"But how did you live in those early days, way back there?"
"Oh!" and Carmen looked up with the most innocent, open-eyed expression,
"we lived on our income."
"Naturally. We all try to do that." The tone in Mavick's voice showed
that he gave it up.
"But, of course," and Carmen was lively again, "it's much nicer to have a
big income that's certain than a small one that is uncertain."
"It would seem so."
"Ah, deary me, it's such a world! Don't you think, dear, that we have
had enough domestic notoriety for one year?"
"Quite. It would do for several."
"And we will put it off a year?"
"Arrange as you like." And Mavick stretched up his arms, half yawned,
and took up another cigar.
"It will be such a relief to McDonald. She insisted it was too soon."
And Carmen whirled out of her chair, went behind her husband, lifted with
her delicate fingers a lock of grayish hair on his forehead, deposited
the lightest kiss there--"Nobody in the world knows how good you are
except me," and was gone.
And the rich man, who had gained everything he wanted in life except
happiness, lighted his cigar and sought refuge in a tale of modern life,
that was, however, too much like his own history to be consoling.
It must not be supposed from what she said that Mrs. Mavick stood in fear
of her daughter, but it was only natural that for a woman of the world
the daily contact of a pure mind should be at times inconvenient. This
pure mind was an awful touchstone of conduct, and there was a fear that
Evelyn's ignorance of life would prevent her from making the proper
allowances. In her affectionate and trusting nature, which suspected
little evil anywhere, there was no doubt that her father and mother
had her entire confidence and love. But the likelihood was that she
would not be pliant. Under Miss McDonald's influence she had somewhat
abstract notions of what is right and wrong, and she saw no reason
why these should not be applied in all cases. What her mother would
have called policy and reasonable concessions she would have given
different names. For getting on in the world, this state of mind has its
disadvantages, and in the opinion of practical men, like Mavick, it was
necessary to know good and evil. But it was the girl's power of
discernment that bothered her mother, who used often to wonder where the
child came from.
On the other hand, it must not be supposed that the singular training of
Evelyn had absolutely destroyed her inherited tendencies, or made her as
she was growing into womanhood anything but a very real woman, with the
reserves, the weaknesses, the coquetries, the defenses which are the
charm of her sex. Nor was she so ignorant of life as such a guarded
personality might be thought. Her very wide range of reading had
liberalized her mind, and given her a much wider outlook upon the
struggles and passions and failures and misery of life than many another
girl of her age had gained by her limited personal experience. Those who
hold the theory that experience is the only guide are right as a matter
of fact, since every soul seems determined to try for itself and not to
accept the accumulated wisdom of literature or of experienced advisers;
but those who come safely out of their experiences are generally sound by
principle which has been instilled in youth. But it is useless to
moralize. Only the event could show whether such an abnormal training as
Evelyn had received was wise.
When Mrs. Mavick went to her daughter's apartments she found Evelyn
reading aloud and Miss McDonald at work on an elaborate piece of
Bulgarian embroidery.
"How industrious! What a rebuke to me!"
"I don't see, mamma, how we could be doing less; I've only an audience of
one, and she is wasting her time."
"Well, carissima, it is settled. It's off for a year."
"The reception? Why so?"
"Your father cannot arrange it. He has too much on hand this season, and
may be away."
"There, McDonald, we've got a reprieve," and Evelyn gave a sigh of
relief.
The Scotch woman smiled, and only said, "Then I shall have time to finish
this."
Evelyn jumped up, threw herself into her mother's lap, and began to
smooth her hair and pet her. "I'm awfully glad. I'd ever so much rather
stay in than come out. Yes, dear little mother."
"Little?"
"Yes." And the girl pulled her mother from her chair, and made her stand
up to measure. "See, McDonald, almost an inch taller than mamma, and
when I do my hair on top!"
"And see, mamma"--the girl was pirouetting on the floor--"I can do those
steps you do. Isn't it Spanish?"
"Rather Spanish-American, I guess. This is the way."
Evelyn clapped her hands. "Isn't that lovely!"
"You are only a little brownie, after all." Her mother was holding her
at arm's--length and studying her critically, wondering if she would ever
be handsome.
The girl was slender, but not tall. Her figure had her mother's grace,
but not its suggestion of yielding suppleness. She was an undoubted
brunette--complexion olive, hair very dark, almost black except in the
sunlight, and low on her forehead-chin a little strong, and nose piquant
to say the least of it. Certainly features not regular nor classic. The
mouth, larger than her mother's, had full lips, the upper one short, and
admirable curves, strong in repose, but fascinating when she smiled. A
face not handsome, but interesting. And the eyes made you hesitate to
say she was not handsome, for they were large, of a dark hazel and
changeable, eyes that flashed with merriment, or fell into sadness under
the long eyelashes; and it would not be safe to say that they could not
blaze with indignation. Not a face to go wild about, but when you felt
her character through it, a face very winning in its dark virgin purity.
"I do wonder where she came from?" Mrs. Mavick was saying to herself, as
she threw herself upon a couch in her own room and took up the latest
Spanish novel.
IX
Celia Howard had been, in a way, Philip's inspiration ever since the days
when they quarreled and made up on the banks of the Deer field. And a
fortunate thing for him it was that in his callow years there was a woman
in whom he could confide. Her sympathy was everything, even if her
advice was not always followed. In the years of student life and
preparation they had not often met, but they were constant and
painstaking correspondents. It was to her that he gave the running
chronicle of his life, and poured out his heart and aspirations.
Unconsciously he was going to school to a woman, perhaps the most
important part of his education. For, though in this way he might never
hope to understand woman, he was getting most valuable knowledge of
himself.
As a guide, Philip was not long in discovering that Celia was somewhat
uncertain. She kept before him a very high ideal; she expected him to be
distinguished and successful, but, her means varied from time to time.
Now she would have him take one path and now another. And Philip learned
to read in this varying advice the changes in her own experience. There
was a time when she hoped he would be a great scholar: there was no
position so noble as that of a university professor or president. Then
she turned short round and extolled the business life: get money, get a
position, and then you can study, write books, do anything you like and
be independent. Then came a time--this was her last year in college
--when science seemed the only thing. That was really a benefit to
mankind: create something, push discovery, dispel ignorance.
"Why, Phil, if you could get people to understand about ventilation, the
necessity of pure air, you would deserve a monument. And, besides--this
is an appeal to your lower nature--science is now the thing that pays."
Theology she never considered; that was just now too uncertain in its
direction. Law she had finally approved; it was still respectable; it
was a very good waiting-ground for many opportunities, and it did not
absolutely bar him from literature, for which she perceived he had a
sneaking fondness.
Philip wondered if Celia was not thinking of the law for herself.
She had tried teaching, she had devoted herself for a time to work in a
College Settlement, she had learned stenography, she had talked of
learning telegraphy, she had been interested in women's clubs, in a civic
club, in the political education of women, and was now a professor of
economics in a girl's college.
It finally dawned upon Philip, who was plodding along, man fashion, in
one of the old ruts, feeling his way, like a true American, into the
career that best suited him, that Celia might be a type of the awakened
American woman, who does not know exactly what she wants.
To be sure, she wants everything. She has recently come into an open
place, and she is distracted by the many opportunities. She has no
sooner taken up one than she sees another that seems better, or more
important in the development of her sex, and she flies to that.
But nothing, long, seems the best thing. Perhaps men are in the way,
monopolizing all the best things. Celia had never made a suggestion of
this kind, but Philip thought she was typical of the women who push
individualism so far as never to take a dual view of life.
"I have just been," Celia wrote in one of her letters, when she was an
active club woman, "out West to a convention of the Federation of Women's
Clubs. Such a striking collection of noble, independent women!
Handsome, lots of them, and dressed--oh, my friend, dress is still a part
of it! So different from a man's convention! Cranks? Yes, a few left
over. It was a fine, inspiring meeting. But, honestly, I could not
exactly make out what they were federating about, and what they were
going to do when they got federated. It sort of came over me,
I am such a weak sister, that there is such a lot of work done in this
world with no object except the doing of it."
A more recent letter:--"Do you remember Aunt Hepsy, who used to keep the
little thread-and-needle and candy shop in Rivervale? Such a dear,
sweet, contented old soul! Always a smile and a good word for every
customer. I can see her now, picking out the biggest piece of candy in
the dish that she could afford to give for a little fellow's cent. It
never came over me until lately how much good that old woman did in the
world. I remember what a comfort it was to go and talk with her. Well,
I am getting into a frame of mind to want to be an Aunt Hepsy. There is
so much sawdust in everything--No, I'm not low-spirited. I'm just
philosophical--I've a mind to write a life of Aunt Hepsy, and let the
world see what a real useful life is."
And here is a passage from the latest:--"What an interesting story your
friend--I hope he isn't you friend, for I don't half like him--has made
out of that Mavick girl! If I were the girl's mother I should want to
roast him over the coals. Is there any truth in it?
"Of course I read it, as everybody did and read the crawl out, and looked
for more. So it is partly our fault, but what a shame it is, the
invasion of family life! Do tell me, if you happen to see her--the girl
--driving in the Park or anywhere--of course you never will--what she
looks like. I should like to see an unsophisticated millionaire-ess!
But it is an awfully interesting problem, invented or not I'm pretty deep
in psychology these days, and I'd give anything to come in contact with
that girl. You would just see a woman, and you wouldn't know. I'd see a
soul. Dear me, if I'd only had the chance of that Scotch woman! Don't
you see, if we could only get to really know one mind and soul, we should
know it all. I mean scientifically. I know what you are thinking, that
all women have that chance. What you think is impertinent--to the
subject."
Indeed, the story of Evelyn interested everybody. It was taken up
seriously in the country regions. It absorbed New York gossip for two
days, and then another topic took possession of the mercurial city; but
it was the sort of event to take possession of the country mind. New
York millionaires get more than their share of attention in the country
press at all times, but this romance became the subject of household talk
and church and sewing-circle gossip, and all the women were eager for
more details, and speculated endlessly about the possible character and
career of the girl.
Alice wrote Philip from Rivervale that her aunt Patience was very much
excited by it. "'The poor thing,' she said, 'always to have somebody
poking round, seeing every blessed thing you do or don't do; it would
drive me crazy. There is that comfort in not having anything much--you
have yourself. You tell Philip that I hope he doesn't go there often.
I've no objection to his being kind to the poor thing when they meet, and
doing neighborly things, but I do hope he won't get mixed up with that
set.' It is very amusing," Alice continued, "to hear Patience
soliloquize about it and construct the whole drama.
"But you cannot say, Philip, that you are not warned (!) and you know that
Patience is almost a prophet in the way she has of putting things
together. Celia was here recently looking after the little house that
has been rented ever since the death of her mother. I never saw her look
so well and handsome, and yet there was a sort of air about her as if she
had been in public a good deal and was quite capable of taking care of
herself. But she was that way when she was little.
"I think she is a good friend of yours. Well, Phil, if you do ever happen
to see that Evelyn in the opera, or anywhere, tell me how she looks and
what she has on--if you can."
The story had not specially interested Philip, except as it was connected
with Brad's newspaper prospects, but letters, like those referred to,
received from time to time, began to arouse a personal interest. Of
course merely a psychological interest, though the talk here and there at
dinner-tables stimulated his desire, at least, to see the subject of
them. But in this respect he was to be gratified, in the usual way
things desired happen in life--that is, by taking pains to bring them
about.
When Mr. Brad came back from his vacation his manner had somewhat
changed. He had the air of a person who stands on firm ground.
He felt that he was a personage. He betrayed this in a certain
deliberation of speech, as if any remark from him now might be important.
In a way he felt himself related to public affairs.
In short, he had exchanged the curiosity of the reporter for the
omniscience of the editor. And for a time Philip was restrained from
intruding the subject of the Mavick sensation. However, one day after
dinner he ventured:
"I see, Mr. Brad, that your hit still attracts attention." Mr. Brad
looked inquiringly blank.
I mean about the millionaire heiress. It has excited a wide interest."
"Ah, that! Yes, it gave me a chance," replied Brad, who was thinking
only of himself.
"I've had several letters about it from the country."
"Yes? Well, I suppose," said Brad, modestly, "that a little country
notoriety doesn't hurt a person."
Philip did not tell his interlocutor that, so far as he knew, nobody in
the country had ever heard the name of Olin Brad, or knew there was such
a person in existence. But he went on:
"Certainly. And, besides, there is a great curiosity to know about the
girl. Did you ever see her?"
"Only in public. I don't know Mavick personally, and for reasons," and
Mr. Brad laughed in a superior manner. "It's easy enough to see her."
"How?"
"Watch out for a Wagner night, and go to the opera. You'll see where
Mavick's box is in the bill. She is pretty sure to be there, and her
mother. There is nothing special about her; but her mother is still a
very fascinating woman, I can tell you. You'll find her sure on a
'Carmen' night, but not so sure of the girl."
On this suggestion Philip promptly acted. The extra expense of an
orchestra seat he put down to his duty to keep his family informed of
anything that interested them in the city. It was a "Siegfried" night,
and a full house. To describe it all would be very interesting to Alice.
The Mavick box was empty until the overture was half through. Then
appeared a gentleman who looked as if he were performing a public duty,
a lady who looked as if she were receiving a public welcome, and seated
between them a dark, slender girl, who looked as if she did not see the
public at all, but only the orchestra.
Behind them, in the shadow, a middle-aged woman in plainer attire.
It must be the Scotch governess. Mrs. Mavick had her eyes
everywhere about the house, and was graciously bowing to her friends.
Mr. Mavick coolly and unsympathetically regarded the house, quite
conscious of it, but as if he were a little bored. You could not see him
without being aware that he was thinking of other things, probably of
far-reaching schemes. People always used to say of Mavick, when he was
young and a clerk in a Washington bureau, that he looked omniscient. At
least the imagination of spectators invested him with a golden hue, and
regarded him through the roseate atmosphere that surrounds a
many-millioned man. The girl had her eyes always on the orchestra, and
was waiting for the opening of the world that lay behind the
drop-curtain. Philip noticed that all the evening Mrs. Mavick paid very
little attention to the stage, except when the rest of the house was so
dark that she could distinguish little in it.
Fortunately for Philip, in his character of country reporter, the Mavick
box was near the stage, and he could very well see what was going on in
it, without wholly distracting his attention from Wagner's sometimes very
dimly illuminated creation.
There are faces and figures that compel universal attention and
admiration. Commonly there is one woman in a theatre at whom all glances
are leveled. It is a mystery why one face makes only an individual
appeal, and an appeal much stronger than that of one universally admired.
The house certainly concerned itself very little about the shy and dark
heiress in the Mavick box, having with regard to her only a moment's
curiosity. But the face instantly took hold of Philip. He found it more
interesting to read the play in her face than on the stage. He seemed
instantly to have established a chain of personal sympathy with her. So
intense was his regard that it seemed as if she must, if there is
anything in the telepathic theory of the interchange of feeling, have
been conscious of it. That she was, however, unconscious of any
influence reaching her except from the stage was perfectly evident. She
was absorbed in the drama, even when the drama was almost lost in
darkness, and only an occasional grunting ejaculation gave evidence that
there was at least animal life responsive to the continual pleading,
suggesting, inspiring strains of the orchestra. In the semi-gloom and
groping of the under-world, it would seem that the girl felt that
mystery of life which the instruments were trying to interpret.
At any rate, Philip could see that she was rapt away into that other
world of the past, to a practical unconsciousness of her immediate
surroundings. Was it the music or the poetic idea that held her?
Perhaps only the latter, for it is Wagner's gift to reach by his
creations those who have little technical knowledge of music. At any
rate, she was absorbed, and so perfectly was the progress of the drama
repeated in her face that Philip, always with the help of the orchestra,
could trace it there.
But presently something more was evident to this sympathetic student of
her face. She was not merely discovering the poet's world, she was
finding out herself. As the drama unfolded, Philip was more interested
in this phase than in the observation of her enjoyment and appreciation.
To see her eyes sparkle and her cheeks glow with enthusiasm during the
sword-song was one thing, but it was quite another when Siegfried began
his idyl, that nature and bird song of the awakening of the whole being
to the passion of love. Then it was that Evelyn's face had a look of
surprise, of pain, of profound disturbance; it was suffused with blushes,
coming and going in passionate emotion; the eyes no longer blazed, but
were softened in a melting tenderness of sympathy, and her whole person
seemed to be carried into the stream of the great life passion. When it
ceased she sank back in her seat, and blushed still more, as if in fear
that some one had discovered her secret.
Afterwards, when Philip had an opportunity of knowing Evelyn Mavick, and
knowing her very well, and to some extent having her confidence, he used
to say to himself that he had little to learn--the soul of the woman was
perfectly revealed to him that night of "Siegfried."
As the curtain went down, Mrs. Mavick, whose attention had not been
specially given to the artists before, was clapping her hands in a great
state of excitement.
"Why don't you applaud, child?"
"Oh, mother," was all the girl could say, with heaving breast and
downcast eyes.
X
All winter long that face seemed to get between Philip and his work. It
was an inspiration to his pen when it ran in the way of literature, but a
distinct damage to progress in his profession. He had seen Evelyn again,
more than once, at the opera, and twice been excited by a passing glimpse
of her on a crisp, sunny afternoon in the Mavick carriage in the
Park-always the same bright, eager face. So vividly personal was the
influence upon him that it seemed impossible that she should not be aware
of it--impossible that she could not know there was such a person in the
world as Philip Burnett.
Fortunately youth can create its own world. Between the secluded
daughter of millions and the law clerk was a great gulf, but this did not
prevent Evelyn's face, and, in moments of vanity, Evelyn herself, from
belonging to Philip's world. He would have denied--we have a habit of
lying to ourselves quite as much as to others--that he ever dreamed of
possessing her, but nevertheless she entered into his thoughts and his
future in a very curious way. If he saw himself a successful lawyer, her
image appeared beside him. If his story should gain the public
attention, and his occasional essays come to be talked of, it was
Evelyn's interest and approval that he caught himself thinking about.
And he had a conviction that she was one to be much more interested in
him as a man of letters than as a lawyer. This might be true. In
Philip's story, which was very slowly maturing, the heroine fell in love
with a young man simply for himself, and regardless of the fact that he
was poor and had his career to make. But he knew that if his novel ever
got published the critics would call it a romance, and not a transcript
of real life. Had not women ceased to be romantic and ceased to indulge
in vagaries of affection?
Was it that Philip was too irresolute to cut either law or literature,
and go in, single-minded, for a fortune of some kind, and a place?
Or was it merely that he had confidence in the winning character of his
own qualities and was biding his time? If it was a question of making
himself acceptable to a woman--say a woman like Evelyn--was it not
belittling to his own nature to plan to win her by what he could make
rather than by what he was?
Probably the vision he had of Evelyn counted for very little in his
halting decision. "Why don't you put her into a novel?" asked Mr. Brad
one evening. The suggestion was a shock. Philip conveyed the idea
pretty plainly that he hadn't got so low as that yet. "Ah, you fellows
think you must make your own material. You are higher-toned than old
Dante." The fact was that Philip was not really halting. Every day he
was less and less in love with the law as it was practiced, and, courting
reputation, he would much rather be a great author than a great lawyer.
But he kept such thoughts to himself. He had inherited a very good stock
of common-sense. Apparently he devoted himself to his office work, and
about the occupation of his leisure hours no one was in his confidence
except Celia, and now and then, when he got something into print, Alice.
Professedly Celia was his critic, but really she was the necessary
appreciator, for probably most writers would come to a standstill if
there was no sympathetic soul to whom they could communicate, while they
were fresh, the teeming fancies of their brains.
The winter wore along without any incident worth recording, but still
fruitful for the future, as Philip fondly hoped. And one day chance
threw in his way another sensation. Late in the afternoon of a spring
day he was sent from the office to Mavick's house with a bundle of papers
to be examined and signed.
"You will be pretty sure to find him," said Mr. Sharp, "at home about
six. Wait till you do see him. The papers must be signed and go to
Washington by the night mail."
Mr. Mavick was in his study, and received Philip very civilly, as the
messenger of his lawyers, and was soon busy in examining the documents,
flinging now and then a short question to Philip, who sat at the table
near him.
Suddenly there was a tap at the door, and, not waiting for a summons, a
young girl entered, and stopped after a couple of steps.
"Oh, I didn't know--"
"What is it, dear?" said Mr. Mavick, looking up a moment, and then down
at the papers.
"Why, about the coachman's baby. I thought perhaps--" She had a paper in
her hand, and advanced towards the table, and then stopped, seeing that
her father was not alone.
Philip rose involuntarily. Mr. Mavick looked up quickly. "Yes,
presently. I've just now got a little business with Mr. Burnett."
It was not an introduction. But for an instant the eyes of the young
people met. It seemed to Philip that it was a recognition. Certainly
the full, sweet eyes were bent on him for the second she stood there,
before turning away and leaving the room. And she looked just as true
and sweet as Philip dreamed she would look at home. He sat in a kind of
maze for the quarter of an hour while Mavick was affixing his signature
and giving some directions. He heard all the directions, and carried
away the papers, but he also carried away something else unknown to the
broker. After all, he found himself reflecting, as he walked down the
avenue, the practice of the law has its good moments!
What was there in this trivial incident that so magnified it in Philip's
mind, day after day? Was it that he began to feel that he had
established a personal relation with Evelyn because she had seen him?
Nothing had really happened. Perhaps she had not heard his name, perhaps
she did not carry the faintest image of him out of the room with her.
Philip had read in romances of love at first sight, and he had personal
experience of it. Commonly, in romances, the woman gives no sign of it,
does not admit it to herself, denies it in her words and in her conduct,
and never owns it until the final surrender. "When was the first moment
you began to love me, dear?" "Why, the first moment, that day; didn't
you know it then?" This we are led to believe is common experience with
the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases,
that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way.
But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was
too slight for Philip to build such a hope on.
Looking back, we like to trace great results to insignificant, momentary
incidents--a glance, a word, that turned the current of a life. There
was a definite moment when the thought came to Alexander that he would
conquer the world! Probably there was no such moment. The great
Alexander was restless, and at no initial instant did he conceive his
scheme of conquest. Nor was it one event that set him in motion. We
confound events with causes. It happened on such a day. Yes, but it
might have happened on another. But if Philip had not been sent on that
errand to Mavick probably Evelyn would never have met him. What nonsense
this is, and what an unheroic character it makes Philip! Is it
supposable that, with such a romance as he had developed about the girl,
he would not some time have come near her, even if she had been locked up
with all the bars and bolts of a safety deposit?
The incident of this momentary meeting was, however, of great
consequence. There is no such feeder of love as the imagination.
And fortunate it was for Philip that his romance was left to grow in the
wonder-working process of his own mind. At first there had been merely a
curiosity in regard to a person whose history and education had been
peculiar. Then the sight of her had raised a strange tumult in his
breast, and his fancy began to play about her image, seen only at a
distance and not many times, until his imagination built up a being of
surpassing loveliness, and endowed with all the attractions that the
poets in all ages have given to the sex that inspires them. But this
sort of creation in the mind becomes vague, and related to literature
only, unless it is sustained by some reality. Even Petrarch must
occasionally see Laura at the church door, and dwell upon the veiled
dreamer that passed and perhaps paused a moment to regard him with sad
eyes. Philip, no doubt, nursed a genuine passion, which grew into an
exquisite ideal in the brooding of a poetic mind, but it might in time
have evaporated into thin air, remaining only as an emotional and
educational experience. But this moment in Mr. Mavick's library had
given a solid body to his imaginations, and a more definite turn to his
thought of her.
If, in some ordinary social chance, Philip had encountered the heiress,
without this previous wonderworking of his imagination in regard to her,
the probability is that he would have seen nothing especially to
distinguish her from the other girls of her age and newness in social
experience. Certainly the thought that she was the possessor of
uncounted millions would have been, on his side, an insuperable barrier
to any advance. But the imagination works wonders truly, and Philip saw
the woman and not the heiress. She had become now a distinct
personality; to be desired above all things on earth, and that he should
see her again he had no doubt.
This thought filled his mind, and even when he was not conscious of it
gave a sort of color to life, refined his perceptions, and gave him
almost sensuous delight in the masterpieces of poetry which had formerly
appealed only to his intellectual appreciation of beauty.
He had not yet come to a desire to share his secret with any confidant,
but preferred to be much alone and muse on it, creating a world which was
without evil, without doubt, undisturbed by criticism. In this so real
dream it was the daily office work that seemed unreal, and the company
and gossip of his club a kind of vain show. He began to frequent the
picture-galleries, where there was at least an attempt to express
sentiment, and to take long walks to the confines of the city-confines
fringed with all the tender suggestions of the opening spring. Even the
monotonous streets which he walked were illumined in his eyes, glorified
by the fullness of life and achievement. "Yes," he said again and again,
as he stood on the Heights, in view of the river, the green wall of
Jersey and the great metropolis spread away to the ocean gate, "it is a
beautiful city! And the critics say it is commonplace and vulgar." Dear
dreamer, it is a beautiful city, and for one reason and another a million
of people who have homes there think so. But take out of it one person,
and it would have for you no more interest than any other huge assembly
of ugly houses. How, in a lover's eyes, the woman can transfigure a
city, a landscape, a country!
Celia had come up to town for the spring exhibitions, and was lodging at
the Woman's Club. Naturally Philip saw much of her, indeed gave her all
his time that the office did not demand. Her company was always for him
a keen delight, an excitement, and in its way a rest. For though she
always criticised, she did not nag, and just because she made no demands,
nor laid any claims on him, nor ever reproached him for want of devotion,
her society was delightful and never dull. They dined together at the
Woman's Club, they experimented on the theatres, they visited the
galleries and the picture-shops, they took little excursions into the
suburbs and came back impressed with the general cheapness and
shabbiness, and they talked--talked about all they saw, all they had
read, and something of what they thought. What was wanting to make this
charming camaraderie perfect? Only one thing.
It may have occurred to Philip that Celia had not sufficient respect for
his opinions; she regarded them simply as opinions, not as his.
One afternoon, in the Metropolitan Picture-Gallery, Philip had been
expressing enthusiasm for some paintings that Celia thought more
sentimental than artistic, and this reminded her that he was getting into
a general way of admiring everything.
"You didn't use, Philip, to care so much for pictures."
"Oh, I've been seeing more."
"But you don't say you like that? Look at the drawing."
"Well, it tells the story."
"A story is nothing; it's the way it's told. This is not well told."
"It pleases me. Look at that girl."
"Yes, she is domestic. I admit that. But I'm not sure I do not prefer
an impressionistic girl, whom you can't half see, to such a thorough
bread-and-butter miss as this."
"Which would you rather live with?"
"I'm not obliged to live with either. In fact, I'd rather live with
myself. If it's art, I want art; if it's cooking and sewing, I want
cooking and sewing. If the artist knew enough, he'd paint a woman
instead of a cook."
"Then you don't care for real life?"
"Real life! There is no such thing. You are demonstrating that. You
transform this uninteresting piece of domesticity into an ideal woman,
ennobling her surroundings. She doesn't do it. She is level with them."
"It would be a dreary world if we didn't idealize things."
"So it would. And that is what I complain of in such 'art' as this. I
don't know what has got into you, Phil. I never saw you so exuberant.
You are pleased with everything. Have you had a rise in the office?
Have you finished your novel?"
"Neither. No rise. No novel. But Tweedle is getting friendly. Threw
an extra job in my way the other day. Do you think I'd better offer my
novel, when it is done, to Tweedle?"
"Tweedle, indeed!"
"Well, one of our clients is one of the great publishing firms, and
Tweedle often dines with the publisher."
"For shame, Phil!"
Philip laughed. "At any rate, that is no meaner than a suggestion of
Brad's. He says if I will just weave into it a lot of line scenery, and
set my people traveling on the great trunk, stopping off now and then at
an attractive branch, the interested railroads would gladly print it and
scatter it all over the country."
"No doubt," said Celia, sinking down upon a convenient seat. "I begin to
feel as if there were no protection for anything. And, Phil, that great
monster of a Mavick, who is eating up the country, isn't he a client
also?"
"Occasionally only. A man like Mavick has his own lawyers and judges."
"Did you ever see him?"
"Just glimpses."
"And that daughter of his, about whom such a fuss was made, I suppose you
never met her?"
"Oh, as I wrote you, at the opera; saw her in her box."
"And--?"
"Oh, she's rather a little thing; rather dark, I told you that; seems
devoted to music."
"And you didn't tell what she wore."
"Why, what they all wear. Something light and rather fluffy."
"Just like a man. Is she pretty?"
"Ye-e-s; has that effect. You'd notice her eyes." If Philip had been
frank he would have answered,
"I don't know. She's simply adorable," and Celia would have understood
all about it.
"And probably doesn't know anything. Yes, highly educated? I heard
that. But I'm getting tired of 'highly educated'; I see so many of them.
I've been making them now for years. Perhaps I'm one of them. And where
am I? Don't interrupt. I tell you it is a relief to come across a
sweet, womanly ignoramus. What church does she go to?"
"Who?"
"That Mavick girl."
"St. Thomas', I believe."
"That's good--that's devotional. I suppose you go there too, being
brought up a Congregationalist?"
"At vespers, sometimes. But, Celia, what is the matter with you?
I thought you didn't care--didn't care to belong to anything?"
"I? I belong to everything. Didn't I write you reams about my studies
in psychology? I've come to one conclusion. There are only two persons
in the world who stand on a solid foundation, the Roman Catholic and the
Agnostic. The Roman Catholic knows everything, the Agnostic doesn't know
anything."
Philip was never certain when the girl was bantering him; nor, when she
was in earnest, how long she would remain in that mind and mood. So he
ventured, humorously:
"The truth is, Celia, that you know too much to be either. You are what
they call emancipated."
"Emancipated!" And Celia sat up energetically, as if she were now really
interested in the conversation. "Become the slave of myself instead of
the slave of somebody else! That's the most hateful thing to be,
emancipated. I never knew a woman who said she was emancipated who
wasn't in some ridiculous folly or another. Now, Phil, I'm going to tell
you something. I can tell you. You know I've been striving to have a
career, to get out of myself somehow, and have a career for myself.
Well, today--mind, I don't say tomorrow"--(and there was a queer little
smile on her lips)--"I think I will just try to be good to people and
things in general, in a human way."
"And give up education?"
"No, no. I get my living by education, just as you do, or hope to do, by
law or by letters; it's all the same. But wait. I haven't finished what
I was going to say. The more I go into psychology, trying to find out
about my mind and mind generally, the more mysterious everything is. Do
you know, Phil, that I'm getting into the supernatural? You can't help
running into it. For me, I am not side-tracked by any of the nonsense
about magnetism and telepathy and mind-reading and other psychic
imponderabilities. Isn't it queer that the further we go into science
the deeper we go into mystery?
"Now, don't be shocked, I mean it reverently, just as an illustration. Do
you think any one knows really anything more about the operation in the
world of electricity than he does about the operation of the Holy Ghost?
And yet people talk about science as if it were something they had made
themselves."
"But, Celia--"
"No, I've talked enough. We are in this world and not in some other, and
I have to make my living. Let's go into the other room and see the old
masters. They, at least, knew how to paint--to paint passion and
character; some of them could paint soul. And then, Phil, I shall be
hungry. Talking about the mind always makes me hungry."
XI
Philip was always welcome at his uncle's house in Rivervale. It was, of
course, his home during his college life, and since then he was always
expected for his yearly holiday. The women of the house made much of
him, waited on him, deferred to him, petted him, with a flattering
mingling of tenderness to a little boy and the respect due to a man who
had gone into the world. Even Mr. Maitland condescended to a sort of
equality in engaging Philip in conversation about the state of the
country and the prospects of business in New York.
It was July. When Philip went to sleep at night--he was in the front
chamber reserved for guests--the loud murmur of the Deerfield was in his
ears, like a current bearing him away into sweet sleep and dreams in a
land of pleasant adventures. Only in youth come such dreams. Later on
the sophisticated mind, left to its own guidance in the night, wanders
amid the complexities of life, calling up in confusion scenes long
forgotten or repented of, images only registered by a sub-conscious
process, dreams to perplex, irritate, and excite.
In the morning the same continuous murmur seemed to awake him into a
peaceful world. Through the open window came in the scents of summer,
the freshness of a new day. How sweet and light was the air! It was
indeed the height of summer. The corn, not yet tasseled, stood in green
flexible ranks, moved by the early breeze. In the river-meadows haying
had just begun. Fields of timothy and clover, yellowing to ripeness,
took on a fresh bloom from the dew, and there was an odor of new-mown
grass from the sections where the scythes had been. He heard the call
of the crow from the hill, the melody of the bobolink along the
meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along
the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden
and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their
young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the
woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the
grindstone. No such vivid realization of summer as that.
Philip stole out the unused front door without disturbing the family.
Whither? Where would a boy be likely to go the first thing? To the
barn, the great cavernous barn, its huge doors now wide open, the stalls
vacant, the mows empty, the sunlight sifting in through the high shadowy
spaces. How much his life had been in that barn! How he had stifled and
scrambled mowing hay in those lofts! On the floor he had hulled heaps of
corn, thrashed oats with a flail--a noble occupation--and many a rainy
day had played there with girls and boys who could not now exactly
describe the games or well recall what exciting fun they were. There
were the racks where he put the fodder for cattle and horses, and there
was the cutting-machine for the hay and straw and for slicing the frozen
turnips on cold winter mornings.
In the barn-yard were the hens, just as usual, walking with measured
step, scratching and picking in the muck, darting suddenly to one side
with an elevated wing, clucking, chattering, jabbering endlessly about
nothing. They did not seem to mind him as he stood in the open door.
But the rooster, in his oriental iridescent plumage, jumped upon a
fence-post and crowed defiantly, in warning that this was his preserve.
They seemed like the same hens, yet Philip knew they were all strangers;
all the hens and flaunting roosters he knew had long ago gone to
Thanksgiving. The hen is, or should be, an annual. It is never made a
pet. It forms no attachments. Man is no better acquainted with the hen,
as a being, than he was when the first chicken was hatched. Its business
is to live a brief chicken life, lay, and be eaten. And this reminded
Philip that his real occupation was hunting hens' eggs. And this he did,
in the mows, in the stalls, under the floor-planks, in every hidden nook.
The hen's instinct is to be orderly, and have a secluded nest of her own,
and bring up a family. But in such a communistic body it is a wise hen
who knows her own chicken. Nobody denies to the hen maternal instincts or
domestic proclivities, but what an ill example is a hen community!
And then Philip climbed up the hill, through the old grass-plot and the
orchard, to the rocks and the forest edge, and the great view.
It had more meaning to him than when he was a boy, and it was more
beautiful. In a certain peaceful charm, he had seen nothing anywhere in
the world like it. Partly this was because his boyish impressions,
the first fresh impressions of the visible world, came back to him; but
surely it was very beautiful. More experienced travelers than Philip
felt its unique charm.
When he descended, Alice was waiting to breakfast with him. Mrs.
Maitland declared, with an approving smile on her placid, aging face,
that he was the same good-for-nothing boy. But Alice said, as she sat
down to the little table with Philip, "It is different, mother, with us
city folks." They were in the middle room, and the windows opened to the
west upon the river-meadows and the wooded hills beyond, and through one
a tall rose-bush was trying to thrust its fragrant bloom.
What a dainty breakfast! Alice flushed with pleasure. It was so good of
him to come to them. Had he slept well? Did it seem like home at all?
Philip's face showed that it was home without the need of saying so.
Such coffee-yes, a real aroma of the berry! Just a little more, would he
have? And as Alice raised the silver pitcher, there was a deep dimple in
her sweet cheek. How happy she was! And then the butter, so fresh and
cool, and the delicious eggs--by the way, he had left a hatful in the
kitchen as he came in. Alice explained that she did not make the eggs.
And then there was the journey, the heat in the city, the grateful
sight of the Deerfield, the splendid morning, the old barn, the
watering-trough, the view from the hill everything just as it used to be.
"Dear Phil, it is so nice to have you here," and there were tears in
Alice's eyes, she was so happy.
After breakfast Philip strolled down the country road through the
village. How familiar was every step of the way!--the old houses jutting
out at the turns in the road; the glimpse of the river beyond the little
meadow where Captain Rice was killed; the spring under the ledge over
which the snap-dragon grew; the dilapidated ranks of fence smothered in
vines and fireweeds; the cottages, with flower-pots in front; the stores,
with low verandas ornamented with boxes and barrels; the academy in its
green on the hill; the old bridge over which the circus elephant dared
not walk; the new and the old churches, with rival steeples; and, not
familiar, the new inn.
And he knew everybody, young and old, at doorways, in the fields or
gardens, and had for every one a hail and a greeting. How he enjoyed it
all, and his self-consciousness added to his pleasure, as he swung along
in his well-fitting city clothes, broad-shouldered and erect--it is
astonishing how much a tailor can do for a man who responds to his
efforts. It is a pleasure to come across such a hero as this in real
life, and not have to invent him, as the saying is, out of the whole
cloth. Philip enjoyed the world, and he enjoyed himself, because it was
not quite his old self, the farmer's boy going on an errand. There must
be knowledge all along the street that he was in the great law office of
Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle. And, besides, Philip's name must be known to all
the readers of magazines in the town as a writer, a name in more than one
list of "contributors." That was fame. Translated, however, into
country comprehension it was something like this, if he could have heard
the comments after he had passed by:
"Yes, that's Phil Burnett, sure enough; but I'd hardly know him; spruced
up mightily. I wonder what he's at?"
"I heard he was down in New York trying to law it. I heard he's been
writin' some for newspapers. Accordin' to his looks, must pay a durn
sight better'n farmin'."
"Well, I always said that boy wa'n't no skeezics."
Almost the first question Philip asked Alice on his return was about the
new inn, the Peacock Inn.
"There seemed a good deal of stir about it as I passed."
"Why, I forgot to tell you about it. It's the great excitement.
Rivervale is getting known. The Mavicks are there. I hear they've taken
pretty much the whole of it."
"The Mavicks?
"Yes, the New York Mavicks, that you wrote us about, that were in the
paper."
"How long have they been there?"
"A week. There is Mrs. Mavick and her daughter, and the governess, and
two maids, and a young fellow in uniform--yes, livery--and a coachman in
the same, and a stableful of horses and carriages. It upset the village
like a circus. And they say there's a French chef in white cap and
apron, who comes to the side-door and jabbers to the small boys like
fireworks."
"How did it come about?"
"Naturally, I guess; a city family wanting a quiet place for summer in
the country. But you will laugh. Patience first discovered it. One
day, sitting at the window, she saw a two-horse buggy driven by the
landlord of the Peacock, and a gentleman by his side. 'Well, I wonder
who that is-city man certainly. And wherever is he going? May be a
railroad man. But there is nothing the matter with the railroad.
Shouldn't wonder if he is going to see the tunnel. If it was just that,
the landlord wouldn't drive him; he'd send a man. And they keep stopping
and pointing and looking round. No, it isn't the railroad, it's scenery.
And what can a man like that want with scenery?
"He does look like a railroad man. It may be tunnel, but it isn't all
tunnel. When the team came back in the afternoon, Patience was again at
the window; she had heard meantime from Jabez that a city man was
stopping at the Peacock. There he goes, and looking round more than
ever. They've stopped by the bridge and the landlord is pointing out.
It's not tunnel, it's scenery. I tell you, he is a city boarder.
Not that he cares about scenery; it's for his family. City families are
always trying to find a grand new place, and he has heard of Rivervale
and the Peacock Inn. Maybe the tunnel had something to do with it."
"Why, it's like second sight."
"No, Patience says it's just judgment. And she generally hits it.
At any rate, the family is here."
The explanation of their being there--it seemed to Philip providential
--was very simple. Mr. Mavick had plans about the Hoosac Tunnel that
required him to look at it. Mrs. Mavick took advantage of this to
commission him to look at a little inn in a retired village of which she
had heard, and to report on scenery and climate. Warm days and cool
nights and simplicity was her idea. Mavick reported that the place
seemed made for the family.
Evelyn was not yet out, but she was very nearly out, and after the late
notoriety Mrs. Mavick dreaded the regular Newport season. And, in the
mood of the moment, she was tired of the Newport palace. She always said
that she liked simplicity--a common failing among people who are not
compelled to observe it. Perhaps she thought she was really fond of
rural life and country ways. As she herself said,
"If you have a summer cottage at Newport or Lenox, it is necessary to go
off somewhere and rest." And then it would be good for Evelyn to live
out-of-doors and see the real country, and, as for herself, as she looked
in the mirror, "I shall drink milk and go to bed early. Henderson used
to say that a month in New Hampshire made another woman of me."
Oh, to find a spot where we could be undisturbed, alone and unknown.
That was the program. But Carmen simply could not be anywhere content if
she were unnoticed. It was not so easy to give up daily luxury, and
habits of ease at the expense of attendants, or the ostentation which had
become a second nature. Therefore the "establishment" went along with
her to Rivervale, and the shy, modest little woman, who had dropped down
into the country simplicity that she so dearly loved, greatly enjoyed the
sensation that her coming produced. It needed no effort on her part to
produce the sensation. The carriage, and coachman and footman in livery,
would have been sufficient; and then the idea of one family being rich
enough to take the whole hotel!
The liveries, the foreign cook in his queer cap and apron, and all the
goings-on at the Peacock were the inexhaustible topic of talk in every
farmhouse for ten miles around. Rivervale was a self-respecting town,
and principled against luxury and self-indulgence, and judged with a just
and severe judgment the world of fashion and of the grasping, wicked
millionaires. And now this world with all its vain show had plumped down
in the midst of them. Those who had traveled and seen the ostentation of
cities smiled a superior smile at the curiosity and wonder exhibited, but
even those who had never seen the like were cautious about letting their
surprise appear. Especially in the presence of fashion and wealth would
the independent American citizen straighten his backbone, reassuring
himself that he was as good as anybody. To be sure, people flew to
windows when the elegant equipage dashed by, and everybody found frequent
occasion to drive or walk past the Peacock Inn. It was only the novelty
of it, in a place that rather lacked novelties.
And yet there prevailed in the community a vague sense that millions were
there, and a curious expectation of some individual benefit from them.
All the young berry-pickers were unusually active, and poured berries
into the kitchen door of the inn. There was not a housewife who was not
a little more anxious about the product of her churning; not a farmer who
did not think that perhaps cord-wood would rise, that there would be a
better demand for garden "sass," and more market for chickens, and who
did not regard with more interest his promising colt. When he drove to
the village his rig was less shabby and slovenly in appearance. The
young fellows who prided themselves upon a neat buggy and a fast horse
made their turnouts shine, and dashed past the inn with a self-conscious
air. Even the stores began to "slick up" and arrange their miscellaneous
notions more attractively, and one of them boldly put in a window a
placard, "Latest New York Style." When the family went to the
Congregational church on Sunday not the slightest notice was taken of
them--though every woman could have told to the last detail what the
ladies wore--but some of the worshipers were for the first time a little
nervous about the performance of the choir, and the deacons heard the
sermon chiefly with reference to what a city visitor would think of it.
Mrs. Mavick was quite equal to the situation. In the church she was
devout, in the village she was affable and friendly. She made
acquaintances right and left, and took a simple interest in everybody and
everything. She was on easy terms with the landlord, who declared,
"There is a woman with no nonsense in her." She chatted with the farmers
who stopped at the inn door, she bought things at the stores that she did
not want, and she speedily discovered Aunt Hepsy, and loved to sit with
her in the little shop and pick up the traditions and the gossip of the
neighborhood. And she did not confine her angelic visits to the village.
On one pretense and another she made her way into every farmhouse that
took her fancy, penetrated the kitchens and dairies, and got, as she told
McDonald, into the inner life of the people.
She must see the grave of Captain Moses Rice. And on this legitimate
errand she one day carried her fluttering attractiveness and patchouly
into the Maitland house. Mrs. Maitland was civil, but no more. Alice
was civil but reserved--a great many people, she said, came to see the
graves in the old orchard. But Mrs. Mavick was not a bit abashed. She
expressed herself delighted with everything. It was such a rest, such a
perfectly lovely country, and everybody was so hospitable! And Aunt
Hepsy had so interested her in the history of the region! But it was
difficult to get her talk responded to.
However, when Miss Patience came in she made better headway. She had
heard so much of Miss Maitland's apartments. She herself was interested
in decorations. She had tried to do something in her New York home. But
there were so many ideas and theories, and it was so hard to be natural
and artificial at the same time. She had no doubt she could get some new
ideas from Miss Maitland. Would it be asking too much to see her
apartments? She really felt like a stranger nowhere in Rivervale.
Patience was only too delighted, and took her into her museum of natural
history, art, religion, and vegetation.
"She might have gone to the grave-yard without coming into the house,"
Alice remarked.
"Oh, well," said her mother, "I think she is very amusing. You shouldn't
be so exclusive, Alice."
"Mother, I do believe she paints."
With Patience, Mrs. Mavick felt on surer ground.
"How curious, how very curious and delightful it is! Such knowledge of
nature, such art in arrangement."
"Oh, I just put them up," said Patience, "as I thought they ought by
rights to be put up."
"That's it. And you have combined everything here. You have given me an
idea. In our house we have a Japan room, and an Indian room, and a
Chinese room, and an Otaheite, and I don't know what--Egyptian, Greek,
and not one American, not a really American. That is, according to
American ideas, for you have everything in these two rooms. I shall
write to Mr. Mavick." (Mr. Mavick never received the letter.)
When she came away it was with a profusion of thanks, and repeated
invitations to drop in at the inn. Alice accompanied her to the first
stone that marked the threshold of the side door, and was bowing her
away, when Mr. Philip swung over the fence by the wood-shed, with a
shot-gun on his shoulder, and swinging in his left hand a gray squirrel
by its bushy tail, and was immediately in front of the group.
"Ah!" involuntarily from Mrs. Mavick. An introduction was inevitable.
"My cousin, Mr. Burnett, Mrs. Mavick." Philip raised his cap and bowed.
"A hunter, I see."
"Hardly, madam. In vacations I like to walk in the woods with a gun."
"Then you are not--"
"No," said Philip, smiling, "unfortunately I cannot do this all the
time."
"You are of the city, then?"
"With the firm of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle."
"Ah, my husband knows them, I believe."
"I have seen Mr. Mavick," and Philip bowed again.
"How lucky!"
Mrs. Mavick had an eye for a fine young fellow--she never denied that
--and Philip's manly figure and easy air were not lost on her. Presently
she said:
"We are here for a good part of the summer. Mr. Mavick's business keeps
him in the city and we have to poke about a good deal alone. Now, Miss
Alice, I am so glad I have met your cousin. Perhaps he will show us some
of the interesting places and the beauties of the country he knows so
well." And she looked sideways at Philip.
"Yes, he knows the country," said Alice, without committing herself.
"I am sure I shall be delighted to do what I can for you whenever you
need my services," said Philip, who had reasons for wishing to know the
Mavicks which Alice did not share.
"That's so good of you! Excursions, picnics oh, we will arrange.
You must come and help me arrange. And I hope," with a smile to Alice,
"you can persuade your cousin to join us sometimes."
Alice bowed, they all bowed, and Mrs. Mavick said au revoir, and went
swinging her parasol down the driveway. Then she turned and called back,
"This is the first long walk I have taken." And then she said to
herself, "Rather stiff, except the young man and the queer old maid. But
what a pretty girl the younger must have been ten years ago! These
country flowers!"
XII
Mrs. Mavick thought herself fortunate in finding, in the social
wilderness of Rivervale, such a presentable young gentleman as Philip.
She had persuaded herself that she greatly enjoyed her simple intercourse
with the inhabitants, and she would have said that she was in deep
sympathy with their lives. No doubt in New York she would relate her
summer adventures as something very amusing, but for the moment this
adaptable woman seemed to herself in a very ingenuous, receptive, and
sympathetic state of mind. Still, there was a limit to the entertaining
power of Aunt Hepsy, which was perceived when she began to repeat her
annals of the neighborhood, and to bring forward again and again the
little nuggets of wisdom which she had evolved in the small circle of her
experience. And similarly Mrs. Mavick became aware that there was a
monotony in the ideas brought forward by the farmers and the farmers'
wives, whether in the kitchen or the best room, which she lighted up by
her gracious presence, that it was possible to be tired of the most
interesting "peculiarities" when once their novelty was exhausted, and
that so-called "characters" in the country fail to satisfy the
requirements of intimate or long companionship. Their world is too
narrowly circumscribed.
The fact that Philip was a native of the place, and so belonged to a
world that was remote from her own, made her free to seek his aid in
making the summer pass agreeably without incurring any risk of social
obligations. Besides, when she had seen more of him, she experienced a
good deal of pleasure in his company. His foreign travel, his reading,
his life in the city, offered many points of mutual interest, and it was
a relief to her to get out of the narrow range of topics in the
provincial thought, and to have her allusions understood. Philip, on his
part, was not slow to see this, or to perceive that in the higher
intellectual ranges, the serious topics which occupied the attention of
the few cultivated people in the neighborhood, Mrs. Mavick had little
interest or understanding, though there was nothing she did not profess
an interest in when occasion required. Philip was not of a suspicious
nature, and it may not have occurred to him that Mrs. Mavick was simply
amusing herself, as she would do with any agreeable man, young or old,
who fell in her way, and would continue to do so if she reached the age
of ninety.
On the contrary, it never seemed to occur to Mrs. Mavick, who was
generally suspicious, that Philip was making himself agreeable to the
mother of Evelyn. In her thought Evelyn was still a child, in
leading-strings, and would be till she was formally launched, and the
social gulf between the great heiress and the law clerk and poor writer
was simply impassable. All of which goes to show that the most astute
women are not always the wisest.
To one person in Rivervale the coming of Mrs. Mavick and her train of
worldliness was unwelcome. It disturbed the peaceful simplicity of the
village, and it was likely to cloud her pleasure in Philip's visit. She
felt that Mrs. Mavick was taking him away from the sweet serenity of
their life, and that in everything she said or did there was an element
of unrest and excitement. She was careful, however, not to show any of
this apprehension to Philip; she showed it only by an increased
affectionate interest in him and his concerns, and in trying to make the
old home more dear to him. Mrs. Mavick was loud in her praise of Alice
to her cousin, and sought to win her confidence, but she was, after all,
a little shy of her, and probably would have characterized her to a city
friend as a sort of virgin in the Bible.
It so happened that day after day went by without giving Philip anything
more than passing glimpses of Evelyn, when she was driving with her
mother or her governess. Yet Rivervale never seemed so ravishingly
beautiful to all his senses. Surely it was possessed by a spirit of
romance and poetry, which he had never perceived before, and he wasted a
good deal of time in gazing on the river, on the gracious meadows, on the
graceful contours of the hills. When he was a lad, in the tree-top,
there had been something stimulating and almost heroic in the scene,
which awakened his ambition. Now it was the idyllic beauty that took
possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman,
that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth. And yet scarcely a
woman--rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the influences
of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of unfolding life.
Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was Evelyn he was
thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with exhilaration the
fresh air, and watched the white clouds sail along the blue vault; and he
knew that if she were suddenly to leave the valley all the light would go
out of it and the scene would be flat to his eyes and torturing to his
memory.
Mrs. Mavick he encountered continually in the village. He had taken many
little strolls with her to this or that pretty point of view, they had
exchanged reminiscences of foreign travel, and had dipped a little into
current popular books, so that they had come to be on easy, friendly
terms. Philip's courtesy and deference, and a certain wit and humor of
suggestion applied to ordinary things, put him more and more on a good
footing with her, so much so that she declared to McDonald that really
young Burnett was a genuine "find" in the country.
It seems a pity that the important events in our lives are so
commonplace. Philip's meeting with Evelyn, so long thought of and
dramatized in his mind, was not in the least as he had imagined it. When
one morning he went to the Peacock Inn at the summons of Mrs. Mavick, in
order to lay out a plan of campaign, he found Evelyn and her governess
seated on the veranda, with their books. It was Evelyn who rose first
and came forward, without, so far as Philip could see, the least
embarrassment of recognition.
"Mr. Burnett? Mamma will be here in a moment. This is our friend, Miss
McDonald."
The girl's morning costume was very simple, and in her short
walking-skirt she seemed younger even than in the city. She spoke and
moved--Philip noticed that--without the least self-consciousness, and
she had a way of looking her interlocutor frankly in the eyes, or, as
Philip expressed it, "flashing" upon him.
Philip bowed to the governess, and, still standing and waving his hand
towards the river, hoped they liked Rivervale, and then added:
"I see you can read in the country."
"We pretend to," said Evelyn, who had resumed her seat and indicated a
chair for Philip, "but the singing of that river, and the bobolinks in
the meadow, and the light on the hills are almost too much for us. Don't
you think, McDonald, it is like Scotland?"
"It would be," the governess replied, "if it rained when it didn't mist,
and there were moors and heather, and--"
"Oh, I didn't mean all that, but a feeling like that, sweet and retired
and sort of lonesome?"
"Perhaps Miss McDonald means," said Philip, "that there isn't much to
feel here except what you see."
Miss McDonald looked sharply around at Philip and remarked: "Yes, that's
just it. It is very lovely, like almost any outdoors, if you will give
yourself up to it. You remember, Evelyn, how fascinating the Arizona
desert was? But there was a romantic addition to the colored desolation
because the Spaniards and the Jesuits had been there. Now this place
lacks traditions, legends, romance. You have to bring your romance with
you."
"And that is the reason you read here?"
"One reason. Especially romances. This charming scenery and the summer
sounds of running water and birds make a nice accompaniment to the
romance."
"But mamma says," Evelyn interrupted, "there is plenty of legend here,
and tradition and flavor, Indians and early settlers, and even Aunt
Hepsy."
"Well, I confess they don't appeal to me. And as for Indians, Parkman's
descriptions of those savages made me squirm. And I don't believe there
was much more romance about the early settlers than about their
descendants. Isn't it true, Mr. Burnett, that you must have a human
element to make any country interesting?"
Philip glanced at Evelyn, whose bright face was kindled with interest in
the discussion, and thought, "Good heavens! if there is not human
interest here, I don't know where to look for it," but he only said:
"Doubtless."
"And why don't you writers do something about it? It is literature that
does it, either in Scotland or Judea."
"Well," said Philip, stoutly, "they are doing something. I could name
half a dozen localities, even sections of country, that travelers visit
with curiosity just because authors have thrown that glamour over them.
But it is hard to create something out of nothing. It needs time."
"And genius," Miss McDonald interjected.
"Of course, but it took time to transform a Highland sheep-stealer into a
romantic personage."
Miss McDonald laughed. "That is true. Take a modern instance. Suppose
Evangeline had lived in this valley! Or some simple Gretchen about whose
simple story all the world is in sympathy!"
"Or," thought Philip, "some Evelyn." But he replied, looking at Evelyn,
"I believe that any American community usually resents being made the
scene of a romance, especially if it is localized by any approach to
reality."
"Isn't that the fault mostly of the writer, who vulgarizes his material?"
"The realists say no. They say that people dislike to see themselves as
they are."
"Very likely," said Miss McDonald; "no one sees himself as others see
him, and probably the poet who expressed the desire to do so was simply
attitudinizing.--[Robert Burns: "Oh! wha gift the Giftie gie us; to see
o'rselves as others see us." Ed.]--By the way, Mr. Burnett, you know
there is one place of sentiment, religious to be sure, not far from here.
I hope we can go some day to see the home of the 'Mountain Miller.'"
"Yes, I know the place. It is beyond the river, up that steep road
running into the sky, in the next adjoining hill town. I doubt if you
find any one there who lays it much to heart. But you can see the mill."
"What is the Mountain Miller?" asked Evelyn.
"A tract that, when I was a girl," answered Miss McDonald, "used to be
bound up with 'The Dairyman's Daughter' and 'The Shepherd of Salisbury
Plain.' It was the first thing that interested me in New England."
"Well," said Philip, "it isn't much. Just a tract. But it was written
by Parson Halleck, a great minister and a sort of Pope in this region for
fifty years. It is, so far as I know, the only thing of his that
remains."
This tractarian movement was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Mavick.
"Good-morning, Mr. Burnett. I've been down to see Jenkins about his
picnic wagon. Carries six, besides the driver and my man, and the
hampers. So, you see, Miss Alice will have to go. We couldn't go
rattling along half empty. I'll go up and see her this afternoon.
So, that's settled. Now about the time and place. You are the director.
Let's sit down and plan it out. It looks like good weather for a week."
"Miss McDonald says she wants to see the Mountain Miller," said Philip,
with a smile.
"What's that? A monument like your Pulpit Rock?"
"No, a tract about a miller."
"Ah, something religious. I never heard of it. Well, perhaps we had
better begin with something secular, and work round to that."
So an excursion was arranged for the next day. And as Philip walked
home, thinking how brilliant Evelyn had been in their little talk,
he began to dramatize the excursion.
All excursions are much alike, exhilarating in the outset, rarely up to
expectation in the object, wearisome in the return; but, nevertheless,
delightful in the memory, especially if attended with some hardship or
slight disaster. To be free, in the open air, and for a day
unconventional and irresponsible, is the sufficient justification of a
country picnic; but its common attraction is in the opportunity for
bringing young persons of the opposite sex into natural and unrestrained
relations. To Philip it was the first time in his life that a picnic had
ever seemed a defensible means of getting rid of a day.
The two persons to whom this excursion was most novel and exciting were
Evelyn and the elder maiden, Alice, who sat together and speedily
developed a sympathy with each other in the enjoyment of the country, and
in a similar poetic temperament, very shy on the part of Alice and very
frank on the part of Evelyn. The whole wild scene along the river was
quite as novel to Alice as to the city girl, because, although she was
familiar with every mile of it and had driven through it a hundred times,
she had never in all her life before, of purpose, gone to see it. No
doubt she had felt its wildness and beauty, but now for the first time
she looked at it as scenery, as she might have looked at a picture in a
gallery. And in the contagion of Evelyn's outspoken enthusiasm she was
no longer afraid to give timid expression to the latent poetry in her own
soul. And daring to express this, she seemed to herself for the first
time to realize vividly the nobility and grace of the landscape. And yet
there was a difference in the appreciation of the two. More widely read
and traveled, Evelyn's imagination took a wider range of comparison and
of admiration, she was appealed to by the large features and the
grandiose effects; while Alice noted more the tenderer aspects, the
wayside flowers and bushes, the exotic-looking plants, which she longed
to domesticate in what might be called the Sunday garden on the terraces
in front of her house. For it is in these little cultivated places by
the door-step, places of dreaming in the summer hours after meeting and
at sunset, that the New England maiden experiences something of that
tender religious sentiment which was not much fed in the barrenness of
the Congregational meeting-house.
The Pulpit Rock, in the rough pasture land of Zoar, was reached by a
somewhat tedious climb from the lonely farmhouse, in a sheltered nook,
through straggling woods and gray pastures. It was a vast exposed
surface rising at a slight angle out of the grass and undergrowth. Along
the upper side was a thin line of bushes, and, pushing these aside, the
observer was always startled at the unexpected scene--as it were the
raising of a curtain upon another world. He stood upon the edge of a
sheer precipice of a thousand feet, and looked down upon a green
amphitheatre through the bottom of which the brawling river, an amber
thread in the summer foliage, seemed trying to get an outlet from this
wilderness cul de sac. From the edge of this precipice the first impulse
was to start back in surprise and dread, but presently the observer
became reassured of its stability, and became fascinated by the lonesome
wildness of the scene.
"Why is it called Pulpit Rock?" asked Mrs. Mavick; "I see no pulpit."
"I suppose," said Philip, "the name was naturally suggested to a
religious community, whose poetic images are mainly Biblical, and who
thought it an advantageous place for a preacher to stand, looking down
upon a vast congregation in the amphitheatre."
"So it is," exclaimed Evelyn. "I can see John the Baptist standing here
now, and hear his voice crying in the wilderness."
"Very likely," said Mrs. Mavick, persisting in her doubt, "of course in
Zoar. Anywhere else in the world it would be called the Lover's Leap."
"That is odd," said Alice; "there was a party of college girls came here
two years ago and made up a story about it which was printed, how an
Indian maiden pursued by a white man ran up this hill as if she had been
a deer, disappeared from his sight through these bushes, and took the
fatal leap. They called it the Indian Maiden's Rock. But it didn't
take. It will always be Pulpit Rock."
"So you see, Miss McDonald," said Philip, "that writers cannot graft
legends on the old stock."
"That depends upon the writer," returned the Scotch woman, shortly. "I
didn't see the schoolgirl's essay."
When the luncheon was disposed of, with the usual adaptation to nomadic
conditions, and the usual merriment and freedom of personal comment, and
the wit that seems so brilliant in the open air and so flat in print,
Mrs. Mavick declared that she was tired by the long climb and the unusual
excitement.
"Perhaps it is the Pulpit," she said, "but I am sleepy; and if you young
people will amuse yourselves, I will take a nap under that tree."
Presently, also, Alice and the governess withdrew to the edge of the
precipice, and Evelyn and Philip were left to the burden of entertaining
each other. It might have been an embarrassing situation but for the
fact that all the rest of the party were in sight, that the girl had not
the least self-consciousness, having had no experience to teach her that
there was anything to be timid about in one situation more than in
another, and that Philip was so absolutely content to be near Evelyn
and hear her voice that there was room for nothing else in his thought.
But rather to his surprise, Evelyn made no talk about the situation
or the day, but began at once with something in her mind, a directness
of mental operation that he found was characteristic of her.
"It seems to me, Mr. Burnett, that there is something of what Miss
McDonald regards as the lack of legend and romance in this region in our
life generally."
"I fancy everybody feels that who travels much elsewhere. You mean life
seems a little thin, as the critics say?"
"Yes, lacks color and background. But, you see, I have no experience.
Perhaps it's owing to Miss McDonald. I cannot get the plaids and tartans
and Jacobins and castles and what-not out of my head. Our landscapes are
just landscapes."
"But don't you think we are putting history and association into them
pretty fast?"
"Yes, I know, but that takes a long time. I mean now. Take this lovely
valley and region, how easily it could be made romantic."
"Not so very easy, I fancy."
"Well, I was thinking about it last night." And then, as if she saw a
clear connection between this and what she was going to say, "Miss
McDonald says, Mr. Burnett, that you are a writer."
"I? Why, I'm, I'm--a lawyer."
"Of course, that's business. That reminds me of what papa said once:
'It's lucky there is so much law, or half the world, including the
lawyers, wouldn't have anything to do, trying to get around it and evade
it.' And you won't mind my repeating it--I was a mite of a girl--I said,
'Isn't that rather sophistical, papa?' And mamma put me down'--It seems
to me, child, you are using pretty big words.'"
They both laughed. But suddenly Evelyn added:
"Why don't you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Write a story about it--what Miss McDonald calls 'invest the region with
romance.'"
The appeal was very direct, and it was enforced by those wonderful eyes
that seemed to Philip to discern his powers, as he felt them, and his
ambitions, and to express absolute confidence in him. His vanity was
touched in its most susceptible spot. Here seemed to be a woman, nay, a
soul, who understood him, understood him even better than Celia, the
lifelong confidante. It is a fatal moment for men and women, that in
which they feel the subtle flattery of being understood by one of the
opposite sex. Philip's estimation of himself rose 'pari passu' with his
recognition of the discernment and intellectual quality of the frank and
fascinating girl who seemed to believe in him. But he restrained himself
and only asked, after a moment of apparent reflection upon the general
proposition:
"Well, Miss Mavick, you have been here some time. Have you discovered
any material for such use?"
"Why, perhaps not, and I might not know what to do with it if I had. But
perhaps you don't mean what I mean. I mean something fitting the
setting. Not the domestic novel. Miss McDonald says we are vulgarized
in all our ideals by so much domesticity. She says that Jennie Deans
would have been just an ordinary, commonplace girl but for Walter Scott."
"Then you want a romance?"
"No. I don't know exactly what I do want. But I know it when I see it."
And Evelyn looked down and appeared to be studying her delicate little
hands, interlacing her taper, ivory fingers--but Philip knew she did not
see them--and then looked up in his face again and said:
"I'll tell you. This morning as we came up I was talking all the way
with your cousin. It took some time to break the ice, but gradually she
began to say things, half stories, half poetic, not out of books; things
that, if said with assurance, in the city would be called wit. And then
I began to see her emotional side, her pure imagination, such a
refinement of appreciation and justice--I think there is an immovable
basis of justice in her nature--and charity, and I think she'd be heroic,
with all her gentleness, if occasion offered."
"I see," said Philip, rather lightly, "that you improved your time in
finding out what a rare creature Alice is. But," and this more gravely,
"it would surprise her that you have found it out."
"I believe you. I fancy she has not the least idea what her qualities
are, or her capacities of doing or of suffering, and the world will never
know--that is the point-unless some genius comes along and reveals them."
"How?"
"Why, through a tragedy, a drama, a story, in which she acts out her
whole self. Some act it out in society. She never will. Such sweetness
and strength and passion--yes, I have no doubt, passion under all the
reserve! I feel it but I cannot describe it; I haven't imagination to
make you see what I feel."
"You come very near it," said Philip, with a smile. And after a moment
the girl broke out again:
"Materials! You writers go searching all round for materials, just as
painters do, fit for your genius."
"But don't you know that the hardest thing to do is the obvious, the
thing close to you?"
"I dare say. But you won't mind? It is just an illustration. I went
the other day with mother to Alice's house. She was so sort of distant
and reserved that I couldn't know her in the least as I know her now.
And there was the rigid Puritan, her father, representing the Old
Testament; and her placid mother, with all the spirit of the New
Testament; and then that dear old maiden aunt, representing I don't know
what, maybe a blind attempt through nature and art to escape out of
Puritanism; and the typical old frame farmhouse--why, here is material
for the sweetest, most pathetic idyl. Yes, the Story of Alice. In
another generation people would come long distances to see the valley
where Alice lived, and her spirit would pervade it."
There could be but one end to such a burst of enthusiasm, and both
laughed and felt a relief in a merriment that was, after all,
sympathetic. But Evelyn was a persistent creature, and presently she
turned to Philip, again with those appealing eyes.
"Now, why don't you do it?"
Philip hesitated a moment and betrayed some embarrassment under the
questioning of the truthful eyes.
"I've a good mind to tell you. I have--I am writing something."
"Yes?"
"Not that exactly. I couldn't, don't you see, betray and use my own
relatives in that way."
"Yes, I see that."
"It isn't much. I cannot tell how it will come out. I tell you--I don't
mean that I have any right to ask you to keep it as a secret of mine, but
it is this way: If a writer gives away his imagination, his idea, before
it is fixed in form on paper, he seems to let the air of all the world
upon it and it disappears, and isn't quite his as it was before to grow
in his own mind."
"I can understand that," Evelyn replied.
"Well--" and Philip found himself launched. It is so easy to talk about
one's self to a sympathetic listener. He told Evelyn a little about his
life, and how the valley used to seem to him as a boy, and how it seemed
now that he had had experience of other places and people, and how his
studies and reading had enabled him to see things in their proper
relations, and how, finally, gradually the idea for a story in this
setting had developed in his mind. And then he sketched in outline
the story as he had developed it, and left the misty outlines of its
possibilities to the imagination.
The girl listened with absorbing interest, and looked the approval which
she did not put in words. Perhaps she knew that a bud will never come to
flower if you pull it in pieces. When Philip had finished he had a
momentary regret for this burst of confidence, which he had never given
to any one else. But in the light of Evelyn's quick approval and
understanding, it was only momentary. Perhaps neither of them thought
what a dangerous game this is, for two young souls to thus unbosom
themselves to each other.
A call from Mrs. Mavick brought them to their feet. It was time to go.
Evelyn simply said:
"I think the valley, Mr. Burnett, looks a little different already."
As they drove home along the murmuring river through the golden sunset,
the party were mostly silent. Only Mrs. Mavick and Philip, who sat
together, kept up a lively chatter, lively because Philip was elated with
the event of the day, and because the nap under the beech-tree in the
open air had brightened the wits of one of the cleverest women Philip had
ever met.
If the valley did seem different to Evelyn, probably she did not think so
far as to own to herself whether this was owing to the outline of the
story, which ran in her mind, or to the presence of the young author.
Alice and Philip were set down at the farmhouse, and the company parted
with mutual enthusiasm over the success of the excursion.
"She is a much more interesting girl than I thought," Alice admitted.
"Not a bit fashionable."
"And she likes you."
"Me?"
"Yes, your ears would have burned."
"Well, I am glad, for I think she is sincere."
"And I can tell you another thing. I had a long talk while you were
taking your siesta. She takes an abstract view of things, judging the
right and wrong of them, without reference to conventionalities or the
practical obstacles to carrying out her ideas, as if she had been
educated by reading and not by society. It is very interesting."
"Philip," and Alice laid her hand on his shoulder, "don't let it be too
interesting."
XIII
When Philip said that Evelyn was educated in the world of literature and
not in the conflicts of life he had hit the key-note of her condition at
the moment she was coming into the world and would have to act for
herself. The more he saw of her the more was he impressed with the fact
that her discrimination, it might almost be called divination, and her
judgment were based upon the best and most vital products of the human
mind. A selection had evidently been made for her, until she had
acquired the taste, or the habit rather, of choosing only the best for
herself. Very little of the trash of literature, or the ignoble--that is
to say, the ignoble view of life--had come into her mind. Consequently
she judged the world as she came to know it by high standards. And her
mind was singularly pure and free from vulgar images.
It might be supposed that this sort of education would have its
disadvantages. The word is firmly fixed in the idea that both for its
pleasure and profit it is necessary to know good and evil. Ignorance of
the evil in the world is, however, not to be predicated of those who are
familiar only with the great masterpieces of literature, for if they are
masterpieces, little or great, they exhibit human nature in all its
aspects. And, further than this, it ought to be demonstrable, a priori,
that a mind fed on the best and not confused by the weak and diluted, or
corrupted by images of the essentially vulgar and vile, would be morally
healthy and best fitted to cope with the social problems of life. The
Testaments reveal about everything that is known about human nature, but
such is their clear, high spirit, and their quality, that no one ever
traced mental degeneration or low taste in literature, or want of
virility in judgment, to familiarity with them. On the contrary, the
most vigorous intellects have acknowledged their supreme indebtedness to
them.
It is not likely that Philip made any such elaborate analysis of the girl
with whom he was in love, or attempted, except by a general reference to
the method of her training, to account for the purity of her mind and her
vigorous discernment. He was in love with her more subtle and hidden
personality, with the girl just becoming a woman, with the mysterious sex
that is the inspiration of most of the poetry and a good part of the
heroism in the world. And he would have been in love with her, let her
education have been what it might. He was in love before he heard her
speak. And whatever she would say was bound to have a quality of
interest and attraction that could be exercised by no other lips. It
might be argued--a priori again, for the world is bound to go on in its
own way--that there would be fewer marriages if the illusion of the sex
did not suffice for the time to hide intellectual poverty, and, what is
worse, ignobleness of disposition.
It was doubtless fortunate for this particular lovemaking, though it did
not seem so to Philip, that it was very much obstructed by lack of
opportunities, and that it was not impaired in its lustre by too much
familiarity. In truth, Philip would have said that he saw very little of
Evelyn, because he never saw her absolutely alone. To be sure he was
much in her presence, a welcome member of the group that liked to idle on
the veranda of the inn, and in the frequent excursions, in which Philip
seemed to be the companion of Mrs. Mavick rather than of her daughter.
But she was never absent from his thought, his imagination was wholly
captive to her image, and the passion grew in these hours of absence
until she became an indispensable associate in all that he was or could
ever hope to be. Alice, who discerned very clearly Mrs. Mavick and her
ambition, was troubled by Philip's absorption and the cruel
disappointment in store for him. To her he was still the little boy, and
all her tenderness for him was stirred to shield him from the suffering
she feared.
But what could she do? Philip liked to talk about Evelyn, to dwell upon
her peculiarities and qualities, to hear her praised; to this extent he
was confidential with his cousin, but never in regard to his own feeling.
That was a secret concerning which he was at once too humble and too
confident to share with any other. None knew better than he the absurd
presumption of aspiring to the hand of such a great heiress, and yet he
nursed the vanity that no other man could ever appreciate and love her as
he did.
Alice was still more distracted and in sympathy with Philip's evident
aspirations by her own love for Evelyn and her growing admiration for the
girl's character. It so happened that mutual sympathy--who can say how
it was related to Philip?--had drawn them much together, and chance had
given them many opportunities for knowing each other. Alice had so far
come out of her shell, and broken the reserve of her life, as to make
frequent visits at the inn, and Mrs. Mavick and Evelyn found it the most
natural and agreeable stroll by the river-side to the farmhouse,
where naturally, while the mother amused herself with the original
eccentricities of Patience, her daughter grew into an intimacy with
Alice.
As for the feelings of Evelyn in these days--her first experience of
something like freedom in the world--the historian has only universal
experience to guide him. In her heart was working the consciousness that
she had been singled out as worthy to share the confidence of a man in
his most secret ambitions and aspirations, in the dreams of youth which
seemed to her so noble. For these aspirations and dreams concerned the
world in which she had lived most and felt most.
If Philip had talked to her as he had to Celia about his plans for
success in life she would have been less interested. But there was
nothing to warn her personally in these unworldly confessions. Nor did
Philip ever seem to ask anything of her except sympathy in his ideas.
And then there was the friendship of Alice, which could not but influence
the girl. In the shelter of that the intercourse of the summer took on
natural relations. For some natures there is no nurture of love like the
security of family protection, under cover of which there is so little to
excite the alarm of a timid maiden.
It was fortunate for Philip that Miss McDonald took a liking to him.
They were thrown much together. They were both good walkers, and liked
to climb the hills and explore the wild mountain streams. Philip would
have confessed that he was fond of nature, and fancied there was a sort
of superiority in his attitude towards it to that of his companion, who
was merely interested in plants-just a botanist. This attitude, which
she perceived, amused Miss McDonald.
"If you American students," she said one day when they were seated on a
fallen tree in the forest, and she was expatiating on a rare plant she
had found, "paid no more attention to the classics than to the world you
live in, few of you would get a degree."
"Oh, some fellows go in for that sort of thing," Philip replied.
"But I have noticed that all English women have some sort of fad--plants,
shells, birds, something special."
"Fad!" exclaimed the Scotchwoman. "Yes, I suppose it is, if reading is a
fad. It is one way of finding out about things. You admire what the
Americans call scenery; we, since you provoke me to say it, love nature
--I mean its individual, almost personal manifestations. Every plant has a
distinct character of its own. I saw the other day an American landscape
picture with a wild, uncultivated foreground. There was not a botanical
thing in it. The man who painted it didn't know a sweetbrier from a
thistle.
"Just a confused mass of rubbish. It was as if an animal painter should
compose a group and you could not tell whether it was made up of sheep or
rabbits or dogs or foxes or griffins."
"So you want things picked out like a photograph?"
"I beg your pardon, I want nature. You cannot give character to a bit of
ground in a landscape unless you know the characters of its details. A
man is no more fit to paint a landscape than a cage of monkeys, unless he
knows the language of the nature he is dealing with down to the alphabet.
The Japanese know it so well that they are not bothered with minutia, but
give you character."
"And you think that science is an aid to art?"
"Yes, if there is genius to transform it into art. You must know the
intimate habits of anything you paint or write about. You cannot even
caricature without that. They talk now about Dickens being just a
caricaturist. He couldn't have been that if he hadn't known the things
he caricatured. That is the reason there is so little good caricature."
"Isn't your idea of painting rather anatomical?" Philip ventured to ask.
"Do you think that if Raphael had known nothing of anatomy the world
would have accepted his Sistine Madonna for the woman she is?" was the
retort.
"I see it is interesting," said Philip, shifting his ground again, "but
what is the real good of all these botanical names and classifications?"
Miss McDonald gave a weary sigh. "Well, you must put things in order.
You studied philology in Germany? The chief end of that is to trace the
development, migration, civilization of the human race. To trace the
distribution of plants is another way to find out about the race. But
let that go. Don't you think that I get more pleasure in looking at all
the growing things we see, as we sit here, than you do in seeing them and
knowing as little about them as you pretend to?"
Philip said that he could not analyze the degree of pleasure in such
things, but he seemed to take his ignorance very lightly. What
interested him in all this talk was that, in discovering the mind of the
governess, he was getting nearer to the mind of her pupil. And finally
he asked (and Miss McDonald smiled, for she knew what this conversation,
like all others with him, must ultimately come to):
"Does the Mavick family also take to botany?"
"Oh yes. Mrs. Mavick is intimate with all the florists in New York. And
Miss Evelyn, when I take home these specimens, will analyze them and tell
all about them. She is very sharp about such things. You must have
noticed that she likes to be accurate?"
"But she is fond of poetry."
"Yes, of poetry that she understands. She has not much of the emotional
vagueness of many young girls."
All this was very delightful for Philip, and for a long time, on one
pretext or another, he kept the conversation revolving about this point.
He fancied he was very deep in doing this. To his interlocutor he was,
however, very transparent. And the young man would have been surprised
and flattered if he had known how much her indulgence of him in this talk
was due to her genuine liking for him.
When they returned to the inn, Mrs. Mavick began to rally Philip about
his feminine taste in woodsy things. He would gladly have thrown botany
or anything else overboard to win the good opinion of Evelyn's mother,
but botany now had a real significance and a new meaning for him.
Therefore he put in a defense, by saying:
"Botany, in the hands of Miss McDonald, cannot be called very feminine;
it is a good deal more difficult to understand and master than law."
"Maybe that's the reason," said Mrs. Mavick, "why so many more girls are
eager to study law now than botany."
"Law?" cried Evelyn; "and to practice?"
"Certainly. Don't you think that a bright, clever woman, especially if
she were pretty, would have an advantage with judge and jury?"
"Not if judge and jury were women," Miss McDonald interposed.
"And you remember Portia?" Mrs. Mavick continued.
"Portia," said Evelyn; "yes, but that is poetry; and, McDonald, wasn't it
a kind of catch? How beautifully she talked about mercy, but she turned
the sharp edge of it towards the Jew. I didn't like that."
"Yes," Miss McDonald replied, "it was a kind of trick, a poet's law.
What do you say, Mr. Burnett?"
"Why," said Philip, hesitating, "usually it is understood when a man buys
or wins anything that the appurtenances necessary to give him full
possession go with it. Only in this case another law against the Jew was
understood. It was very clever, nothing short of woman's wit."
"Are there any women in your firm, Mr. Burnett?" asked Mrs. Mavick.
"Not yet, but I think there are plenty of lawyers who would be willing to
take Portia for a partner."
"Make her what you call a consulting partner. That is just the way with
you men--as soon as you see women succeeding in doing anything
independently, you head them off by matrimony."
"Not against their wills," said the governess, with some decision.
"Oh, the poor things are easily hypnotized. And I'm glad they are. The
funniest thing is to hear the Woman's Rights women talk of it as a state
of subjection," and Mrs. Mavick laughed out of her deep experience.
"Rights, what's that?" asked Evelyn.
"Well, child, your education has been neglected. Thank McDonald for
that."
"Don't you know, Evelyn," the governess explained, "that we have always
said that women had a right to have any employment, or do anything they
were fitted to do?"
"Oh, that, of course; I thought everybody said that. That is natural.
But I mean all this fuss. I guess I don't understand what you all are
talking about." And her bright face broke out of its look of perplexity
into a smile.
"Why, poor thing," said her mother, "you belong to the down-trodden sex.
Only you haven't found it out."
"But, mamma," and the girl seemed to be turning the thing over in her
mind, as was her wont with any new proposition, "there seem to be in
history a good many women who never found it out either."
"It is not so now. I tell you we are all in a wretched condition."
"You look it, mamma," replied Evelyn, who perfectly understood when her
mother was chaffing.
"But I think I don't care so much for the lawyers," Mrs. Mavick
continued, with more air of conviction; "what I can't stand are the
doctors, the female doctors. I'd rather have a female priest about me
than a female doctor."
This was not altogether banter, for there had been times in Carmen's
career when the externals of the Roman Church attracted her, and she
wished she had an impersonal confidant, to whom she could confess--well,
not everything-and get absolution. And she could make a kind of
confidant of a sympathetic doctor. But she went on:
"To have a sharp woman prying into all my conditions and affairs! No,
I thank you. Don't you think so, McDonald?"
"They do say," the governess admitted, "that women doctors haven't as
much consideration for women's whims as men." And, after a moment, she
continued:
"But, for all that, women ought to understand about women better than men
can, and be the best doctors for them."
"So it seems to me," said Evelyn, appealing to her mother. "Don't you
remember that day you took me down to the infirmary in which you are
interested, and how nice it was, nobody but women for doctors and nurses
and all that? Would you put that in charge of men?"
"Oh, you child!" cried Mrs. Mavick, turning to her daughter and patting
her on the head. "Of course there are exceptions. But I'm not going to
be one of the exceptions. Ah, well, I suppose I am quite behind the age;
but the conduct of my own sex does get on my nerves sometimes."
Evelyn was silent. She was often so when discussions arose. They were
apt to plunge her into deep thought. To those who knew her history,
guarded from close contact with anything but the world of ideas, it was
very interesting to watch her mental attitude as she was day by day
emerging into a knowledge of the actual world and encountering its
crosscurrents. To Philip, who was getting a good idea of what her
education had been, an understanding promoted by his knowledge of the
character and attainments of her governess, her mental processes, it may
be safely said, opened a new world of thought. Not that mental processes
made much difference to a man in his condition, still, they had the
effect of setting her personality still further apart from that of other
women. One day when they happened to be tete-a-tete in one of their
frequent excursions--a rare occasion--Evelyn had said:
"How strange it is that so many things that are self-evident nobody seems
to see, and that there are so many things that are right that can't be
done."
"That is the way the world is made," Philip had replied. She was
frequently coming out with the sort of ideas and questions that are often
proposed by bright children, whose thinking processes are not only fresh
but undisturbed by the sophistries or concessions that experience has
woven into the thinking of our race. "Perhaps it hasn't your faith in
the abstract."
"Faith? I wonder. Do you mean that people do not dare go ahead and do
things?"
"Well, partly. You see, everybody is hedged in by circumstances."
"Yes. I do begin to see circumstances. I suppose I'm a sort of a goose
--in the abstract, as you say." And Evelyn laughed. It was the
spontaneous, contagious laugh of a child. "You know that Miss McDonald
says I'm nothing but a little idealist."
"Did you deny it?"
"Oh, no. I said, so were the Apostles, all save one--he was a realist."
It was Philip's turn to laugh at this new definition, and upon this the
talk had drifted into the commonplaces of the summer situation and about
Rivervale and its people. Philip regretted that his vacation would so
soon be over, and that he must say good-by to all this repose and beauty,
and to the intercourse that had been so delightful to him.
"But you will write," Evelyn exclaimed.
Philip was startled.
"Write?"
"Yes, your novel."
"Oh, I suppose so," without any enthusiasm.
"You must. I keep thinking of it. What a pleasure it must be to create
a real drama of life."
So this day on the veranda of the inn when Philip spoke of his hateful
departure next day, and there was a little chorus of protest, Evelyn was
silent; but her silence was of more significance to him than the
protests, for he knew her thoughts were on the work he had promised to go
on with.
"It is too bad," Mrs. Mavick exclaimed; "we shall be like a lot of sheep
without a shepherd."
"That we shall," the governess joined in. "At any rate, you must make us
out a memorandum of what is to be seen and done and how to do it."
"Yes," said Philip, gayly, "I'll write tonight a complete guide to
Rivervale."
"We are awfully obliged to you for what you have done." Mrs. Mavick was
no doubt sincere in this. And she added, "Well, we shall all be back in
the city before long."
It was a natural thing to say, and Philip understood that there was no
invitation in it, more than that of the most conventional acquaintance.
For Mrs. Mavick the chapter was closed.
There were the most cordial hand-shakings and good-bys, and Philip said
good-by as lightly as anybody. But as he walked along the road he knew,
or thought he was sure, that the thoughts of one of the party were going
along with him into his future, and the peaceful scene, the murmuring
river, the cat-birds and the blackbirds calling in the meadow, and the
spirit of self-confident youth in him said not good-by, but au revoir.
XIV
Of course Philip wrote to Celia about his vacation intimacy with the
Mavicks. It was no news to her that the Mavicks were spending the summer
there; all the world knew that, and society wondered what whim of
Carmen's had taken her out of the regular summer occupations and immured
her in the country. Not that it gave much thought to her, but, when her
name was mentioned, society resented the closing of the Newport house and
the loss of her vivacity in the autumn at Lenox. She is such a hand to
set things going, don't you know? Mr. Mavick never made a flying visit
to his family--and he was in Rivervale twice during the season--that the
newspapers did not chronicle his every movement, and attribute other
motives than family affection to these excursions into New England. Was
the Central system or the Pennsylvania system contemplating another raid?
It could not be denied that the big operator's connection with any great
interest raised suspicion and often caused anxiety.
Naturally, thought Celia, in such a little village, Philip would fall in
with the only strangers there, so that he was giving her no news in
saying so. But there was a new tone in his letters; she detected an
unusual reserve that was in itself suspicious. Why did he say so much
about Mrs. Mavick and the governess, and so little about the girl?
"You don't tell me," she wrote, "anything about the Infant Phenomenon.
And you know I am dying to know."
This Philip resented. Phenomenon! The little brown girl, with eyes that
saw so much and were so impenetrably deep, and the mobile face, so alert
and responsive. If ever there was a natural person, it was Evelyn. So
he wrote:
"There is nothing to tell; she is not an infant and she is not a
phenomenon. Only this: she has less rubbish in her mind than any person
you ever saw. And I guess the things she does not know about life are
not worth knowing."
"I see," replied Celia; "poor boy! it's the moth and the star. [That's
just like her, muttered Philip, she always assumed to be the older.] But
don't mind. I've come to the conclusion that I am a moth myself, and
some of the lights I used to think stars have fallen. And, seriously,
dear friend, I am glad there is a person who does not know the things not
worth knowing. It is a step in the right direction. I have been this
summer up in the hills, meditating. And I am not so sure of things as I
was. I used to think that all women needed was what is called education
--science, history, literature--and you could safely turn them loose on
the world. It certainly is not safe to turn them loose without
education--but I begin to wonder what we are all coming to. I don't mind
telling you that I have got into a pretty psychological muddle, and I
don't see much to hold on to.
"I suppose that Scotch governess is pious; I mean she has a backbone of
what they call dogma; things are right or wrong in her mind--no haziness.
Now, I am going to make a confession. I've been thinking of religion.
Don't mock. You know I was brought up religious, and I am religious. I
go to church--well, you know how I feel and especially the things I don't
believe. I go to church to be entertained. I read the other day that
Cardinal Manning said: 'The three greatest evils in the world today are
French devotional books, theatrical music, and the pulpit orator. And
the last is the worst.' I wonder. I often feel as if I had been to a
performance. No. It is not about sin that I am especially thinking, but
the sinner. One ought to do something. Sometimes I think I ought to go
to the city. You know I was in a College Settlement for a while. Now I
mean something permanent, devoted to the poor as a life occupation, like
a nun or something of that sort. You think this is a mood? Perhaps.
There have always been so many things before me to do, and I wanted to do
them all. And I do not stick to anything? You must not presume to say
that, because I confide to you all my errant thoughts. You have not
confided in me--I don't insinuate that you have anything to confide but I
cannot help saying that if you have found a pure and clear-minded girl
--Heaven knows what she will be when she is a woman I--I am sorry she is
not poor."
But if Philip did not pour out his heart to his old friend, he did open a
lively and frequent correspondence with Alice. Not about the person who
was always in his thoughts--oh, no--but about himself, and all he was
doing, in the not unreasonable expectation that the news would go where
he could not send it directly--so many ingenious ways has love of
attaining its object. And if Alice, no doubt, understood all this, she
was nevertheless delighted, and took great pleasure in chronicling the
news of the village and giving all the details that came in her way about
the millionaire family. This connection with the world, if only by
correspondence, was an outlet to her reserved and secluded life. And her
letters recorded more of her character, of her feeling, than he had known
in all his boyhood. When Alice mentioned, as it were by chance, that
Evelyn had asked, more than once, when she had spoken of receiving
letters, if her cousin was going on with his story, Philip felt that
the connection was not broken.
Going on with his story he was, and with good heart. The thought that
"she" might some day read it was inspiration enough. Any real creation,
by pen or brush or chisel, must express the artist and be made in
independence of the demands of a vague public. Art is vitiated when the
commercial demand, which may be a needed stimulus, presides at the
creation. But it is doubtful if any artist in letters, or in form or
color, ever did anything well without having in mind some special person,
whose approval was desired or whose criticism was feared. Such is the
universal need of human sympathy. It is, at any rate, true that Philip's
story, recast and reinspired, was thenceforth written under the spell of
the pure divining eyes of Evelyn Mavick. Unconsciously this was so. For
at this time Philip had not come to know that the reason why so many
degraded and degrading stories and sketches are written is because the
writers' standard is the approval of one or two or a group of persons of
vitiated tastes and low ideals.
The Mavicks did not return to town till late in the autumn. By this time
Philip's novel had been submitted to a publisher, or, rather, to state
the exact truth, it had begun to go the rounds of the publishers. Mr.
Brad, to whose nineteenth-century and newspaper eye Philip had shrunk
from confiding his modest creation, but who was consulted in the
business, consoled him with the suggestion that this was a sure way of
getting his production read. There was already in the city a
considerable body of professional "readers," mostly young men and women,
to whom manuscripts were submitted by the publishers, so that the author
could be sure, if he kept at it long enough, to get a pretty fair
circulation for his story. They were selected because they were good
judges of literature and because they had a keen appreciation of what the
public wanted at the moment. Many of them are overworked, naturally so,
in the mass of manuscripts turned over to their inspection day after day,
and are compelled often to adopt the method of tea-tasters, who sip but
do not swallow, for to drink a cup or two of the decoction would spoil
their taste and impair their judgment, especially on new brands. Philip
liked to imagine, as the weeks passed away--the story is old and need not
be retold here--that at any given hour somebody was reading him. He did
not, however, dwell with much delight upon this process, for the idea
that some unknown Rhadamanthus was sitting in judgment upon him much more
wounded his 'amour propre', and seemed much more like an invading of his
inner, secret life and feeling, than would be an instant appeal to the
general public. Why, he thought, it is just as if I had shown it to Brad
himself--apiece of confidence that he could not bring himself to. He did
not know that Brad himself was a reader for a well-known house--which had
employed him on the strength of his newspaper notoriety--and that very
likely he had already praised the quality of the work and damned it as
lacking "snap."
It was, however, weary waiting, and would have been intolerable if his
duties in the law office had not excluded other thoughts from his mind a
good part of the time. There were days when he almost resolved to
confine himself to the solid and remunerative business of law, and give
up the vague aspirations of authorship. But those vague aspirations were
in the end more enticing than the courts. Common-sense is not an
antidote to the virus of the literary infection when once a young soul
has taken it. In his long walks it was not on the law that Philip was
ruminating, nor was the fame of success in it occupying his mind.
Suppose he could write one book that should touch the heart of the world.
Would he exchange the sweetness of that for the fleeting reputation of
the most brilliant lawyer? In short, he magnified beyond all reason the
career and reputation of the author, and mistook the consideration he
occupies in the great world. And what a world it would be if there had
not been a continuous line of such mistaken fools as he!
That it was not literature alone that inflated his dreams was evidenced
by the direction his walks took. Whatever their original destination or
purpose, he was sure to pass through upper Fifth Avenue, and walk by the
Mavick mansion. And never without a lift in his spirits. What comfort
there is to a lover in gazing at the blank and empty house once occupied
by his mistress has never been explained; but Philip would have counted
the day lost in which he did not see it.
After he heard from Alice that the Mavicks had returned, the house had
still stronger attractions for him, for there was added the chance of a
glimpse of Evelyn or one of the family. Many a day passed, however,
before he mustered up courage to mount the steps and touch the button.
"Yes, sir," said the servant, "the family is returned, but they is
h'out."
Philip left his card. But nothing came of it, and he did not try again.
In fact, he was a little depressed as the days went by. How much doubt
and anxiety, even suffering, might have been spared him if the historian
at that moment could have informed him of a little shopping incident at
Tiffany's a few days after the Mavicks' return.
A middle-aged lady and a young girl were inspecting some antiques. The
girl, indeed, had been asking for ancient coins, and they were shown two
superb gold staters with the heads of Alexander and Philip.
"Aren't they beautiful?" said the younger. "How lovely one would be for
a brooch!"
"Yes, indeed," replied the elder, "and quite in the line of our Greek
reading."
The girl held them in her hand and looked at one and the other with a
student's discrimination.
"Which would you choose?"
"Oh, both are fine. Philip of Macedon has a certain youthful freshness,
in the curling hair and uncovered head. But, of course, Alexander the
Great is more important, and then there is the classic casque. I should
take the Alexander." The girl still hesitated, weighing the choice in
her mind from the classic point of view.
"Doubtless you are right. But"--and she held up the lovely head--"this
is not quite so common, and--and--I think I'll take the Macedon one.
Yes, you may set that for me," turning to the salesman.
"Diamonds or pearls?" asked the jeweler.
"Oh, dear, no!" exclaimed the girl; "just the head."
Evelyn's education was advancing. For the first time in her life she had
something to conceal. The privilege of this sort of secret is, however,
an inheritance of Eve. The first morning she wore it at breakfast Mrs.
Mavick asked her what it was.
"It's a coin, antique Greek," Evelyn replied, passing it across the
table.
"How pretty it is; it is very pretty. Ought to have pearls around it.
Seems to be an inscription on it."
"Yes, it is real old. McDonald says it is a stater, about the same as a
Persian daric-something like the value of a sovereign."
"Oh, indeed; very interesting."
To give Evelyn her due, it must be confessed that she blushed at this
equivocation about the inscription, and she got quite hot with shame
thinking what would become of her if Philip should ever know that she was
regarding him as a stater and wearing his name on her breast.
One can fancy what philosophical deductions as to the education of women
Celia Howard would have drawn out of this coin incident; one of them
doubtless being that a classical education is no protection against love.
But for Philip's connection with the thriving firm of Hunt, Sharp &
Tweedle, it is safe to say that he would have known little of the world
of affairs in Wall Street, and might never have gained entrance into that
other world, for which Wall Street exists, that society where its wealth
and ambitious vulgarity are displayed. Thomas Mavick was a client of the
firm. At first they had been only associated with his lawyer, and
consulted occasionally. But as time went on Mr. Mavick opened to them
his affairs more and more, as he found the advantage of being represented
to the public by a firm that combined the highest social and
professional standing with all the acumen and adroitness that his
complicated affairs required.
It was a time of great financial feverishness and uncertainty, and of
opportunity for the most reckless adventurers. Houses the most solid
were shaken and crippled, and those which were much extended in a variety
of adventures were put to their wits' ends to escape shipwreck.
Financial operations are perpetual war. It is easy to calculate about
the regular forces, but the danger is from the unexpected "raids" and the
bushwhackers and guerrillas. And since politics has become inextricably
involved in financial speculations (as it has in real war), the
excitement and danger of business on a large scale increase.
Philip as a trusted clerk, without being admitted into interior secrets,
came to know a good deal about Mavick's affairs, and to be more than ever
impressed with his enormous wealth and the magnitude of his operations.
From time to time he was sent on errands to Mavick's office, and
gradually, as Mavick became accustomed to him as a representative of the
firm, they came on a somewhat familiar footing, and talked of other
things than business. And Mavick, who was not a bad judge of the
capacities of men, conceived a high idea of Philip's single-mindedness,
of his integrity and general culture, and, as well, of his agreeableness
(for Philip had a certain charm where he felt at ease), while at the same
time he discovered that his mind was more upon something else than law,
and that, if his success in his profession depended upon his adoption of
the business methods of the Street, he could not go very far.
Consequently he did not venture upon the same confidences with him that
he habitually did with Mr. Sharp. Yet, business aside, he had an
intellectual pleasure in exchanging views with Philip which Mr. Sharp's
conversation did not offer him.
When, therefore, Mrs. Mavick came to consult her husband about the list
for the coming-out reception of Evelyn, Philip found a friend at court.
"It is all plain enough," said Carmen, as she sat down with book and
pencil in hand, "till you come to the young men, the unattached young
men. Here is my visiting-list, that of course. But for the young ladies
we must have more young men. Can't you suggest any?"
"Perhaps. I know a lot of young fellows."
"But I mean available young men, those that count socially. I don't want
a broker's board or a Chamber of Commerce here."
Mr. Mavick named half a dozen, and Carmen looked for their names in the
social register. "Any more?"
"Why, you forgot young Burnett, who was with you last summer at
Rivervale. I thought you liked him."
"So I did in Rivervale. Plain farmer people. Yes, he was very nice to
us. I've been thinking if I couldn't send him something Christmas and
pay off the debt."
"He'd think a great deal more of an invitation to your reception."
"But you don't understand. You never think of Evelyn's future. We are
asking people that we think she ought to know."
"Well, Burnett is a very agreeable fellow."
"Fiddlesticks! He is nothing but a law clerk. Worse than that, he is a
magazine writer."
"I thought you liked his essays and stories."
"So I do. But you don't want to associate with everybody you like that
way. I am talking about society. You must draw the line somewhere. Oh,
I forgot Fogg--Dr. LeRoy Fogg, from Pittsburg." And down went the name
of Fogg.
"You mean that young swell whose business it is to drive a four-in-hand
to Yonkers and back, and toot on a horn?"
"Well, what of that? Everybody who is anybody, I mean all the girls,
want to go on his coach."
"Oh, Lord! I'd rather go on the Elevated." And Mavick laughed very
heartily, for him. "Well, I'll make a compromise. You take Fogg and
I'll take Burnett. He is in a good firm, he belongs to a first-rate
club, he goes to the Hunts' and the Scammels', I hear of him in good
places. Come."
"Well, if you make a point of it. I've nothing against him. But if you
knew the feelings of a mother about her only daughter you would know,
that you cannot be too careful."
When, several days after this conversation, Philip received his big
invitation, gorgeously engraved on what he took to be a sublimated sort
of wrapping-paper, he felt ashamed that he had doubted the sincere
friendship and the goodness of heart of Mrs. Mavick.
XV
One morning in December, Philip was sent down to Mr. Mavick's office with
some important papers. He was kept waiting a considerable time in the
outer room where the clerks were at work. A couple of clerks at desks
near the chair he occupied were evidently discussing some one and he
overheard fragments of sentences--"Yes, that's he." "Well, I guess the
old man's got his match this time."
When he was admitted to the private office, he encountered coming out in
the anteroom a man of striking appearance. For an instant they were face
to face, and then bowed and passed on. The instant seemed to awaken some
memory in Philip which greatly puzzled him.
The man had closely cropped black hair, black Whiskers, a little curling,
but also closely trimmed, piercing black eyes, and the complexion of a
Spaniard. The nose was large but regular, the mouth square-cut and firm,
and the powerful jaw emphasized the decision of the mouth. The frame
corresponded with the head. It was Herculean, and yet with no
exaggerated developments. The man was over six feet in height, the
shoulders were square, the chest deep, the hips and legs modeled for
strength, and with no superfluous flesh. Philip noticed, as they fronted
each other for an instant and the stranger raised his hat, that his hands
and feet were smaller than usually accompany such a large frame. The
impression was that of great physical energy, self-confidence, and
determined will. The face was not bad, certainly not in detail, and even
the penetrating eyes seemed at the moment capable of a humorous
expression, but it was that of a man whom you would not like to have your
enemy. He wore a business suit of rough material and fashionable cut,
but he wore it like a man who did not give much thought to his clothes.
"What a striking-looking man," said Philip, motioning with his hand
towards the anteroom as he greeted Mr. Mavick.
"Who, Ault?" answered Mavick, indifferently.
"Ault! What, Murad Ault?"
"Nobody else."
"Is it possible? I thought I saw a resemblance. Several times I have
wondered, but I fancied it only a coincidence of names. It seemed
absurd. Why, I used to know Murad Ault when we were boys. And to think
that he should be the great Murad Ault."
"He hasn't been that for more than a couple of years," Mavick answered,
with a smile at the other's astonishment, and then, with more interest,
"What do you know about him?"
"If this is the same person, he used to live at Rivervale. Came there,
no one knew where from, and lived with his mother, a little withered old
woman, on a little cleared patch up in the hills, in a comfortable sort
of shanty. She used to come to the village with herbs and roots to sell.
Nobody knew whether she was a gypsy or a decayed lady, she had such an
air, and the children were half afraid of her, as a sort of witch. Murad
went to school, and occasionally worked for some farmer, but nobody knew
him; he rarely spoke to any one, and he had the reputation of being a
perfect devil; his only delight seemed to be in doing some dare-devil
feat to frighten the children. We used to say that Murad Ault would
become either a pirate or--"
"Broker," suggested Mr. Mavick, with a smile.
"I didn't know much about brokers at that time," Philip hastened to say,
and then laughed himself at his escape from actual rudeness.
"What became of him?"
"Oh, he just disappeared. After I went away to school I heard that his
mother had died, and Murad had gone off--gone West it was said. Nothing
was ever heard of him."
The advent and rise of Murad Ault in New York was the sort of phenomenon
to which the metropolis, which picks up its great men as Napoleon did his
marshals, is accustomed. The mystery of his origin, which was at first
against him, became at length an element of his strength and of the fear
he inspired, as a sort of elemental force of unknown power. Newspaper
biographies of him constantly appeared, but he had evaded every attempt
to include him and his portrait in the Lives of Successful Men. The
publishers of these useful volumes for stimulating speculation and
ambition did not dare to take the least liberties with Murad Ault.
The man was like the boy whom Philip remembered. Doubtless he
appreciated now as then the value of the mystery that surrounded his name
and origin; and he very soon had a humorous conception of the situation
that made him decline to be pilloried with others in one of those
volumes, which won from a reviewer the confession that "lives of great
men all remind us we may make our lives sublime." One of the legends
current about him was that he first appeared in New York as a "hand" on a
canal-boat, that he got employment as a check-clerk on the dock, that he
made the acquaintance of politicians in his ward, and went into politics
far enough to get a city contract, which paid him very well and showed
him how easily a resolute man could get money and use it in the city. He
was first heard of in Wall Street as a curbstone broker, taking enormous
risks and always lucky. Very soon he set up an office, with one clerk or
errand-boy, and his growing reputation for sagacity and boldness began to
attract customers; his ventures soon engaged the attention of guerrillas
like himself, who were wont to consult him. They found that his advice
was generally sound, and that he had not only sensitiveness but
prescience about the state of the market. His office was presently
enlarged, and displayed a modest sign of "Murad Ault, Banker and Broker."
Mr. Ault's operations constantly enlarged, his schemes went beyond the
business of registering other people's bets and taking a commission on
them; he was known as a daring but successful promoter, and he had a
visible ownership in steamships and railways, and projected such vast
operations as draining the Jersey marshes. If he had been a citizen of
Italy he would have attacked the Roman Campagna with the same confidence.
At any rate, he made himself so much felt and seemed to command so many
resources that it was not long before he forced his way into the Stock
Exchange and had a seat in the Board of Brokers. He was at first an odd
figure there. There was something flash about his appearance, and his
heavy double watch-chain and diamond shirt-studs gave him the look of an
ephemeral adventurer. But he soon took his cue, the diamonds
disappeared, and the dress was toned down. There seemed to be two models
in the Board, the smart and neat, and the hayseed style adopted by some
of the most wily old operators, who posed as honest dealers who retained
their rural simplicity. Mr. Ault adopted a middle course, and took the
respectable yet fashionable, solid dress of a man of affairs.
There is no other place in the world where merit is so quickly recognized
as in the Stock Exchange, especially if it is backed by brass and a good
head. Ault's audacity made him feared; he was believed to be as
unscrupulous as he was reckless, but this did not much injure his
reputation when it was seen that he was marvelously successful. That
Ault would wreck the market, if he could and it was to his advantage, no
one doubted; but still he had a quality that begot confidence. He kept
his word. Though men might be shy of entering into a contract with Ault,
they learned that what he said he would do he would do literally. He was
not a man of many words, but he was always decided and apparently open,
and, as whatever he touched seemed to thrive, his associates got the
habit of saying, "What Ault says goes."
Murad Ault had married, so it was said, the daughter of a boarding-house
keeper on the dock. She was a pretty girl, had been educated in a
convent (perhaps by his aid after he was engaged to marry her), and was a
sweet mother to a little brood of charming children, and a devout member
of her parish church. Those who had seen Mrs. Ault when her carriage
took her occasionally to Ault's office in the city were much impressed by
her graceful manner and sweet face, and her appearance gave Ault a sort
of anchorage in the region of respectability. No one would have accused
Ault of being devoted to any special kind of religious worship; but he
was equally tolerant of all religions, and report said was liberal in his
wife's church charities. Besides the fact that he owned a somewhat
pretentious house in Sixtieth Street, society had very little knowledge
of him.
It was, however, undeniable that he was a power in the Street. No other
man's name was oftener mentioned in the daily journals in connection with
some bold and successful operation. He seemed to thrive on panics, and
to grow strong and rich with every turn of the wheel. There is only one
stock expression in America for a man who is very able and unscrupulous,
and carries things successfully with a high hand--he is Napoleonic. It
needed only a few brilliant operations, madly reckless in appearance but
successful, to give Ault the newspaper sobriquet of the Young Napoleon.
"Papa, what does he mean?" asked the eldest boy. "Jim Dustin says the
papers call you Napoleon."
"It means, my boy," said Ault, with a grim smile, that I am devoted to
your mother, St. Helena."
"Don't say that, Murad," exclaimed his wife; I'm far enough from a saint,
and your destiny isn't the Island."
"What's the Island, mamma?"
"It's a place people are sent to for their health."
"In a boat? Can I go?"
"You ask too many questions, Sinclair," said Mr. Ault; "it's time you
were off to school."
There seems to have been not the least suspicion in this household that
the head of it was a pirate.
It must be said that Mavick still looked upon Ault as an adventurer, one
of those erratic beings who appear from time to time in the Street, upset
everything, and then disappear. They had been associated occasionally in
small deals, and Ault had more than once appealed to Mavick, as a great
capitalist, with some promising scheme. They had, indeed, co-operated in
reorganizing a Western railway, but seemed to have come out of the
operation without increased confidence in each other. What had occurred
nobody knew, but thereafter there developed a slight antagonism between
the two operators. Ault went no more to consult the elder man, and they
had two or three little bouts, in which Mavick did not get the best of
it. This was not an unusual thing in the Street. Mr. Ault never
expressed his opinion of Mr. Mavick, but it became more and more apparent
that their interests were opposed. Some one who knew both men, and said
that the one was as cold and selfish as a pike, and the other was a most
unscrupulous dare-devil, believed that Mavick had attempted some sort of
a trick on Ault, and that it was the kind of thing that the Spaniard (his
complexion had given him this nickname) never forgot.
It is not intended to enter into a defense of the local pool known as the
New York Stock Exchange. It needs none. Some regard it as a necessary
standpipe to promote and equalize distribution, others consult it as a
sort of Nilometer, to note the rise and fall of the waters and the
probabilities of drought or flood. Everybody knows that it is full of
the most gamy and beautiful fish in the world--namely, the speckled
trout, whose honest occupation it is to devour whatever is thrown into
the pool--a body governed by the strictest laws of political economy in
guarding against over-population, by carrying out the Malthusian idea, in
the habit the big ones have of eating the little ones. But occasionally
this harmonious family, which is animated by one of the most conspicuous
traits of human nature--to which we owe very much of our progress
--namely, the desire to get hold of everything within reach, and is such a
useful object-lesson of the universal law of upward struggle that results
in the survival of the fittest, this harmonious family is disturbed by
the advent of a pickerel, which makes a raid, introduces confusion into
all the calculations of the pool, roils the water, and drives the trout
into their holes.
The presence in the pool of a slimy eel or a blundering bullhead or a
lethargic sucker is bad enough, but the rush in of the pickerel is the
advent of the devil himself. Until he is got rid of, all the delicate
machinery for the calculation of chances is hopelessly disturbed; and no
one could tell what would become of the business of the country if there
were not a considerable number of devoted men engaged in registering its
fluctuations and the change of values, and willing to back their opinions
by investing their own capital or, more often, the capital of others.
This somewhat mixed figure cannot be pursued further without losing its
analogy, becoming fantastic, and violating natural law. For it is matter
of observation that in this arena the pickerel, if he succeeds in
clearing out the pool, suddenly becomes a trout, and is respected as the
biggest and most useful fish in the pond.
What is meant is simply that Murad Ault was fighting for position, and
that for some reason, known to himself, Thomas Mavick stood in his way.
Mr. Mavick had never been under the necessity of making such a contest.
He stepped into a commanding position as the manager if not the owner of
the great fortune of Rodney Henderson. His position was undisputed, for
the Street believed with the world in the magnitude of that fortune,
though there were shrewd operators who said that Mavick had more chicane
but not a tenth part of the ability of Rodney Henderson. Mr. Ault had
made the fortune the object of keen scrutiny, when his antagonism was
aroused, and none knew better than he its assailable points. Henderson
had died suddenly in the midst of vast schemes which needed his genius to
perfect. Apparently the Mavick estate was second to only a few fortunes
in the country. Mr. Ault had set himself to find out whether this vast
structure stood upon rock foundations. The knowledge he acquired about
it and his intentions he communicated to no one. But the drift of his
mind might be gathered from a remark he made to his wife one day, when
some social allusion was made to Mavick: "I'll bring down that snob."
The use of such men as Ault in the social structure is very doubtful, as
doubtful as that of a summer tempest or local cyclone, which it is said
clears the air and removes rubbish, but is a scourge that involves the
innocent as often as the guilty. It is popularly supposed that the
disintegration and distribution of a great fortune, especially if it has
been accumulated by doubtful methods, is a benefit to mankind. Mr. Ault
may have shared this impression, but it is unlikely that he philosophized
on the subject. No one, except perhaps his own family, had ever
discovered that he had any sensibilities that could be appealed to, and,
if he had known the ideas beginning to take shape in the mind of the
millionaire heiress in regard to this fortune, he would have approved or
comprehended them as little as did her mother.
Evelyn had lived hitherto with little comprehension of her peculiar
position. That the world went well with her, and that no obstacle was
opposed to the gratification of her reasonable desires, or to her
impulses of charity and pity, was about all she knew of her power. But
she was now eighteen and about to appear in the world. Her mother,
therefore, had been enlightening her in regard to her expectations and
the career that lay open to her. And Carmen thought the girl a little
perverse, in that this prospect, instead of exciting her worldly
ambition, seemed to affect her only seriously as a matter of
responsibility.
In their talks Mrs. Mavick was in fact becoming acquainted with the mind
of her daughter, and learning, somewhat to her chagrin, the limitations
of her education produced by the policy of isolation.
To her dismay, she found that the girl did not care much for the things
that she herself cared most for. The whole world of society, its
strifes, ambitions, triumphs, defeats, rewards, did not seem to Evelyn so
real or so important as that world in which she had lived with her
governess and her tutors. And, worse than this, the estimate she placed
upon the values of material things was shockingly inadequate to her
position.
That her father was a very great man was one of the earliest things
Evelyn began to know, exterior to herself. This was impressed upon her
by the deference paid to him not only at home but wherever they went, and
by the deference shown to her as his daughter. And she was proud of
this. He was not one of the great men whose careers she was familiar
with in literature, not a general or a statesman or an orator or a
scientist or a poet or a philanthropist she never thought of him in
connection with these heroes of her imagination--but he was certainly a
great power in the world. And she had for him a profound admiration,
which might have become affection if Mavick had ever taken the pains to
interest himself in the child's affairs. Her mother she loved, and
believed there could be no one in the world more sweet and graceful and
attractive, and as she grew up she yearned for more of the motherly
companionship, for something more than the odd moments of petting that
were given to her in the whirl of the life of a woman of the world. What
that life was, however, she had only the dimmest comprehension, and it
was only in the last two years, since she was sixteen, that she began to
understand it, and that mainly in contrast to her own guarded life. And
she was now able to see that her own secluded life had been unusual.
Not till long after this did she speak to any one of her experience as a
child, of the time when she became conscious that she was never alone,
and that she was only free to act within certain limits.
To McDonald, indeed, she had often shown her irritation, and it was only
the strong good sense of the governess that kept her from revolt. It was
not until very recently that it could be explained to her, without
putting her in terror hourly, why she must always be watched and guarded.
It had required all the tact and sophistry of her governess to make her
acquiesce in a system of education--so it was called-that had been
devised in order to give her the highest and purest development. That
the education was mainly left to McDonald, and that her parents were
simply anxious about her safety, she did not learn till long afterwards.
In the first years Mrs. Mavick had been greatly relieved to be spared all
the care of the baby, and as the years went on, the arrangement seemed
more and more convenient, and she gave little thought to the character
that was being formed. To Mr. Mavick, indeed, as to his wife, it was
enough to see that she was uncommonly intelligent, and that she had a
certain charm that made her attractive. Mrs. Mavick took it for granted
that when it came time to introduce her into the world she would be like
other girls, eager for its pleasures and susceptible to all its
allurements. Of the direction of the undercurrents of the girl's life
she had no conception, until she began to unfold to her the views of the
world that prevailed in her circle, and what (in the Carmen scheme of
life) ought to be a woman's ambition.
That she was to be an heiress Evelyn had long known, that she would one
day have a great fortune at her disposal had indeed come into her serious
thought, but the brilliant use of it in relation to herself, at which her
mother was always lately hinting, came to her as a disagreeable shock.
For the moment the fortune seemed to her rather a fetter than an
opportunity, if she was to fulfill her mother's expectations. These
hints were conveyed with all the tact of which her mother was master, but
the girl was nevertheless somewhat alarmed, and she began to regard the
"coming out" as an entrance into servitude rather than an enlargement of
liberty. One day she surprised Miss McDonald by asking her if she didn't
think that rich people were the only ones not free to do as they pleased?
"Why, my dear, it is not generally so considered. Most people fancy that
if they had money enough they could do anything."
"Yes, of course," said the girl, putting down her stitching and looking
up; "that is not exactly what I mean. They can go in the current, they
can do what they like with their money, but I mean with themselves.
Aren't they in a condition that binds them half the time to do what they
don't wish to do?"
"It's a condition that all the world is trying to get into."
"I know. I've been talking with mamma about the world and about society,
and what is expected and what you must live up to."
"But you have always known that you must one day go into the world and
take your share in life."
"That, yes. But I would rather live up to myself. Mamma seems to think
that society will do a great deal for me, that I will get a wider view of
life, that I can do so much for society, and, with my position, mamma
says, have such a career. McDonald, what is society for?"
That was such a poser that the governess threw up her hands, and then
laughed aloud, and then shook her head. "Wiser people than you have
asked that question."
"I asked mamma that, for she is in it all the time. She didn't like it
much, and asked, 'What is anything for?' You see, McDonald, I've been
with mamma many a time when her friends came to see her, and they never
have anything to say, never--what I call anything. I wonder if in
society they go about saying that? What do they do it for?"
Miss McDonald had her own opinion about what is called society and its
occupations and functions, but she did not propose to encourage this
girl, who would soon take her place in it, in such odd notions.
"Don't you know, child, that there is society and society? That it is
all sorts of a world, that it gets into groups and circles about, and
that is the way the world is stirred up and kept from stagnation. And,
my dear, you have just to do your duty where you are placed, and that is
all there is about it."
"Don't be cross, McDonald. I suppose I can think my thoughts?"
"Yes, you can think, and you can learn to keep a good deal that you think
to yourself. Now, Evelyn, haven't you any curiosity to see what this
world we are talking about is like?"
"Indeed I have," said Evelyn, coming out of her reflective mood into a
girlish enthusiasm. "And I want to see what I shall be like in it.
Only--well, how is that?" And she held out the handkerchief she had been
plying her needle on.
Miss McDonald looked at the stitches critically, at the letters T.M.
enclosed in an oval.
"That is very good, not too mechanical. It will please your father. The
oval makes a pretty effect; but what are those signs between the
letters?"
"Don't you see? It is a cartouche, and those are hieroglyphics--his name
in Egyptian. I got it out of Petrie's book."
"It certainly is odd."
"And every one of the twelve is going to be different. It is so
interesting to hunt up the signs for qualities. If papa can read it he
will find out a good deal that I think about him."
The governess only smiled for reply. It was so like Evelyn, so different
from others even in the commonplace task of marking handkerchiefs, to
work a little archaeology into her expression of family affection.
Mrs. Mavick's talks with her daughter in which she attempted to give
Evelyn some conception of her importance as the heiress of a great
fortune, of her position in society, what would be expected of her, and
of the brilliant social career her mother imagined for her, had an effect
opposite to that intended. There had been nothing in her shielded life,
provided for at every step without effort, that had given her any idea of
the value and importance of money.
To a girl in her position, educated in the ordinary way and mingling with
school companions, one of the earliest lessons would be a comprehension
of the power that wealth gave her; and by the time that she was of
Evelyn's age her opinion of men would begin to be colored by the notion
that they were polite or attentive to her on account of her fortune and
not for any charm of hers, and so a cruel suspicion of selfishness would
have entered her mind to poison the very thought of love.
No such idea had entered Evelyn's mind. She would not readily have
understood that love could have any sort of relation to riches or
poverty. And if, deep down in her heart, not acknowledged, scarcely
recognized, by herself, there had begun to grow an image about which she
had sweet and tender thoughts, it certainly did not occur to her that her
father's wealth could make any difference in the relations of friendship
or even of affection. And as for the fortune, if she was, as her mother
said, some day to be mistress of it, she began to turn over in her mind
objects quite different from the display and the career suggested by her
mother, and to think how she could use it.
In her ignorance of practical life and of what the world generally
values, of course the scheme that was rather hazy in her mind was simply
Quixotic, as appeared in a conversation with her father one evening while
he smoked his cigar. He had called Evelyn to the library, on the
suggestion of Carmen that he should "have a little talk with the girl."
Mr. Mavick began, when Evelyn was seated beside him, and he had drawn her
close to him and she had taken possession of his big hand with both her
little hands, about the reception and about balls to come, and the opera,
and what was going on in New York generally in the season, and suddenly
asked:
"My dear, if you had a lot of money, what would you do with it?"
"What would you?" said the girl, looking up into his face. "What do
people generally do?"
"Why," and Mavick hesitated, "they use it to add more to it."
"And then?" pursued the girl.
"I suppose they leave it to somebody. Suppose it was left to you?"
"Don't think me silly, papa; I've thought a lot about it, and I shall do
something quite different."
"Different from what?"
"You know mamma is in the Orthopedic Hospital, and in the Ragged Schools,
and in the Infirmary, and I don't know what all."
"And wouldn't you help them?"
"Of course, I would help. But everybody does those things, the practical
things, the charities; I mean to do things for the higher life."
Mr. Mavick took his cigar from his mouth and looked puzzled. "You want
to build a cathedral?"
"No, I don't mean that sort of higher life, I mean civilization, the
things at the top. I read an essay the other day that said it was easy
to raise money for anything mechanical and practical in a school, but
nobody wanted to give for anything ideal."
"Quite right," said her father; "the world is full of cranks. You seem
as vague as your essayist."
"Don't you remember, papa, when we were in Oxford how amused you were
with the master, or professor, who grumbled because the college was full
of students, and there wasn't a single college for research?
"I asked McDonald afterwards what he meant; that is how I first got my
idea, but I didn't see exactly what it was until recently. You've got to
cultivate the high things--that essay says--the abstract, that which does
not seem practically useful, or society will become low and material."
"By George!" cried Mavick, with a burst of laughter, "you've got the
lingo. Go on, I want to see where you are going to light."
"Well, I'll tell you some more. You know my tutor is English. McDonald
says she believes he is the most learned man in eighteenth-century
literature living, and his dream is to write a history of it. He is
poor, and engaged all the time teaching, and McDonald says he will die,
no doubt, and leave nothing of his investigations to the world."
"And you want to endow him?"
"He is only one. There is the tutor of history. Teach, teach, teach,
and no time or strength left for investigation. You ought to hear him
tell of the things just to be found out in American history. You see
what I mean? It is plainer in the sciences. The scholars who could
really make investigations, and do something for the world, have to earn
their living and have no time or means for experiments. It seems foolish
as I say it, but I do think, papa, there is something in it."
"And what would you do?"
Evelyn saw that she was making no headway, and her ideas, exposed to so
practical a man as her father, did seem rather ridiculous. But she
struck out boldly with the scheme that she had been evolving.
"I'd found Institutions of Research, where there should be no teaching,
and students who had demonstrated that they had anything promising in
them, in science, literature, languages, history, anything, should have
the means and the opportunity to make investigations and do work. See
what a hard time inventors and men of genius have; it is pitiful."
"And how much money do you want for this modest scheme of yours?"
"I hadn't thought," said Evelyn, patting her father's hand. And then, at
a venture, "I guess about ten millions."
"Whew! Have you any idea how much ten millions are, or how much one
million is?"
"Why, ten millions, if you have a hundred, is no more than one million if
you have only ten. Doesn't it depend?"
"If it depends upon you, child, I don't think money has any value for you
whatever. You are a born financier for getting rid of a surplus. You
ought to be Secretary of the Treasury."
Mavick rose, lifted up his daughter, and, kissing her with more than
usual tenderness, said, "You'll learn about the world in time," and bade
her goodnight.
XVI
Law and love go very well together as occupations, but, when literature
is added, the trio is not harmonious. Either of the two might pull
together, but the combination of the three is certainly disastrous.
It would be difficult to conceive of a person more obviously up in the
air than Philip at this moment. He went through his office duties
intelligently and perfunctorily, but his heart was not in the work, and
reason as he would his career did not seem to be that way. He was lured
too strongly by that siren, the ever-alluring woman who sits upon the
rocks and sings so deliciously to youth of the sweets of authorship. He
who listens once to that song hears it always in his ears, through
disappointment and success--and the success is often the greatest
disappointment--through poverty and hope deferred and heart-sickness for
recognition, through the hot time of youth and the creeping incapacity of
old age. The song never ceases. Were the longing and the hunger it
arouses ever satisfied with anything, money for instance, any more than
with fame?
And if the law had a feeble hold on him, how much more uncertain was his
grasp on literature. He had thrown his line, he had been encouraged by
nibbles, but publishers were too wary to take hold. It seemed to him
that he had literally cast his bread upon the waters, and apparently at
an ebb tide, and his venture had gone to the fathomless sea. He had put
his heart into the story, and, more than that, his hope of something
dearer than any public favor. As he went over the story in his mind,
scene after scene, and dwelt upon the theme that held the whole in unity,
he felt that Evelyn would be touched by the recognition of her part in
the inspiration, and that the great public must give some heed to it.
Perhaps not the great public--for its liking now ran in quite another
direction, but a considerable number of people like Celia, who were
struggling with problems of life, and the Alices in country homes who
still preserved in their souls a belief in the power of a noble life, and
perhaps some critics who had not rid themselves of the old traditions.
If the publishers would only give him a chance!
But if law and literature were to him little more than unsubstantial
dreams, the love he cherished was, in the cool examination of reason,
preposterous. What! the heiress of so many millions, brought up
doubtless in the expectation of the most brilliant worldly alliance, the
heiress with the world presently at her feet, would she look at a
lawyer's clerk and an unsuccessful scribbler? Oh, the vanity of youth
and the conceit of intellect!
Down in his heart Philip thought that she might. And he went on nursing
this vain passion, knowing as well as any one can know the social code,
that Mr. Mavick and Mrs. Mavick would simply laugh in his face at such a
preposterous idea. And yet he knew that he had her sympathy in his
ambition, that to a certain extent she was interested in him. The girl
was too guileless to conceal that. And then suppose he should become
famous--well, not exactly famous, but an author who was talked about, and
becoming known, and said to be promising? And then he could fancy Mavick
weighing this sort of reputation in his office scales against money, and
Mrs. Mavick weighing it in her boudoir against social position. He was a
fool to think of it. And yet, suppose, suppose the girl should come to
love him. It would not be lightly. He knew that, by looking into her
deep, clear, beautiful eyes. There were in them determination and
tenacity of purpose as well as the capability of passion. Heavens and
earth, if that girl once loved, there was a force that no opposition
could subdue! That was true. But what had he to offer to evoke such a
love?
In those days Philip saw much of Celia, who at length had given up
teaching, and had come to the city to try her experiment, into which she
was willing to embark her small income. She had taken a room in the
midst of poverty and misery on the East Side, and was studying the
situation.
"I am not certain," she said, "whether I or any one else can do anything,
or whether any organization down there can effect much.
But I will find out."
"Aren't you lonesome--and disgusted?" asked Philip.
"Disgusted? You might as well be disgusted with one thing as another. I
am generally disgusted with the way things go. But, lonely? No, there
is too much to do and to learn. And do you know, Philip, that people are
more interesting over there, more individual, have more queer sorts of
character. I begin to believe, with a lovely philanthropist I know, who
had charge of female criminals, that 'wicked women are more interesting
than good women.'"
"You have struck a rich mine of interest in New York, then."
"Don't be cynical, Phil. There are different kinds of interest. Stuff!
But I won't explain." And then, abruptly changing the subject, "Seems to
me you have something on your mind lately. Is it the novel?"
"Perhaps."
"The publishers haven't decided?"
"I am afraid they have."
"Well, Philip, do you know that I think the best thing that could happen
to you would be to have the story rejected."
"It has been rejected several times," said Philip. "That didn't seem to
do me any good."
"But finally, so that you would stop thinking about it, stop expecting
anything that way, and take up your profession in earnest."
"You are a nice comforter!" retorted Philip, with a sort of smirking grin
and a look of keen inspection, as if he saw something new in the
character of his adviser. "What has come over you? Suppose I should
give you that sort of sympathy in the projects you set your heart on?"
"It does seem hard and mean, doesn't it? I knew you wouldn't like it.
That is, not now. But it is for your lifetime. As for me, I've wanted
so many things and I've tried so many things. And do you know, Phil,
that I have about come to the conclusion that the best things for us in
this world are the things we don't get."
"You are always coming to some new conclusion."
"Yes, I know. But just look at it rationally. Suppose your story is
published, cast into the sea of new books, and has a very fair sale.
What will you get out of it? You can reckon how many copies at ten cents
a copy it will need to make as much as some writers get for a trivial
magazine paper. Recognition? Yes, from a very few people. Notoriety?
You would soon find what that is. Suppose you make what is called a
'hit.' If you did not better that with the next book, you would be
called a failure. And you must keep at it, keep giving the public
something new all the time, or you will drop out of sight. And then the
anxiety and the strain of it, and the temptation, because you must live,
to lower your ideal, and go down to what you conceive to be the buying
public. And if your story does not take the popular fancy, where will
you be then?"
"Celia, you have become a perfect materialist. You don't allow anything
for the joy of creation, for the impulse of a man's mind, for the delight
in fighting for a place in the world of letters."
"So it seems to you now. If you have anything that must be said, of
course you ought to say it, no matter what comes after. If you are
looking round for something you can say in order to get the position you
covet, that is another thing. People so deceive themselves about this.
I know literary workers who lead a dog's life and are slaves to their
pursuit, simply because they have deceived themselves in this. I want
you to be free and independent, to live your own life and do what work
you can in the world. There, I've said it, and of course you will go
right on. I know you. And maybe I am all wrong. When I see the story I
may take the other side and urge you to go on, even if you are as poor as
a church-mouse, and have to be under the harrow of poverty for years."
"Then you have some curiosity to see the story?"
"You know I have. And I know I shall like it. It isn't that, Phil; it
is what is the happiest career for you."
"Well, I will send it to you when it comes back."
But the unexpected happened. It did not come back. One morning Philip
received a letter from the publishers that set his head in a whirl. The
story was accepted. The publisher wrote that the verdict of the readers
was favorable, and he would venture on it, though he cautioned Mr.
Burnett not to expect a great commercial success. And he added, as to
terms, it being a new name, though he hoped one that would become famous,
that the copyright of ten per cent. would not begin until after the sale
of the first thousand copies.
The latter part of the letter made no impression on Philip. So long as
the book was published, and by a respectable firm, he was indifferent as
a lord to the ignoble details of royalty. The publisher had recognized
the value of the book, and it was accepted on its merits. That was
enough. The first thing he did was to enclose the letter to Celia, with
the simple remark that he would try to sympathize with her in her
disappointment.
Philip would have been a little less jubilant if he had known how the
decision of the publishing house was arrived at. It was true that the
readers had reported favorably, but had refused to express any opinion on
the market value. The manuscript had therefore been put in the
graveyard of manuscripts, from which there is commonly no resurrection
except in the funeral progress of the manuscript back to the author. But
the head of the house happened to dine at the house of Mr. Hunt, the
senior of Philip's law firm. Some chance allusion was made by a lady to
an article in a recent magazine which had pleased her more than anything
she had seen lately. Mr. Hunt also had seen it, for his wife had insisted
on reading it to him, and he was proud to say that the author was a clerk
in his office--a fine fellow, who, he always fancied, had more taste for
literature than for law, but he had the stuff in him to succeed in
anything. The publisher pricked up his ears and asked some questions. He
found that Mr. Burnett stood well in the most prominent law firm in the
city, that ladies of social position recognized his talent, that he dined
here and there in a good set, and that he belonged to one of the best
clubs. When he went to his office the next morning he sent for the
manuscript, looked it over critically, and then announced to his partners
that he thought the thing was worth trying.
In a day or two it was announced in the advertising lists as forthcoming.
There it stared Philip in the face and seemed to be the only conspicuous
thing in the journal. He had not paid much attention before to the
advertisements, but now this department seemed the most interesting part
of the paper, and he read every announcement, and then came back and read
his over and over. There it stood:--"On Saturday, The Puritan Nun. An
Idyl. By Philip Burnett."
The naming of the book had been almost as difficult as the creation. His
first choice had been "The Lily of the Valley," but Balzac had pre-empted
that. And then he had thought of "The Enclosed Garden" (Hortus Clausus),
the title of a lovely picture he had seen. That was Biblical, but in the
present ignorance of the old scriptures it would be thought either
agricultural or sentimental. It is not uncommon that a book owes its
notoriety and sale to its title, and it is not easy to find a title that
will attract attention without being too sensational. The title chosen
was paradoxical, for while a nun might be a puritan, it was unthinkable
that a Puritan should be a nun.
Mr. Brad said he liked it, because it looked well and did not mean
anything; he liked all such titles, the "Pious Pirate," the "Lucid
Lunatic," the "Sympathetic Siren," the "Guileless Girl," and so on.
The announcement of publication had the effect of putting Philip in high
spirits for the Mavick reception-spirits tempered, however, by the
embarrassment natural to a modest man that he would be painfully
conspicuous. This first placarding of one's name is a peculiar and mixed
sensation. The letters seem shamefully naked, and the owner seems
exposed and to have parted with a considerable portion of his innate
privacy. His first fancy is that everybody will see it. But this fancy
only comes once. With experience he comes to doubt if anybody except
himself will see it.
To those most concerned the Mavick reception was the event of a lifetime.
To the town--that is, to a thousand or two persons occupying in their own
eyes an exclusive position it was one of the events of the season, and,
indeed, it was the sensation for a couple of days. The historian of
social life formerly had put upon him the task of painfully describing
all that went to make such an occasion brilliant--the house itself, the
decorations, the notable company, men distinguished in the State or the
Street, women as remarkable for their beauty as for their courage in its
exhibition, the whole world of fashion and of splendid extravagance upon
which the modiste and the tailor could look with as much pride as the
gardener does upon a show of flowers which his genius has brought to
perfection.
The historian has no longer this responsibility. It is transferred to a
kind of trust. A race of skillful artists has arisen, who, in
combination with the caterers, the decorators, and the milliners, produce
a composite piece of literature in which all details are woven into a
splendid whole--a composition rhetorical, humorous, lyrical, a noble
apotheosis of wealth and beauty which carefully satisfies individual
vanity and raises in the mind a noble picture of modern civilization.
The pen and the pencil contribute to this splendid result in the daily
chronicle of our life. Those who are not present are really witnesses of
the scene, and this pictorial and literary triumph is justified in the
fact that no other effort of the genius of reproduction is so eagerly
studied by the general public. Not only in the city, but in the remote
villages, these accounts are perused with interest, and it must be taken
as an evidence of the new conception of the duties of the favored of
fortune to the public pleasure that the participants in these fetes
overcome, though reluctantly, their objection to notoriety.
No other people in the world are so hospitable as the Americans, and so
willing to incur discomfort in showing hospitality. No greater proof of
this can be needed than the effort to give princely entertainments in
un-princely houses, where opposing streams of guests fight for progress
in scant passages and on narrow stairways, and pack themselves in
stifling rooms. The Mavick house, it should be said, was perfectly
adapted to the throng that seemed to fill but did not crowd it. The
spacious halls, the noble stairways, the ample drawing-rooms, the
ballroom, the music-room, the library, the picture-gallery, the
dining-room, the conservatory--into these the crowd flowed or lingered
without confusion or annoyance and in a continual pleasure of surprise.
"The best point of view," said an artist of Philip's acquaintance, "is
just here." They were standing in the great hall looking up at that noble
gallery from which flowed down on either hand a broad stairway.
"I didn't know there was so much beauty in New York. It never before had
such an opportunity to display itself. There is room for the exhibition
of the most elaborate toilets, and the costumes really look regal in such
a setting."
When Philip was shown to the dressing-room, conscious that the servant
was weighing him lightly in the social scale on account of his early
arrival, he found a few men who were waiting to make their appearance
more seasonable. They were young men, who had the air of being bored by
this sort of thing, and greeted each other with a look of courteous
surprise, as much as to say, "Hello! you here?" One of them, whom Philip
knew slightly, who had the reputation of being the distributer if not the
fountain of social information, and had the power of attracting gossip as
a magnet does iron filings, gave Philip much valuable information
concerning the function.
"Mrs. Mavick has done it this time. Everybody has tumbled in.
Washington is drained of its foreign diplomats, the heavy part of the
cabinet is moved over to represent the President, who sent a gracious
letter, the select from Boston, the most ancient from Philadelphia, and I
know that Chicago comes in a special train. Oh, it's the thing. I
assure you there was a scramble for invitations in the city. Lots of
visiting nobility--Count de l'Auney, I know, and that little snob, Lord
Montague."
"Who is he?"
"Lord Crewe Monmouth Fitzwilliam, the Marquis of Montague, eldest son of
the Duke of Tewkesbury. He's a daisy.
"They say he is over here looking for capital to carry on his peer
business when he comes into it. Don't know who put up the money for the
trip. These foreigners keep a sharp eye on our market, I can tell you.
They say she is a nice little girl, rather a blue-stocking, face rather
intelligent than pretty, but Montague won't care for that--excuse the old
joke, but it is the figure Monte is after. He hasn't any manners, but
he's not a bad sort of a fellow, generally good-natured, immensely
pleased with New York, and an enthusiastic connoisseur in club drinks."
At the proper hour--the hour, it came into, his mind, when the dear ones
at Rivervale had been long in sleep, lulled by the musical flow of the
Deerfield--Philip made his way to the reception room, where there
actually was some press of a crowd, in lines, to approach the attraction
of the evening, and as he waited his turn he had leisure to observe the
brilliant scene. There was scarcely a person in the room he knew. One
or two ladies gave him a preoccupied nod, a plain little woman whom he
had talked with about books at a recent dinner smiled upon him
encouragingly. But what specially impressed him at the moment was the
seriousness of the function, the intentness upon the presentation, and
the look of worry on the faces of the women in arranging trains and
avoiding catastrophes.
As he approached he fancied that Mr. Mavick looked weary and bored, and
that a shade of abstraction occasionally came over his face as if it were
difficult to keep his thoughts on the changing line.
But his face lighted up a little when he took Philip's hand and exchanged
with him the commonplaces of the evening. But before this he had to wait
a moment, for he was preceded by an important personage. A dapper little
figure, trim, neat, at the moment drew himself up before Mrs. Mavick,
brought his heels together with a click, and made a low bow. Doubtless
this was the French count. Mrs. Mavick was radiant. Philip had never
seen her in such spirits or so fascinating in manner.
"It is a great honor, count."
"It ees to me," said the count, with a marked accent; "I assure you it is
like Paris in ze time of ze monarchy. Ah, ze Great Republic, madame--so
it was in France in ze ancien regime. Ah, mademoiselle! Permit me," and
he raised her hand to his lips; "I salute--is it not" (turning to Mrs.
Mavick)--"ze princess of ze house?"
The next man who shook hands with the host, and then stood in an easy
attitude before the hostess, attracted Philip's attention strongly, for
he fancied from the deference shown him it must be the lord of whom he
had heard. He was a short, little man, with heavy limbs and a clumsy
figure, reddish hair, very thin on the crown, small eyes that were not
improved in expression by white eyebrows, a red face, smooth shaven and
freckled. It might have been the face of a hostler or a billiard-marker.
"I am delighted, my lord, that you could make room in your engagements to
come."
"Ah, Mrs. Mavick, I wouldn't have missed it," said my lord, with easy
assurance; "I'd have thrown over anything to have come. And, do you
know" (looking about him coolly), "it's quite English, 'pon my honor,
quite English--St. James and that sort of thing."
"You flatter me, my lord," replied the lady of the house, with a winning
smile.
"No, I do assure you, it's bang-up. Ah, Miss Mavick, delighted,
delighted. Most charming. Lucky for me, wasn't it? I'm just in time."
"You've only recently come over, Lord Montague?" asked Evelyn.
"Been here before--Rockies, shooting, all that. Just arrived now
--beastly trip, beastly."
"And so you were glad to land?"
"Glad to land anywhere. But New York suits me down to the ground.
It goes, as you say over here. You know Paris?"
"We have been in Paris. You prefer it?"
"For some thing. Paris as it was in the Empire. For sport, no.
For horses, no. And" (looking boldly into her face) "when you speak of
American women, Paris ain't in it, as you say over here."
And the noble lord, instead of passing on, wheeled about and took a
position near Evelyn, so that he could drop his valuable observations
into her ear as occasion offered.
To Philip Mrs. Mavick was civil, but she did not beam upon him, and she
did not detain him longer than to say, "Glad to see you." But Evelyn
--could Philip be deceived?--she gave him her hand cordially and looked
into his eyes trustfully, as she had the habit of doing in the country,
and as if it were a momentary relief to her to encounter in all this
parade a friend.
"I need not say that I am glad you could come. And oh" (there was time
only for a word), "I saw the announcement. Later, if you can, you will
tell me more about it."
Lord Montague stared at him as if to say, "Who the deuce are you?" and as
Philip met his gaze he thought, "No, he hasn't the manner of a stable
boy; no one but a born nobleman could be so confident with women and so
supercilious to men."
But my lord, was little in his thought. It was the face of Evelyn that
he saw, and the dainty little figure; the warmth of the little hand still
thrilled him. So simple, and only a bunch of violets in her corsage for
all ornament! The clear, dark complexion, the sweet mouth, the wonderful
eyes! What could Jenks mean by intimating that she was plain?
Philip drifted along with the crowd. He was very much alone. And he
enjoyed his solitude. A word and a smile now and then from an
acquaintance did not tempt him to come out of his seclusion. The gay
scene pleased him. He looked for a moment into the ballroom. At another
time he would have tried his fortune in the whirl. But now he looked on
as at a spectacle from which he was detached. He had had his moment and
he waited for another. The voluptuous music, the fascinating toilets,
the beautiful faces, the graceful forms that were woven together in this
shifting kaleidoscope, were, indeed, a part of his beautiful dream. But
how unreal they all were! There was no doubt that Evelyn's eyes had
kindled for him as for no one else whom she had greeted. She singled him
out in all this crush, her look, the cordial pressure of her hand,
conveyed the feeling of comradeship and understanding. This was enough
to fill his thought with foolish anticipations. Is there any being quite
so happy, quite so stupid, as a lover? A lover, who hopes everything and
fears everything, who goes in an instant from the heights of bliss to the
depths of despair.
When the "reception" was over and the company was breaking up into groups
and moving about, Philip again sought Evelyn. But she was the centre of
a somewhat noisy group, and it was not easy to join it.
Yet it was something that he could feast his eyes on her and was rewarded
by a look now and then that told him she was conscious of his presence.
Encouraged by this, he was making his way to her, when there was a
movement towards the supper-room, and Mrs. Mavick had taken the arm of
the Count de l'Auney, and the little lord was jauntily leading away
Evelyn. Philip had a pang of disgust and jealousy. Evelyn was actually
chatting with him and seemed amused. Lord Montague was evidently laying
himself out to please and exerting all the powers of his subtle humor and
exploiting his newly acquired slang. That Philip could hear as they
moved past him. "The brute!" Philip said to himself, with the injustice
which always clouds the estimate of a lover of a rival whose
accomplishments differ from his own.
In the supper-room, however, in the confusion and crowding of it, Philip
at length found his opportunity to get to the side of Evelyn, whose smile
showed him that he was welcome. It was in that fortunate interval when
Lord Montague was showing that devotion to women was not incompatible
with careful attention to terrapin and champagne. Philip was at once
inspired to say:
"How lovely it is! Aren't you tired?"
"Not at all. Everybody is very kind, and some are very amusing. I am
learning a great deal," and there was a quizzical look in her eyes,
"about the world."
"Well," said Philip, "t's all here."
"I suppose so. But do you know," and there was quite an ingenuous blush
in her cheeks as she said it, "it isn't half so nice, Mr. Burnett, as a
picnic in Zoar."
"So you remember that?" Philip had not command of himself enough not to
attempt the sentimental.
"You must think I have a weak memory," she replied, with a laugh.
"And the story? When shall we have it?"
"Soon, I hope. And, Miss Mavick, I owe so much of it to you that I hope
you will let me send you the very first copy from the press."
"Will you? And do you Of course I shall be pleased and" (making him a
little curtsy) "honored, as one ought to say in this company."
Lord Montague was evidently getting uneasy, for his attention was
distracted from the occupation of feeding.
"No, don't go Lord Montague, an old friend, Mr. Burnett."
"Much pleased," said his lordship, looking round rather inquiringly at
the intruder. "I can't say much for the champagne--ah, not bad, you
know--but I always said that your terrapin isn't half so nasty as it
looks." And his lordship laughed most good-humoredly, as if he were
paying the American nation a deserved compliment.
"Yes," said Philip, "we have to depend upon France for the champagne, but
the terrapin is native."
"Quite so, and devilish good! That ain't bad, 'depend upon France for
the champagne!' There is nothing like your American humor, Miss Mavick."
"It needs an Englishman to appreciate it," replied Evelyn, with a twinkle
in her eyes which was lost upon her guest.
In the midst of these courtesies Philip bowed himself away. The party
was over for him, though he wandered about for a while, was attracted
again by the music to the ballroom, and did find there a dinner
acquaintance with whom he took a turn. The lady must have thought him a
very uninteresting or a very absent-minded companion.
As for Lord Montague, after he had what he called a "go" in the
dancing-room, he found his way back to the buffet in the supper-room, and
the historian says that he greatly enjoyed himself, and was very amusing,
and that he cultivated the friendship of an obliging waiter early in the
morning, who conducted his lordship to his cab.
XVII
The morning after The Puritan Nun was out, as Philip sat at his office
desk, conscious that the eyes of the world were on him, Mr. Mavick
entered, bowed to him absent-mindedly, and was shown into Mr. Hunt's
room.
Philip had dreaded to come to the office that morning and encounter the
inquisition and perhaps the compliments of his fellow-clerks.
He had seen his name in staring capitals in the book-seller's window as
he came down, and he felt that it was shamefully exposed to the public
gaze, and that everybody had seen it. The clerks, however, gave no sign
that the event had disturbed them. He had encountered many people he
knew on the street, but there had been no recognition of his leap into
notoriety. Not a fellow in the club, where he had stopped a moment, had
treated him with any increased interest or deference. In the office only
one person seemed aware of his extraordinary good fortune. Mr. Tweedle
had come to the desk and offered his hand in his usual conciliatory and
unctuous manner.
"I see by the paper, Mr. Burnett, that we are an author. Let me
congratulate you. Mrs. Tweedle told me not to come home without bringing
your story. Who publishes it?"
"I shall be much honored," said Philip, blushing, "if Mrs. Tweedle will
accept a copy from me."
"I didn't mean that, Mr. Burnett; but, of course, gift of the author
--Mrs. Tweedle will be very much pleased."
In half an hour Mr. Mavick came out, passed him without recognition, and
hurried from the office, and Philip was summoned to Mr. Hunt's room.
"I want you to go to Washington immediately, Mr. Burnett. Return by the
night train. You can do without your grip? Take these papers to
Buckston Higgins--you see the address--who represents the British
Argentine syndicate. Wait till he reads them and get his reply. Here is
the money for the trip. Oh, after Mr. Higgins writes his answer, ask him
if you can telegraph me 'yes' or 'no.' Good-morning."
While Philip was speeding to Washington, an important conference was
taking place in Murad Ault's office. He was seated at his desk, and
before him lay two despatches, one from Chicago and a cable from London.
Opposite him, leaning forward in his chair, was a lean, hatchet-faced
man, with keen eyes and aquiline nose, who watched his old curbstone
confidant like a cat.
"I tell you, Wheatstone," said Mr. Ault, with an unmoved face, bringing
his fist down on the table, "now is the time to sell these three stocks."
"Why," said Mr. Wheatstone, with a look of wonder, "they are about the
strongest on the list. Mavick controls them."
"Does he?" said Ault. "Then he can take care of them."
"Have you any news, Mr. Ault?"
"Nothing to speak of," replied Ault, grimly. "It just looks so to me.
All you've got to do is to sell. Make a break this afternoon, about two
or three points off."
"They are too strong," protested Mr. Wheatstone.
"That is just the reason. Everybody will think something must be the
matter, or nobody would be fool enough to sell. You keep your eye on the
Spectrum this afternoon and tomorrow morning. About Organization and one
or two other matters."
"Ah, they do say that Mavick is in Argentine up to his neck," said the
broker, beginning to be enlightened.
"Is he? Then you think he would rather sell than buy?"
Mr. Wheatstone laughed and looked admiringly at his leader. "He may have
to."
Mr. Ault took up the cable cipher and read it to himself again. If Mr.
Hunt had known its contents he need not have waited for Philip to
telegraph "no" from Washington.
"It's all right, Wheatstone. It's the biggest thing you ever struck.
Pitch 'em overboard in the morning. The Street is shaky about Argentine.
There'll be h---to pay before half past twelve. I guess you can safely
go ten points. Lower yet, if Mavick's brokers begin to unload. I guess
he will have to unless he can borrow. Rumor is a big thing, especially
in a panic, eh? Keep your eye peeled. And, oh, won't you ask Babcock to
step round here?"
Mr. Babcock came round, and had his instructions when to buy. He had the
reputation of being a reckless broker, and not a safe man to follow.
The panic next day, both in London and New York, was long remembered. In
the unreasoning scare the best stocks were sacrificed. Small country
"investors" lost their stakes. Some operators were ruined. Many men
were poorer at the end of the scrimmage, and a few were richer. Murad
Ault was one of the latter. Mavick pulled through, though at an enormous
cost, and with some diminution of the notion of his solidity. The wise
ones suspected that his resources had been overestimated, or that they
were not so well at his command as had been supposed.
When he went home that night he looked five years older, and was too worn
and jaded to be civil to his family. The dinner passed mostly in
silence. Carmen saw that something serious had happened. Lord Montague
had called.
"Eh, what did he want?" said Mavick, surlily.
Carmen looked up surprised. "What does anybody after a reception call
for?"
"The Lord only knows."
"He is the funniest little man," Evelyn ventured to say.
"That is no way, child, to speak of the son of a duke," said Mavick,
relaxing a little.
Carmen did not like the tone in which this was said, but she prudently
kept silent. And presently Evelyn continued:
"He asked for you, papa, and said he wanted to pay his respects."
"I am glad he wants to pay anything," was the ungracious answer. Still
Evelyn was not to be put down.
"It was such a bright day in the Park. What were you doing all day,
papa?"
"Why, my dear, I was engaged in Research; you will be pleased to know.
Looking after those ten millions."
When the dinner was over, Carmen followed Mr. Mavick to his study.
"What is the matter, Tom?"
"Nothing uncommon. It's a beastly hole down there. The Board used
to be made up of gentlemen. Now there are such fellows as Ault, a
black-hearted scoundrel."
"But he has no influence. He is nothing socially," said Carmen.
"Neither is a wolf or a cyclone. But I don't care to talk about him.
Don't you see, I don't want to be bothered?"
While these great events were taking place Philip was enjoying all the
tremors and delights of expectation which attend callow authorship. He
did not expect much, he said to himself, but deep down in his heart there
was that sweet hope, which fortunately always attends young writers, that
his would be an exceptional experience in the shoal of candidates for
fame, and he was secretly preparing himself not to be surprised if he
should "awake one morning and find himself famous."
The first response was from Celia. She wrote warm-heartedly. She wrote
at length, analyzing the characters, recalling the striking scenes, and
praising without stint the conception and the working out of the
character of the heroine. She pointed out the little faults of
construction and of language, and then minimized them in comparison with
the noble motive and the unity and beauty of the whole. She told Philip
that she was proud of him, and then insisted that, when his biography,
life, and letters was published, it would appear, she hoped, that his
dear friend had just a little to do with inspiring him. It was exactly
the sort of letter an author likes to receive, critical, perfectly
impartial, and with entire understanding of his purpose. All the author
wants is to be understood.
The letter from Alice was quite of another sort, a little shy in speaking
of the story, but full of affection. "Perhaps, dear Phil," she wrote, "I
ought not to tell you how much I like it, how it quite makes me blush in
its revelation of the secrets of a New England girl's heart. I read it
through fast, and then I read it again slowly. It seemed better even the
second time. I do think, Phil, it is a dear little book. Patience says
she hopes it will not become common; it is too fine to be nosed about by
the ordinary. I suppose you had to make it pathetic. Dear me! that is
just the truth of it. Forgive me for writing so freely. I hope it will
not be long before we see you. To think it is done by little Phil!"
The most eagerly expected acknowledgment was, however, a disappointment.
Philip knew Mrs. Mavick too well by this time to expect a letter from her
daughter, but there might have been a line. But Mrs. Mavick wrote
herself. Her daughter, she said, had asked her to acknowledge the
receipt of his very charming story. When he had so many friends it was
very thoughtful in him to remember the acquaintances of last summer. She
hoped the book would have the success it deserved.
This polite note was felt to be a slap in the face, but the effect of it
was softened a little later by a cordial and appreciative letter from
Miss McDonald, telling the author what great delight and satisfaction
they had had in reading it, and thanking him for a prose idyl that showed
in the old-fashioned way that common life was not necessarily vulgar.
The critics seemed to Philip very slow in letting the public know of the
birth of the book. Presently, however, the little notices, all very much
alike, began to drop along, longer or shorter paragraphs, commonly in
undiscriminating praise of the beauty of the story, the majority of them
evidently written by reviewers who sat down to a pile of volumes to be
turned off, and who had not more than five or ten minutes to be lost.
Rarely, however, did any one condemn it, and that showed that it was
harmless. Mr. Brad had given it quite a lift in the Spectrum. The
notice was mainly personal--the first work of a brilliant young man at
the bar who was destined to go high in his profession, unless literature
should, fortunately for the public, have stronger attractions for him.
That such a country idyl should be born amid law-books was sufficiently
remarkable. It was an open secret that the scene of the story was the
birthplace of the author--a lovely village that was brought into notice a
summer ago as the chosen residence of Thomas Mavick and his family.
Eagerly looked for at first, the newspaper notices soon palled upon
Philip, the uniform tone of good-natured praise, unanimous in the
extravagance of unmeaning adjectives. Now and then he welcomed one that
was ill-natured and cruelly censorious. That was a relief. And yet
there were some reviews of a different sort, half a dozen in all, and
half of them from Western journals, which took the book seriously, saw
its pathos, its artistic merit, its failure of construction through
inexperience. A few commended it warmly to readers who loved ideal
purity and could recognize the noble in common life. And some, whom
Philip regarded as authorities, welcomed a writer who avoided
sensationalism, and predicted for him an honorable career in letters, if
he did not become self-conscious and remained true to his ideals.
The book clearly had not made a hit, the publishers had sold one edition
and ordered half another, and no longer regarded the author as a risk.
But, better than this, the book had attracted the attention of many
lovers of literature. Philip was surprised day after day by meeting
people who had read it. His name began to be known in a small circle who
are interested in the business, and it was not long before he had offers
from editors, who were always on the lookout for new writers of promise,
to send something for their magazines. And, perhaps more flattering than
all, he began to have society invitations to dine, and professional
invitations to those little breakfasts that publishers give to old
writers and to young whose names are beginning to be spoken of. All this
was very exhilarating and encouraging. And yet Philip was not allowed to
be unduly elated by the attention of his fellow-craftsmen, for he soon
found that a man's consequence in this circle, as well as with the great
public, depended largely upon the amount of the sale of his book. How
else should it be rated, when a very popular author, by whom Philip sat
one day at luncheon, confessed that he never read books?
"So," said Mr. Sharp, one morning, "I see you have gone into literature,
Mr. Burnett."
"Not very deep," replied Philip with a smile, as he rose from his desk.
"Going to drop law, eh?"
"I haven't had occasion to drop much of anything yet," said Philip, still
smiling.
"Oh well, two masters, you know," and Mr. Sharp passed on to his room.
It was not, however, Mr. Sharp's opinion that Philip was concerned about.
The polite note from Mrs. Mavick stuck in his mind. It was a civil way
of telling him that all summer debts were now paid, and that his
relations with the house of Mavick were at an end. This conclusion was
forced upon him when he left his card, a few days after the reception,
and had the ill luck not to find the ladies at home. The situation had
no element of tragedy in it, but Philip was powerless. He could not
storm the house. He had no visible grievance. There was nothing to
fight. He had simply run against one of the invisible social barriers
that neither offer resistance nor yield. No one had shown him any
discourtesy that society would recognize as a matter of offense. Nay,
more than that, it could have no sympathy with him. It was only the case
of a presumptuous and poor young man who was after a rich girl. The
position itself was ignoble, if it were disclosed.
Yet fortune, which sometimes likes to play the mischief with the best
social arrangements, did give Philip an unlooked-for chance. At a dinner
given by the lady who had been Philip's only partner at the Mavick
reception, and who had read his story and had written to "her partner" a
most kind little note regretting that she had not known she was dancing
with an author, and saying that she and her husband would be delighted to
make his acquaintance, Philip was surprised by the presence of the
Mavicks in the drawing-room. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Mavick seemed
especially pleased when they encountered him, and in fact his sole
welcome from the family was in the eyes of Evelyn.
The hostess had supposed that the Mavicks would be pleased to meet the
rising author, and in still further carrying out her benevolent purpose,
and with, no doubt, a sympathy in the feelings of the young, Mrs. Van
Cortlandt had assigned Miss Mavick to Mr. Burnett. It was certainly a
natural arrangement, and yet it called a blank look to Mrs. Mavick's
face, that Philip saw, and put her in a bad humor which needed an effort
for her to conceal it from Mr. Van Cortlandt. The dinner-party was
large, and her ill-temper was not assuaged by the fact that the young
people were seated at a distance from her and on the same side of the
table.
"How charming your daughter is looking, Mrs. Mavick!" Mr. Van Cortlandt
began, by way of being agreeable. Mrs. Mavick inclined her head. "That
young Burnett seems to be a nice sort of chap; Mrs. Van Cortlandt says he
is very clever."
"Yes?"
"I haven't read his book. They say he is a lawyer."
"Lawyer's clerk, I believe," said Mrs. Mavick, indifferently.
"Authors are pretty plenty nowadays."
"That's a fact. Everybody writes. I don't see how all the poor devils
live." Mr. Van Cortlandt had now caught the proper tone, and the
conversation drifted away from personalities.
It was a very brilliant dinner, but Philip could not have given much
account of it. He made an effort to be civil to his left-hand neighbor,
and he affected an ease in replying to cross-table remarks. He fancied
that he carried himself very well, and so he did for a man unexpectedly
elevated to the seventh heaven, seated for two hours beside the girl
whose near presence filled him with indescribable happiness. Every look,
every tone of her voice thrilled him. How dear she was! how adorable she
was! How radiantly happy she seemed to be whenever she turned her face
towards him to ask a question or to make a reply!
At moments his passion seemed so overmastering that he could hardly
restrain himself from whispering, "Evelyn, I love you." In a hundred
ways he was telling her so. And she must understand. She must know that
this was not an affair of the moment, but that there was condensed in it
all the constant devotion of months and months.
A woman, even any girl with the least social experience, would have seen
this. Was Evelyn's sympathetic attention, her evident enjoyment in
talking with him, any evidence of a personal interest, or only a young
girl's enjoyment of her new position in the world? That she liked him he
was sure. Did she, was she beginning in any degree to return his
passion? He could not tell, for guilelessness in a woman is as
impenetrable as coquetry.
Of what did they talk? A stenographer would have made a meagre report of
it, for the most significant part of this conversation of two fresh,
honest natures was not in words. One thing, however, Philip could bring
away with him that was not a mere haze of delicious impressions. She had
been longing, she said, to talk to him about his story. She told him how
eagerly she had read it, and in talking about its meaning she revealed to
him her inner thought more completely than she could have done in any
other way, her sympathy with his mind, her interest in his work.
"Have you begun another?" she asked, at last.
"No, not on paper."
"But you must. It must be such a world to you. I can't imagine anything
so fine as that. There is so much about life to be said.
To make people see it as it is; yes, and as it ought to be. Will you?"
"You forget that I am a lawyer."
"And you prefer to be that, a lawyer, rather than an author?"
"It is not exactly what I prefer, Miss Mavick."
"Why not? Does anybody do anything well if his heart is not in it?"
"But circumstances sometimes compel a man."
"I like better for men to compel circumstances," the girl exclaimed, with
that disposition to look at things in the abstract that Philip so well
remembered.
"Perhaps I do not make myself understood. One must have a career."
"A career?" And Evelyn looked puzzled for a moment. "You mean for
himself, for his own self?" There is a lawyer who comes to see papa.
I've been in the room sometimes, when they don't mind. Such talk about
schemes, and how to do this and that, and twisting about. And not a word
about anything any of the time. And one day when he was waiting for papa
I talked with him. You would have been surprised.
I told papa that I could not find anything to interest him. Papa laughed
and said it was my fault, he was one of the sharpest lawyers in the city.
Would you rather be that than to write?"
"Oh, all lawyers are not like that. And, don't you know, literature
doesn't pay."
"Yes, I have heard that." And then she thought a minute and with a
quizzical look continued: "That is such a queer word, 'pay.' McDonald
says that it pays to be good. Do you think, Mr. Burnett, that law would
pay you?"
Evidently the girl had a standard of judging people that was not much in
use.
Before they rose from the table, Philip asked, speaking low, "Miss
Mavick, won't you give me a violet from your bunch in memory of this
evening?"
Evelyn hesitated an instant, and then, without looking up, disengaged
three, and shyly laid them at her left hand. "I like the number three
better."
Philip covered the flowers with his hand, and said, "I will keep them
always."
"That is a long time," Evelyn answered, but still without looking up.
But when they rose the color mounted to her cheeks, and Philip thought
that the glorious eyes turned upon him were full of trust.
"It is all your doing," said Carmen, snappishly, when Mavick joined her
in the drawing-room.
"What is?"
"You insisted upon having him at the reception."
"Burnett? Oh, stuff, he isn't a fool!"
There was not much said as the three drove home. Evelyn, flushed with
pleasure and absorbed in her own thoughts, saw that something had gone
wrong with her mother and kept silent. Mr. Mavick at length broke the
silence with:
"Did you have a good time, child?"
"Oh, yes," replied Evelyn, cheerfully, "and Mrs. Van Cortlandt was very
sweet to me. Don't you think she is very hospitable, mamma?"
"Tries to be," Mrs. Mavick replied, in no cordial tone. "Good-natured
and eccentric. She picks up the queerest lot of people. You can never
know whom you will not meet at her house. Just now she goes in for being
literary."
Evelyn was not so reticent with McDonald. While she was undressing she
disclosed that she had had a beautiful evening, that she was taken out by
Mr. Burnett, and talked about his story.
"And, do you know, I think I almost persuaded him to write another."
"It's an awful responsibility," dryly said the shrewd Scotch woman,
"advising young men what to do."
XVIII
Upon the recollection of this dinner Philip maintained his hope and
courage for a long time. The day after it, New York seemed more
brilliant to him than it had ever been. In the afternoon he rode down to
the Battery. It was a mild winter day, with a haze in the atmosphere
that softened all outlines and gave an enchanting appearance to the
harbor shores. The water was silvery, and he watched a long time the
craft plying on it--the businesslike ferry-boats, the spiteful tugs, the
great ocean steamers, boldly pushing out upon the Atlantic through the
Narrows or cautiously drawing in as if weary with the buffeting of the
waves. The scene kindled in him a vigorous sense of life, of prosperity,
of longing for the activity of the great world.
Clearly he must do something and not be moping in indecision.
Uncertainty is harder to bear than disaster itself. When he thought of
Evelyn, and he always thought of her, it seemed cowardly to hesitate.
Celia, after her first outburst of enthusiasm, had returned to her
cautious advice. The law was much surer. Literature was a mere chance.
Why not be content with his little success and buckle down to his
profession? Perhaps by-and-by he would have leisure to indulge his
inclination. The advice seemed sound.
But there was Evelyn, with her innocent question.
"Would the law pay you?" Evelyn? Would he be more likely to win her by
obeying the advice of Celia, or by trusting to Evelyn's inexperienced
discernment? Indeed, what chance was there to win her at all? What had
he to offer her?
His spirits invariably fell when he thought of submitting his pretensions
to the great man of Wall Street or to his worldly wife. Already it was
the gossip of the clubs that Lord Montague was a frequent visitor at the
Mavicks', that he was often seen in their box at the opera, and that Mrs.
Mavick had said to Bob Shafter that it was a scandal to talk of Lord
Montague as a fortune-hunter. He was a most kind-hearted, domestic man.
She should not join in the newspaper talk about him. He belonged to an
old English family, and she should be civil to him. Generally she did
not fancy Englishmen, and this one she liked neither better nor worse
because he had a title. And when you came to that, why shouldn't any
American girl marry her equal?
As to Montague, he was her friend, and she knew that he had not the least
intention at present of marrying anybody. And then the uncharitable
gossip went on, that there was the Count de l'Auney, and that Mrs. Mavick
was playing the one off against the other.
As the days went on and spring began to appear in the light, fleeting
clouds in the blue sky and in the greening foliage in the city squares,
Philip became more and more restless. The situation was intolerable.
Evelyn he could never see. Perhaps she wondered that he made no effort
to see her. Perhaps she never thought of him at all, and simply, like an
obedient child, accepted her mother's leading, and was getting to like
that society life which was recorded in the daily journals. What did it
matter to him whether he stuck to the law or launched himself into the
Bohemia of literature, so long as doubt about Evelyn haunted him day and
night? If she was indifferent to him, he would know the worst, and go
about his business like a man. Who were the Mavicks, anyway?
Alice had written him once that Evelyn was a dear girl, no one could help
loving her; but she did not like the blood of father and mother. "And
remember, Phil--you must let me say this--there is not a drop of mean
blood in your ancestors."
Philip smiled at this. He was not in love with Mrs. Mavick nor with her
husband. They were for him simply guardians of a treasure he very much
coveted, and yet they were to a certain extent ennobled in his mind as
the authors of the being he worshiped. If it should be true that his
love for her was returned, it would not be possible even for them to
insist upon a course that would make their daughter unhappy for life.
They might reject him--no doubt he was a wholly unequal match for the
heiress--but could they, to the very end, be cruel to her?
Thus the ingenuous young man argued with himself, until it seemed plain
to him that if Evelyn loved him, and the conviction grew that she did,
all obstacles must give way to this overmastering passion of his life.
If he were living in a fool's paradise he would know it, and he ventured
to put his fortune to the test of experiment. The only manly course was
to gain the consent of the parents to ask their daughter to marry him; if
not that, then to be permitted to see her. He was nobly resolved to
pledge himself to make no proposals to her without their approval.
This seemed a very easy thing to do until he attempted it. He would
simply happen into Mr. Mavick's office, and, as Mr. Mavick frequently
talked familiarly with him, he would contrive to lead the conversation to
Evelyn, and make his confession. He mapped out the whole conversation,
and even to the manner in which he would represent his own prospects and
ambitions and his hopes of happiness. Of course Mr. Mavick would evade,
and say that it would be a long time before they should think of
disposing of their daughter's hand, and that--well, he must see himself
that he was in no position to support a wife accustomed to luxury;
in short, that one could not create situations in real life as he could
in novels, that personally he could give him no encouragement,
but that he would consult his wife.
This dream got no further than a private rehearsal. When he called at
Mr. Mavick's office he learned that Mr. Mavick had gone to the Pacific
coast, and that he would probably be absent several weeks. But Philip
could not wait. He resolved to end his torture by a bold stroke.
He wrote to Mrs. Mavick, saying that he had called at Mr. Mavick's
office, and, not finding him at home, he begged that she would give him
an interview concerning a matter of the deepest personal interest to
himself.
Mrs. Mavick understood in an instant what this meant. She had feared it.
Her first impulse was to write him a curt note of a character that would
end at once all intercourse. On second thought she determined to see
him, to discover how far the affair had gone, and to have it out with him
once for all. She accordingly wrote that she would have a few minutes at
half past five the next day.
As Philip went up the steps of the Mavick house at the appointed hour, he
met coming out of the door--and it seemed a bad omen--Lord Montague, who
seemed in high spirits, stared at Philip without recognition, whistled
for his cab, and drove away.
Mrs. Mavick received him politely, and, without offering her hand, asked
him to be seated. Philip was horribly embarrassed. The woman was so
cool, so civil, so perfectly indifferent. He stammered out something
about the weather and the coming spring, and made an allusion to the
dinner at Mrs. Van Cortlandt's. Mrs. Mavick was not in the mood to help
him with any general conversation, and presently said, looking at her
watch:
"You wrote me that you wanted to consult me. Is there anything I can do
for you?"
"It was a personal matter," said Philip, getting control of himself.
"So you wrote. Mr. Mavick is away, and if it is in regard to anything in
your office, any promotion, you know, I don't understand anything about
business." And Mrs. Mavick smiled graciously.
"No, it is not about the office. I should not think of troubling my
friends in that way. It is just that--"
"Oh, I see," Mrs. Mavick interrupted, with good-humor, "it's about the
novel. I hear that it has sold very well. And you are not certain
whether its success will warrant your giving up your clerkship. Now as
for me," and she leaned back in her chair, with the air of weighing the
chances in her mind, "it doesn't seem to me that a writer--"
"No, it is not that," said Philip, leaning forward and looking her full
in the face with all the courage he could summon, "it is your daughter."
"What!" cried Mrs. Mavick, in a tone of incredulous surprise.
"I was afraid you would think me very presumptuous."
"Presumptuous! Why, she is a child. Do you know what you are talking
about?"
"My mother married at eighteen," said Philip, gently.
"That is an interesting piece of information, but I don't see its
bearing. Will you tell me, Mr. Burnett, what nonsense you have got into
your head?"
"I want," and Philip spoke very gently--"I want, Mrs. Mavick, permission
to see your daughter."
"Ah! I thought in Rivervale, Mr. Burnett, that you were a gentleman.
You presume upon my invitation to this house, in an underhand way,
to--What right have you?"
Mrs. Mavick was so beside herself that she could hardly speak. The lines
in her face deepened into wrinkles and scowls. There was something
malevolent and mean in it. Philip was astonished at the transformation.
And she looked old and ugly in her passion.
"You!" she repeated.
"It is only this, Mrs. Mavick," and Philip spoke calmly, though his blood
was boiling at her insulting manner--"it is only this--I love your
daughter."
"And you have told her this?"
"No, never, never a word."
"Does she know anything of this absurd, this silly attempt?"
"I am afraid not."
"Ah! Then you have spared yourself one humiliation. My daughter's
affections are not likely to be placed where her parents do not approve.
Her mother is her only confidante. I can tell you, Mr. Burnett, and when
you are over this delusion you will thank me for being so plain with you,
my daughter would laugh at the idea of such a proposal. But I will not
have her annoyed by impecunious aspirants."
"Madam!" cried Philip, rising, with a flushed face, and then he
remembered that he was talking to Evelyn's mother, and uttered no other
word.
"This is ended." And then, with a slight change of manner, she went on:
"You must see how impossible it is. You are a man of honor.
"I should like to think well of you. I shall trust to your honor that
you will never try, by letter or otherwise, to hold any communication
with her."
"I shall obey you," said Philip, quite stiffly, "because you are her
mother. But I love her, and I shall always love her."
Mrs. Mavick did not condescend to any reply to this, but she made a cold
bow of dismissal and turned away from him. He left the house and walked
away, scarcely knowing in which direction he went, anger for a time being
uppermost in his mind, chagrin and defeat following, and with it the
confused feeling of a man who has passed through a cyclone and been
landed somewhere amid the scattered remnants of his possessions.
As he strode away he was intensely humiliated. He had been treated like
an inferior. He had voluntarily put himself in a position to be
insulted. Contempt had been poured upon him, his feelings had been
outraged, and there was no way in which he could show his resentment.
Presently, as his anger subsided, he began to look at the matter more
sanely. What had happened? He had made an honorable proposal. But what
right had he to expect that it would be favorably considered?
He knew all along that it was most unlikely that Mrs. Mavick would
entertain for a moment idea of such a match. He knew what would be the
unanimous opinion of society about it. In the case of any other young
man aspiring to the hand of a rich girl, he knew very well what he should
have thought.
Well, he had done nothing dishonorable. And as he reviewed the bitter
interview he began to console himself with the thought that he had not
lost his temper, that he had said nothing to be regretted, nothing that
he should not have said to the mother of the girl he loved. There was an
inner comfort in this, even if his life were ruined.
Mrs. Mavick, on the contrary, had not so good reason to be satisfied with
herself. It was a principle of her well-ordered life never to get into a
passion, never to let herself go, never to reveal herself by intemperate
speech, never to any one, except occasionally to her husband when his
cold sarcasm became intolerable. She felt, as soon as the door closed on
Philip, that she had made a blunder, and yet in her irritation she
committed a worse one. She went at once to Evelyn's room, resolved to
make it perfectly sure that the Philip episode was ended. She had had
suspicions about her daughter ever since the Van Cortlandt dinner. She
would find out if they were justified, and she would act decidedly before
any further mischief was done. Evelyn was alone, and her mother kissed
her fondly several times and then threw herself into an easy-chair and
declared she was tired.
"My dear, I have had such an unpleasant interview."
"I am sorry," said Evelyn, seating herself on the arm of the chair and
putting her arm round her mother's neck. "With whom, mamma?"
"Oh, with that Mr. Burnett." Mrs. Mavick felt a nervous start in the arm
that caressed her.
"Here?"
"Yes, he came to see your father, I fancy, about some business. I think
he is not getting on very well."
"Why, his book--"
"I know, but that amounts to nothing. There is not much chance for a
lawyer's clerk who gets bitten with the idea that he can write."
"If he was in trouble, mamma," said Evelyn, softly, "then you were good
to him."
"I tried to be," Mrs. Mavick half sighed, "but you can't do anything with
such people" (by 'such people' Mrs. Mavick meant those who have no money)
"when they don't get on. They are never reasonable. And he was in such
an awful bad temper. You cannot show any kindness to such people without
exposing yourself. I think he presumes upon his acquaintance with your
father. It was most disagreeable, and he was so rude" (a little thrill
in the arm again)--"well, not exactly rude, but he was not a bit nice to
me, and I am afraid I showed by my looks that I was irritated. He was
just as disagreeable as he could be.
"He met Lord Montague on the steps, and he had something spiteful to say
about him. I had to tell him he was presuming a good deal on his
acquaintance, and that I considered his manner insulting. He flung out
of the house very high and mighty."
"That was not a bit like him, mamma."
"We didn't know him. That is all. Now we do, and I am thankful we do.
He will never come here again."
Evelyn was very still for a moment, and then she said: "I'm very sorry
for it all. It must be some misunderstanding."
"Of course, it is dreadful to be so disappointed in people. But we have
to learn. I don't know anything about his misunderstanding, but I did
not misunderstand what he said. At any rate, after such an exposition we
can have no further intercourse with him. You will not care to see any
one who treated your mother in this way? If you love me, you cannot be
friendly with him. I know you would not like to be."
Evelyn did not reply for a moment. Her silence revealed the fact to the
shrewd woman that she had not intervened a day too soon.
"You promise me, dear, that you will put the whole thing out of your
mind?" and she drew her daughter closer to her and kissed her.
And then Evelyn said slowly: "I shall not have any friends whom you do
not approve, but, mamma, I cannot be unjust in my mind."
And Mrs. Mavick had the good sense not to press the question further.
She still regarded Evelyn as a child. Her naivete, her simplicity, her
ignorance of social conventions and of the worldly wisdom which to Mrs.
Mavick was the sum of all knowledge misled her mother as to her power of
discernment and her strength of character. Indeed, Mrs. Mavick had only
the slightest conception of that range of thought and feeling in which
the girl habitually lived, and of the training which at the age of
eighteen had given her discipline, and great maturity of judgment as
well. She would be obedient, but she was incapable of duplicity, and
therefore she had said as plainly as possible that whatever the trouble
might be she would not be unjust to Philip.
The interview with her mother left her in a very distressed state of
mind. It is a horrible disillusion when a girl begins to suspect that
her mother is not sincere, and that her ideals of life are mean. This
knowledge may exist with the deepest affection--indeed, in a noble mind,
with an inward tenderness and an almost divine pity. How many times have
we seen a daughter loyal to a frivolous, worldly-minded, insincere
mother, shielding her and exhibiting to the censorious world the utmost
love and trust!
Evelyn was far from suspecting the extent of her mother's duplicity, but
her heart told her that an attempt had been made to mislead her, and that
there must be some explanation of Philip's conduct that would be
consistent with her knowledge of his character. And, as she endeavored
to pierce this mystery, it dawned upon her that there had been a method
in throwing her so much into the society of Lord Montague, and that it
was unnatural that such a friend as Philip should be seen so seldom--only
twice since the days in Rivervale. Naturally the very reverse of
suspicious, she had been dreaming on things to come in the seclusion of
her awakening womanhood, without the least notion that the freedom of her
own soul was to be interfered with by any merely worldly demands. But
now things that had occurred, and that her mother had said, came back to
her with a new meaning, and her trustful spirit was overwhelmed. And
there, in the silence of her chamber, began the fierce struggle between
desire and what she called her duty--a duty imposed from without.
She began to perceive that she was not free, that she was a part of a
social machine, the power of which she had not at all apprehended, and
that she was powerless in its clutch. She might resist, but peace was
gone. She had heretofore found peace in obedience, but when she
consulted her own heart she knew that she could not find peace in
obedience now. To a girl differently reared, perhaps, subterfuge, or
some manoeuvring justified by the situation, might have been resorted to.
But such a thing never occurred to Evelyn. Everything looked
dark before her, as she more clearly understood her mother's attitude,
and for the first time in years she could do nothing but give way to
emotions.
"Why, Evelyn, you have been crying!" exclaimed the governess, who came to
seek her. "What is the matter?"
Evelyn arose and threw herself on her friend's neck for a moment, and
then, brushing away the tears, said, with an attempt to smile, "Oh,
nothing; I got thinking, thinking, thinking, and Don't you ever get blue,
McDonald?"
"Not often," said the Scotchwoman, gravely. "But, dear, you have nothing
in the world to make you so."
"No, no, nothing;" and then she broke down again, and threw herself upon
McDonald's bosom in a passion of sobbing. "I can't help it. Mamma says
Phil--Mr. Burnett--is never to come to this house again. What have I
done? And he will think--he will think that I hate him."
McDonald drew the girl into her lap, and with uncommon gentleness
comforted her with caresses.
"Dear child," she said, "crosses must come into our lives; we cannot
help that. Your mother is no doubt doing what she thinks best for your
own happiness. Nothing can really hurt us for long, you know that well,
except what we do to ourselves. I never told you why I came to this
country--I didn't want to sadden you with my troubles--but now I want you
to understand me better. It is a long story."
But it was not very long in the telling, for the narrator found that what
seemed to her so long in the suffering could be conveyed to another in
only a few words. And the story was not in any of its features new,
except to the auditor. There had been a long attachment, passionate love
and perfect trust, long engagement, marriage postponed because both were
poor, and the lover struggling into his profession, and then, it seemed
sudden and unaccountable, his marriage with some one else. "It was not
like him," said the governess in conclusion; "it was his ambition to get
on that blinded him."
"And he, was he happy?" asked Evelyn.
"I heard that he was not" (and she spoke reluctantly); "I fear not. How
could he be?" And the governess seemed overwhelmed in a flood of tender
and painful memories. "That was over twenty years ago. And I have been
happy, my darling, I have had such a happy life with you.
"I never dreamed I could have such a blessing. And you, child, will be
happy too; I know it."
And the two women, locked in each other's arms, found that consolation in
sympathy which steals away half the grief of the world. Ah! who knows a
woman's heart?
For Philip there was in these days no such consolation. It was a man's
way not to seek any, to roll himself up in his trouble like a hibernating
bear. And yet there were times when he had an intolerable longing for a
confidant, for some one to whom he could relieve himself of part of his
burden by talking. To Celia he could say nothing. Instinct told him
that he should not go to her. Of the sympathy of Alice he was sure, but
why inflict his selfish grief on her tender heart? But he was writing to
her often, he was talking to her freely about his perplexities, about
leaving the office and trusting himself to the pursuit of literature in
some way. And, in answer to direct questions, he told her that he had
seen Evelyn only a few times, and, the fact was, that Mrs. Mavick had cut
him dead. He could not give to his correspondent a very humorous turn to
this situation, for Alice knew--had she not seen them often together, and
did she not know the depths of Philip's passion? And she read between
the lines the real state of the case. Alice was indignant, but she did
not think it wise to make too much of the incident. Of Evelyn she wrote
affectionately--she knew she was a noble and high-minded girl. As to her
mother, she dismissed her with a country estimate. "You know, Phil,
that I never thought she was a lady."
But the lover was not to be wholly without comfort. He met by chance one
day on the Avenue Miss McDonald, and her greeting was so cordial that he
knew that he had at least one friend in the house of Mavick.
It was a warm spring day, a stray day sent in advance, as it were, to
warn the nomads of the city that it was time to move on. The tramps in
Washington Square felt the genial impulse, and, seeking the shaded
benches, began to dream of the open country, the hospitable farmhouses,
the nooning by wayside springs, and the charm of wandering at will among
a tolerant and not too watchful people. Having the same abundant
leisure, the dwellers up-town--also nomads--were casting in their minds
how best to employ it, and the fortunate ones were already gathering
together their flocks and herds and preparing to move on to their camps
at Newport or among the feeding-hills of the New-England coast.
The foliage of Central Park, already heavy, still preserved the freshness
of its new birth, and invited the stroller on the Avenue to its
protecting shade. At Miss McDonald's suggestion they turned in and found
a secluded seat.
"I often come here," she said to Philip; "it is almost as peaceful as the
wilderness itself."
To Philip also it seemed peaceful, but the soothing influence he found in
it was that he was sitting with the woman who saw Evelyn hourly, who had
been with her only an hour ago.
"Yes," she said, in reply to a question, "everybody is well. We are
going to leave town earlier than usual this summer, as soon as Mr. Mavick
returns. Mrs. Mavick is going to open her Newport house; she says she
has had enough of the country. It is still very amusing to me to see how
you Americans move about with the seasons, just like the barbarians of
Turkestan, half the year in summer camps and half the year in winter
camps."
"Perhaps," said Philip, "it is because the social pasturage gets poor."
"Maybe," replied the governess, continuing the conceit, "only the horde
keeps pretty well together, wherever it is. I know we are to have a very
gay season. Lots of distinguished foreigners and all that."
"But," said Philip, "don't England and the Continent long for the
presence of Americans in the season in the same way?"
"Not exactly. It is the shop-keepers and hotels that sigh for the
Americans. I don't think that American shop-keepers expect much of
foreigners."
"And you are going soon? I suppose Miss Mavick is eager to go also,"
said Philip, trying to speak indifferently.
Miss McDonald turned towards him with a look of perfect understanding,
and then replied, "No, not eager; she hasn't been in her usual spirits
lately--no, not ill--and probably the change will be good for her.
It is her first season, you know, and that is always exciting to a girl.
Perhaps it is only the spring weather."
It was some moments before either of them spoke again, and then Miss
McDonald looked up--"Oh, Mr. Burnett, I have wanted to see you and have
a talk with you about your novel. I could say so little in my note. We
read it first together and then I read it alone, rather to sit in
judgment on it, you know. I liked it better the second time, but I could
see the faults of construction, and I could see, too, why it will be more
popular with a few people than with the general public. You don't mind
my saying--"
"Go on, the words of a friend."
"Yes, I know, are sometimes hardest to bear. Well, it is lovely, ideal,
but it seems to me you are still a little too afraid of human nature.
You are afraid to say things that are common. And the deep things of
life are pretty much all common. No, don't interrupt me. I love the
story just as it is. I am glad you wrote it as you did. It was natural,
in your state of experience, that you should do it. But in your next,
having got rid of what was on top of your mind, so to speak, you will
take a firmer, more confident hold of life. You are not offended?"
"No, indeed," cried Philip. "I am very grateful. No doubt you are
right. It seems to me, now that I am detached from it, as if it were
only a sort of prelude to something else."
"Well, you must not let my single opinion influence you too much, for I
must in honesty tell you another thing. Evelyn will not have a word of
criticism of it. She says it is like a piece of music, and the impudent
thing declares that she does not expect a Scotchwoman to understand
anything but ballad music."
Philip laughed at this, such a laugh as he had not indulged in for many
days. "I hope you don't quarrel about such a little thing."
"Not seriously. She says I may pick away at the story--and I like to see
her bristle up--but that she looks at the spirit."
"God bless her," said Philip under his breath.
Miss McDonald rose, and they walked out into the Avenue again. How
delightful was the genial air, the light, the blue sky of spring!
How the brilliant Avenue, now filling up with afternoon equipages,
sparkled in the sunshine!
When they parted, Miss McDonald gave him her hand and held his a moment,
looking into his eyes. "Mr. Burnett, authors need some encouragement.
When I left Evelyn she was going to her room with your book in her hand."
XIX
Why should not Philip trust the future? He was a free man. He had given
no hostages to fortune. Even if he did not succeed, no one else would be
involved in his failure. Why not follow his inclination, the dream of
his boyhood?
He was at liberty to choose for himself. Everybody in America is; this
is the proclamation of its blessed independence. Are we any better off
for the privilege of following first one inclination and then another,
which is called making a choice? Are they not as well off, and on the
whole as likely to find their right place, who inherit their callings in
life, whose careers are mapped out from the cradle by circumstance and
convention? How much time do we waste in futile experiment? Freedom to
try everything, which is before the young man, is commonly freedom to
excel in nothing.
There are, of course, exceptions. The blacksmith climbs into a city
pulpit. The popular preacher becomes an excellent insurance agent. The
saloon-keeper develops into the legislator, and wears the broadcloth and
high hat of the politician. The brakeman becomes the railway magnate,
and the college graduate a grocer's clerk, and the messenger-boy, picking
up by chance one day the pen, and finding it run easier than his legs,
becomes a power on a city journal, and advises society how to conduct
itself and the government how to make war and peace. All this adds to
the excitement and interest of life. On the whole, we say that people
get shaken into their right places, and the predetermined vocation is
often a mistake. There is the anecdote of a well-known clergyman who,
being in a company with his father, an aged and distinguished doctor of
divinity, raised his monitory finger and exclaimed, "Ah, you spoiled a
first-rate carpenter when you made a poor minister of me."
Philip thought he was calmly arguing the matter with himself. How often
do we deliberately weigh such a choice as we would that of another
person, testing our inclination by solid reason? Perhaps no one could
have told Philip what he ought to do, but every one who knew him, and the
circumstances, knew what he would do. He was, in fact, already doing it
while he was paltering with his ostensible profession. But he never
would have confessed, probably he would then have been ashamed to
confess, how much his decision to break with the pretense of law was
influenced by the thought of what a certain dark little maiden, whose
image was always in his mind, would wish him to do, and by the very
remarkable fact that she was seen going to her room with his well-read
story in her hand. Perhaps it was under her pillow at night!
Good-luck seemed to follow his decision--as it often does when a man
makes a questionable choice, as if the devil had taken an interest in his
downward road to prosperity. But Philip really gained a permanent
advantage. The novel had given him a limited reputation and very little
money. Yet it was his stepping-stone, and when he applied to his
publishers and told them of his decision, they gave him some work as a
reader for the house. At first this was fitful and intermittent, but as
he showed both literary discrimination and tact in judging of the market,
his services were more in request, and slowly he acquired confidential
relations with the house. Whatever he knew, his knowledge of languages
and his experience abroad, came into play, and he began to have more
confidence in himself, as he saw that his somewhat desultory education
had, after all, a market value.
The rather long period of his struggle, which is a common struggle, and
often disheartening, need not be dwelt on here. We can anticipate by
saying that he obtained in the house a permanent and responsible
situation, with an income sufficient for a bachelor without habits of
self-indulgence. It was not the crowning of a noble ambition, it was not
in the least the career he had dreamed of, but it gave him support and a
recognized position, and, above all, did not divert him from such
creative work as he was competent to do. Nay, he found very soon that
the feeling of security, without any sordid worry, gave freedom to his
imagination. There was something stimulating in the atmosphere of books
and manuscripts and in that world of letters which seems so large to
those who live in it. Fortunately, also, having a support, he was not
tempted to debase his talent by sensational ventures. What he wrote for
this or that magazine he wrote to please himself, and, although he saw no
fortune that way, the little he received was an encouragement as well as
an appreciable addition to his income.
There are two sorts of success in letters as in life generally.
The one is achieved suddenly, by a dash, and it lasts as long as the
author can keep the attention of the spectators upon his scintillating
novelties. When the sparks fade there is darkness. How many such
glittering spectacles this century has witnessed!
There is another sort of success which does not startlingly or at once
declare itself. Sometimes it comes with little observation. The
reputation is slowly built up, as by a patient process of nature.
It is curious, as Philip wrote once in an essay, to see this unfolding in
Lowell's life. There was no one moment when he launched into great
popularity--nay, in detail, he seemed to himself not to have made the
strike that ambition is always expecting. But lo! the time came when, by
universal public consent, which was in the nature of a surprise to him,
he had a high and permanent place in the world of letters.
In anticipating Philip's career, however, it must not be understood that
he had attained any wide public recognition. He was simply enrolled in
the great army of readers and was serving his apprenticeship. He was
recognized as a capable man by those who purvey in letters to the
entertainment of the world. Even this little foothold was not easily
gained in a day, as the historian discovered in reading some bundles of
old letters which Philip wrote in this time of his novitiate to Celia and
to his cousin Alice.
It was against Celia's most strenuous advice that he had trusted himself
to a literary career. "I see, my dear friend," she wrote,
in reply to his announcement that he was going that day to Mr. Hunt to
resign his position, "that you are not happy, but whatever your
disappointment or disillusion, you will not better yourself by
surrendering a regular occupation. You live too much in the imagination
already."
Philip fancied, with that fatuity common to his sex, that he had worn an
impenetrable mask in regard to his wild passion for Evelyn, and did not
dream that, all along, Celia had read him like an open book. She judged
Philip quite accurately. It was herself that she did not know, and she
would have repelled as nonsense the suggestion that her own restlessness
and her own changing experiments in occupation were due to the
unsatisfied longings of a woman's heart.
"You must not think," the letter went on, "that I want to dictate, but I
have noticed that men--it may be different with women--only succeed by
taking one path and diligently walking in it. And literature is not a
career, it is just a toss up, a lottery, and woe to you if you once draw
a lucky number--you will always be expecting another . . . You say
that I am a pretty one to give advice, for I am always chopping and
changing myself. Well, from the time you were a little boy, did I ever
give you but one sort of advice? I have been constant in that. And as
to myself, you are unjust. I have always had one distinct object in
life, and that I have pursued. I wanted to find out about life, to have
experience, and then do what I could do best, and what needed most to be
done. Why did I not stick to teaching in that woman's college? Well, I
began to have doubts, I began to experiment on my pupils. You will
laugh, but I will give you a specimen. One day I put a question to my
literature class, and I found out that not one of them knew how to boil
potatoes. They were all getting an education, and hardly one of them
knew how much the happiness of a home depends upon having the potatoes
mealy and not soggy. It was so in everything. How are we going to live
when we are all educated, without knowing how to live? Then I found that
the masses here in New York did not know any better than the classes how
to live. Don't think it is just a matter of cooking. It is knowing how,
generally, to make the most of yourself and of your opportunities, and
have a nice world to live in, a thrifty, self-helpful, disciplined world.
Is education giving us this? And then we think that organization will do
it, organization instead of self-development. We think we can organize
life, as they are trying to organize art. They have organized art as
they have the production of cotton.
"Did I tell you I was in that? No? I used to draw in school, and after
I had worked in the Settlement here in New York, and while I was working
down on the East Side, it came over me that maybe I had one talent
wrapped in a napkin; and I have been taking lessons in Fifty-seventh
Street with the thousand or two young women who do not know how to boil
potatoes, but are pursuing the higher life of art. I did not tell you
this because I knew you would say that I am just as inconsistent as you
are. But I am not. I have demonstrated the fact that neither I nor one
in a hundred of those charming devotees to art could ever earn a living
by art, or do anything except to add to the mediocrity of the amazing art
product of this free country.
"And you will ask, what now? I am going on in the same way. I am going
to be a doctor. In college I was very well up in physiology and anatomy,
and I went quite a way in biology. So you see I have a good start. I am
going to attend lectures and go into a hospital, as soon as there is an
opening, and then I mean to practice. One essential for a young doctor I
have in advance. That is patients. I can get all I want on the East
Side, and I have already studied many of them. Law and medicine are what
I call real professions."
However Celia might undervalue the calling that Philip had now entered
on, he had about this time evidence of the growing appreciation of
literature by practical business men. He was surprised one day by a
brief note from Murad Ault, asking him to call at his office as soon as
convenient.
Mr. Ault received him in his private office at exactly the hour named.
Evidently Mr. Ault's affairs were prospering. His establishment
presented every appearance of a high-pressure business perfectly
organized. The outer rooms were full of industrious clerks, messengers
were constantly entering and departing in a feverish rapidity, servants
moved silently about, conducting visitors to this or that waiting-room
and answering questions, excited speculators in groups were gesticulating
and vociferating, and in the anteroom were impatient clients awaiting
their turn. In the inner chamber, however, was perfect calm. There at
his table sat the dark, impenetrable operator, whose time was exactly
apportioned, serene, saturnine, or genial, as the case might be,
listening attentively, speaking deliberately, despatching the affair in
hand without haste or the waste of a moment.
Mr. Ault arose and shook hands cordially, and then went on, without delay
for any conventional talk.
"I sent for you, Mr. Burnett, because I wanted your help, and because I
thought I might do you a good turn. You see" (with a grim smile)
"I have not forgotten Rivervale days. My wife has been reading your
story. I don't have much time for such things myself, but her constant
talk about it has given me an idea. I want to suggest to you the scene
of a novel, one that would be bound to be a good seller.
"I could guarantee a big circulation. I have just become interested in
one of the great transcontinental lines." He named the most picturesque
of them--one that he, in fact, absolutely controlled. "Well, I want a
story, yes, I guess a good love-story--a romance of reality you might
call it--strung on that line. You take the idea?"
"Why," said Philip, half amused at the conceit and yet complimented by
the recognition of his talent, "I don't know anything about railroads
--how they are run, cost of building, prospect of traffic, engineering
difficulties, all that--nothing whatever."
"So much the better. It is a literary work I want, not a brag about the
road or a description of its enterprise. You just take the line as your
scene. Let the story run on that. The company, don't you see, must not
in any way be suspected with having anything to do with it, no mention of
its name as a company, no advertisement of the road on a fly-leaf or
cover. Just your own story, pure and simple."
"But," said Philip, more and more astonished at this unlooked-for
expansion of the literary field, "I could not embark on an enterprise of
such magnitude."
"Oh," said Mr. Ault, complacently, "that will be all arranged. Just a
pleasure trip, as far as that goes. You will have a private car, well
stocked, a photographer will go along, and I think--don't you? a
water-color artist. You can take your own time, stop when and where you
choose--at the more stations the better. It ought to be profusely
illustrated with scenes on the line--yes, have colored plates, all that
would give life and character to your story. Love on a Special, some
such title as that. It would run like oil. I will arrange to have it as
a serial in one of the big magazines, and then the book would be bound to
go. The company, of course, can have nothing to do with it, but I can
tell you privately that it would rather distribute a hundred thousand
copies of a book of good literature through the country than to encourage
the railway truck that is going now.
"I shouldn't wonder, Mr. Burnett, if the public would be interested in
having the Puritan Nun take that kind of a trip." And Mr. Ault ended his
explanation with an interrogatory smile.
Philip hesitated a moment, trying to grasp the conception of this
business use of literature. Mr. Ault resumed:
"It isn't anything in the nature of an advertisement. Literature is a
power. Why, do you know--of course you did not intend it--your story has
encouraged the Peacock Inn to double its accommodations, and half the
farmhouses in Rivervale are expecting summer boarders. The landlord of
the Peacock came to see me the other day, and he says everything is
stirred up there, and he has already to enlarge or refuse application."
"It is very kind in you, Mr. Ault, to think of me in that connection, but
I fear you have over-estimated my capacity. I could name half a dozen
men who could do it much better than I could. They know how to do it,
they have that kind of touch. I have been surprised at the literary
ability engaged by the great corporations."
Mr. Ault made a gesture of impatience. "I wouldn't give a damn for that
sort of thing. It is money thrown away. If I should get one of the
popular writers you refer to, the public would know he was hired. If you
lay your story out there, nobody will suspect anything of the sort. It
will be a clean literary novel. Not travel, you understand, but a story,
and the more love in it the better. It will be a novelty. You can run
your car sixty miles an hour in exciting passages, everything will work
into it. When people travel on the road the pictures will show them the
scenes of the story. It is a big thing," said Mr. Ault in conclusion.
"I see it is," said Philip, rising at the hint that his time had expired.
"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Ault, for your confidence in me. But
it is a new idea. I will have to think it over."
"Well, think it over. There is money in it. You would not start till
about midsummer. Good-day."
A private car! Travel like a prince! Certainly literature was looking
up in the commercial world. Philip walked back to his publishers with a
certain elasticity of step, a new sense of power. Yes, the power of the
pen. And why not? No doubt it would bring him money and spread his name
very widely. There was nothing that a friendly corporation could not do
for a favorite. He would then really be a part of the great, active,
enterprising world. Was there anything illegitimate in taking advantage
of such an opportunity? Surely, he should remain his own master, and
write nothing except what his own conscience approved. But would he not
feel, even if no one else knew it, that he was the poet-laureate of a
corporation?
And suddenly, as he thought how the clear vision of Evelyn would plunge
to the bottom of such a temptation, he felt humiliated that such a
proposition should have been made to him. Was there nothing, nobody,
that commercialism did not think for sale and to be trafficked in?
Nevertheless, he wrote to Alice about it, describing the proposal as it
was made to him, without making any comment on it.
Alice replied speedily. "Isn't it funny," she wrote, "and isn't it
preposterous? I wonder what such people think? And that horrid young
pirate, Ault, a patron of literature! My dear, I cannot conceive of you
as the Pirate's Own. Dear Phil, I want you to succeed. I do want you to
make money, a lot of it. I like to think you are wanted and appreciated,
and that you can get paid better and better for what you do. Sell your
manuscripts for as good a price as you can get. Yes, dear, sell your
manuscripts, but don't sell your soul."
XX
Did Miss McDonald tell Evelyn of her meeting with Philip in Central Park?
The Scotch loyalty to her service would throw a doubt upon this. At the
same time, the Scotch affection, the Scotch sympathy with a true and
romantic passion, and, above all, the Scotch shrewdness, could be trusted
to do what was best under the circumstances. That she gave the least
hint of what she said to Mr. Burnett concerning Evelyn is not to be
supposed for a moment. Certainly she did not tell Mrs. Mavick. Was she
a person to run about with idle gossip? But it is certain that Evelyn
knew that Philip had given up his situation in the office, that he had
become a reader for a publishing house, that he had definitely decided to
take up a literary career. And somehow it came into her mind that Philip
knew that this decision would be pleasing to her.
According to the analogy of other things in nature, it would seem that
love must have something to feed on to sustain it. But it is remarkable
upon how little it can exist, can even thrive and become strong, and
develop a power of resistance to hostile influences. Once it gets a
lodgment in a woman's heart, it is an exclusive force that transforms her
into a heroine of courage and endurance. No arguments, no reason, no
considerations of family, of position, of worldly fortune, no prospect of
immortal life, nothing but doubt of faith in the object can dislodge it.
The woman may yield to overwhelming circumstances, she may even by her
own consent be false to herself, but the love lives, however hidden and
smothered, so long as the vital force is capable of responding to a true
emotion. Perhaps nothing in human life is so pathetic as this survival
in old age of a youthful, unsatisfied love. It may cease to be a
passion, it may cease to be a misery, it may have become only a placid
sentiment, yet the heart must be quite cold before this sentiment can
cease to stir it on occasion--for the faded flower is still in the memory
the bloom of young love.
They say that in the New Education for women love is not taken into
account in the regular course; it is an elective study. But the immortal
principle of life does not care much for organization, and says, as of
old, they reckon ill who leave me out.
In the early season at Newport there was little to distract the attention
and much to calm the spirit. Mrs. Mavick was busy in her preparation for
the coming campaign, and Evelyn and her governess were left much alone,
to drive along the softly lapping sea, to search among the dells of the
rocky promontory for wild flowers, or to sit on the cliffs in front of
the gardens of bloom and watch the idle play of the waves, that chased
each other to the foaming beach and in good-nature tossed about the
cat-boats and schooners and set the white sails shimmering and dipping in
the changing lights. And Evelyn, drinking in the beauty and the peace of
it, no doubt, was more pensive than joyous. Within the last few months
life had opened to her with a suddenness that half frightened her.
It was a woman who sat on the cliffs now, watching the ocean of life, no
longer a girl into whose fresh soul the sea and the waves and the air,
and the whole beauty of the world, were simply responsive to her own
gayety and enjoyment of living. It was not the charming scene that held
her thought, but the city with its human struggle, and in that struggle
one figure was conspicuous. In such moments this one figure of youth
outweighed for her all that the world held besides. It was strange.
Would she have admitted this? Not in the least, not even to herself, in
her virgin musings; nevertheless, the world was changed for her, it was
more serious, more doubtful, richer, and more to be feared.
It was not too much to say that one season had much transformed her. She
had been so ignorant of the world a year ago. She had taken for granted
all that was abstractly right. Now she saw that the conventions of life
were like sand-dunes and barriers in the path she was expected to walk.
She had learned for one thing what money was. Wealth had been such an
accepted part of her life, since she could remember, that she had
attached no importance to it, and had only just come to see what
distinctions it made, and how it built a barrier round about her. She
had come to know what it was that gave her father position and
distinction; and the knowledge had been forced upon her by all the
obsequious flattery of society that she was, as a great heiress,
something apart from others. This position, so much envied, may be to a
sensitive soul an awful isolation.
It was only recently that Evelyn had begun to be keenly aware of the
circumstances that hedged her in. They were speaking one day as they sat
upon the cliffs of the season about to begin. In it Evelyn had always
had unalloyed, childish delight. Now it seemed to her something to be
borne.
"McDonald," the girl said, abruptly, but evidently continuing her line of
thought, "mamma says that Lord Montague is coming next week."
"To be with us?"
"Oh, no. He is to stay with the Danforth-Sibbs. Mamma says that as he
is a stranger here we must be very polite to him, and that his being here
will give distinction to the season. Do you like him?" There was in
Evelyn still, with the penetration of the woman, the naivete of the
child.
"I cannot say that he is personally very fascinating, but then I have
never talked with him."
"Mamma says he is very interesting about his family, and their place in
England, and about his travels. He has been in the South Sea Islands. I
asked him about them. He said that the natives were awfully jolly, and
that the climate was jolly hot. Do you know, McDonald, that you can't
get anything out of him but exclamations and slang. I suppose he talks
to other people differently. I tried him. At the reception I asked him
who was going to take Tennyson's place. He looked blank, and then said,
'Er--I must have missed that. What place? Is he out?'"
Miss McDonald laughed, and then said, "You don't understand the classes
in English life. Poetry is not in his line. You see, dear, you couldn't
talk to him about politics. He is a born legislator, and when he is in
the House of Lords he will know right well who is in and who is out. You
mustn't be unjust because he seems odd to you and of limited
intelligence. Just that sort of youth is liable to turn up some day in
India or somewhere and do a mighty plucky thing, and become a hero. I
dare say he is a great sportsman."
"Yes, he quite warmed up about shooting. He told me about going for yak
in the snow mountains south of Thibet. Bloody cold it was. Nasty beast,
if you didn't bring him down first shot. No, I don't doubt his courage
nor his impudence. He looks at me so, that I can't help blushing. I
wish mamma wouldn't ask him."
"But, my dear, we must live in the world as it is. You are not
responsible for Lord Montague."
"And I know he will come," the girl persisted in her line of thought.
"When he called the day before we came away, he asked a lot of questions
about Newport, about horses and polo and golf, and all that, and were the
roads good. And then, 'Do you bike, Miss Mavick?'
"I pretended not to understand, and said I was still studying with my
governess and I hadn't got all the irregular verbs yet. For once, he
looked quite blank, and after a minute he said, 'That's very good, you
know!' McDonald, I just hate him. He makes me so uneasy."
"But don't you know, child," said Miss McDonald, laughing, "that we are
required to love our enemies?"
"So I would," replied the girl, quickly, "if he were an enemy and would
keep away. Ah, me! McDonald, I want to ask you something. Do you
suppose he would hang around a girl who was poor, such a sweet, pretty,
dear creature as Alice Maitland, who is a hundred times nicer than I am?"
"He might," said Miss McDonald, still quizzically. "They say that like
goes to like, and it is reported that the Duke of Tewkesbury is as good
as ruined."
"Do be serious, McDonald." The girl nestled up closer to her and took
her hand. "I want to ask you one question more. Do you think--no, don't
look at me, look away off at that sail do you-think that, if I had been
poor, Mr. Burnett would have seen me only twice, just twice, all last
season?"
Miss McDonald put her arm around Evelyn and clasped the little figure
tight. "You must not give way to fancies. We cannot, as life is
arranged, be perfectly happy, but we can be true to ourselves, and there
is scarcely anything that resolution and patience cannot overcome. I
ought not to talk to you about this, Evelyn. But I must say one thing: I
think I can read Philip Burnett. Oh, he has plenty of self-esteem, but,
unless I mistake him, nothing could so mortify him as to have it said
that he was pursuing a girl for the sake of her fortune."
"And he wouldn't!" cried the girl, looking up and speaking in an unsteady
voice.
"Let me finish. He is, so I think, the sort of man that would not let
any fortune, or anything else, stand in the way when his heart was
concerned. I somehow feel that he could not change--faithfulness, that
is his notion. If he only knew--"
"He never shall! he never shall!" cried the girl in alarm--"never!"
"And you think, child, that he doesn't know? Come! That sail has been
coming straight towards us ever since we sat here, never tacked once.
That is omen enough for one day. See how the light strikes it. Come!"
The Newport season was not, after all, very gay. Society has become so
complex that it takes more than one Englishman to make a season. Were it
the business of the chronicler to study the evolution of this lovely
watering-place from its simple, unconventional, animated days of natural
hospitality and enjoyment, to its present splendid and palatial isolation
of a society--during the season--which finds its chief satisfaction in
the rivalry of costly luxury and in an atmosphere of what is deemed
aristocratic exclusiveness, he would have a theme attractive to the
sociologist. But such a noble study is not for him. His is the humble
task of following the fortunes of certain individuals, more or less
conspicuous in this astonishing flowering of a democratic society, who
have become dear to him by long acquaintance.
It was not the fault of Mrs. Mavick that the season was so frigid, its
glacial stateliness only now and then breaking out in an illuminating
burst of festivity, like the lighting-up of a Montreal ice-palace. Her
spacious house was always open, and her efforts, in charity enterprises
and novel entertainments, were untiring to stimulate a circulation in the
languid body of society.
This clever woman never showed more courage or more tact than in this
campaign, and was never more agreeable and fascinating. She was even
popular. If she was not accepted as a leader, she had a certain standing
with the leaders, as a person of vivacity and social influence. Any
company was eager for her presence. Her activity, spirit, and affability
quite won the regard of the society reporters, and those who know Newport
only through the newspapers would have concluded that the Mavicks were on
the top of the wave. She, however, perfectly understood her position,
and knew that the sweet friends, who exchanged with her, whenever they
met, the conventional phrases of affection commented sarcastically upon
her ambitions for her daughter. It was, at the same time, an ambition
that they perfectly understood, and did not condemn on any ethical
grounds. Evelyn was certainly a sweet girl, rather queerly educated, and
never likely to make much of a dash, but she was an heiress, and why
should not her money be put to the patriotic use of increasing the
growing Anglo-American cordiality?
Lord Montague was, of course, a favorite, in demand for all functions,
and in request for the private and intimate entertainments. He was an
authority in the stables and the kennels, and an eager comrade in all the
sports of the island. His easy manner, his self-possession everywhere,
even his slangy talk, were accepted as evidence that he was above
conventionalities. "The little man isn't a beauty," said Sally McTabb,
"but he shows 'race.'" He might be eccentric, but when you came to know
him you couldn't help liking the embryo duke in him.
In fact, things were going very well with Mrs. Mavick, except in her own
household. There was something there that did not yield, that did not
flow with her plans. With Lord Montague she was on the most intimate and
confidential relations. He was almost daily at the house. Often she
drove with him; frequently Evelyn was with them. Indeed, the three came
to be associated in the public mind. There could be no doubt of the
intentions of the young nobleman. That he could meet any opposition was
not conceived.
The noble lord, since they had been in Newport, had freely opened his
mind to Mrs. Mavick, and on a fit occasion had formally requested her
daughter's hand. Needless to say that he was accepted. Nay, more,
he felt that he was trusted like a son. He was given every opportunity
to press his suit. Somewhat to his surprise, he did not appear to make
much headway. He was rarely able to see her alone, even for a moment.
Such evasiveness in a young girl to a man of his rank astonished him.
There could be no reason for it in himself; there must be some influence
at work unknown to his social experience.
He did not reproach Mrs. Mavick with this, but he let her see that he was
very much annoyed.
"If I had not your assurance to the contrary, Mrs. Mavick," he said one
day in a pet, "I should think she shunned me."
"Oh, no, Lord Montague, that could not be. I told you that she had had a
peculiar education; she is perfectly ignorant of the world, she is shy,
and--well, for a girl in her position, she is unconventional. She is so
young that she does not yet understand what life is."
"You mean she does not know what I offer her?"
"Why, my dear Lord Montague, did you ever offer her anything?"
"Not flat, no," said my lord, hesitating. "Every time I approach her she
shies off like a young filly. There is something I don't understand."
"Evelyn," and Mrs. Mavick spoke with feeling, "is an affectionate and
dutiful child. She has never thought of marriage. The prospect is all
new to her. But I am sure she would learn to love you if she knew you
and her mind were once turned upon such a union. My lord, why not say to
her what you feel, and make the offer you intend? You cannot expect a
young girl to show her inclination before she is asked." And Mrs. Mavick
laughed a little to dispel the seriousness.
"By Jove! that's so, good enough. I'll do it straight out. I'll tell
her to take it or leave it. No, I don't mean that, of course. I'll tell
her that I can't live without her--that sort of thing, you know. And I
can't, that's just the fact."
"You can leave it confidently to her good judgment and to the friendship
of the family for you."
Lord Montague was silent for a moment, and seemed to be looking at a
problem in his shrewd mind. For he had a shrewd mind, which took in the
whole situation, Mrs. Mavick and all, with a perspicacity that would have
astonished that woman of the world.
"There is one thing, perhaps I ought not to say it, but I have seen it,
and it is in my head that it is that--I beg your pardon, madam--that
damned governess."
The shot went home. The suggestion, put into language that could be more
easily comprehended than defended, illuminated Mrs. Mavick's mind in a
flash, seeming to disclose the source of an opposition to her purposes
which secretly irritated her. Doubtless it was the governess. It was
her influence that made Evelyn less pliable and amenable to reason than a
young girl with such social prospects as she had would naturally be.
Besides, how absurd it was that a young lady in society should still have
a governess. A companion? The proper companion for a girl on the edge
of matrimony was her mother!
XXI
This idea, once implanted in Mrs. Mavick's mind, bore speedy fruit. No
one would have accused her of being one of those uncomfortable persons
who are always guided by an inflexible sense of justice, nor could it be
said that she was unintelligently unjust. Facile as she was, in all her
successful life she had never acted upon impulse, but from a conscience
keenly alive to what was just to herself. Miss McDonald was in the way.
And Mrs. Mavick had one quality of good generalship--she acted promptly
on her convictions.
When Mr. Mavick came over next day to spend Sunday in what was called in
print the bosom of his family, he looked very much worn and haggard and
was in an irritated mood. He had been very little in Newport that
summer, the disturbed state of business confining him to the city. And
to a man of his age, New York in midsummer in a panicky season is not a
recreation.
The moment Mrs. Mavick got her husband alone she showed a lively
solicitude about his health.
"I suppose it has been dreadfully hot in the city?"
"Hot enough. Everything makes it hot."
"Has anything gone wrong? Has that odious Ault turned up again?"
"Turned up is the word. Half the time that man is a mole, half the time
a bull in a china-shop. He sails up to you bearing your own flag, and
when he gets aboard he shows the skull and cross-bones."
"Is it so bad as that?"
"As bad as what? He is a bad lot, but he is just an adventurer--a
Napoleon who will get his Waterloo before fall. Don't bother about
things you don't understand. How are things down here?"
"Going swimmingly." "So I judged by the bills. How is the lord?"
"Now don't be vulgar, Tom. You must keep up your end. Lord Montague is
very nice; he is a great favorite here."
"Does Evelyn like him?"
"Yes, she likes him; she likes him very much."
"She didn't show it to me."
"No, she is awfully shy. And she is rather afraid of him, the big title
and all that. And then she has never been accustomed to act for herself.
She is old enough to be independent and to take her place in the world.
At her age I was not in leading-strings."
"I should say not," said Mavick.
"Except in obedience to my mother," continued Carmen, not deigning to
notice the sarcasm. "And I've been thinking that McDonald--"
"So you want to get rid of her?"
"What a brutal way of putting it! No. But if Evelyn is ever to be
self-reliant it is time she should depend more on herself. You know I am
devoted to McDonald. And, what is more, I am used to her. I wasn't
thinking of her. You don't realize that Evelyn is a young lady in
society, and it has become ridiculous for her to still have a governess.
Everybody would say so."
"Well, call her a companion."
"Ah, don't you see it would be the same? She would still be under her
influence and not able to act for herself."
"What are you going to do? Turn her adrift after eighteen--what is it,
seventeen?--years of faithful service?"
"How brutally you put it. I'm going to tell McDonald just how it is.
She is a sensible woman, and she will see that it is for Evelyn's good.
And then it happens very luckily. Mrs. Van Cortlandt asked me last
winter if I wouldn't let her have McDonald for her little girl when we
were through with her. She knew, of course, that we couldn't keep a
governess much longer for Evelyn. I am going to write to her. She will
jump at the chance."
"And McDonald?"
"Oh, she likes Mrs. Van Cortlandt. It will just suit her."
"And Evelyn? That will be another wrench." Men are so foolishly
tender-hearted about women.
"Of course, I know it seems hard, and will be for a little. But it is
for Evelyn's good, I am perfectly sure."
Mr. Mavick was meditating. It was a mighty unpleasant business. But he
was getting tired of conflict. There was an undercurrent in the lives of
both that made him shrink from going deep into any domestic difference.
It was best to yield.
"Well, Carmen, I couldn't have the heart to do it. She has been Evelyn's
constant companion all the child's life. Ah, well, it's your own affair.
Only don't stir it up till after I am gone. I must go to the city early
Monday morning."
Because Mavick, amid all the demands of business and society, and his
ambitions for power in the world of finance and politics, had not had
much time to devote to his daughter, it must not be supposed that he did
not love her. In the odd moments at her service she had always been a
delight to him; and, in truth, many of his ambitions had centred in the
intelligent, affectionate, responsive child. But there had been no time
for much real comradeship.
This Sunday, however, and it was partly because of pity for the shock he
felt was in store for her, he devoted himself to her. They had a long
walk on the cliff, and he talked to her of his life, of his travels, and
his political experience. She was a most appreciative listener, and in
the warmth of his confidence she opened her mind to him, and rather
surprised him by her range of intelligence and the singular uprightness
of her opinions, and more still by her ready wit and playfulness. It was
the first time she had felt really free with her father, and he for the
first time seemed to know her as she was in her inner life. When they
returned to the house, and she was thanking him with a glow of enthusiasm
for such a lovely day, he lifted her up and kissed her, with an emotion
of affection that brought tears to her eyes.
A couple of days elapsed before Mrs. Mavick was ready for action. During
this time she had satisfied herself, by apparently casual conversation
with her daughter and Miss McDonald, that the latter would be wholly out
of sympathy with her intentions in regard to Evelyn. Left to herself she
judged that her daughter would look with more favor upon the brilliant
career offered to her by Lord Montague. When, therefore, one morning the
governess was summoned to her room, her course was decided on. She
received Miss McDonald with more than usual cordiality. She had in her
hand a telegram, and beamed upon her as the bearer of good news.
"I have an excellent offer for you, Miss McDonald."
"An offer for me?"
"Yes, from Mrs. Van Cortlandt, to be the governess of her daughter, a
sweet little girl of six. She has often spoken about it, and now I have
an urgent despatch from her. She is in need of some one at once, and she
greatly prefers you."
"Do you mean, Mrs. Mavick, that--you--want--that I am to leave Evelyn,
and you?" The room seemed to whirl around her.
"It is not what we want, McDonald," said Mrs. Mavick calmly and still
beaming, "but what is best. Your service as governess has continued much
longer than could have been anticipated, and of course it must come to an
end some time. You understand how hard this separation is for all of us.
Mr. Mavick wanted me to express to you his infinite obligation, and I am
sure he will take a substantial way of showing it. Evelyn is now a young
lady in society, and of course it is absurd for her to continue under
pupilage. It will be best for her, for her character, to be independent
and learn to act for herself in the world."
"Did she--has Evelyn--"
"No, I have said nothing to her of this offer, which is a most
advantageous one. Of course she will feel as we do, at first."
"Why, all these years, all her life, since she was a baby, not a day, not
a night, Evelyn, and now--so sweet, so dear--why Mrs. Mavick!"
And the Scotch woman, dazed, with a piteous appeal in her eyes, trying in
vain to control her face, looked at her mistress.
"My dear McDonald, you must not take it that way. It is only a change.
You are not going away really, we shall all be in the same city. I am
sure you will--like your new home. Shall I tell Mrs. Van Cortlandt?"
"Tell Mrs. Van Cortlandt? Yes, tell her, thanks. I will go--soon--at
once. In a little time, to get-ready. Thanks." The governess rose and
stood a moment to steady herself. All her life was in ruins. The blow
crushed her. And she had been so happy. In such great peace. It seemed
impossible. To leave Evelyn! She put out her hand as if to speak. Did
Mrs. Mavick understand what she was doing? That it was the same as
dragging a mother away from her child? But she said nothing. Words
would not come. Everything seemed confused and blank. She sank into her
chair.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Mavick, I think I am not very strong this morning." And
presently she stood on her feet again and steadied herself. "You will
please tell Evelyn before--before I see her." And she walked out of the
room as one in a trance.
The news was communicated to Evelyn, quite incidentally, in the manner
that all who knew Mrs. Mavick admired in her. Evelyn had just been in
and out of her mother's room, on one errand and another, and was going
out again, when her mother said:
"Oh, by-the-way, Evelyn, at last we have got a splendid place for
McDonald."
Evelyn turned, not exactly comprehending. "A place for McDonald? For
what?"
"As governess, of course. With Mrs. Van Cortlandt."
"What! to leave us?" The girl walked back to her mother's chair and
stood before her in an attitude of wonder and doubt. "You don't mean,
mamma, that she is going away for good?"
"It is a great chance for her. I have been anxious for some time about
employment for her, now that you do not need a governess--haven't really
for a year or two."
"But, mamma, it can't be. She is part of us. She belongs to the family;
she has been in it almost as long as I have. Why, I have been with her
every day of my life. To go away? To give her up? Does she know?"
"Does she know? What a child! She has accepted Mrs. Van Cortlandt's
offer. I telegraphed for her this morning. Tomorrow she goes to town to
get her belongings together. Mrs. Van Cortlandt needs her at once. I am
sorry to see, my dear, that you are thinking only of yourself."
"Of myself?" The girl had been at first confused, and, as the idea forced
itself upon her mind, she felt weak, and trembled, and was deadly pale.
But when the certainty came, the enormity and cruelty of the dismissal
aroused her indignation. "Myself!" she exclaimed again. Her eyes blazed
with a wrath new to their tenderness, and, stepping back and stamping her
foot; she cried out: "She shall not go! It is unjust! It is cruel!"
Her mother had never seen her child like that. She was revealing a
spirit of resistance, a temper, an independence quite unexpected.
And yet it was not altogether displeasing. Mrs. Mavick's respect for her
involuntarily rose. And after an instant, instead of responding with
severity, as was her first impulse, she said, very calmly:
"Naturally, Evelyn, you do not like to part with her. None of us do.
But go to your room and think it over reasonably. The relations of
childhood cannot last forever."
Evelyn stood for a moment undecided. Her mother's calm self-control had
not deceived her. She was no longer a child. It was a woman reading a
woman. All her lifetime came back to her to interpret this moment. In
the reaction of the second, the deepest pain was no longer for herself,
nor even for Miss McDonald, but for a woman who showed herself so
insensible to noble feeling. Protest was useless. But why was the
separation desired? She did not fully see, but her instinct told her
that it had a relation to her mother's plans for her; and as life rose
before her in the society, in the world, into which she was newly
launched, she felt that she was alone, absolutely alone. She tried to
speak, but before she could collect her thoughts her mother said:
"There, go now. It is useless to discuss the matter. We all have to
learn to bear things."
Evelyn went away, in a tumult of passion and of shame, and obeyed her
impulse to go where she had always found comfort.
Miss McDonald was in her own room. Her trunk was opened. She had taken
her clothes from the closet. She was opening the drawers and laying one
article here and another there. She was going from closet to bureau,
opening this door and shutting that in her sitting-room and bedroom, in
an aimless, distracted way. Out of her efforts nothing had so far come
but confusion. It seemed an impossible dream that she was actually
packing up to go away forever.
Evelyn entered in a haste that could not wait for permission.
"Is it true?" she cried.
McDonald turned. She could not speak. Her faithful face was gray with
suffering. Her eyes were swollen with weeping. For an instant she
seemed not to comprehend, and then a flood of motherly feeling overcame
her. She stretched out her arms and caught the girl to her breast in a
passionate embrace, burying her face in her neck in a vain effort to
subdue her sobbing.
What was there to say? Evelyn had come to her refuge for comfort, and to
Evelyn the comforter it was she herself who must be the comforter.
Presently she disengaged herself and forced the governess into an easy
chair. She sat down on the arm of the chair and smoothed her hair and
kissed her again and again.
"There. I'm going to help you. You'll see you have not taught me for
nothing." She jumped up and began to bustle about. "You don't know what
a packer I am."
"I knew it must come some time," she was saying, with a weary air, as she
followed with her eyes the light step of the graceful girl, who was
beginning to sort things and to bring order out of the confusion, holding
up one article after another and asking questions with an enforced
cheerfulness that was more pathetic than any burst of grief.
"Yes, I know. There, that is laid in smooth." She pretended to be
thinking what to put in next, and suddenly she threw herself into
McDonald's lap and began to talk gayly. "It is all my fault, dear; I
should have stayed little. And it doesn't make any difference.
I know you love me, and oh, McDonald, I love you more, a hundred times
more, than ever. If you did not love me! Think how dreadful that would
be. And we shall not be separated-only by streets, don't you know. They
can't separate us. I know you want me to be brave. And some day,
perhaps" (and she whispered in her ear--how many hundred times had she
told her girl secrets in that way!), "if I do have a home of my own,
then--"
It was not very cheerful talk, however it seemed to be, but it was better
than silence, and in the midst of it, with many interruptions, the
packing was over, and some sort of serenity was attained even by Miss
McDonald. "Yes, dear heart, we have love and trust and hope."
But when the preparations were all made, and Evelyn went to her own room,
there did not seem to be so much hope, nor any brightness in the midst of
this first great catastrophe of her life.
XXII
The great Mavick ball at Newport, in the summer long remembered for its
financial disasters, was very much talked about at the time. Long after,
in any city club, a man was sure to have attentive listeners if he, began
his story or his gossip with the remark that he was at the Mavick ball.
It attracted great attention, both on account of the circumstances that
preceded it and the events which speedily followed, and threw a light
upon it that gave it a spectacular importance. The city journals made a
feature of it. They summoned their best artists to illustrate it, and
illuminate it in pen-and-ink, half-tones, startling colors, and
photographic reproductions, sketches theatrical, humorous, and poetic,
caricatures, pictures of tropical luxury and aristocratic pretension; in
short, all the bewildering affluence of modern art which is brought to
bear upon the aesthetic cultivation of the lowest popular taste. They
summoned their best novelists to throw themselves recklessly upon the
English language, and extort from it its highest expression in color and
lyrical beauty, the novelists whose mission it is, in the newspaper
campaign against realism, to adorn and dramatize the commonest events of
life, creating in place of the old-fashioned "news" the highly spiced
"story," which is the ideal aspiration of the reporter.
Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable
that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic,
however insignificant in itself, that it may elect to make the
sensation of the day--a wedding, a murder, a political scandal, a
divorce, a social event, a defalcation, a lost child, an unidentified
victim of accident or crime, an election, or--that undefined quickener of
patriotism called a casus belli. It can impose any topic it pleases upon
the public mind. In case there is no topic, it is necessary to make one,
for it is an indefeasible right of the public to have news.
These reports of the Mavick ball had a peculiar interest for at least two
people in New York. Murad Ault read them with a sardonic smile and an
enjoyment that would not have been called altruistic. Philip
searched them with the feverish eagerness of a maiden who scans the
report of a battle in which her lover has been engaged.
All summer long he had lived upon stray bits of news in the society
columns of the newspapers. To see Evelyn's name mentioned, and only
rarely, as a guest at some entertainment, and often in connection with
that of Lord Montague, did not convey much information, nor was that
little encouraging. Was she well? Was she absorbed in the life of the
season? Did she think of him in surroundings so brilliant? Was she,
perhaps, unhappy and persecuted? No tidings came that could tell him the
things that he ached to know.
Only recently intelligence had come to him that at the same time wrung
his heart with pity and buoyed him up with hope. He had not seen Miss
McDonald since her dismissal, for she had been only one night in the
city, but she had written to him. Relieved by her discharge of all
obligations of silence, she had written him frankly about the whole
affair, and, indeed, put him in possession of unrecorded details and
indications that filled him with anxiety, to be sure, but raised his
courage and strengthened his determination. If Evelyn loved him, he had
faith that no manoeuvres or compulsion could shake her loyalty. And yet
she was but a girl; she was now practically alone, and could she resist
the family and the social pressure? Few women could, few women do,
effectively resist under such circumstances. With one of a tender heart,
duty often takes the most specious and deceiving forms. In yielding to
the impulses of her heart, which in her inexperience may be mistaken, has
a girl the right--from a purely rational point of view--to set herself
against, nay, to destroy, the long-cherished ambitions of her parents for
a brilliant social career for her, founded upon social traditions of
success? For what had Mr. Mavick toiled? For what had Mrs. Mavick
schemed all these years? Could the girl throw herself away? Such
disobedience, such disregard for social law, would seem impossible to her
mother.
Some of the events that preceded the Mavick ball throw light upon that
interesting function. After the departure of Miss McDonald, Mrs. Mavick,
in one of her confidential talks with her proposed son-in-law, confessed
that she experienced much relief. An obstacle seemed to be removed.
In fact, Evelyn rather surprised her mother by what seemed a calm
acceptance of the situation. There was no further outburst. If the girl
was often preoccupied and seemed listless, that was to be expected, on
the sudden removal of the companion of her lifetime.
But she did not complain. She ceased after a while to speak of McDonald.
If she showed little enthusiasm in what was going on around her, she was
compliant, she fell in at once with her mother's suggestions, and went
and came in an attitude of entire obedience.
"It isn't best for you to keep up a correspondence, my dear, now that you
know that McDonald is nicely settled--all reminiscent correspondence is
very wearing--and, really, I am more than delighted to see that you are
quite capable of walking alone. Do you know, Evelyn, that I am more and
more proud of you every day, as my daughter. I don't dare to tell you
half the nice things that are said of you. It would make you vain." And
the proud mother kissed her affectionately. The letters ceased. If the
governess wrote, Evelyn did not see the letters.
As the days went by, Lord Montague, in high and confident spirits, became
more and more a familiar inmate of the house. Daily he sent flowers to
Evelyn; he contrived little excursions and suppers; he was marked in his
attentions wherever they went. "He is such a dear fellow," said Mrs.
Mavick to one of her friends; "I don't know how we should get on without
him."
Only, in the house, owing to some unnatural perversity of circumstances,
he did not see much of Evelyn, never alone for more than a moment. It is
wonderful what efficient, though invisible, defenses most women, when
they will, can throw about themselves.
That the affair was "arranged" Lord Montague had no doubt. It was not
conceivable that the daughter of an American stock-broker would refuse
the offer of a position so transcendent and so evidently coveted in a
democratic society. Not that the single-minded young man reasoned about
it this way. He was born with a most comfortable belief in himself and
the knowledge that when he decided to become a domestic man he had
simply, as the phrase is, to throw his handkerchief.
At home, where such qualities as distinguished him from the common were
appreciated without the need of personal exertion, this might be true;
but in America it did seem to be somehow different. American women, at
least some of them, did need to be personally wooed; and many of them had
a sort of independence in the bestowal of their affections or, what they
understood to be the same thing, themselves that must be taken into
account. And it gradually dawned upon the mind of this inheritor of
privilege that in this case the approval of the family, even the pressure
of the mother, was not sufficient; he must have also Evelyn's consent.
If she were a mature woman who knew and appreciated the world, she would
perceive the advantages offered to her without argument. But a girl,
just released from the care of her governess, unaccustomed to society,
might have notions, or, in the vernacular of the scion, might be
skittish.
And then, again, to do the wooer entire justice, the dark little girl, so
much mistress of herself, so evidently spirited, with such an air of
distinction, began to separate herself in his mind as a good goer against
the field, and he had a real desire to win her affection. The more
indifferent she was to him, the keener was his desire to possess her.
His unsuccessful wooing had passed through several stages, first
astonishment, then pique, and finally something very like passion, or a
fair semblance of devotion, backed, of course, since all natures are more
or less mixed, by the fact that this attractive figure of the woman was
thrown into high relief by the colossal fortune behind her.
And Evelyn herself? Neither her mother nor her suitor appreciated the
uncommon circumstances that her education, her whole training in
familiarity with pure and lofty ideals, had rendered her measurably
insensible to the social considerations that seemed paramount to them, or
that there could be any real obstacle to the bestowal of her person.
where her heart was not engaged. Yet she perfectly understood her
situation, and, at times, deprived of her lifelong support, she felt
powerless in it, and she suffered as only the pure and the noble can
suffer. Day after day she fought her battle alone, now and then, as the
situation confronted her, assailed by a shudder of fear, as of one
awakening in the night from a dream of peril, the clutch of an assassin,
or the walking on an icy precipice. If McDonald were only with her! If
she could only hear from Philip! Perhaps he had lost hope and was
submitting to the inevitable.
The opportunity which Lord Montague had long sought came one day
unexpectedly, or perhaps it was contrived. They were waiting in the
drawing-room for an afternoon drive. The carriage was delayed, and Mrs.
Mavick excused herself to ascertain the cause of the delay. Evelyn and
her suitor were left alone. She was standing by a window looking out,
and he was standing by the fireplace watching the swing of the figure on
the pendulum of the tall mantelpiece clock. He was the first to break
the silence.
"Your clock, Miss Mavick, is a little fast." No reply. "Or else I am
slow." Still no reply. "They say, you know, that I am a little slow,
over here." No reply. "I am not, really, you know. I know my mind.
And there was something, Miss Mavick, something particular, that I wanted
to say to you."
"Yes?" without turning round. "The carriage will be here in a minute."
"Never mind that," and Lord Montague moved away from the fireplace and
approached the girl; "take care of the minutes and the hours will take
care of themselves, as the saying is." At this unexpected stroke of
brilliancy Evelyn did turn round, and stood in an expectant attitude.
The moment had evidently come, and she would not meet it like a coward.
"We have been friends a long time; not so very long, but it seems to me
the best part of my life," he was looking down and speaking slowly, with
the modest deference of a gentleman, "and you must have seen, that is, I
wanted you to see, you know well, that is--er--what I was staying on here
for."
"Because you like America, I suppose," said Evelyn, coolly.
"Because I like some things in America--that is just the fact," continued
the little lord, with more confidence. "And that is why I stayed. You
see I couldn't go away and leave what was best in the world to me."
There was an air of simplicity and sincerity about this that was
unexpected, and could not but be respected by any woman. But Evelyn
waited, still immovable.
"It wasn't reasonable that you should like a stranger right off," he went
on, "just at first, and I waited till you got to know me better. Ways
are different here and over there, I know that, but if you came to know
me, Miss Mavick, you would see that I am not such a bad sort of a
fellow." And a deprecatory smile lighted up his face that was almost
pathetic. To Evelyn this humility seemed genuine, and perhaps it was,
for the moment. Certainly the eyes she bent on, the odd little figure
were less severe.
"All this is painful to me, Lord Montague."
"I'm sorry," he continued, in the same tone. "I cannot help it.
I must say it. I--you must know that I love you." And then, not heeding
the nervous start the girl gave in stepping backward, "And--and, will you
be my wife?"
"You do me too much honor, Lord Montague," said Evelyn, summoning up all
her courage.
"No, no, not a bit of it."
"I am obliged to you for your good opinion, but you know I am almost a
school-girl. My governess has just left me. I have never thought of
such a thing. And, Lord Montague, I cannot return your feeling. That is
all. You must see how painful this is to me."
"I wouldn't give you pain, Miss Mavick, not for the world. Perhaps when
you think it over it will seem different to you. I am sure it will.
Don't answer now, for good."
"No, no, it cannot be," said Evelyn, with something of alarm in her tone,
for the full meaning of it all came over her as she thought of her
mother.
"You are not offended?"
"No," said Evelyn.
"I couldn't bear to offend you. You cannot think I would. And you will
not be hard-hearted. You know me, Miss Mavick, just where I am. I'm
just as I said."
"The carriage is coming," said Mrs. Mavick, who returned at this moment.
The group for an instant was silent, and then Evelyn said:
"We have waited so long; mamma, that I am a little tired, and you will
excuse me from the drive this afternoon?"
"Certainly, my dear."
When the two were seated in the carriage, Mrs. Mavick turned to Lord
Montague:
"Well?"
"No go," replied my lord, as sententiously, and in evident bad humor.
"What? And you made a direct proposal?"
"Showed her my whole hand. Made a square offer. Damme, I am not used to
this sort of thing."
"You don't mean that she refused you?"
"Don't know what you call it. Wouldn't start."
"She couldn't have understood you. What did she say?"
"Said it was too much honor, and that rot. By Jove, she didn't look it.
I rather liked her pluck. She didn't flinch."
"Oh, is that all?" And Mrs. Mavick spoke as if her mind were relieved.
"What could you expect from such a sudden proposal to a young girl,
almost a child, wholly unused to the world? I should have done the same
thing at her age. It will look different to her when she reflects, and
understands what the position is that is offered her. Leave that to me."
Lord Montague shook his head and screwed up his keen little eyes.
His mind was in full play. "I know women, Mrs. Mavick, and I tell you
there is something behind this. Somebody has been in the stable." The
noble lord usually dropped into slang when he was excited.
"I don't understand your language," said Mrs. Mavick, straightening
herself up in her seat.
"I beg pardon. It is just a way of speaking on the turf. When a
favorite goes lame the morning of the race, we know some one has been
tampering with him. I tell you there is some one else. She has some one
else in her mind. That's the reason of it."
"Nonsense." cried Mrs. Mavick, with the energy of conviction.
"It's impossible. There is nobody, couldn't be anybody. She has led a
secluded life till this hour. She hasn't a fancy, I know."
"I hope you are right," he replied, in the tone of a man wishing to take
a cheerful view. "Perhaps I don't understand American girls."
"I think I do," she said, smiling. "They are generally amenable to
reason. Evelyn now has something definite before her. I am glad you
proposed."
And this was the truth. Mrs. Mavick was elated. So far her scheme was
completely successful. As to Evelyn, she trusted to various influences
she could bring to bear. Ultimate disobedience of her own wishes she did
not admit as a possible thing.
A part of her tactics was the pressure of public opinion, so far as
society represents it--that is, what society expects. And therefore it
happened in a few days that a strong suspicion got about that Lord
Montague had proposed formally to the heiress. The suspicion was
strengthened by appearances. Mrs. Mavick did not deny the rumor. That
there was an engagement was not affirmed, but that the honor had been or
would be declined was hardly supposable.
In the painful interview between mother and daughter concerning this
proposal, Evelyn had no reason to give for her opposition, except that
she did not love him. This point Mrs. Mavick skillfully evaded and
minimized. Of course she would love him in time. The happiest marriages
were founded on social fitness and the judgment of parents, and not on
the inexperienced fancies of young girls. And in this case things had
gone too far to retreat. Lord Montague's attentions had been too open
and undisguised. He had been treated almost as a son by the house.
Society looked upon the affair as already settled. Had Evelyn reflected
on the mortification that would fall upon her mother if she persisted in
her unreasonable attitude? And Mrs. Mavick shed actual tears in thinking
upon her own humiliation.
The ball which followed these private events was also a part of Mrs.
Mavick's superb tactics. It would be in a way a verification of the
public rumors and a definite form of pressure which public expectation
would exercise upon the lonely girl.
The splendor of this function is still remembered. There were, however,
features in the glowing descriptions of it which need to be mentioned.
It was assumed that it was for a purpose, that it was in fact, if not a
proclamation, at least an intimation of a new and brilliant Anglo-Saxon
alliance. No one asserted that an engagement existed. But the prominent
figures in the spectacle were the English lord and the young and
beautiful American heiress. There were portraits of both in half-tone.
The full names and titles expectant of Lord Montague were given, a
history of the dukedom of Tewkesbury and its ancient glory, with the long
line of noble names allied to the young lord, who was a social star of
the first magnitude, a great traveler, a sportsman of the stalwart race
that has the world for its field. ("Poor little Monte," said the
managing editor as he passed along these embellishments with his
approval.)
On the other hand, the proposed alliance was no fall in dignity or family
to the English house. The heiress was the direct descendant of the
Eschelles, an old French family, distinguished in camp and court in the
glorious days of the Grand Monarch.
XXIII
Probably no man ever wrote and published a book, a magazine story, or a
bit of verse without an instant decision to repeat the experiment. The
inclination once indulged becomes insatiable. It is not altogether the
gratified vanity of seeing one's self in print, for, before printing was,
the composers and reciters of romances and songs were driven along the
same path of unrest and anxiety, when once they had the least recognition
of their individual distinction. The impulse is more subtle than the
desire for wealth or the craving for political place. In some cases it
is in simple obedience to the longing to create; in others it is a lower
ambition for notoriety, for praise.
In any case the experiment of authorship, in however humble, a way, has
an analogy to that other tempting occupation of making "investments" in
the stock-market: the first trial is certain to lead to another. If the
author succeeds in any degree, his spirit rises to another attempt in the
hope of a wider recognition. If he fails, that is a reason why he should
convince his fellows that the failure was not inherent in himself, but in
ill-luck or a misdirection of his powers. And the experiment has another
analogy to the noble occupation of levying toll upon the change of
values--a first brilliant success is often a misfortune, inducing an
overestimate of capacity, while a very moderate success, recognized
indeed only as a trial, steadies a man, and sets him upon that serious
diligence upon which alone, either in art or business, any solid fortune
is built.
Philip was fortunate in that his first novel won him a few friends and a
little recognition, but no popularity. It excited neither envy nor
hostility. In the perfunctory and somewhat commercial good words it
received, he recognized the good-nature of the world. In the few short
reviews that dealt seriously with his work, he was able, when the
excitement of seeing himself discussed had subsided, to read between the
lines why The Puritan Nun had failed to make a larger appeal. It was
idyllic and poetic, but it lacked virility; it lacked also simplicity in
dealing with the simple and profound facts of life. He had been too
solicitous to express himself, to write beautifully, instead of letting
the human emotions with which he had to deal show themselves. One notice
had said that it was too "literary"; by which, of course, the critic
meant that he did not follow the solid traditions, the essential elements
in all the great masterpieces of literature that have been created. And
yet he had shown a quality, a facility, a promise, that had gained him a
foothold and a support in the world of books and of the making of books.
And though he had declined Mr. Ault's tempting offer to illuminate his
transcontinental road with a literary torch, he none the less was pleased
with this recognition of his capacity and the value of his name.
To say that Philip lived on hope during this summer of heat, suspensions,
and business derangement would be to allow him a too substantial
subsistence. Evelyn, indeed, seemed, at the distance of Newport, more
unattainable than ever, and the scant news he had of the drama enacted
there was a perpetual notice to him of the social gulf that lay between
them. And yet his dream was sustained by occasional assurances from Miss
McDonald of her confidence in Evelyn's belief in him, nay, of her trust,
and she even went so far as to say affection. So he went on building
castles in the air, which melted and were renewed day after day, like the
transient but unfailing splendor of the sunset.
There was a certain exaltation in this indulgence of his passion that
stimulated his creative faculties, and, while his daily tasks kept him
from being morbid, his imagination was free to play with the construction
of a new story, to which his recent experience would give a certain
solidity and a knowledge of the human struggle as it is.
He found himself observing character more closely than before, looking
for it not so much in books as in the people he met. There was Murad
Ault, for instance. How he would like to put him into a book!
Of course it would not do to copy a model, raw, like' that, but he fell
to studying his traits, trying to see the common humanity exhibited in
him. Was he a type or was he a freak? This was, however, too dangerous
ground until he knew more of life.
The week's vacation allowed him by his house was passed in Rivervale.
There, in the calmness of country life, and in the domestic atmosphere of
affection which believed in him, he was far enough removed from the scene
of the spectres of his imagination to see them in proper perspective, and
there the lines of his new venture were laid down, to be worked out
later on, he well knew, in the anxiety and the toil which should endue
the skeleton with life. Rivervale, to be sure, was haunted by the
remembrance of Evelyn; very often the familiar scenes filled him with an
intolerable longing to see again the eyes that had inspired him, to hear
the voice that was like no other in the world, to take the little hand
that had often been so frankly placed in his, and to draw to him the form
in which was embodied all the grace and tender witchery of womanhood.
But the knowledge of what she expected of him was an inspiration,
always present in his visions of her.
Something of his hopes and fears Alice divined, and he felt her sympathy,
although she did not intrude upon his reticence by any questions. They
talked about Evelyn, but it was Evelyn in Rivervale, not in Newport. In
fact, the sensible girl could regard her cousin's passion as nothing more
than a romance in a young author's life, and to her it was a sign of his
security that he had projected a new story.
With instinctive perception of his need, she was ever turning his
thoughts upon his literary career. Of course she and all the household
seemed in a conspiracy to flatter and encourage the vanity of authorship.
Was not all the village talking about the reputation he had conferred on
it? Was it not proud of him? Indeed, it did imagine that the world
outside of Rivervale was very much interested in him, and that he was
already an author of distinction. The county Gazette had announced, as
an important piece of news, that the author of The Puritan Nun was on a
visit to his relatives, the Maitlands. This paragraph seemed to stand
out in the paper as an almost immodest exposure of family life, read
furtively at first, and not talked of, and yet every member of the family
was conscious of an increase in the family importance. Aunt Patience
discovered, from her outlook on the road, that summer visitors had a
habit of driving or walking past the house and then turning back to look
at it again.
So Philip was not only distinguished, but he had the power of conferring
distinction. No one can envy a young author this first taste of fame,
this home recognition. Whatever he may do hereafter, how much more
substantial rewards he may attain, this first sweetness of incense to his
ambition will never come to him again.
When Philip returned to town, the city was still a social desert,
and he plunged into the work piled up on his desk, the never-ceasing
accumulation of manuscripts, most of them shells which the workers have
dredged up from the mud of the literary ocean, in which the eager
publisher is always expecting to find pearls. Even Celia was still in
the country, and Philip's hours spared from drudgery were given to the
new story. His days, therefore, passed without incident, but not without
pleasure. For whatever annoyances the great city may have usually, it is
in the dull season--that is, the season of its summer out-of-doors
animation--a most attractive and, even stimulating place for the man who
has an absorbing pursuit, say a work in creative fiction. Undisturbed by
social claims or public interests, the very noise and whirl of the gay
metropolis seem to hem him in and protect the world of his own
imagination.
The first disturbing event in this serenity was the report of the Mavick
ball, already referred to, and the interpretation put upon it by the
newspapers. In this light his plans seemed the merest moonshine. What
became of his fallacious hope of waiting when events were driving on at
this rate? What chance had he in such a social current? Would Evelyn be
strong enough to stem it and to wait also? And to wait for what? For
the indefinite and improbable event of a poor author, hardly yet
recognized as an author, coming into position, into an income (for that
was the weak point in his aspirations) that would not be laughed at by
the millionaire. When he coolly considered it, was it reasonable to
expect that Mr. and Mrs. Mavick would ever permit Evelyn to throw away
the brilliant opportunity for their daughter which was to be the crowning
end of their social ambition? The mere statement of the proposition was
enough to overwhelm him.
That this would be the opinion of the world he could not doubt.
He felt very much alone. It was not, however, in any resolve to make a
confidante of Celia, but in an absolute need of companionship, that he
went to see if she had returned. That he had any personal interest in
this ball he did not intend to let Celia know, but talk with somebody he
must. Of his deep affection for this friend of his boyhood, there was no
doubt, nor of his knowledge of her devotion to his interests. Why, then,
was he reserved with her upon the absorbing interest of his life?
Celia had returned, before the opening of the medical college, full of a
new idea. This was nothing new in her restless nature; but if Philip had
not been blinded by the common selfishness of his sex, he might have seen
in the gladness of her welcome of him something more than mere sisterly
affection.
"Are you real glad to see me, Phil? I thought you might be lonesome by
this time in the deserted city."
"I was, horribly." He was still holding her hand. "Without a chance to
talk with you or Alice, I am quite an orphan."
"Ah! You or Alice!" A shade of disappointment came over her face as she
dropped his hand. But she rallied in a moment.
"Poor boy! You ought to have a guardian. What heroine of romance are
you running after now?"
"In my new story?"
"Of course."
"She isn't very well defined in my mind yet. But a lovely girl, without
anything peculiar, no education to speak of, or career, fascinating in
her womanhood, such as might walk out of the Bible. Don't you think that
would be a novelty? But it is the most difficult to do."
"Negative. That sort has gone out. Philip, why don't you take the
heroine of the Mavick ball? There is a theme." She was watching him
shrewdly, and saw the flush in his face as he hurriedly asked,
"Did you ever see her?"
"Only at a distance. But you must know her well enough for a literary
purpose. The reports of the ball give you the setting of the drama."
"Did you read them?"
"I should say I did. Most amusing."
"Celia, don't you think it would be an ungentlemanly thing to take a
social event like that?"
"Why, you must take life as it is. Of course you would change the
details. You could lay the scene in Philadelphia. Nobody would suspect
you then."
Philip shook his head. The conversation was not taking the turn that was
congenial to him. The ball seemed to him a kind of maelstrom in which
all his hopes were likely to be wrecked. And here was his old friend,
the keenest-sighted woman he knew, looking upon it simply as literary
material--a ridiculous social event. He had better change the subject.
"So the college is not open yet?"
"No, I came back because I had a new idea, and wanted time to look
around. We haven't got quite the right idea in our city missions. They
have another side. We need country missions."
"Aren't they that now?"
"No, I mean for the country. I've been about a good deal all this
vacation, and my ideas are confirmed. The country towns and villages are
full of young hoodlums and toughs, and all sorts of wickedness. They
could be improved by sending city boys up there--yes, and girls of tender
age. I don't mean the worst ones, not altogether. The young of a
certain low class growing up in the country are even worse than the same
class in the city, and they lack a civility of manner which is pretty
sure to exist in a city-bred person."
"If the country is so bad, why send any more unregenerates into it?"
"How do you know that anybody is always to be unregenerate? But I
wouldn't send thieves and imbeciles. I would select children of some
capacity, whose circumstances are against them where they are, and I am
sure they would make better material than a good deal of the young
generation in country villages now. This is what I mean by a mission for
the country. We have been bending all our efforts to the reformation of
the cities. What we need to go at now is the reforming of the country."
"You have taken a big contract," said Philip, smiling at her enthusiasm.
"Don't you intend to go on with medicine?"
"Certainly. At least far enough to be of some use in breaking up
people's ignorance about their own bodies. Half the physical as well as
moral misery comes from ignorance. Didn't I always tell you that I want
to know? A good many of my associates pretend to be agnostics, neither
believe or disbelieve in anything. The further I go the more I am
convinced that there is a positive basis for things. They talk about the
religion of humanity. I tell you, Philip, that humanity is pretty poor
stuff to build a religion on."
The talk was wandering far away from what was in Philip's mind, and
presently Celia perceived his want of interest.
"There, that is enough about myself. I want to know all about you, your
visit to Rivervale, how the publishing house suits you, how the story is
growing."
And Philip talked about himself, and the rumors in Wall Street, and Mr.
Ault and his offer, and at last about the Mavicks--he could not help
that--until he felt that Celia was what she had always been to him, and
when he went away he held her hand and said what a dear, sweet friend she
was.
And when he had gone, Celia sat a long time by the window, not seeing
much of the hot street into which she looked, until there were tears in
her eyes.
XXIV
There was one man in New York who thoroughly enjoyed the summer. Murad
Ault was, as we say of a man who is free to indulge his natural powers,
in his element. There are ingenious people who think that if the
ordering of nature had been left to them, they could maintain moral
conditions, or at least restore a disturbed equilibrium, without
violence, without calling in the aid of cyclones and of uncontrollable
electric displays, in order to clear the air. There are people also who
hold that the moral atmosphere of the world does not require the
occasional intervention of Murad Ault.
The conceit is flattering to human nature, but it is not borne out by the
performance of human nature in what is called the business world, which
is in such intimate alliance with the social world in such great centres
of conflict as London, New York, or Chicago. Mr. Ault is everywhere an
integral and necessary part of the prevailing system--that is, the system
by which the moral law is applied to business. The system, perhaps,
cannot be defended, but it cannot be explained without Mr. Ault. We may
argue that such a man is a disturber of trade, of legitimate operations,
of the fairest speculations, but when we see how uniform he is as a
phenomenon, we begin to be convinced that he is somehow indispensable to
the system itself. We cannot exactly understand why a cyclone should
pick up a peaceful village in Nebraska and deposit it in Kansas, where
there, is already enough of that sort, but we cannot conceive of Wall
Street continuing to be Wall Street unless it were now and then visited
by a powerful adjuster like Mr. Ault.
The advent, then, of Murad Ault in New York was not a novelty, but a
continuation of like phenomena in the Street, ever since the day when
ingenious men discovered that the ability to guess correctly which of two
sparrows, sold for a farthing, lighting on the spire of Trinity Church,
will fly first, is an element in a successful and distinguished career.
There was nothing peculiar in kind in his career, only in the force
exhibited which lifted him among the few whose destructive energy the
world condones and admires as Napoleonic. He may have been an instrument
of Providence. When we do not know exactly what to do with an
exceptional man who is disagreeable, we call him an Instrument of
Providence.
It is not, then, in anything exceptional that we are interested in the
operations of Murad Ault, but simply on account of his fortuitous
connection with a great fortune which had its origin in very much the
same cyclonic conditions that Mr. Ault reveled in. Those who know Wall
Street best, by reason of sad experience, say that the presiding deity
there is not the Chinese god, Luck, but the awful pagan deity, Nemesis.
Alas! how many innocent persons suffer in order to get justice done in
this world.
Those who have unimpaired memories may recollect the fortune amassed,
many years previous to this history, by one Rodney Henderson, gathered
and enlarged by means not indictable, but which illustrate the wide
divergence between the criminal code and the moral law. This fortune,
upon the sudden death of its creator, had been largely diverted from its
charitable destination by fraud, by a crime that would have fallen within
the code if it had been known. This fortune had been enjoyed by those
who seized it for many years of great social success, rising into
acknowledged respectability and distinction; and had become the basis of
the chance of social elevation, which is dear to the hearts of so many
excellent people, who are compelled to wander about in a chaotic society
that has no hereditary titles. It was this fortune, the stake in such an
ambition, or perhaps destined in a new possessor to a nobler one, that
came in the way of Mr. Ault's extensive schemes.
It is not necessary to infer that Mr. Ault was originally actuated by any
greed as to this special accumulation of property, or that he had any
malevolence towards Mr. Mavick; but the eagerness of his personal pursuit
led him into collisions. There were certain possessions of Mr. Mavick
that were desirable for the rounding-out of his plans--these graspings
were many of them understood by the public as necessary to the
"development of a system"--and in this collision of interests and fierce
strength a vindictive feeling was engendered, a feeling born, as has been
hinted, by Mr. Mavick's attempt to trick his temporary ally in a certain
operation, so that Mr. Ault's main purpose was to "down Mavick."
This was no doubt an exaggeration concerning a man with so many domestic
virtues as Mr. Ault, meaning by domestic virtues indulgence of his
family; but a fight for place or property in politics or in the Street
is pretty certain to take on a personal character.
We can understand now why Mr. Ault read the accounts of the Mavick ball
with a grim smile. In speaking of it he used the vulgar term "splurge,"
a word especially offensive to the refined society in which the Mavicks
had gained a foothold. And yet the word was on the lips of a great many
men on the Street. The shifting application of sympathy is a very queer
thing in this world. Mr. Ault was not a snob. Whatever else he was, he
made few pretensions. In his first advent he had been resisted as an
intruder and shunned as a vulgarian; but in time respect for his force
and luck mingled with fear of his reckless talent, and in the course of
events it began to be admitted that the rough diamond was being polished
into one of the corner-stones of the great business edifice. At the time
of this writing he did not altogether lack the sympathy of the Street,
and an increasing number of people were not sorry to see Mr. Mavick get
the worst of it in repeated trials of strength. And in each of these
trials it became increasingly difficult for Mr. Mavick to obtain the
assistance and the credit which are often indispensable to the strongest
men in a panic.
The truth was that there were many men in the Street who were not sorry
to see Mr. Mavick worried. They remembered perfectly well the omniscient
snobbishness of Thomas Mavick when he held a position in the State
Department at Washington and was at the same time a secret agent of
Rodney Henderson. They did not change their opinion of him when, by his
alliance with Mrs. Henderson, he stepped into control of Mr. Henderson's
property and obtained the mission to Rome; but later on he had been
accepted as one of the powers in the financial world. There were a few
of the old stagers who never trusted him. Uncle Jerry Hollowell, for
instance, used to say, "Mavick is smart, smart as lightnin'; I guess
he'll make ducks and drakes of the Henderson property." They are very
superficial observers of Wall Street who think that character does not
tell there. Mr. Mavick may have realized that when in his straits he
looked around for assistance.
The history of this panic summer in New York would not be worthy the
reader's attention were not the fortunes of some of his acquaintances
involved in it. It was not more intense than the usual panics, but it
lasted longer on account of the complications with uncertain government
policy, and it produced stagnation in social as well as business circles.
So quiet a place as Rivervale felt it in the diminution of city visitors,
and the great resorts showed it in increased civility to the small number
of guests.
The summer at Newport, which had not been distinguished by many great
events, was drawing to a close--that is, it was in the period when those
who really loved the charming promenade which is so loved of the sea
began to enjoy themselves, and those who indulge in the pleasures of
hope, based upon a comfortable matrimonial establishment, are reckoning
up the results of the campaign.
Mrs. Mavick, according to her own assertion, was one of those who enjoy
nature. "Nature and a few friends, not too many, only those whom one
trusts and who are companionable," she had said to Lord Montague.
This young gentleman had found the pursuit of courtship in America
attended by a good many incidental social luxuries. It had been a wise
policy to impress him with the charm of a society which has unlimited
millions to make it attractive. Even to an impecunious noble there is a
charm in this, although the society itself has some of the lingering
conditions of its money origin. But since the great display of the ball,
and the legitimate inferences drawn from it by the press and the
fashionable world, Mrs. Mavick had endeavored to surround her intended
son-in-law with the toils of domestic peace.
He must be made to feel at home. And this she did. Mrs. Mavick was as
admirable in the role of a domestic woman as of a woman of the world.
The simple pleasures, the confidences, the intimacies of home life
surrounded him. His own mother, the aged duchess, could not have looked
upon him with more affection, and possibly not have pampered him with so
many luxuries. There was only one thing wanting to make this home
complete. In conventional Europe the contracting parties are not the
signers of the marriage contract. In the United States the parties most
interested take the initiative in making the contract.
Here lay the difficulty of the situation, a situation that puzzled Lord
Montague and enraged Mrs. Mavick. Evelyn maintained as much indifference
to the domestic as to the worldly situation. Her mother thought her
lifeless and insensible; she even went so far as to call her unwomanly in
her indifference to what any other woman would regard as an opportunity
for a brilliant career.
Lifeless indeed she was, poor child; physically languid and scarcely able
to drag herself through the daily demands upon her strength.
Her mother made it a reproach that she was so pale and unresponsive.
Apparently she did not resist, she did everything she was told to do.
She passed, indeed, hours with Lord Montague, occasions contrived when
she was left alone in the house with him, and she made heroic efforts to
be interested, to find something in his mind that was in sympathy with
her own thoughts. With a woman's ready instinct she avoided committing
herself to his renewed proposals, sometimes covert, sometimes direct, but
the struggle tired her. At the end of all such interviews she had to
meet her mother, who, with a smile of hope and encouragement, always
said, "Well, I suppose you and Lord Montague have made it up," and then
to encounter the contempt expressed for her as a "goose."
She was helpless in such toils. At times she felt actually abandoned of
any human aid, and in moods of despondency almost resolved to give up the
struggle. In the eyes of the world it was a good match, it would make
her mother happy, no doubt her father also; and was it not her duty to
put aside her repugnance, and go with the current of the social and
family forces that seemed irresistible?
Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them. This
invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual
tyranny. There are no tragedies in our modern life so pathetic as the
ossification of women's hearts when love is crushed under the compulsion
of social and caste requirements. Everybody expected that Evelyn would
accept Lord Montague. It could be said that for her own reputation the
situation required this consummation of the intimacy of the season. And
the mother did not hesitate to put this interpretation upon the events
which were her own creation.
But with such a character as Evelyn, who was a constant puzzle to her
mother, this argument had very little weight compared with her own sense
of duty to her parents. Her somewhat ideal education made worldly
advantages of little force in her mind, and love the one priceless
possession of a woman's heart which could not be bartered. And yet might
there not be an element of selfishness in this--might not its sacrifice
be a family duty? Mrs. Mavick having found this weak spot in her
daughter's armor, played upon it with all her sweet persuasive skill and
show of tenderness.
"Of course, dear," she said, "you know what would make me happy. But I
do not want you to yield to my selfishness or even to your father's
ambition to see his only child in an exalted position in life. I can
bear the disappointment. I have had to bear many. But it is your own
happiness I am thinking of. And I think also of the cruel blow your
refusal will inflict upon a man whose heart is bound up in you."
"But I don't love him." The girl was very pale, and she spoke with an
air of weariness, but still with a sort of dogged persistence.
"You will in time. A young girl never knows her own heart, any more than
she knows the world."
"Mother, that isn't all. It would be a sin to him to pretend to give him
a heart that was not his. I can't; I can't."
"My dear child, that is his affair. He is willing to trust you, and to
win your love. When we act from a sense of duty the way is apt to open
to us. I have never told you of my own earlier experience.
I was not so young as you are when I married Mr. Henderson, but I had not
been without the fancies and experiences of a young girl. I might have
yielded to one of them but for family reasons. My father had lost his
fortune and had died, disappointed and broken down. My mother, a lovely
woman, was not strong, was not capable of fighting the world alone, and
she depended upon me, for in those days I had plenty of courage and
spirit. Mr. Henderson was a widower whom we had known as a friend before
the death of his accomplished wife. In his lonesomeness he turned to me.
In our friendlessness I turned to him. Did I love him? I esteemed him,
I respected him, I trusted him, that was all. He did not ask more than
that. And what a happy life we had! I shared in all his great plans.
And when in the midst of his career, with such large ideas of public
service and philanthropy, he was stricken down, he left to me, in the
confidence of his love, all that fortune which is some day to be yours."
Mrs. Mavick put her handkerchief to her eyes. "Ah, well, our destiny is
not in our hands. Heaven raised up for me another protector, another
friend. Perhaps some of my youthful illusions have vanished, but should
I have been happier if I had indulged them? I know your dear father does
not think so."
"Mother," cried Evelyn, deeply moved by this unprecedented confidence, "I
cannot bear to see you suffer on my account. But must not every one
decide for herself what is right before God?"
At this inopportune appeal to a higher power Mrs. Mavick had some
difficulty in restraining her surprise and indignation at what she
considered her child's stubbornness. But she conquered the inclination,
and simply looked sad and appealing when she said:
"Yes, yes, you must decide for yourself. You must not consider your
mother as I did mine."
This cruel remark cut the girl to the heart. The world seemed to whirl
around her, right and wrong and duty in a confused maze. Was she, then,
such a monster of ingratitude? She half rose to throw herself at her
mother's feet, upon her mother's mercy. And at the moment it was not her
reason but her heart that saved her. In the moral confusion rose the
image of Philip. Suppose she should gain the whole world and lose him!
And it was love, simple, trusting love, that put courage into her sinking
heart.
"Mother, it is very hard. I love you; I could die for you. I am so
forlorn. But I cannot, I dare not, do such a thing, such a dreadful
thing!"
She spoke brokenly, excitedly, she shuddered as she said the last words,
and her eyes were full of tears as she bent down and kissed her mother.
When she had gone, Mrs. Mavick sat long in her chair, motionless between
bewilderment and rage. In her heart she was saying, "The obstinate,
foolish girl must be brought to reason!"
A servant entered with a telegram. Mrs. Mavick took it, and held it
listlessly while the servant waited. "You can sign." After the door
closed--she was still thinking of Evelyn--she waited a moment before she
tore the envelope, and with no eagerness unfolded the official yellow
paper. And then she read:
"I have made an assignment. T. M."
A half-hour afterwards when a maid entered the room she found Mrs. Mavick
still seated in the armchair, her hands powerless at her side, her eyes
staring into space, her face haggard and old.
XXV
The action of Thomas Mavick in giving up the fight was as unexpected in
New York as it was in Newport. It was a shock even to those familiar
with the Street. It was known that he was in trouble, but he had been in
trouble before. It was known that there had been sacrifices, efforts at
extension, efforts at compromise, but the general public fancied that the
Mavick fortune had a core too solid to be washed away by any storm. Only
a very few people knew--such old hands as Uncle Jerry Hollowell, and such
inquisitive bandits as Murad Ault--that the house of Mavick was a house
of cards, and that it might go down when the belief was destroyed that it
was of granite.
The failure was not an ordinary sensation, and, according to the
excellent practices and differing humors of the daily newspapers,
it was made the most of, until the time came for the heavy weeklies
to handle it in its moral aspects as an illustration of modern
civilization. On the first morning there was substantial unanimity in
assuming the totality of the disaster, and the most ingenious artists in
headlines vied with each other in startling effects: "Crash in Wall
Street." "Mavick Runs Up the White Flag." "King of Wall Street Called
Down." "Ault Takes the Pot." "Dangerous to Dukes." "Mavick Bankrupt."
"The House of Mavick a Ruin." "Dukes and Drakes." "The Sea Goes Over
Him."
This, however, was only the beginning. The sensation must be prolonged.
The next day there were attenuating circumstances.
It might be only a temporary embarrassment. The assets were vastly
greater than the liabilities. There was talk in financial circles of an
adjustment. With time the house could go on. The next day it was made a
reproach to the house that such deceptive hopes were put upon the public.
Journalistic enterprise had discovered that the extent of the liabilities
had been concealed. This attempt to deceive the public, these defenders
of the public interest would expose. The next day the wind blew from
another direction. The alarmists were rebuked. The creditors were
disposed to be lenient. Doubtful securities were likely to realize more
than was expected. The assignees were sharply scored for not taking the
newspapers into their confidence.
And so for ten days the failure went on in the newspapers, backward and
forward, now hopeless, now relieved, now sunk in endless complications,
and fallen into the hands of the lawyers who could be trusted with the
most equitable distribution of the property involved, until the reading
public were glad to turn, with the same eager zest, to the case of the
actress who was found dead in a hotel in Jersey City. She was attended
only by her pet poodle, in whose collar was embedded a jewel of great
price. This jewel was traced to a New York establishment, whence it had
disappeared under circumstances that pointed to the criminality of a
scion of a well-known family--an exposure which would shake society to
its foundations.
Meantime affairs took their usual course. The downfall of Mavick is too
well known in the Street to need explanation here. For a time it was
hoped that sacrifices of great interests would leave a modest little
fortune, but under the pressure of liquidation these hopes melted away.
If anything could be saved it would be only comparatively valueless
securities and embarrassed bits of property that usually are only a
delusion and a source of infinite worry to a bankrupt. It seemed
incredible that such a vast fortune should so disappear; but there were
wise men who, so they declared, had always predicted this disaster. For
some years after Henderson's death the fortune had appeared to expand
marvelously. It was, however, expanded, and not solidified. It had been
risked in many gigantic speculations (such as the Argentine), and it had
been liable to collapse at any time if its central credit was doubted.
Mavick's combinations were splendidly conceived, but he lacked the power
of coordination. And great as were his admitted abilities, he had never
inspired confidence.
"And, besides," said Uncle Jerry, philosophizing about it in his homely
way, "there's that little devil of a Carmen, the most fascinating woman I
ever knew--it would take the Bank of England to run her. Why, when I see
that Golden House going up, I said I'd give 'em five years to balloon in
it. I was mistaken. They've floated it about eighteen. Some folks are
lucky--up to a certain point."
Grave history gives but a paragraph to a personal celebrity of this sort.
When a ship goes down in a tempest off the New England coast, there is a
brief period of public shock and sympathy, and then the world passes on
to other accidents and pleasures; but for months relics of the great
vessel float ashore on lonely headlands or are cast up on sandy beaches,
and for years, in many a home made forlorn by the shipwreck, are aching
hearts and an ever-present calamity.
The disaster of the house of Mavick was not accepted without a struggle,
lasting long after the public interest in the spectacle had abated--a
struggle to save the ship and then to pick up some debris from the great
wreck. The most pathetic sight in the business world is that of a
bankrupt, old and broken, pursuing with always deluded expectations the
remnants of his fortune, striving to make new combinations, involved in
lawsuits, alternately despairing, alternately hopeful in the chaos of his
affairs. This was the fate of Thomas Mavick.
The news was all over Newport in a few hours after it had stricken down
Mrs. Mavick. The newspaper details the morning after were read with that
eager interest that the misfortunes of neighbors always excite. After
her first stupor, Mrs. Mavick refused to believe it. It could not be,
and her spirit of resistance rose with the frantic messages she sent to
her husband. Alas, the cold fact of the assignment remained. Still her
courage was not quite beaten down. The suspension could only be
temporary. She would not have it otherwise. Two days she showed herself
as usual in Newport, and carried herself bravely. The sympathy looked or
expressed was wormwood to her, but she met it with a reassuring smile.
To be sure it was very hard to bear such a blow, the result of a stock
intrigue, but it would soon pass over--it was a temporary embarrassment
--that she said everywhere.
She had not, however, told the news to Evelyn with any such smiling
confidence. There was still rage in her heart against her daughter, as
if her obstinacy had some connection with this blow of fate, and she did
not soften the announcement. She expected to sting her, and she did
astonish and she did grieve her, for the breaking-up of her world could
not do otherwise; but it was for her mother and not for herself that
Evelyn showed emotion. If their fortune was gone, then the obstacle was
removed that separated her from Philip. The world well lost! This
flashed through her mind before she had fairly grasped the extent of
the fatality, and it blunted her appreciation of it as an unmixed ruin.
"Poor mamma!" was what she said.
"Poor me!" cried Mrs. Mavick, looking with amazement at her daughter,"
don't you understand that our life is all ruined?"
"Yes, that part of it, but we are left. It might have been so much
worse."
"Worse? You have no more feeling than a chip. You are a beggar! That
is all. What do you mean by worse?"
"If father had done anything dishonorable!" suggested the girl, timidly,
a little scared by her mother's outburst.
"Evelyn, you are a fool!"
And perhaps she was, with such preposterous notions of what is really
valuable in life. There could be no doubt of it from Mrs. Mavick's point
of view.
If Evelyn's conduct exasperated her, the non-appearance of Lord Montague
after the publication of the news seriously alarmed her.
No doubt he was shocked, but she could explain it to him, and perhaps he
was too much interested in Evelyn to be thrown off by this misfortune.
The third day she wrote him a note, a familiar, almost affectionate note,
chiding him for deserting them in their trouble. She assured him that
the news was greatly exaggerated, the embarrassment was only temporary,
such things were always happening in the Street. "You know," she said,
playfully, "it is our American way to be up in a minute when we seem to
be down." She asked him to call, for she had something that was
important to tell him, and, besides, she needed his counsel as a friend
of the house. The note was despatched by a messenger.
In an hour it was returned, unopened, with a verbal message from his
host, saying that Lord Montague had received important news from London,
and that he had left town the day before.
"Coward!" muttered the enraged woman, with closed teeth. "Men are all
cowards, put them to the test."
The energetic woman judged from a too narrow basis. Because Mavick was
weak--and she had always secretly despised him for yielding to her--weak
as compared with her own indomitable spirit, she generalized wildly. Her
opinion of men would have been modified if she had come in contact with
Murad Ault.
To one man in New York besides Mr. Ault the failure did not seem a
personal calamity. When Philip saw in the steamer departures the name of
Lord Montague, his spirits rose in spite of the thought that the heiress
was no longer an heiress. The sky lifted, there was a promise of fair
weather, the storm, for him, had indeed cleared the air.
"Dear Philip," wrote Miss McDonald, "it is really dreadful news, but
I cannot be so very downhearted. It is the least of calamities that
could happen to my dear child. Didn't I tell you that it is always
darkest just before the dawn?"
And Philip needed the hope of the dawn. Trial is good for any one, but
hopeless suffering for none. Philip had not been without hope, but it
was a visionary indulgence, against all evidence. It was the hope of
youth, not of reason. He stuck to his business doggedly,
he stuck to his writing doggedly, but over all his mind was a cloud, an
oppression not favorable to creative effort--that is, creative effort
sweet and not cynical, sunny and not morbid.
And yet, who shall say that this very experience, this oppression of
circumstance, was not the thing needed for the development of the best
that was in him? Thrown back upon himself and denied an airy soaring in
the heights of a prosperous fancy, he had come to know himself and his
limitations. And in the year he had learned a great deal about his art.
For one thing he had come to the ground. He was looking more at life as
it is. His experience at the publishers had taught him one important
truth, and that is that a big subject does not make a big writer, that
all that any mind can contribute to the general thought of the world in
literature is what is in itself, and if there is nothing in himself it is
vain for the writer to go far afield for a theme. He had seen the young
artists, fretting for want of subjects, wandering the world over in
search of an object fitted to their genius, setting up their easels in
front of the marvels of nature and of art, in the expectation that genius
would descend upon them.
If they could find something big enough to paint! And he had seen,
in exhibition after exhibition, that the artist who cannot paint a
rail-fence cannot paint a pyramid. A man does not become a good rider by
mounting an elephant; ten to one a donkey would suit him better. Philip
had begun to see that the life around him had elements enough of the
comic and the tragic to give full play to all his powers.
He began to observe human beings as he had never done before. There were
only two questions, and they are at the bottom of all creative
literature--could he see them, could he make others see them?
This was all as true before the Mavick failure as after; but, before,
what was the use of effort? Now there was every inducement to effort.
Ambition to succeed had taken on him the hold of necessity. And with a
free mind as to the obstacles that lay between him and the realization of
the great dream of his life, the winning of the one woman who could make
his life complete, Philip set to work with an earnestness and a clearness
of vision that had never been given him before.
In the wreck of the Mavick estate, in its distribution, there are one or
two things of interest to the general reader. One of these was the fate
of the Golden House, as it was called. Mrs. Mavick had hurried back to
her town house, determined to save it at all hazard. The impossibility
of this was, however, soon apparent even to her intrepid spirit. She
would either sacrifice all else to save it, or--dark thoughts of ending
it in a conflagration entered her mind. This was only her first temper.
But to keep the house without a vast fortune to sustain it was an
impossibility, and, as it was the most conspicuous of Mavick's visible
possessions, perhaps the surrender of it, which she could not prevent,
would save certain odds and ends here and there. Whether she liked it or
not, the woman learned for once that her will had little to do with the
course of events.
Its destination was gall and wormwood both to Carmen and her husband.
For it fell into the hands of Murad Ault. He coveted it as the most
striking symbol of the position he had conquered in the metropolis. Its
semi-barbaric splendor appealed also to his passion for display. And it
was notable that the taste of the rude lad of poverty--this uncultivated
offspring of a wandering gypsy and herb--collector--perhaps she had
ancient and noble blood in her veins--should be the same for material
ostentation and luxury as that of the cultivated, fastidious Mavick and
his worldly-minded wife. So persistent is the instinct of barbarism in
our modern civilization.
When Ault told his wife what he had done, that sweet, domestic, and
sensible woman was very far from being elated.
"I am almost sorry," she said.
"Sorry for what?" asked Mr. Ault, gently, but greatly surprised.
"For the Mavicks. I don't mean for Mrs. Mavick--I hear she is a worldly
and revengeful woman--but for the girl. It must be dreadful to turn her
out of all the surroundings of her happy life. And I hear she is as good
as she is lovely. Think what it would be for our own girls."
"But it can't be helped," said Ault, persuasively. "The house had to be
sold, and it makes no difference who has it, so far as the girl is
concerned."
"And don't you fear a little for our own girls, launching out that way?"
"You are afraid they will get lost in that big house?" And Mr. Ault
laughed. "It isn't a bit too big or too good for them. At any rate, my
dear, in they go, and you must get ready to move. The house will be
empty in a week."
"Murad," and Mrs. Ault spoke as if she were not thinking of the change
for herself, "there is one thing I wish you would do for me, dear."
"What is that?"
"Go to Mr. Mavick, or to Mrs. Mavick, or the assignees or whoever, and
have the daughter--yes, and her mother--free to take away anything they
want, anything dear to them by long association. Will you?"
"I don't see how. Mavick wouldn't do it for us, and I guess he is too
proud to accept anything from me. I don't owe him anything. And then
the property is in the assignment. Whatever is there I bought with the
house."
"I should be so much happier if you could do something about it."
"Well, it don't matter much. I guess the assignees can make Mrs. Mavick
believe easy enough that certain things belong to her. But I would not
do it for any other living being but you."
"By-the-way," he added, "there is another bit of property that I didn't
take, the Newport palace."
"I should have dreaded that more than the other."
"So I thought. And I have another plan. It's long been in my mind, and
we will carry it out next summer. There is a little plateau on the side
of the East Mountain in Rivervale, where there used to stand a shack of a
cabin, with a wild sort of garden-patch about it, a tumble-down root
fence, all in the midst of brush and briers. Lord, what a habitation it
was! But such a view--rivers, mountains, meadows, and orchards in the
distance! That is where I lived with my mother. What a life!
I hated everything, everybody but her."
Mr. Ault paused, his strong, dark face working with passion, as the
memory of his outlawed boyhood revived. Is it possible that this pirate
of the Street had a bit of sentiment at the bottom of his heart? After a
moment he continued:
"That was the spot to which my mother took me when I was knee-high. I've
bought it, bought the whole hillside. Next summer we will put up a house
there, not a very big house, just a long, low sort of a Moorish pavilion,
the architect calls it. I wish she could see it."
Mrs. Ault rose, with tears in her gentle eyes, stood by her husband's
chair a moment, ran her fingers through his heavy black locks, bent down
and kissed him, and went away without a word.
There was another bit of property that was not included in the wreck.
It belonged to Mrs. Mavick. This was a little house in Irving Place, in
which Carmen Eschelle lived with her mother, in the days before the death
of Henderson's first wife, not very happy days for that wife. Carmen had
a fancy for keeping it after her marriage. Not from any sentiment, she
told Mr. Mavick on the occasion of her second marriage, oh, no, but
somehow it seemed to her, in all her vast possessions left to her by
Henderson, the only real estate she had. It was the only thing that had
not passed into the absolute possession and control of Mavick. The great
town house, with all the rest, stood in Mavick's name. What secret
influence had he over her that made her submit to such a foolish
surrender?
It was in this little house that the reduced family stowed itself after
the downfall. The little house, had it been sentient, would have been
astonished at the entrance into it of the furniture and the remnants of
luxurious living that Mrs. Mavick was persuaded belonged to her
personally. These reminders of former days were, after all, a mockery in
the narrow quarters and the pinched economy of the bankrupt. Yet they
were, for a time useful in preserving to Mrs. Mavick a measure of
self-respect, her self-respect having always been based upon what she had
and not what she was. In truth, the change of lot was harder for Mrs.
Mavick than for Evelyn, since the world in which the latter lived had not
been destroyed. She still had her books, she still had a great love in
her heart, and hope, almost now a sure hope, that her love would blossom
into a great happiness.
But where was Philip? In all this time why did he make no sign?
At moments a great fear came over her. She was so ignorant of life.
Could he know what misery she was in, the daily witness of her father's
broken condition, of her mother's uncertain temper?
XXVI
Is justice done in this world only by a succession of injustices?
Is there any law that a wrong must right a wrong? Did it rebuke the
means by which the vast fortune of Henderson was accumulated, that it was
defeated of any good use by the fraud of his wife? Was her action
punished by the same unscrupulous tactics of the Street that originally
made the fortune? And Ault? Would a stronger pirate arise in time to
despoil him, and so act as the Nemesis of all violation of the law of
honest relations between men?
The comfort is, in all this struggle of the evil powers, masked as
justice, that the Almighty Ruler of the world does not forget his own,
and shows them a smiling face in the midst of disaster. There is no
mystery in this. For the noble part in man cannot be touched in its
integrity by such vulgar disasters as we are considering. In those days
when Evelyn saw dissolving about her the material splendors of her old
life, while the Golden House was being dismantled, and she was taking sad
leave of the scenes of her girlhood, so vivid with memory of affection
and of intellectual activity, they seemed only the shell, the casting-off
of which gave her freedom. The sun never shone brighter, there was never
such singing in her heart, as on the morning when she was free to go to
Mrs. Van Cortlandt's and throw herself into the arms of her dear
governess and talk of Philip.
Why not? Perhaps she had not that kind of maidenly shyness, sometimes
called conventional propriety, sometimes described as 'mauvaise honte'
which a woman of the world would have shown. The impulses of her heart
followed as direct lines as the reasoning of her brain. Was it due to
her peculiar education, education only in the noblest ideas of the race,
that she should be a sort of reversion, in our complicated life, to the
type of woman in the old societies (we like to believe there was such a
type as the poets love, the Nausicaas), who were single-minded, as frank
to avow affection as opinion?
"Have you seen him?" she asked.
"No, but he has written."
"And you think he--" the girl had her arms around her friend's neck
again, and concealed her blushing face don't make me say it, McDonald."
"Yes, dear, I am sure--I know he does."
There was a little quiver in her form, but it was not of agony; then she
put her hands on the shoulders of her governess, and, looking in her
eyes, said:
"When you did see him, how did he look--how did he look?--pretty sad?"
"How could he help it?"
"The dear! But was he well?"
"Splendidly, so he said. Like his old self."
"Tell me," said the girl.
And Miss McDonald went into delightful details, how he looked, how he
walked, how his voice sounded, how he talked, how melancholy he was, and
how full of determination he was, his eyes were so kindly, and his smile
was never so sweet as now when there was sadness in it.
"It is very long since," drearily murmured the girl. And then she
continued, partly to herself, partly to Miss McDonald: "He will come now,
can't he? Not to that house. Never would I wish him to set foot in it.
But he is not forbidden to come to the place where we are going. Soon,
you think? Perhaps you might hint--oh no, not from me--just your idea.
Wouldn't it be natural, after our misfortune? Perhaps mamma would feel
differently after what has happened. Oh, that Montague! that horrid
little man! I think--I think I shall receive him coolly at first, just
to see."
But it was not immediately that the chance for a guileless woman to show
her coolness to her lover was to occur. This postponement was not due to
the coolness or to the good sense of Philip. When the catastrophe came,
his first impulse was that of a fireman who plunges into a burning
building to rescue the imperiled inmates. He pictured in his mind a
certain nobility of action in going forward to the unfortunate family
with his sympathy, and appearing to them in the heroic attitude of a man
whose love has no alloy of self-interest. They should speedily
understand that it was not the heiress, but the woman, with whom he was
in love.
But Miss McDonald understood human nature better than that, at least the
nature of Mrs. Mavick. People of her temperament, humiliated and
enraged, are best left alone. The fierceness with which she would have
turned upon any of her society friends who should have presumed to offer
her condolence, however sweetly the condescension were concealed, would
have been vented without mercy upon the man whose presence would have
reminded her of her foolish rudeness to him, and of the bitter failure of
her schemes for her daughter. "Wait, wait," said the good counselor,
"until the turmoil has subsided, and the hard pressure of circumstances
compels her to look at things in their natural relations. She is too
sore now in--the wreck of all her hopes."
But, indeed, her hopes were not all surrendered in a moment. She had
more spirit than her husband in their calamity. She was, in fact, a born
gambler; she had the qualities of her temperament, and would not believe
that courage and luck could not retrieve, at least partially, their
fortune. It seemed incredible in the Street that the widow of Henderson
should have given over her property so completely to her second husband,
and it was a surprise to find that there was very little of value that
the assignment of Mavick did not carry with it. The Street did not know
the guilty secret between Mavick and his wife that made them cowards to
each other. Nor did it understand that Carmen was the more venturesome
gambler of the two, and that gradually, for the success of promising
schemes, she had thrown one thing after another into the common
speculation, until practically all the property stood in Mavick's name.
Was she a fool in this, as so many women are about their separate
property, or was she cheated?
The palace on Fifth Avenue was not even in her name. When she realized
that, there was a scene--but this is not a history of the quarrels of
Carmen and her husband after the break-down.
The reader would not be interested--the public of the time were not--in
the adjustment of Mavick and his wife to their new conditions.
The broken-down, defeated bankrupt is no novelty in Wall Street, the man
struggling to keep his foothold in the business of the Street, and
descending lower and lower in the scale. The shrewd curbstone broker may
climb to a seat in the Stock Exchange; quite as often a lord of the
Board, a commander of millions, may be reduced to the seedy watcher of
the bulletin-board in a bucket-shop.
At first, in the excitement and the confusion, amid the debris of so much
possible wealth, Mavick kept a sort of position, and did not immediately
feel the pinch of vulgar poverty. But the day came when all illusion
vanished, and it was a question of providing from day to day for the
small requirements of the house in Irving Place.
It was not a cheerful household; reproaches are hard to bear when
physical energy is wanting to resist them. Mavick had visibly aged
during the year. It was only in his office that he maintained anything
of the spruce appearance and 'sang froid' which had distinguished the
diplomatist and the young adventurer. At home he had fallen into the
slovenliness that marks a disappointed old age. Was Mrs. Mavick peevish
and unreasonable? Very likely. And had she not reason to be? Was she,
as a woman, any more likely to be reconciled to her fate when her mirror
told her, with pitiless reflection, that she was an old woman?
Philip waited. Under the circumstances would not both Philip and Evelyn
have been justified in disregarding the prohibition that forbade their
meeting or even writing to each other? It may be a nice question, but it
did not seem so to these two, who did not juggle with their consciences.
Philip had given his word. Evelyn would tolerate no concealments; she
was just that simple-minded in her filial notions.
The girl, however, had one comfort, and that was the knowledge of Philip
through Miss McDonald, whom she saw frequently, and to whom even Mrs.
Mavick was in a manner reconciled. She was often in the little house in
Irving Place. There was nothing in her manner to remind Mrs. Mavick that
she had done her a great wrong, and her cheerfulness and good sense made
her presence and talk a relief from the monotony of the defeated woman's
life.
It came about, therefore, that one day Philip made his way down into the
city to seek an interview with Mr. Mavick. He found him, after some
inquiry, in a barren little office, occupying one of the rented desks
with three or four habitues of the Street, one of them an old man like
himself, the others mere lads who did not intend to remain long in such
cramped quarters.
Mr. Mavick arose when his visitor stood at his desk, buttoned up his
frock-coat, and extended his hand with a show of business cordiality, and
motioned him to a chair. Philip was greatly shocked at the change in Mr.
Mavick's appearance.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "for disturbing you in business hours."
"No disturbance," he answered, with something of the old cynical smile on
his lips.
"Long ago I called to see you on the errand I have now, but you were not
in town. It was, Mr. Mavick," and Philip hesitated and looked down, "in
regard to your daughter."
"Ah, I did not hear of it."
"No? Well, Mr. Mavick, I was pretty presumptuous, for I had no foothold
in the city, except a law clerkship."
"I remember--Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle; why didn't you keep it?"
"I wasn't fitted for the law."
"Oh, literature? Does literature pay?"
"Not in itself, not for many," and Philip forced a laugh. "But it led to
a situation in a first-rate publishing house--an apprenticeship that has
now given me a position that seems to be permanent, with prospects
beyond, and a very fair salary. It would not seem much to you,
Mr. Mavick," and Philip tried to laugh again.
"I don't know," replied Mr. Mavick. "If a fellow has any sort of salary
these times, I should advise him to hold on to it. By-the-way,
Mr. Burnett, Hunt's a Republican, isn't he?"
"He was," replied Philip, "the last I knew."
"Do you happen to know whether he knows Bilbrick, the present Collector?"
"Mr. Bilbrick used to be a client of his."
"Just so. I think I'll see Hunt. A salary isn't a bad thing for a--for
a man who has retired pretty much from business. But you were saying,
Mr. Burnett?"
"I was going to say, Mr. Mavick, that there was a little something more
than my salary that I can count on pretty regularly now from the
magazines, and I have had another story, a novel, accepted, and--you
won't think me vain--the publisher says it will go; if it doesn't have a
big sale he will--"
"Make it up to you?"
"Not exactly," and Philip laughed; "he will be greatly mistaken."
"I suppose it is a kind of lottery, like most things. The publishers
have to take risks. The only harm I wish them is that they were
compelled to read all the stuff they try to make us read. Ah, well. Mr.
Burnett, I hope you have made a hit. It is pretty much the same thing in
our business. The publisher bulls his own book and bears the other
fellow's. Is it a New York story?"
"Partly; things come to a focus here, you know."
"I could give you points. It's a devil of a place. I guess the
novelists are too near to see the romance of it. When I was in Rome I
amused myself by diving into the mediaeval records. Steel and poison
were the weapons then. We have a different method now, but it comes to
the same thing, and we say we are more civilized. I think our way is
more devilishly dramatic than the old brute fashion. Yes, I could give
you points."
"I should be greatly obliged," said Philip, seeing the way to bring the
conversation back to its starting point; "your wide experience of life
--if you had leisure at home some time."
"Oh," replied Mavick, with more good-humor in his laugh than he had shown
before, "you needn't beat about the bush. Have you seen Evelyn?"
"No, not since that dinner at the Van Cortlandts'."
"Huh! for myself, I should be pleased to see you any time, Mr. Burnett.
Mrs. Mavick hasn't felt like seeing anybody lately. But I'll see, I'll
see."
The two men rose and shook hands, as men shake hands when they have an
understanding.
"I'm glad you are doing well," Mr. Mavick added; "your life is before
you, mine is behind me; that makes a heap of difference."
Within a few days Philip received a note from Mrs. Mavick--not an
effusive note, not an explanatory note, not an apologetic note, simply a
note as if nothing unusual had happened--if Mr. Burnett had leisure,
would he drop in at five o'clock in Irving Place for a cup of tea?
Not one minute by his watch after the hour named, Philip rang the bell
and was shown into a little parlor at the front. There was only one
person in the room, a lady in exquisite toilet, who rose rather languidly
to meet him, exactly as if the visitor were accustomed to drop in to tea
at that hour.
Philip hesitated a moment near the door, embarrassed by a mortifying
recollection of his last interview with Mrs. Mavick, and in that moment
he saw her face. Heavens, what a change! And yet it was a smiling face.
There is a portrait of Carmen by a foreign artist, who was years ago the
temporary fashion in New York, painted the year after her second marriage
and her return from Rome, which excited much comment at the time. Philip
had seen it in more than one portrait exhibition.
Its technical excellence was considerable. The artist had evidently
intended to represent a woman piquant and fascinating, if not strictly
beautiful. Many persons said it was lovely. Other critics said that,
whether the artist intended it or not, he had revealed the real character
of the subject. There was something sinister in its beauty. One artist,
who was out of fashion as an idealist, said, of course privately, that
the more he looked at it the more hideous it became to him--like one of
Blake's objective portraits of a "soul"--the naked soul of an evil woman
showing through the mask of all her feminine fascinations--the possible
hell, so he put it, under a woman's charm.
It was this in the portrait that Philip saw in the face smiling a
welcome--like an old, sweetly smiling Lalage--from which had passed away
youth and the sustaining consciousness of wealth and of a place in the
great world. The smile was no longer sweet, though the words from the
lips were honeyed.
"It is very good of you to drop in in this way, Mr. Burnett," she said,
as she gave him her hand. "It is very quiet down here."
"It is to me the pleasantest part of the city."
"You think so now. I thought so once," and there was a note of sadness
in her voice. "But it isn't New York. It is a place for the people who
are left."
"But it has associations."
"Yes, I know. We pretend that it is more aristocratic. That means the
rents are lower. It is a place for youth to begin and for age to end.
We seem to go round in a circle. Mr. Mavick began in the service of the
government, now he has entered it again--ah, you did not know?--a place
in the Custom-House. He says it is easier to collect other people's
revenues than your own. Do you know, Mr. Burnett, I do not see much
use in collecting revenues anyway--so far as New York is concerned
the people get little good of them. Look out there at that cloud of dust
in the street."
Mrs. Mavick rambled on in the whimsical, cynical fashion of old ladies
when they cease to have any active responsibility in life and become
spectators of it. Their remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank
speech.
"But I thought," Philip interrupted, "that this part of the town was
specially New York."
"New York!" cried Carmen, with animation. "The New York of the
newspapers, of the country imagination; the New York as it is known in
Paris is in Wall Street and in the palaces up-town. Who are the kings of
Wall Street, and who build the palaces up-town? They say that there are
no Athenians in Athens, and no Romans in Rome. How many New-Yorkers are
there in New York? Do New-Yorkers control the capital, rule the
politics, build the palaces, direct the newspapers, furnish the
entertainment, manufacture the literature, set the pace in society? Even
the socialists and mobocrats are not native. Successive invaders, as in
Rome, overrun and occupy the town.
"No, Mr. Burnett, I have left the existing New York. How queer it is to
think about it. My first husband was from New Hampshire. My second
husband was from Illinois. And there is your Murad Ault. The Lord knows
where he came from.
"Talk about the barbarians occupying Rome! Look at that Ault in a
palace! Who was that emperor--Caligula?--I am like the young lady from a
finishing-school who said she never could remember which came first in
history, Greece or Rome--who stabled his horses with stalls and mangers
of gold? The Aults stable themselves that way. Ah, me! Let me give you
a cup of tea. Even that is English."
"It's an innocent pastime," she continued, as Philip stirred his tea, in
perplexity as to how he should begin to say what he had to say--"you
won't object if I light a cigarette? One ought to retain at least one
bad habit to keep from spiritual pride. Tea is an excuse for this. I
don't think it a bad habit, though some people say that civilization is
only exchanging one bad habit for another. Everything changes."
"I don't think I have changed, Mrs. Mavick," said Philip, with
earnestness.
"No? But you will. I have known lots of people who said they never
would change. They all did. No, you need not protest. I believe in you
now, or I should not be drinking tea with you. But you must be
tired of an old woman's gossip. Evelyn has gone out for a walk; she
didn't know. I expect her any minute. Ah, I think that is her ring. I
will let her in. There is nothing so hateful as a surprise."
She turned and gave Philip her hand, and perhaps she was sincere--she had
a habit of being so when it suited her interests--when she said, "There
are no bygones, my friend."
Philip waited, his heart beating a hundred to the minute. He heard
greetings and whisperings in the passage-way, and then--time seemed to
stand still--the door opened and Evelyn stood on the threshold, radiant
from her walk, her face flushed, the dainty little figure poised in timid
expectation, in maidenly hesitation, and then she stepped forward to meet
his advance, with welcome in her great eyes, and gave him her hand in the
old-fashioned frankness.
"I am so glad to see you."
Philip murmured something in reply and they were seated.
That was all. It was so different from the meeting as Philip had a
hundred times imagined it.
"It has been very long," said Philip, who was devouring the girl with his
eyes very long to me."
"I thought you had been very busy," she replied, demurely. Her composure
was very irritating.
"If you thought about it at all, Miss Mavick."
"That is not like you, Mr. Burnett," Evelyn replied, looking up suddenly
with troubled eyes.
"I didn't mean that," said Philip, moving uneasily in his chair,
"I--so many things have happened. You know a person can be busy and not
happy."
"I know that. I was not always happy," said the girl, with the air of
making a confession. "But I liked to hear from time to time of the
success of my friends," she added, ingenuously. And then, quite
inconsequently, "I suppose you have news from Rivervale?"
Yes, Philip heard often from Alice, and he told the news as well as he
could, and the talk drifted along--how strange it seemed!--about things
in which neither of them felt any interest at the moment.
Was there no way to break the barrier that the little brown girl had
thrown around herself? Were all women, then, alike in parrying and
fencing? The talk went on, friendly enough at last, about a thousand
things. It might have been any afternoon call on a dear friend. And at
length Philip rose to go.
"I hope I may see you again, soon."
"Of course," said Evelyn, cheerfully. "I am sure father will be
delighted to see you. He enjoys so little now."
He had taken both her hands to say good-by, and was looking hungrily into
her eyes.
"I can't go so. Evelyn, you know, you must know, I love you."
And before the girl comprehended him he had drawn her to him and pressed
his lips upon hers.
The girl started back as if stung, and looked at him with flashing eyes.
"What have you done, what have you done to me?"
Her eyes were clouded, and she put her hands to her face, trembling, and
then with a cry, as of a soul born into the world, threw herself upon
him, her arms around his neck--
"Philip, Philip, my Philip!"
XXVII
Perhaps Philip's announcement of his good-fortune to Alice and to Celia
was not very coherent, but his meaning was plain. Perhaps he was
conscious that the tidings would not increase the cheerfulness of Celia's
single-handed struggle for the ideal life; at least, he would rather
write than tell her face to face.
However he put the matter to her, with what protestations of affectionate
friendship and trust he wrapped up the statement that he made as matter
of fact as possible, he could not conceal the ecstatic state of his mind.
Nothing like it certainly had happened to anybody in the world before.
All the dream of his boyhood, romantic and rose-colored, all the
aspirations of his manhood, for recognition, honor, a place in the life
of his time, were mere illusions compared to this wonderful crown of
life--a woman's love. Where did it come from into this miserable world,
this heavenly ray, this pure gift out of the divine beneficence, this
spotless flower in a humanity so astray, this sure prophecy of the final
redemption of the world? The immeasurable love of a good woman! And to
him! Philip felt humble in his exaltation, charitable in his selfish
appropriation. He wanted to write to Celia--but he did not--that he
loved her more than ever. But to Alice he could pour out his wealth
of affection, quickened to all the world by this great love, for he knew
that her happiness would be in his happiness.
The response from Alice was what he expected, tender, sweet, domestic,
and it was full of praise of Evelyn, of love for her. "Perhaps, dear
Phil," she wrote, "I shall love her more than I do you. I almost think
--did I not remember what a bad boy you could be sometimes--that each one
of you is too good for the other. But, Phil, if you should ever come to
think that she is not too good for you, you will not be good enough for
her. I can't think she is perfect, any more than you are perfect--you
will find that she is just a woman--but there is nothing in all life so
precious as such a heart as hers. You will come here, of course, and at
once, whenever it is. You know that big, square, old-fashioned corner
chamber, with the high-poster. That is yours. Evelyn never saw it. The
morning and the evening sun shoot across it, and the front windows look
on the great green crown of Mount Peak. You know it. There is not such
a place in the world to hear the low and peaceful murmur of the river,
all night long, rushing, tumbling, crooning, I used to think when I was a
little girl and dreamed of things unseen, and still going on when the
birds begin to sing in the dawn. And with Evelyn! Dear Phil!"
It was in another strain, but not less full of real affection, that Celia
wrote:
"I am not going to congratulate you. You are long past the need of that.
But you know that I am happy in having you happy. You thought I never
saw anything? I wonder if men are as blind as they seem to be? And I
had fears. Do you know a man ought to build his own monument. If he
goes into a monument built for him, that is the end of him. Now you can
work, and you will. I am so glad she isn't an heiress any more. I guess
there was a curse on that fortune. But she has eluded it. I believe all
you tell me about her. Perhaps there are more such women in the world
than you think. Some day I shall know her, and soon. I do long to see
her. Love her I feel sure I shall.
"You ask about myself. I am the same, but things change. When I get my
medical diploma I shall decide what to do. My little property just
suffices, with economy, and I enjoy economy. I doubt if I do any general
practice for pay. There are so many young doctors that need the money
for practice more than I do. And perhaps taking it up as a living would
make me sort of hard and perfunctory. And there is so much to do in this
great New York among the unfortunate that a woman who knows medicine can
do better than any one else.
"Ah, me, I am happy in a way, or I expect to be. Everybody--it isn't
because I am a woman I say this--needs something to lean on now and then.
There isn't much to lean on in the college, nor in many of my zealous and
ambitious companions there. There is more faith in the poor people down
in the wards where I go. They are kind to each other, and most of them,
not all, believe in something. They, have that, at any rate, in all
their trials and poverty. Philip, don't despise the invisible. I have
got into the habit of going into a Catholic church down there, when I am
tired and discouraged, and getting the peace of it. It is a sort of open
door! You need not jump to the conclusion that I am 'going over.' Maybe
I am going back. I don't know. I have always you know, been looking for
something.
"I like to sit there in that dim quiet and think of things I can't think
of elsewhere. Do you think I am queer? Philip, all women are queer.
They haven't yet been explained. That is the reason why the novelists
find it next to impossible, with all the materials at hand, to make a
good woman--that is a woman. Do you know what it is to want what you
don't want? Longing is one thing and reason another.
"Perhaps I have depended too much on my reason. If you long to go to a
place where you will have peace, why should you let what you call your
reason stand in the way? Perhaps your reason is foolishness. You will
laugh a little at this, and say that I am tired. No. Only I am not so
sure of things as I used to be. Do you remember when we children used to
sit under that tree by the Deerfield, how confident I was that I
understood all about life, and my airs of superiority?
"Well, I don't know as much now. But there is one thing that has survived
and grown with the years, and that, Philip, is your dear friendship."
What was it in this unassuming, but no doubt sufficiently conceited and
ambitious, young fellow that he should have the affection, the love, of
three such women?
Is affection as whimsically, as blindly distributed as wealth? It is the
experience of life that it is rare to keep either to the end, but as a
man is judged not so much by his ability to make money as to keep it, so
it is fair to estimate his qualities by his power to retain friendship.
New York is full of failures, bankrupts in fortune and bankrupts in
affection, but this melancholy aspect of the town is on the surface, and
is not to be considered in comparison with the great body of moderately
contented, moderately successful, and on the whole happy households. In
this it is a microcosm of the world.
To Evelyn and Philip, judging the world a good deal by each other,
in those months before their marriage, when surprising perfection and new
tenderness were daily developed, the gay and busy city seemed a sort of
paradise.
Mysterious things were going on in the weeks immediately preceding the
wedding. There was a conspiracy between Miss McDonald and Philip in the
furnishing and setting in order a tiny apartment on the Heights,
overlooking the city, the lordly Hudson, and its romantic hills.
And when, after the ceremony, on a radiant afternoon in early June, the
wedded lovers went to their new home, it was the housekeeper, the old
governess, who opened the door and took into her arms the child she had
loved and lost awhile.
This fragment of history leaves Philip Burnett on the threshold of his
career. Those who know him only by his books may have been interested in
his experiences, in the merciful interposition of disaster, before he
came into the great fortune of the love of Evelyn Mavick.
THEIR PILGRIMAGE
By Charles Dudley Warner
I
FORTRESS MONROE
When Irene looked out of her stateroom window early in the morning of the
twentieth of March, there was a softness and luminous quality in the
horizon clouds that prophesied spring. The steamboat, which had left
Baltimore and an arctic temperature the night before, was drawing near
the wharf at Fortress Monroe, and the passengers, most of whom were
seeking a mild climate, were crowding the guards, eagerly scanning the
long facade of the Hygeia Hotel.
"It looks more like a conservatory than a hotel," said Irene to her
father, as she joined him.
"I expect that's about what it is. All those long corridors above and
below enclosed in glass are to protect the hothouse plants of New York
and Boston, who call it a Winter Resort, and I guess there's considerable
winter in it."
"But how charming it is--the soft sea air, the low capes yonder, the
sails in the opening shining in the haze, and the peaceful old fort! I
think it's just enchanting."
"I suppose it is. Get a thousand people crowded into one hotel under
glass, and let 'em buzz around--that seems to be the present notion of
enjoyment. I guess your mother'll like it."
And she did. Mrs. Benson, who appeared at the moment, a little flurried
with her hasty toilet, a stout, matronly person, rather overdressed for
traveling, exclaimed: "What a homelike looking place! I do hope the
Stimpsons are here!"
"No doubt the Stimpsons are on hand," said Mr. Benson. "Catch them not
knowing what's the right thing to do in March! They know just as well as
you do that the Reynoldses and the Van Peagrims are here."
The crowd of passengers, alert to register and secure rooms, hurried up
the windy wharf. The interior of the hotel kept the promise of the
outside for comfort. Behind the glass-defended verandas, in the spacious
office and general lounging-room, sea-coal fires glowed in the wide
grates, tables were heaped with newspapers and the illustrated pamphlets
in which railways and hotels set forth the advantages of leaving home;
luxurious chairs invited the lazy and the tired, and the hotel-bureau,
telegraph-office, railway-office, and post-office showed the new-comer
that even in this resort he was still in the centre of activity and
uneasiness. The Bensons, who had fortunately secured rooms a month in
advance, sat quietly waiting while the crowd filed before the register,
and took its fate from the courteous autocrat behind the counter. "No
room," was the nearly uniform answer, and the travelers had the
satisfaction of writing their names and going their way in search of
entertainment. "We've eight hundred people stowed away," said the clerk,
"and not a spot left for a hen to roost."
At the end of the file Irene noticed a gentleman, clad in a
perfectly-fitting rough traveling suit, with the inevitable crocodile
hand-bag and tightly-rolled umbrella, who made no effort to enroll ahead
of any one else, but having procured some letters from the post-office
clerk, patiently waited till the rest were turned away, and then put down
his name. He might as well have written it in his hat. The deliberation
of the man, who appeared to be an old traveler, though probably not more
than thirty years of age, attracted Irene's attention, and she could not
help hearing the dialogue that followed.
"What can you do for me?"
"Nothing," said the clerk.
"Can't you stow me away anywhere? It is Saturday, and very inconvenient
for me to go any farther."
"Cannot help that. We haven't an inch of room."
"Well, where can I go?"
"You can go to Baltimore. You can go to Washington; or you can go to
Richmond this afternoon. You can go anywhere."
"Couldn't I," said the stranger, with the same deliberation--"wouldn't
you let me go to Charleston?"
"Why," said the clerk, a little surprised, but disposed to accommodate
--"why, yes, you can go to Charleston. If you take at once the boat you
have just left, I guess you can catch the train at Norfolk."
As the traveler turned and called a porter to reship his baggage, he was
met by a lady, who greeted him with the cordiality of an old acquaintance
and a volley of questions.
"Why, Mr. King, this is good luck. When did you come? have you a good
room? What, no, not going?"
Mr. King explained that he had been a resident of Hampton Roads just
fifteen minutes, and that, having had a pretty good view of the place, he
was then making his way out of the door to Charleston, without any
breakfast, because there was no room in the inn.
"Oh, that never'll do. That cannot be permitted," said his engaging
friend, with an air of determination. "Besides, I want you to go with us
on an excursion today up the James and help me chaperon a lot of young
ladies. No, you cannot go away."
And before Mr. Stanhope King--for that was the name the traveler had
inscribed on the register--knew exactly what had happened, by some
mysterious power which women can exercise even in a hotel, when they
choose, he found himself in possession of a room, and was gayly
breakfasting with a merry party at a little round table in the
dining-room.
"He appears to know everybody," was Mrs. Benson's comment to Irene, as
she observed his greeting of one and another as the guests tardily came
down to breakfast. "Anyway, he's a genteel-looking party. I wonder if
he belongs to Sotor, King and Co., of New York?"
"Oh, mother," began Irene, with a quick glance at the people at the next
table; and then, "if he is a genteel party, very likely he's a drummer.
The drummers know everybody."
And Irene confined her attention strictly to her breakfast, and never
looked up, although Mrs. Benson kept prattling away about the young man's
appearance, wondering if his eyes were dark blue or only dark gray, and
why he didn't part his hair exactly in the middle and done with it, and a
full, close beard was becoming, and he had a good, frank face anyway, and
why didn't the Stimpsons come down; and, "Oh, there's the Van Peagrims,"
and Mrs. Benson bowed sweetly and repeatedly to somebody across the room.
To an angel, or even to that approach to an angel in this world, a person
who has satisfied his appetite, the spectacle of a crowd of people
feeding together in a large room must be a little humiliating. The fact
is that no animal appears at its best in this necessary occupation. But
a hotel breakfast-room is not without interest. The very way in which
people enter the room is a revelation of character. Mr. King, who was
put in good humor by falling on his feet, as it were, in such agreeable
company, amused himself by studying the guests as they entered. There
was the portly, florid man, who "swelled" in, patronizing the entire
room, followed by a meek little wife and three timid children. There was
the broad, dowager woman, preceded by a meek, shrinking little man, whose
whole appearance was an apology. There was a modest young couple who
looked exceedingly self-conscious and happy, and another couple, not
quite so young, who were not conscious of anybody, the gentleman giving a
curt order to the waiter, and falling at once to reading a newspaper,
while his wife took a listless attitude, which seemed to have become
second nature. There were two very tall, very graceful, very high-bred
girls in semi-mourning, accompanied by a nice lad in tight clothes, a
model of propriety and slender physical resources, who perfectly
reflected the gracious elevation of his sisters. There was a
preponderance of women, as is apt to be the case in such resorts. A fact
explicable not on the theory that women are more delicate than men, but
that American men are too busy to take this sort of relaxation, and that
the care of an establishment, with the demands of society and the worry
of servants, so draw upon the nervous energy of women that they are glad
to escape occasionally to the irresponsibility of hotel life. Mr. King
noticed that many of the women had the unmistakable air of familiarity
with this sort of life, both in the dining-room and at the office, and
were not nearly so timid as some of the men. And this was very
observable in the case of the girls, who were chaperoning their mothers
--shrinking women who seemed a little confused by the bustle, and a
little awed by the machinery of the great caravansary.
At length Mr. King's eye fell upon the Benson group. Usually it is
unfortunate that a young lady should be observed for the first time at
table. The act of eating is apt to be disenchanting. It needs
considerable infatuation and perhaps true love on the part of a young man
to make him see anything agreeable in this performance. However
attractive a girl may be, the man may be sure that he is not in love if
his admiration cannot stand this test. It is saying a great deal for
Irene that she did stand this test even under the observation of a
stranger, and that she handled her fork, not to put too fine a point upon
it, in a manner to make the fastidious Mr. King desirous to see more of
her. I am aware that this is a very unromantic view to take of one of
the sweetest subjects in life, and I am free to confess that I should
prefer that Mr. King should first have seen Irene leaning on the
balustrade of the gallery, with a rose in her hand, gazing out over the
sea with "that far-away look in her eyes." It would have made it much
easier for all of us. But it is better to tell the truth, and let the
girl appear in the heroic attitude of being superior to her
circumstances.
Presently Mr. King said to his friend, Mrs. Cortlandt, "Who is that
clever-looking, graceful girl over there?"
"That," said Mrs. Cortlandt, looking intently in the direction indicated
--"why, so it is; that's just the thing," and without another word she
darted across the room, and Mr. King saw her in animated conversation
with the young lady. Returning with satisfaction expressed in her face,
she continued, "Yes, she'll join our party--without her mother. How
lucky you saw her!"
"Well! Is it the Princess of Paphlagonia?"
"Oh, I forgot you were not in Washington last winter. That's Miss
Benson; just charming; you'll see. Family came from Ohio somewhere.
You'll see what they are--but Irene! Yes, you needn't ask; they've got
money, made it honestly. Began at the bottom--as if they were in
training for the presidency, you know--the mother hasn't got used to it
as much as the father. You know how it is. But Irene has had every
advantage--the best schools, masters, foreign travel, everything. Poor
girl! I'm sorry for her. Sometimes I wish there wasn't any such thing
as education in this country, except for the educated. She never shows
it; but of course she must see what her relatives are."
The Hotel Hygeia has this advantage, which is appreciated, at least by
the young ladies. The United States fort is close at hand, with its
quota of young officers, who have the leisure in times of peace to
prepare for war, domestic or foreign; and there is a naval station across
the bay, with vessels that need fashionable inspection. Considering the
acknowledged scarcity of young men at watering-places, it is the duty of
a paternal government to place its military and naval stations close to
the fashionable resorts, so that the young women who are studying the
german [(dance) D.W.] and other branches of the life of the period can
have agreeable assistants. It is the charm of Fortress Monroe that its
heroes are kept from ennui by the company assembled there, and that they
can be of service to society.
When Mrs. Cortlandt assembled her party on the steam-tug chartered by her
for the excursion, the army was very well represented. With the
exception of the chaperons and a bronzed veteran, who was inclined to
direct the conversation to his Indian campaigns in the Black Hills, the
company was young, and of the age and temper in which everything seems
fair in love and war, and one that gave Mr. King, if he desired it, an
opportunity of studying the girl of the period--the girl who impresses
the foreigner with her extensive knowledge of life, her fearless freedom
of manner, and about whom he is apt to make the mistake of supposing that
this freedom has not perfectly well-defined limits. It was a delightful
day, such as often comes, even in winter, within the Capes of Virginia;
the sun was genial, the bay was smooth, with only a light breeze that
kept the water sparkling brilliantly, and just enough tonic in the air to
excite the spirits. The little tug, which was pretty well packed with
the merry company, was swift, and danced along in an exhilarating manner.
The bay, as everybody knows, is one of the most commodious in the world,
and would be one of the most beautiful if it had hills to overlook it.
There is, to be sure, a tranquil beauty in its wooded headlands and long
capes, and it is no wonder that the early explorers were charmed with it,
or that they lost their way in its inlets, rivers, and bays. The company
at first made a pretense of trying to understand its geography, and asked
a hundred questions about the batteries, and whence the Merrimac
appeared, and where the Congress was sunk, and from what place the
Monitor darted out upon its big antagonist. But everything was on a
scale so vast that it was difficult to localize these petty incidents
(big as they were in consequences), and the party soon abandoned history
and geography for the enjoyment of the moment. Song began to take the
place of conversation. A couple of banjos were produced, and both the
facility and the repertoire of the young ladies who handled them
astonished Irene. The songs were of love and summer seas, chansons in
French, minor melodies in Spanish, plain declarations of affection in
distinct English, flung abroad with classic abandon, and caught up by the
chorus in lilting strains that partook of the bounding, exhilarating
motion of the little steamer. Why, here is material, thought King, for a
troupe of bacchantes, lighthearted leaders of a summer festival. What
charming girls, quick of wit, dashing in repartee, who can pick the
strings, troll a song, and dance a brando!
"It's like sailing over the Bay of Naples," Irene was saying to Mr. King,
who had found a seat beside her in the little cabin; "the
guitar-strumming and the impassioned songs, only that always seems to me
a manufactured gayety, an attempt to cheat the traveler into the belief
that all life is a holiday. This is spontaneous."
"Yes, and I suppose the ancient Roman gayety, of which the Neapolitan is
an echo, was spontaneous once. I wonder if our society is getting to
dance and frolic along like that of old at Baiae!"
"Oh, Mr. King, this is an excursion. I assure you the American girl is a
serious and practical person most of the time. You've been away so long
that your standards are wrong. She's not nearly so knowing as she seems
to be."
The boat was preparing to land at Newport News--a sand bank, with a
railway terminus, a big elevator, and a hotel. The party streamed along
in laughing and chatting groups, through the warehouse and over the
tracks and the sandy hillocks to the hotel. On the way they captured a
novel conveyance, a cart with an ox harnessed in the shafts, the property
of an aged negro, whose white hair and variegated raiment proclaimed him
an ancient Virginian, a survival of the war. The company chartered this
establishment, and swarmed upon it till it looked like a Neapolitan
'calesso', and the procession might have been mistaken for a
harvest-home--the harvest of beauty and fashion. The hotel was captured
without a struggle on the part of the regular occupants, a dance
extemporized in the dining-room, and before the magnitude of the invasion
was realized by the garrison, the dancing feet and the laughing girls
were away again, and the little boat was leaping along in the Elizabeth
River towards the Portsmouth Navy-yard.
It isn't a model war establishment this Portsmouth yard, but it is a
pleasant resort, with its stately barracks and open square and occasional
trees. In nothing does the American woman better show her patriotism
than in her desire to inspect naval vessels and understand dry-docks
under the guidance of naval officers. Besides some old war hulks at the
station, there were a couple of training-ships getting ready for a
cruise, and it made one proud of his country to see the interest shown by
our party in everything on board of them, patiently listening to the
explanation of the breech-loading guns, diving down into the
between-decks, crowded with the schoolboys, where it is impossible for a
man to stand upright and difficult to avoid the stain of paint and tar,
or swarming in the cabin, eager to know the mode of the officers' life at
sea. So these are the little places where they sleep? and here is where
they dine, and here is a library--a haphazard case of books in the
saloon.
It was in running her eyes over these that a young lady discovered that
the novels of Zola were among the nautical works needed in the navigation
of a ship of war.
On the return--and the twenty miles seemed short enough--lunch was
served, and was the occasion of a good deal of hilarity and innocent
badinage. There were those who still sang, and insisted on sipping the
heel-taps of the morning gayety; but was King mistaken in supposing that
a little seriousness had stolen upon the party--a serious intention,
namely, between one and another couple? The wind had risen, for one
thing, and the little boat was so tossed about by the vigorous waves that
the skipper declared it would be imprudent to attempt to land on the
Rip-Raps. Was it the thought that the day was over, and that underneath
all chaff and hilarity there was the question of settling in life to be
met some time, which subdued a little the high spirits, and gave an air
of protection and of tenderness to a couple here and there? Consciously,
perhaps, this entered into the thought of nobody; but still the old story
will go on, and perhaps all the more rapidly under a mask of raillery and
merriment.
There was great bustling about, hunting up wraps and lost parasols and
mislaid gloves, and a chorus of agreement on the delight of the day, upon
going ashore, and Mrs. Cortlandt, who looked the youngest and most
animated of the flock, was quite overwhelmed with thanks and
congratulations upon the success of her excursion.
"Yes, it was perfect; you've given us all a great deal of pleasure, Mrs.
Cortlandt," Mr. King was saying, as he stood beside her, watching the
exodus.
Perhaps Mrs. Cortlandt fancied his eyes were following a particular
figure, for she responded, "And how did you like her?"
"Like her--Miss Benson? Why, I didn't see much of her. I thought she
was very intelligent--seemed very much interested when Lieutenant Green
was explaining to her what made the drydock dry--but they were all that.
Did you say her eyes were gray? I couldn't make out if they were not
rather blue after all--large, changeable sort of eyes, long lashes; eyes
that look at you seriously and steadily, without the least bit of
coquetry or worldliness; eyes expressing simplicity and interest in what
you are saying--not in you, but in what you are saying. So few women
know how to listen; most women appear to be thinking of themselves and
the effect they are producing."
Mrs. Cortlandt laughed. "Ah; I see. And a little 'sadness' in them,
wasn't there? Those are the most dangerous eyes. The sort that follow
you, that you see in the dark at night after the gas is turned off."
"I haven't the faculty of seeing things in the dark, Mrs. Cortlandt. Oh,
there's the mother!" And the shrill voice of Mrs. Benson was heard, "We
was getting uneasy about you. Pa says a storm's coming, and that you'd
be as sick as sick."
The weather was changing. But that evening the spacious hotel,
luxurious, perfectly warmed, and well lighted, crowded with an agreeable
if not a brilliant company--for Mr. King noted the fact that none of the
gentlemen dressed for dinner--seemed all the more pleasant for the
contrast with the weather outside. Thus housed, it was pleasant to hear
the waves dashing against the breakwater. Just by chance, in the
ballroom, Mr. King found himself seated by Mrs. Benson and a group of
elderly ladies, who had the perfunctory air of liking the mild gayety of
the place. To one of them Mr. King was presented, Mrs. Stimpson--a stout
woman with a broad red face and fishy eyes, wearing an elaborate
head-dress with purple flowers, and attired as if she were expecting to
take a prize. Mrs. Stimpson was loftily condescending, and asked Mr.
King if this was his first visit. She'd been coming here years and
years; never could get through the spring without a few weeks at the
Hygeia. Mr. King saw a good many people at this hotel who seemed to
regard it as a home.
"I hope your daughter, Mrs. Benson, was not tired out with the rather
long voyage today."
"Not a mite. I guess she enjoyed it. She don't seem to enjoy most
things. She's got everything heart can wish at home. I don't know how
it is. I was tellin' pa, Mr. Benson, today that girls ain't what they
used to be in my time. Takes more to satisfy 'em. Now my daughter, if I
say it as shouldn't, Mr. King, there ain't a better appearin,' nor
smarter, nor more dutiful girl anywhere--well, I just couldn't live
without her; and she's had the best schools in the East and Europe; done
all Europe and Rome and Italy; and after all, somehow, she don't seem
contented in Cyrusville--that's where we live in Ohio--one of the
smartest places in the state; grown right up to be a city since we was
married. She never says anything, but I can see. And we haven't spared
anything on our house. And society--there's a great deal more society
than I ever had."
Mr. King might have been astonished at this outpouring if he had not
observed that it is precisely in hotels and to entire strangers that some
people are apt to talk with less reserve than to intimate friends.
"I've no doubt," he said, "you have a lovely home in Cyrusville."
"Well, I guess it's got all the improvements. Pa, Mr. Benson, said that
he didn't know of anything that had been left out, and we had a man up
from Cincinnati, who did all the furnishing before Irene came home."
"Perhaps your daughter would have preferred to furnish it herself?"
"Mebbe so. She said it was splendid, but it looked like somebody else's
house. She says the queerest things sometimes. I told Mr. Benson that I
thought it would be a good thing to go away from home a little while and
travel round. I've never been away much except in New York, where Mr.
Benson has business a good deal. We've been in Washington this winter."
"Are you going farther south?"
"Yes; we calculate to go down to the New Orleans Centennial. Pa wants to
see the Exposition, and Irene wants to see what the South looks like, and
so do I. I suppose it's perfectly safe now, so long after the war?"
"Oh, I should say so."
"That's what Mr. Benson says. He says it's all nonsense the talk about
what the South 'll do now the Democrats are in. He says the South wants
to make money, and wants the country prosperous as much as anybody. Yes,
we are going to take a regular tour all summer round to the different
places where people go. Irene calls it a pilgrimage to the holy places
of America. Pa thinks we'll get enough of it, and he's determined we
shall have enough of it for once. I suppose we shall. I like to travel,
but I haven't seen any place better than Cyrusville yet."
As Irene did not make her appearance, Mr. King tore himself away from
this interesting conversation and strolled about the parlors, made
engagements to take early coffee at the fort, to go to church with Mrs.
Cortlandt and her friends, and afterwards to drive over to Hampton and
see the copper and other colored schools, talked a little politics over a
late cigar, and then went to bed, rather curious to see if the eyes that
Mrs. Cortlandt regarded as so dangerous would appear to him in the
darkness.
When he awoke, his first faint impressions were that the Hygeia had
drifted out to sea, and then that a dense fog had drifted in and
enveloped it. But this illusion was speedily dispelled. The
window-ledge was piled high with snow. Snow filled the air, whirled
about by a gale that was banging the window-shutters and raging exactly
like a Northern tempest.
It swirled the snow about in waves and dark masses interspersed with
rifts of light, dark here and luminous there. The Rip-Raps were lost to
view. Out at sea black clouds hung in the horizon, heavy reinforcements
for the attacking storm. The ground was heaped with the still
fast-falling snow--ten inches deep he heard it said when he descended.
The Baltimore boat had not arrived, and could not get in. The waves at
the wharf rolled in, black and heavy, with a sullen beat, and the sky
shut down close to the water, except when a sudden stronger gust of wind
cleared a luminous space for an instant. Stormbound: that is what the
Hygeia was--a winter resort without any doubt.
The hotel was put to a test of its qualities. There was no getting
abroad in such a storm. But the Hygeia appeared at its best in this
emergency. The long glass corridors, where no one could venture in the
arctic temperature, gave, nevertheless, an air of brightness and
cheerfulness to the interior, where big fires blazed, and the company
were exalted into good-fellowship and gayety--a decorous Sunday gayety
--by the elemental war from which they were securely housed.
If the defenders of their country in the fortress mounted guard that
morning, the guests at the Hygeia did not see them, but a good many of
them mounted guard later at the hotel, and offered to the young ladies
there that protection which the brave like to give the fair.
Notwithstanding this, Mr. Stanhope King could not say the day was dull.
After a morning presumably spent over works of a religious character,
some of the young ladies, who had been the life of the excursion the day
before, showed their versatility by devising serious amusements befitting
the day, such as twenty questions on Scriptural subjects, palmistry,
which on another day is an aid to mild flirtation, and an exhibition of
mind-reading, not public--oh, dear, no--but with a favored group in a
private parlor. In none of these groups, however, did Mr. King find Miss
Benson, and when he encountered her after dinner in the reading-room, she
confessed that she had declined an invitation to assist at the
mind-reading, partly from a lack of interest, and partly from a
reluctance to dabble in such things.
"Surely you are not uninterested in what is now called psychical
research?" he asked.
"That depends," said Irene. "If I were a physician, I should like to
watch the operation of the minds of 'sensitives' as a pathological study.
But the experiments I have seen are merely exciting and unsettling,
without the least good result, with a haunting notion that you are being
tricked or deluded. It is as much as I can do to try and know my own
mind, without reading the minds of others."
"But you cannot help the endeavor to read the mind of a person with whom
you are talking."
"Oh, that is different. That is really an encounter of wits, for you
know that the best part of a conversation is the things not said. What
they call mindreading is a vulgar business compared to this. Don't you
think so, Mr. King?"
What Mr. King was actually thinking was that Irene's eyes were the most
unfathomable blue he ever looked into, as they met his with perfect
frankness, and he was wondering if she were reading his present state of
mind; but what he said was, "I think your sort of mind-reading is a good
deal more interesting than the other," and he might have added,
dangerous. For a man cannot attempt to find out what is in a woman's
heart without a certain disturbance of his own. He added, "So you think
our society is getting too sensitive and nervous, and inclined to make
dangerous mental excursions?"
"I'm afraid I do not think much about such things," Irene replied,
looking out of the window into the storm. "I'm content with a very
simple faith, even if it is called ignorance."
Mr. King was thinking, as he watched the clear, spirited profile of the
girl shown against the white tumult in the air, that he should like to
belong to the party of ignorance himself, and he thought so long about it
that the subject dropped, and the conversation fell into ordinary
channels, and Mrs. Benson appeared. She thought they would move on as
soon as the storm was over. Mr. King himself was going south in the
morning, if travel were possible. When he said good-by, Mrs. Benson
expressed the pleasure his acquaintance had given them, and hoped they
should see him in Cyrusville. Mr. King looked to see if this invitation
was seconded in Irene's eyes; but they made no sign, although she gave
him her hand frankly, and wished him a good journey.
The next morning he crossed to Norfolk, was transported through the
snow-covered streets on a sledge, and took his seat in the cars for the
most monotonous ride in the country, that down the coast-line.
When next Stanhope King saw Fortress Monroe it was in the first days of
June. The summer which he had left in the interior of the Hygeia was now
out-of-doors. The winter birds had gone north; the summer birds had not
yet come. It was the interregnum, for the Hygeia, like Venice, has two
seasons, one for the inhabitants of colder climes, and the other for
natives of the country. No spot, thought our traveler, could be more
lovely. Perhaps certain memories gave it a charm, not well defined, but
still gracious. If the house had been empty, which it was far from
being, it would still have been peopled for him. Were they all such
agreeable people whom he had seen there in March, or has one girl the
power to throw a charm over a whole watering-place? At any rate, the
place was full of delightful repose. There was movement enough upon the
water to satisfy one's lazy longing for life, the waves lapped soothingly
along the shore, and the broad bay, sparkling in the sun, was animated
with boats, which all had a holiday air. Was it not enough to come down
to breakfast and sit at the low, broad windows and watch the shifting
panorama? All about the harbor slanted the white sails; at intervals a
steamer was landing at the wharf or backing away from it; on the wharf
itself there was always a little bustle, but no noise, some pretense of
business, and much actual transaction in the way of idle attitudinizing,
the colored man in castoff clothes, and the colored sister in sun-bonnet
or turban, lending themselves readily to the picturesque; the scene
changed every minute, the sail of a tiny boat was hoisted or lowered
under the window, a dashing cutter with its uniformed crew was pulling
off to the German man-of-war, a puffing little tug dragged along a line
of barges in the distance, and on the horizon a fleet of coasters was
working out between the capes to sea. In the open window came the fresh
morning breeze, and only the softened sounds of the life outside. The
ladies came down in cool muslin dresses, and added the needed grace to
the picture as they sat breakfasting by the windows, their figures in
silhouette against the blue water.
No wonder our traveler lingered there a little! Humanity called him, for
one thing, to drive often with humanely disposed young ladies round the
beautiful shore curve to visit the schools for various colors at Hampton.
Then there was the evening promenading on the broad verandas and out upon
the miniature pier, or at sunset by the water-batteries of the old fort
--such a peaceful old fortress as it is. All the morning there were
"inspections" to be attended, and nowhere could there be seen a more
agreeable mingling of war and love than the spacious, tree-planted
interior of the fort presented on such occasions. The shifting figures
of the troops on parade; the martial and daring manoeuvres of the
regimental band; the groups of ladies seated on benches under the trees,
attended by gallants in uniform, momentarily off duty and full of
information, and by gallants not in uniform and never off duty and
desirous to learn; the ancient guns with French arms and English arms,
reminiscences of Yorktown, on one of which a pretty girl was apt to be
perched in the act of being photographed--all this was enough to inspire
any man to be a countryman and a lover. It is beautiful to see how
fearless the gentle sex is in the presence of actual war; the prettiest
girls occupied the front and most exposed seats; and never flinched when
the determined columns marched down on them with drums beating and colors
flying, nor showed much relief when they suddenly wheeled and marched to
another part of the parade in search of glory. And the officers'
quarters in the casemates--what will not women endure to serve their
country! These quarters are mere tunnels under a dozen feet of earth,
with a door on the parade side and a casement window on the outside--a
damp cellar, said to be cool in the height of summer. The only excuse
for such quarters is that the women and children will be comparatively
safe in case the fortress is bombarded.
The hotel and the fortress at this enchanting season, to say nothing of
other attractions, with laughing eyes and slender figures, might well
have detained Mr. Stanhope King, but he had determined upon a sort of
roving summer among the resorts of fashion and pleasure. After a long
sojourn abroad, it seemed becoming that he should know something of the
floating life of his own country. His determination may have been
strengthened by the confession of Mrs. Benson that her family were
intending an extensive summer tour. It gives a zest to pleasure to have
even an indefinite object, and though the prospect of meeting Irene again
was not definite, it was nevertheless alluring. There was something
about her, he could not tell what, different from the women he had met in
France. Indeed, he went so far as to make a general formula as to the
impression the American women made on him at Fortress Monroe--they all
appeared to be innocent.
II
CAPE MAY, ATLANTIC CITY
"Of course you will not go to Cape May till the season opens. You might
as well go to a race-track the day there is no race." It was Mrs.
Cortlandt who was speaking, and the remonstrance was addressed to Mr.
Stanhope King, and a young gentleman, Mr. Graham Forbes, who had just
been presented to her as an artist, in the railway station at
Philadelphia, that comfortable home of the tired and bewildered traveler.
Mr. Forbes, with his fresh complexion, closely cropped hair, and London
clothes, did not look at all like the traditional artist, although the
sharp eyes of Mrs. Cortlandt detected a small sketch-book peeping out of
his side pocket.
"On the contrary, that is why we go," said Mr. King. "I've a fancy that
I should like to open a season once myself."
"Besides," added Mr. Forbes, "we want to see nature unadorned. You know,
Mrs. Cortlandt, how people sometimes spoil a place."
"I'm not sure," answered the lady, laughing, "that people have not
spoiled you two and you need a rest. Where else do you go?"
"Well, I thought," replied Mr. King, "from what I heard, that Atlantic
City might appear best with nobody there."
"Oh, there's always some one there. You know, it is a winter resort now.
And, by the way--But there's my train, and the young ladies are beckoning
to me." (Mrs. Cortlandt was never seen anywhere without a party of young
ladies.) "Yes, the Bensons passed through Washington the other day from
the South, and spoke of going to Atlantic City to tone up a little before
the season, and perhaps you know that Mrs. Benson took a great fancy to
you, Mr. King. Good-by, au revoir," and the lady was gone with her bevy
of girls, struggling in the stream that poured towards one of the
wicket-gates.
"Atlantic City? Why, Stanhope, you don't think of going there also?"
"I didn't think of it, but, hang it all, my dear fellow, duty is duty.
There are some places you must see in order to be well informed. Atlantic
City is an important place; a great many of its inhabitants spend their
winters in Philadelphia."
"And this Mrs. Benson?"
"No, I'm not going down there to see Mrs. Benson."
Expectancy was the word when our travelers stepped out of the car at Cape
May station. Except for some people who seemed to have business there,
they were the only passengers. It was the ninth of June. Everything was
ready--the sea, the sky, the delicious air, the long line of gray-colored
coast, the omnibuses, the array of hotel tooters. As they stood waiting
in irresolution a grave man of middle age and a disinterested manner
sauntered up to the travelers, and slipped into friendly relations with
them. It was impossible not to incline to a person so obliging and well
stocked with local information. Yes, there were several good hotels
open. It didn't make much difference; there was one near at hand, not
pretentious, but probably as comfortable as any. People liked the table;
last summer used to come there from other hotels to get a meal. He was
going that way, and would walk along with them. He did, and conversed
most interestingly on the way. Our travelers felicitated themselves upon
falling into such good hands, but when they reached the hotel designated
it had such a gloomy and in fact boardinghouse air that they hesitated,
and thought they would like to walk on a little farther and see the town
before settling. And their friend appeared to feel rather grieved about
it, not for himself, but for them. He had moreover, the expression of a
fisherman who has lost a fish after he supposed it was securely hooked.
But our young friends had been angled for in a good many waters, and they
told the landlord, for it was the landlord, that while they had no doubt
his was the best hotel in the place, they would like to look at some not
so good. The one that attracted them, though they could not see in what
the attraction lay, was a tall building gay with fresh paint in many
colors, some pretty window balconies, and a portico supported by high
striped columns that rose to the fourth story. They were fond of color,
and were taken by six little geraniums planted in a circle amid the sand
in front of the house, which were waiting for the season to open before
they began to grow. With hesitation they stepped upon the newly
varnished piazza and the newly varnished office floor, for every step
left a footprint. The chairs, disposed in a long line on the piazza,
waiting for guests, were also varnished, as the artist discovered when he
sat in one of them and was held fast. It was all fresh and delightful.
The landlord and the clerks had smiles as wide as the open doors; the
waiters exhibited in their eagerness a good imitation of unselfish
service.
It was very pleasant to be alone in the house, and to be the first-fruits
of such great expectations. The first man of the season is in such a
different position from the last. He is like the King of Bavaria alone
in his royal theatre. The ushers give him the best seat in the house, he
hears the tuning of the instruments, the curtain is about to rise, and
all for him. It is a very cheerful desolation, for it has a future, and
everything quivers with the expectation of life and gayety. Whereas the
last man is like one who stumbles out among the empty benches when the
curtain has fallen and the play is done. Nothing is so melancholy as the
shabbiness of a watering-place at the end of the season, where is left
only the echo of past gayety, the last guests are scurrying away like
leaves before the cold, rising wind, the varnish has worn off, shutters
are put up, booths are dismantled, the shows are packing up their tawdry
ornaments, and the autumn leaves collect in the corners of the gaunt
buildings.
Could this be the Cape May about which hung so many traditions of summer
romance? Where were those crowds of Southerners, with slaves and
chariots, and the haughtiness of a caste civilization, and the belles
from Baltimore and Philadelphia and Charleston and Richmond, whose smiles
turned the heads of the last generation? Had that gay society danced
itself off into the sea, and left not even a phantom of itself behind? As
he sat upon the veranda, King could not rid himself of the impression
that this must be a mocking dream, this appearance of emptiness and
solitude. Why, yes, he was certainly in a delusion, at least in a
reverie. The place was alive. An omnibus drove to the door (though no
sound of wheels was heard); the waiters rushed out, a fat man descended,
a little girl was lifted down, a pretty woman jumped from the steps with
that little extra bound on the ground which all women confessedly under
forty always give when they alight from a vehicle, a large woman lowered
herself cautiously out, with an anxious look, and a file of men stooped
and emerged, poking their umbrellas and canes in each other's backs. Mr.
King plainly saw the whole party hurry into the office and register their
names, and saw the clerk repeatedly touch a bell and throw back his head
and extend his hand to a servant. Curious to see who the arrivals were,
he went to the register. No names were written there. But there were
other carriages at the door, there was a pile of trunks on the veranda,
which he nearly stumbled over, although his foot struck nothing, and the
chairs were full, and people were strolling up and down the piazza. He
noticed particularly one couple promenading--a slender brunette, with a
brilliant complexion; large dark eyes that made constant play--could it
be the belle of Macon?--and a gentleman of thirty-five, in black
frock-coat, unbuttoned, with a wide-brimmed soft hat-clothes not quite
the latest style--who had a good deal of manner, and walked apart from
the young lady, bending towards her with an air of devotion. Mr. King
stood one side and watched the endless procession up and down, up and
down, the strollers, the mincers, the languid, the nervous steppers;
noted the eye-shots, the flashing or the languishing look that kills, and
never can be called to account for the mischief it does; but not a sound
did he hear of the repartee and the laughter. The place certainly was
thronged. The avenue in front was crowded with vehicles of all sorts;
there were groups strolling on the broad beach-children with their tiny
pails and shovels digging pits close to the advancing tide, nursery-maids
in fast colors, boys in knickerbockers racing on the beach, people lying
on the sand, resolute walkers, whose figures loomed tall in the evening
light, doing their constitutional. People were passing to and fro on the
long iron pier that spider-legged itself out into the sea; the two rooms
midway were filled with sitters taking the evening breeze; and the large
ball and music room at the end, with its spacious outside promenade-yes,
there were dancers there, and the band was playing. Mr. King could see
the fiddlers draw their bows, and the corneters lift up their horns and
get red in the face, and the lean man slide his trombone, and the drummer
flourish his sticks, but not a note of music reached him. It might have
been a performance of ghosts for all the effect at this distance. Mr.
King remarked upon this dumb-show to a gentleman in a blue coat and white
vest and gray hat, leaning against a column near him. The gentleman made
no response. It was most singular. Mr. King stepped back to be out of
the way of some children racing down the piazza, and, half stumbling, sat
down in the lap of a dowager--no, not quite; the chair was empty, and he
sat down in the fresh varnish, to which his clothes stuck fast. Was this
a delusion? No. The tables were filled in the dining-room, the waiters
were scurrying about, there were ladies on the balconies looking dreamily
down upon the animated scene below; all the movements of gayety and
hilarity in the height of a season. Mr. King approached a group who were
standing waiting for a carriage, but they did not see him, and did not
respond to his trumped-up question about the next train. Were these,
then, shadows, or was he a spirit himself? Were these empty omnibuses
and carriages that discharged ghostly passengers? And all this
promenading and flirting and languishing and love-making, would it come
to nothing-nothing more than usual? There was a charm about it all--the
movement, the color, the gray sand, and the rosy blush on the sea--a
lovely place, an enchanted place. Were these throngs the guests that were
to come, or those that had been herein other seasons? Why could not the
former "materialize" as well as the latter? Is it not as easy to make
nothing out of what never yet existed as out of what has ceased to exist?
The landlord, by faith, sees all this array which is prefigured so
strangely to Mr. King; and his comely young wife sees it and is ready for
it; and the fat son at the supper table--a living example of the good
eating to be had here--is serene, and has the air of being polite and
knowing to a houseful. This scrap of a child, with the aplomb of a man of
fifty, wise beyond his fatness, imparts information to the travelers
about the wine, speaks to the waiter with quiet authority, and makes
these mature men feel like boys before the gravity of our perfect flower
of American youth who has known no childhood. This boy at least is no
phantom; the landlord is real, and the waiters, and the food they bring.
"I suppose," said Mr. King to his friend, "that we are opening the
season. Did you see anything outdoors?"
"Yes; a horseshoe-crab about a mile below here on the smooth sand, with a
long dotted trail behind him, a couple of girls in a pony-cart who nearly
drove over me, and a tall young lady with a red parasol, accompanied by a
big black-and-white dog, walking rapidly, close to the edge of the sea,
towards the sunset. It's just lovely, the silvery sweep of coast in this
light."
"It seems a refined sort of place in its outlines, and quietly
respectable. They tell me here that they don't want the excursion crowds
that overrun Atlantic City, but an Atlantic City man, whom I met at the
pier, said that Cape May used to be the boss, but that Atlantic City had
got the bulge on it now--had thousands to the hundreds here. To get the
bulge seems a desirable thing in America, and I think we'd better see
what a place is like that is popular, whether fashion recognizes it or
not."
The place lost nothing in the morning light, and it was a sparkling
morning with a fresh breeze. Nature, with its love of simple, sweeping
lines, and its feeling for atmospheric effect, has done everything for
the place, and bad taste has not quite spoiled it. There is a sloping,
shallow beach, very broad, of fine, hard sand, excellent for driving or
for walking, extending unbroken three miles down to Cape May Point, which
has hotels and cottages of its own, and lifesaving and signal stations.
Off to the west from this point is the long sand line to Cape Henlopen,
fourteen miles away, and the Delaware shore. At Cape May Point there is
a little village of painted wood houses, mostly cottages to let, and a
permanent population of a few hundred inhabitants. From the pier one
sees a mile and a half of hotels and cottages, fronting south, all
flaming, tasteless, carpenter's architecture, gay with paint. The sea
expanse is magnificent, and the sweep of beach is fortunately
unencumbered, and vulgarized by no bath-houses or show-shanties. The
bath-houses are in front of the hotels and in their enclosures; then come
the broad drive, and the sand beach, and the sea. The line is broken
below by the lighthouse and a point of land, whereon stands the elephant.
This elephant is not indigenous, and he stands alone in the sand, a
wooden sham without an explanation. Why the hotel-keeper's mind along
the coast regards this grotesque structure as a summer attraction it is
difficult to see. But when one resort had him, he became a necessity
everywhere. The travelers walked down to this monster, climbed the
stairs in one of his legs, explored the rooms, looked out from the
saddle, and pondered on the problem. This beast was unfinished within
and unpainted without, and already falling into decay. An elephant on
the desert, fronting the Atlantic Ocean, had, after all, a picturesque
aspect, and all the more so because he was a deserted ruin.
The elephant was, however, no emptier than the cottages about which our
friends strolled. But the cottages were all ready, the rows of new
chairs stood on the fresh piazzas, the windows were invitingly open, the
pathetic little patches of flowers in front tried hard to look festive in
the dry sands, and the stout landladies in their rocking-chairs calmly
knitted and endeavored to appear as if they expected nobody, but had
almost a houseful.
Yes, the place was undeniably attractive. The sea had the blue of Nice;
why must we always go to the Mediterranean for an aqua marina, for poetic
lines, for delicate shades? What charming gradations had this
picture-gray sand, blue waves, a line of white sails against the pale
blue sky! By the pier railing is a bevy of little girls grouped about an
ancient colored man, the very ideal old Uncle Ned, in ragged, baggy, and
disreputable clothes, lazy good-nature oozing out of every pore of him,
kneeling by a telescope pointed to a bunch of white sails on the horizon;
a dainty little maiden, in a stiff white skirt and golden hair, leans
against him and tiptoes up to the object-glass, shutting first one eye
and then the other, and making nothing out of it all. "Why, ov co'se you
can't see nuffln, honey," said Uncle Ned, taking a peep, "wid the 'scope
p'inted up in the sky."
In order to pass from Cape May to Atlantic City one takes a long circuit
by rail through the Jersey sands. Jersey is a very prolific State, but
the railway traveler by this route is excellently prepared for Atlantic
City, for he sees little but sand, stunted pines, scrub oaks, small frame
houses, sometimes trying to hide in the clumps of scrub oaks, and the
villages are just collections of the same small frame houses hopelessly
decorated with scroll-work and obtrusively painted, standing in lines on
sandy streets, adorned with lean shade-trees. The handsome Jersey people
were not traveling that day--the two friends had a theory about the
relation of a sandy soil to female beauty--and when the artist got out
his pencil to catch the types of the country, he was well rewarded. There
were the fat old women in holiday market costumes, strong-featured,
positive, who shook their heads at each other and nodded violently and
incessantly, and all talked at once; the old men in rusty suits, thin,
with a deprecatory manner, as if they had heard that clatter for fifty
years, and perky, sharp-faced girls in vegetable hats, all long-nosed and
thin-lipped. And though the day was cool, mosquitoes had the bad taste
to invade the train. At the junction, a small collection of wooden
shanties, where the travelers waited an hour, they heard much of the
glories of Atlantic City from the postmistress, who was waiting for an
excursion some time to go there (the passion for excursions seems to be a
growing one), and they made the acquaintance of a cow tied in the room
next the ticket-office, probably also waiting for a passage to the city
by the sea.
And a city it is. If many houses, endless avenues, sand, paint, make a
city, the artist confessed that this was one. Everything is on a large
scale. It covers a large territory, the streets run at right angles, the
avenues to the ocean take the names of the states. If the town had been
made to order and sawed out by one man, it could not be more beautifully
regular and more satisfactorily monotonous. There is nothing about it to
give the most commonplace mind in the world a throb of disturbance. The
hotels, the cheap shops, the cottages, are all of wood, and, with three
or four exceptions in the thousands, they are all practically alike, all
ornamented with scroll-work, as if cut out by the jig-saw, all vividly
painted, all appealing to a primitive taste just awakening to the
appreciation of the gaudy chromo and the illuminated and consoling
household motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable
distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be
monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six
miles of stark-naked plank walk, rows on rows of bath closets, leagues of
flimsy carpentry-work, in the way of cheap-John shops, tin-type booths,
peep-shows, go-rounds, shooting-galleries, pop-beer and cigar shops,
restaurants, barber shops, photograph galleries, summer theatres.
Sometimes the plank walk runs for a mile or two, on its piles, between
rows of these shops and booths, and again it drops off down by the waves.
Here and there is a gayly-painted wooden canopy by the shore, with chairs
where idlers can sit and watch the frolicking in the water, or a space
railed off, where the select of the hotels lie or lounge in the sand
under red umbrellas. The calculating mind wonders how many million feet
of lumber there are in this unpicturesque barricade, and what gigantic
forests have fallen to make this timber front to the sea. But there is
one thing man cannot do. He has made this show to suit himself, he has
pushed out several iron piers into the sea, and erected, of course, a
skating rink on the end of one of them. But the sea itself, untamed,
restless, shining, dancing, raging, rolls in from the southward, tossing
the white sails on its vast expanse, green, blue, leaden, white-capped,
many-colored, never two minutes the same, sounding with its eternal voice
I knew not what rebuke to man.
When Mr. King wrote his and his friend's name in the book at the Mansion
House, he had the curiosity to turn over the leaves, and it was not with
much surprise that he read there the names of A. J. Benson, wife, and
daughter, Cyrusville, Ohio.
"Oh, I see!" said the artist; "you came down here to see Mr. Benson!"
That gentleman was presently discovered tilted back in a chair on the
piazza, gazing vacantly into the vacant street with that air of endurance
that fathers of families put on at such resorts. But he brightened up
when Mr. King made himself known.
"I'm right glad to see you, sir. And my wife and daughter will be. I was
saying to my wife yesterday that I couldn't stand this sort of thing much
longer."
"You don't find it lively?"
"Well, the livelier it is the less I shall like it, I reckon. The town
is well enough. It's one of the smartest places on the coast. I should
like to have owned the ground and sold out and retired. This sand is all
gold. They say they sell the lots by the bushel and count every sand.
You can see what it is, boards and paint and sand. Fine houses, too;
miles of them."
"And what do you do?"
"Oh, they say there's plenty to do. You can ride around in the sand; you
can wade in it if you want to, and go down to the beach and walk up and
down the plank walk--walk up and down--walk up and down. They like it.
You can't bathe yet without getting pneumonia. They have gone there now.
Irene goes because she says she can't stand the gayety of the parlor."
From the parlor came the sound of music. A young girl who had the air of
not being afraid of a public parlor was drumming out waltzes on the
piano, more for the entertainment of herself than of the half-dozen
ladies who yawned over their worsted-work. As she brought her piece to
an end with a bang, a pretty, sentimental miss with a novel in her hand,
who may not have seen Mr. King looking in at the door, ran over to the
player and gave her a hug. "That's beautiful! that's perfectly lovely,
Mamie!"--"This," said the player, taking up another sheet, "has not been
played much in New York." Probably not, in that style, thought Mr. King,
as the girl clattered through it.
There was no lack of people on the promenade, tramping the boards, or
hanging about the booths where the carpenters and painters were at work,
and the shop men and women were unpacking the corals and the sea-shells,
and the cheap jewelry, and the Swiss wood-carving, the toys, the tinsel
brooches, and agate ornaments, and arranging the soda fountains, and
putting up the shelves for the permanent pie. The sort of preparation
going on indicated the kind of crowd expected. If everything had a cheap
and vulgar look, our wandering critics remembered that it is never fair
to look behind the scenes of a show, and that things would wear a braver
appearance by and by. And if the women on the promenade were homely and
ill-dressed, even the bonnes in unpicturesque costumes, and all the men
were slouchy and stolid, how could any one tell what an effect of gayety
and enjoyment there might be when there were thousands of such people,
and the sea was full of bathers, and the flags were flying, and the bands
were tooting, and all the theatres were opened, and acrobats and spangled
women and painted red-men offered those attractions which, like
government, are for the good of the greatest number? What will you have?
Shall vulgarity be left just vulgar, and have no apotheosis and
glorification? This is very fine of its kind, and a resort for the
million. The million come here to enjoy themselves. Would you have an
art-gallery here, and high-priced New York and Paris shops lining the
way?
"Look at the town," exclaimed the artist, "and see what money can do, and
satisfy the average taste without the least aid from art. It's just
wonderful. I've tramped round the place, and, taking out a cottage or
two, there isn't a picturesque or pleasing view anywhere. I tell you
people know what they want, and enjoy it when they get it."
"You needn't get excited about it," said Mr. King. "Nobody said it
wasn't commonplace, and glaringly vulgar if you like, and if you like to
consider it representative of a certain stage in national culture, I hope
it is not necessary to remind you that the United States can beat any
other people in any direction they choose to expand themselves. You'll
own it when you've seen watering-places enough."
After this defense of the place, Mr. King owned it might be difficult for
Mr. Forbes to find anything picturesque to sketch. What figures, to be
sure! As if people were obliged to be shapely or picturesque for the
sake of a wandering artist! "I could do a tree," growled Mr. Forbes, "or
a pile of boards; but these shanties!"
When they were well away from the booths and bath-houses, Mr. King saw in
the distance two ladies. There was no mistaking one of them--the easy
carriage, the grace of movement. No such figure had been afield all day.
The artist was quick to see that. Presently they came up with them, and
found them seated on a bench, looking off upon Brigantine Island, a low
sand dune with some houses and a few trees against the sky, the most
pleasing object in view.
Mrs. Benson did not conceal the pleasure she felt in seeing Mr. King
again, and was delighted to know his friend; and, to say the truth, Miss
Irene gave him a very cordial greeting.
"I'm 'most tired to death," said Mrs. Benson, when they were all seated.
"But this air does me good. Don't you like Atlantic City?"
"I like it better than I did at first." If the remark was intended for
Irene, she paid no attention to it, being absorbed in explaining to Mr.
Forbes why she preferred the deserted end of the promenade.
"It's a place that grows on you. I guess it's grown the wrong way on
Irene and father; but I like the air--after the South. They say we ought
to see it in August, when all Philadelphia is here."
"I should think it might be very lively."
"Yes; but the promiscuous bathing. I don't think I should like that. We
are not brought up to that sort of thing in Ohio."
"No? Ohio is more like France, I suppose?"
"Like France!" exclaimed the old lady, looking at him in amazement--"like
France! Why, France is the wickedest place in the world."
"No doubt it is, Mrs. Benson. But at the sea resorts the sexes bathe
separately."
"Well, now! I suppose they have to there."
"Yes; the older nations grow, the more self-conscious they become."
"I don't believe, for all you say, Mr. King, the French have any more
conscience than we have."
"Nor do I, Mrs. Benson. I was only trying to say that they pay more
attention to appearances."
"Well, I was brought up to think it's one thing to appear, and another
thing to be," said Mrs. Benson, as dismissing the subject. "So your
friend's an artist? Does he paint? Does he take portraits? There was
an artist at Cyrusville last winter who painted portraits, but Irene
wouldn't let him do hers. I'm glad we've met Mr. Forbes. I've always
wanted to have--"
"Oh, mother," exclaimed Irene, who always appeared to keep one ear for
her mother's conversation, "I was just saying to Mr. Forbes that he ought
to see the art exhibitions down at the other end of the promenade, and
the pictures of the people who come here in August. Are you rested?"
The party moved along, and Mr. King, by a movement that seemed to him
more natural than it did to Mr. Forbes, walked with Irene, and the two
fell to talking about the last spring's trip in the South.
"Yes, we enjoyed the exhibition, but I am not sure but I should have
enjoyed New Orleans more without the exhibition. That took so much time.
There is nothing so wearisome as an exhibition. But New Orleans was
charming. I don't know why, for it's the flattest, dirtiest, dampest
city in the world; but it is charming. Perhaps it's the people, or the
Frenchiness of it, or the tumble-down, picturesque old creole quarter, or
the roses; I didn't suppose there were in the world so many roses; the
town was just wreathed and smothered with them. And you did not see it?"
"No; I have been to exhibitions, and I thought I should prefer to take
New Orleans by itself some other time. You found the people hospitable?"
"Well, they were not simply hospitable; they were that, to be sure, for
father had letters to some of the leading men; but it was the general air
of friendliness and good-nature everywhere, of agreeableness--it went
along with the roses and the easy-going life. You didn't feel all the
time on a strain. I don't suppose they are any better than our people,
and I've no doubt I should miss a good deal there after a while--a
certain tonic and purpose in life. But, do you know, it is pleasant
sometimes to be with people who haven't so many corners as our people
have. But you went south from Fortress Monroe?"
"Yes; I went to Florida."
"Oh, that must be a delightful country!"
"Yes, it's a very delightful land, or will be when it is finished. It
needs advertising now. It needs somebody to call attention to it. The
modest Northerners who have got hold of it, and staked it all out into
city lots, seem to want to keep it all to themselves."
"How do you mean 'finished'?"
"Why, the State is big enough, and a considerable portion of it has a
good foundation. What it wants is building up. There's plenty of water
and sand, and palmetto roots and palmetto trees, and swamps, and a
perfectly wonderful vegetation of vines and plants and flowers. What it
needs is land--at least what the Yankees call land. But it is coming on.
A good deal of the State below Jacksonville is already ten to fifteen
feet above the ocean."
"But it's such a place for invalids!"
"Yes, it is a place for invalids. There are two kinds of people there
--invalids and speculators. Thousands of people in the bleak North, and
especially in the Northwest, cannot live in the winter anywhere else than
in Florida. It's a great blessing to this country to have such a
sanitarium. As I said, all it needs is building up, and then it wouldn't
be so monotonous and malarious."
"But I had such a different idea of it!"
"Well, your idea is probably right. You cannot do justice to a place by
describing it literally. Most people are fascinated by Florida: the fact
is that anything is preferable to our Northern climate from February to
May."
"And you didn't buy an orange plantation, or a town?"
"No; I was discouraged. Almost any one can have a town who will take a
boat and go off somewhere with a surveyor, and make a map."
The truth is--the present writer had it from Major Blifill, who runs a
little steamboat upon one of the inland creeks where the alligator is
still numerous enough to be an entertainment--that Mr. King was no doubt
malarious himself when he sailed over Florida. Blifill says he offended
a whole boatfull one day when they were sailing up the St. John's.
Probably he was tired of water, and swamp and water, and scraggy trees
and water. The captain was on the bow, expatiating to a crowd of
listeners on the fertility of the soil and the salubrity of the climate.
He had himself bought a piece of ground away up there somewhere for two
hundred dollars, cleared it up, and put in orange-trees, and thousands
wouldn't buy it now. And Mr. King, who listened attentively, finally
joined in with the questioners, and said, "Captain, what is the average
price of land down in this part of Florida by the--gallon?"
They had come down to the booths, and Mrs. Benson was showing the artist
the shells, piles of conchs, and other outlandish sea-fabrications in
which it is said the roar of the ocean can be heard when they are
hundreds of miles away from the sea. It was a pretty thought, Mr. Forbes
said, and he admired the open shells that were painted on the inside
--painted in bright blues and greens, with dabs of white sails and a
lighthouse, or a boat with a bare-armed, resolute young woman in it,
sending her bark spinning over waves mountain-high.
"Yes," said the artist, "what cheerfulness those works of art will give to
the little parlors up in the country, when they are set up with other
shells on the what-not in the corner! These shells always used to remind
me of missionaries and the cause of the heathen; but when I see them now
I shall think of Atlantic City."
"But the representative things here," interrupted Irene, "are the
photographs, the tintypes. To see them is just as good as staying here
to see the people when they come."
"Yes," responded Mr. King, "I think art cannot go much further in this
direction."
If there were not miles of these show-cases of tintypes, there were at
least acres of them. Occasionally an instantaneous photograph gave a
lively picture of the beach, when the water was full of bathers-men,
women, children, in the most extraordinary costumes for revealing or
deforming the human figure--all tossing about in the surf. But most of
the pictures were taken on dry land, of single persons, couples, and
groups in their bathing suits. Perhaps such an extraordinary collection
of humanity cannot be seen elsewhere in the world, such a uniformity of
one depressing type reduced to its last analysis by the sea-toilet.
Sometimes it was a young man and a maiden, handed down to posterity in
dresses that would have caused their arrest in the street, sentimentally
reclining on a canvas rock. Again it was a maiden with flowing hair,
raised hands clasped, eyes upturned, on top of a crag, at the base of
which the waves were breaking in foam. Or it was the same stalwart
maiden, or another as good, in a boat which stood on end, pulling through
the surf with one oar, and dragging a drowning man (in a bathing suit
also) into the boat with her free hand. The legend was, "Saved." There
never was such heroism exhibited by young women before, with such
raiment, as was shown in these rare works of art.
As they walked back to the hotel through a sandy avenue lined with
jig-saw architecture, Miss Benson pointed out to them some things that
she said had touched her a good deal. In the patches of sand before each
house there was generally an oblong little mound set about with a rim of
stones, or, when something more artistic could be afforded, with shells.
On each of these little graves was a flower, a sickly geranium, or a
humble marigold, or some other floral token of affection.
Mr. Forbes said he never was at a watering-place before where they buried
the summer boarders in the front yard. Mrs. Benson didn't like joking on
such subjects, and Mr. King turned the direction of the conversation by
remarking that these seeming trifles were really of much account in these
days, and he took from his pocket a copy of the city newspaper, 'The
Summer Sea-Song,' and read some of the leading items: "S., our eye is on
you." "The Slopers have come to their cottage on Q Street, and come to
stay." "Mr. E. P. Borum has painted his front steps." "Mr.
Diffendorfer's marigold is on the blow." And so on, and so on. This was
probably the marigold mentioned that they were looking at.
The most vivid impression, however, made upon the visitor in this walk
was that of paint. It seemed unreal that there could be so much paint in
the world and so many swearing colors. But it ceased to be a dream, and
they were taken back into the hard, practical world, when, as they turned
the corner, Irene pointed out her favorite sign:
Silas Lapham, mineral paint.
Branch Office.
The artist said, a couple of days after this morning, that he had enough
of it. "Of course," he added, "it is a great pleasure to me to sit and
talk with Mrs. Benson, while you and that pretty girl walk up and down
the piazza all the evening; but I'm easily satisfied, and two evenings
did for me."
So that, much as Mr. King was charmed with Atlantic City, and much as he
regretted not awaiting the arrival of the originals of the tintypes, he
gave in to the restlessness of the artist for other scenes; but not
before he had impressed Mrs. Benson with a notion of the delights of
Newport in July.
III
THE CATSKILLS
The view of the Catskills from a certain hospitable mansion on the east
side of the Hudson is better than any mew from those delectable hills.
The artist said so one morning late in June, and Mr. King agreed with
him, as a matter of fact, but would have no philosophizing about it, as
that anticipation is always better than realization; and when Mr. Forbes
went on to say that climbing a mountain was a good deal like marriage
--the world was likely to look a little flat once that cerulean height
was attained--Mr. King only remarked that that was a low view to take of
the subject, but he would confess that it was unreasonable to expect that
any rational object could fulfill, or even approach, the promise held out
by such an exquisite prospect as that before them.
The friends were standing where the Catskill hills lay before them in
echelon towards the river, the ridges lapping over each other and
receding in the distance, a gradation of lines most artistically drawn,
still further refined by shades of violet, which always have the effect
upon the contemplative mind of either religious exaltation or the
kindling of a sentiment which is in the young akin to the emotion of
love. While the artist was making some memoranda of these outlines, and
Mr. King was drawing I know not what auguries of hope from these purple
heights, a young lady seated upon a rock near by--a young lady just
stepping over the border-line of womanhood--had her eyes also fixed upon
those dreamy distances, with that look we all know so well, betraying
that shy expectancy of life which is unconfessed, that tendency to
maidenly reverie which it were cruel to interpret literally. At the
moment she is more interesting than the Catskills--the brown hair, the
large eyes unconscious of anything but the most natural emotion, the
shapely waist just beginning to respond to the call of the future--it is
a pity that we shall never see her again, and that she has nothing
whatever to do with our journey. She also will have her romance; fate
will meet her in the way some day, and set her pure heart wildly beating,
and she will know what those purple distances mean. Happiness, tragedy,
anguish--who can tell what is in store for her? I cannot but feel
profound sadness at meeting her in this casual way and never seeing her
again. Who says that the world is not full of romance and pathos and
regret as we go our daily way in it? You meet her at a railway station;
there is the flutter of a veil, the gleam of a scarlet bird, the lifting
of a pair of eyes--she is gone; she is entering a drawing-room, and stops
a moment and turns away; she is looking from a window as you pass--it is
only a glance out of eternity; she stands for a second upon a rock
looking seaward; she passes you at the church door--is that all? It is
discovered that instantaneous photographs can be taken. They are taken
all the time; some of them are never developed, but I suppose these
impressions are all there on the sensitive plate, and that the plate is
permanently affected by the impressions. The pity of it is that the
world is so full of these undeveloped knowledges of people worth knowing
and friendships worth making.
The comfort of leaving same things to the imagination was impressed upon
our travelers when they left the narrow-gauge railway at the mountain
station, and identified themselves with other tourists by entering a
two-horse wagon to be dragged wearily up the hill through the woods. The
ascent would be more tolerable if any vistas were cut in the forest to
give views by the way; as it was, the monotony of the pull upward was
only relieved by the society of the passengers. There were two bright
little girls off for a holiday with their Western uncle, a big,
good-natured man with a diamond breast-pin, and his voluble son, a lad
about the age of his little cousins, whom he constantly pestered by his
rude and dominating behavior. The boy was a product which it is the
despair of all Europe to produce, and our travelers had great delight in
him as an epitome of American "smartness." He led all the conversation,
had confident opinions about everything, easily put down his deferential
papa, and pleased the other passengers by his self-sufficient,
know-it-all air. To a boy who had traveled in California and seen the
Alps it was not to be expected that this humble mountain could afford
much entertainment, and he did not attempt to conceal his contempt for
it. When the stage reached the Rip Van Winkle House, half-way, the shy
schoolgirls were for indulging a little sentiment over the old legend,
but the boy, who concealed his ignorance of the Irving romance until his
cousins had prattled the outlines of it, was not to be taken in by any
such chaff, and though he was a little staggered by Rip's own cottage,
and by the sight of the cave above it which is labeled as the very spot
where the vagabond took his long nap, he attempted to bully the attendant
and drink-mixer in the hut, and openly flaunted his incredulity until the
bar-tender showed him a long bunch of Rip's hair, which hung like a scalp
on a nail, and the rusty barrel and stock of the musket. The cabin is,
indeed, full of old guns, pistols, locks of hair, buttons,
cartridge-boxes, bullets, knives, and other undoubted relics of Rip and
the Revolution. This cabin, with its facilities for slaking thirst on a
hot day, which Rip would have appreciated, over a hundred years old
according to information to be obtained on the spot, is really of unknown
antiquity, the old boards and timber of which it is constructed having
been brought down from the Mountain House some forty years ago.
The old Mountain House, standing upon its ledge of rock, from which one
looks down upon a map of a considerable portion of New York and New
England, with the lake in the rear, and heights on each side that offer
charming walks to those who have in contemplation views of nature or of
matrimony, has somewhat lost its importance since the vast Catskill
region has come to the knowledge of the world. A generation ago it was
the centre of attraction, and it was understood that going to the
Catskills was going there. Generations of searchers after immortality
have chiseled their names in the rock platform, and one who sits there
now falls to musing on the vanity of human nature and the transitoriness
of fashion. Now New York has found that it has very convenient to it a
great mountain pleasure-ground; railways and excellent roads have pierced
it, the varied beauties of rocks, ravines, and charming retreats are
revealed, excellent hotels capable of entertaining a thousand guests are
planted on heights and slopes commanding mountain as well as lowland
prospects, great and small boarding-houses cluster in the high valleys
and on the hillsides, and cottages more thickly every year dot the wild
region. Year by year these accommodations will increase, new roads
around the gorges will open more enchanting views, and it is not
improbable that the species of American known as the "summer boarder"
will have his highest development and apotheosis in these mountains.
Nevertheless Mr. King was not uninterested in renewing his memories of
the old house. He could recall without difficulty, and also without
emotion now, a scene on this upper veranda and a moonlight night long
ago, and he had no doubt he could find her name carved on a beech-tree in
the wood near by; but it was useless to look for it, for her name had
been changed. The place was, indeed, full of memories, but all chastened
and subdued by the indoor atmosphere, which impressed him as that of a
faded Sunday. He was very careful not to disturb the decorum by any
frivolity of demeanor, and he cautioned the artist on this point; but Mr.
Forbes declared that the dining-room fare kept his spirits at a proper
level. There was an old-time satisfaction in wandering into the parlor,
and resting on the haircloth sofa, and looking at the hair-cloth chairs,
and pensively imagining a meeting there, with songs out of the Moody and
Sankey book; and he did not tire of dropping into the reposeful
reception-room, where he never by any chance met anybody, and sitting
with the melodeon and big Bible Society edition of the Scriptures, and a
chance copy of the Christian at Play. These amusements were varied by
sympathetic listening to the complaints of the proprietor about the
vandalism of visitors who wrote with diamonds on the window-panes, so
that the glass had to be renewed, or scratched their names on the pillars
of the piazza, so that the whole front had to be repainted, or broke off
the azalea blossoms, or in other ways desecrated the premises. In order
to fit himself for a sojourn here, Mr. King tried to commit to memory a
placard that was neatly framed and hung on the veranda, wherein it was
stated that the owner cheerfully submits to all necessary use of the
premises, "but will not permit any unnecessary use, or the exercise of a
depraved taste or vandalism." There were not as yet many guests, and
those who were there seemed to have conned this placard to their
improvement, for there was not much exercise of any sort of taste. Of
course there were two or three brides, and there was the inevitable
English nice middle-class tourist with his wife, the latter ram-roddy and
uncompromising, in big boots and botanical, who, in response to a
gentleman who was giving her information about travel, constantly
ejaculated, in broad English, "Yas, yas; ow, ow, ow, really!"
And there was the young bride from Kankazoo, who frightened Mr. King back
into his chamber one morning when he opened his door and beheld the
vision of a woman going towards the breakfast-room in what he took to be
a robe de nuit, but which turned out to be one of the "Mother-Hubbards"
which have had a certain celebrity as street dresses in some parts of the
West. But these gayeties palled after a time, and one afternoon our
travelers, with their vandalism all subdued, walked a mile over the rocks
to the Kaaterskill House, and took up their abode there to watch the
opening of the season. Naturally they expected some difficulty in
transferring their two trunks round by the road, where there had been
nothing but a wilderness forty years ago; but their change of base was
facilitated by the obliging hotelkeeper in the most friendly manner, and
when he insisted on charging only four dollars for moving the trunks, the
two friends said that, considering the wear and tear of the mountain
involved, they did not see how he could afford to do it for such a sum,
and they went away, as they said, well pleased.
It happened to be at the Kaaterskill House--it might have been at the
Grand, or the Overlook--that the young gentlemen in search of information
saw the Catskill season get under way. The phase of American life is
much the same at all these great caravansaries. It seems to the writer,
who has the greatest admiration for the military genius that can feed and
fight an army in the field, that not enough account is made of the
greater genius that can organize and carry on a great American hotel,
with a thousand or fifteen hundred guests, in a short, sharp, and
decisive campaign of two months, at the end of which the substantial
fruits of victory are in the hands of the landlord, and the guests are
allowed to depart with only their personal baggage and side-arms, but so
well pleased that they are inclined to renew the contest next year. This
is a triumph of mind over mind. It is not merely the organization and
the management of the army under the immediate command of the landlord,
the accumulation and distribution of supplies upon this mountain-top, in
the uncertainty whether the garrison on a given day will be one hundred
or one thousand, not merely the lodging, rationing and amusing of this
shifting host, but the satisfying of as many whims and prejudices as
there are people who leave home on purpose to grumble and enjoy
themselves in the exercise of a criticism they dare not indulge in their
own houses. Our friends had an opportunity of seeing the machinery set
in motion in one of these great establishments. Here was a vast balloon
structure, founded on a rock, but built in the air, and anchored with
cables, with towers and a high pillared veranda, capable, with its annex,
of lodging fifteen hundred people. The army of waiters and
chamber-maids, of bellboys, and scullions and porters and laundry-folk,
was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were
filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array of
white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the
telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging
his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open
for letters. It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery
in motion. And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to
launch him into the maddening gayety of the season. It would welcome his
arrival in triumphant strains; it would pursue him at dinner, and drown
his conversation; it will fill his siesta with martial dreams, and it
would seize his legs in the evening, and entreat him to caper in the
parlor. Everything was ready. And this was what happened. It was the
evening of the opening day. The train wagons might be expected any
moment. The electric lights were blazing. All the clerks stood
expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys
were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves
of the register with a gracious air. A noise is heard outside, the big
door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a
linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady,
and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet--the
whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or
smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next
day there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and
the day following, an excursion.
With increasing arrivals opportunity was offered for the study of
character. Away from his occupation, away from the cares of the
household and the demands of society, what is the self-sustaining
capacity of the ordinary American man or woman? It was interesting to
note the enthusiasm of the first arrival, the delight in the view--Round
Top, the deep gorges, the charming vista of the lowlands, a world and
wilderness of beauty; the inspiration of the air, the alertness to
explore in all directions, to see the lake, the falls, the mountain
paths. But is a mountain sooner found out than a valley, or is there a
want of internal resources, away from business, that the men presently
become rather listless, take perfunctory walks for exercise, and are so
eager for meal-time and mail-time? Why do they depend so much upon the
newspapers, when they all despise the newspapers? Mr. King used to
listen of an evening to the commonplace talk about the fire, all of which
was a dilution of what they had just got out of the newspapers, but what
a lively assent there was to a glib talker who wound up his remarks with
a denunciation of the newspapers! The man was no doubt quite right, but
did he reflect on the public loss of his valuable conversation the next
night if his newspaper should chance to fail? And the women, after their
first feeling of relief, did they fall presently into petty gossip,
complaints about the table, criticisms of each other's dress, small
discontents with nearly everything? Not all of them.
An excursion is always resented by the regular occupants of a summer
resort, who look down upon the excursionists, while they condescend to be
amused by them. It is perhaps only the common attitude of the wholesale
to the retail dealer, although it is undeniable that a person seems
temporarily to change his nature when he becomes part of an excursion;
whether it is from the elation at the purchase of a day of gayety below
the market price, or the escape from personal responsibility under a
conductor, or the love of being conspicuous as a part of a sort of
organization, the excursionist is not on his ordinary behavior.
An excursion numbering several hundreds, gathered along the river towns
by the benevolent enterprise of railway officials, came up to the
mountain one day. The officials seemed to have run a drag-net through
factories, workshops, Sunday-schools, and churches, and scooped in the
weary workers at homes and in shops unaccustomed to a holiday. Our
friends formed a part of a group on the hotel piazza who watched the
straggling arrival of this band of pleasure. For by this time our two
friends had found a circle of acquaintances, with the facility of
watering-place life, which in its way represented certain phases of
American life as well as the excursion. A great many writers have sought
to classify and label and put into a paragraph a description of the
American girl. She is not to be disposed of by any such easy process.
Undoubtedly she has some common marks of nationality that distinguish her
from the English girl, but in variety she is practically infinite, and
likely to assume almost any form, and the characteristics of a dozen
nationalities. No one type represents her. What, indeed, would one say
of this little group on the hotel piazza, making its comments upon the
excursionists? Here is a young lady of, say, twenty-three years,
inclining already to stoutness, domestic, placid, with matron written on
every line of her unselfish face, capable of being, if necessity were, a
notable housekeeper, learned in preserves and jellies and cordials, sure
to have her closets in order, and a place for every remnant, piece of
twine, and all odds and ends. Not a person to read Browning with, but to
call on if one needed a nurse, or a good dinner, or a charitable deed.
Beside her, in an invalid's chair, a young girl, scarcely eighteen, of
quite another sort, pale, slight, delicate, with a lovely face and large
sentimental eyes, all nerves, the product, perhaps, of a fashionable
school, who in one season in New York, her first, had utterly broken down
into what is called nervous prostration. In striking contrast was Miss
Nettie Sumner, perhaps twenty-one, who corresponded more nearly to what
the internationalists call the American type; had evidently taken school
education as a duck takes water, and danced along in society into
apparent robustness of person and knowledge of the world. A handsome
girl, she would be a comely woman, good-natured, quick at repartee,
confining her knowledge of books to popular novels, too natural and frank
to be a flirt, an adept in all the nice slang current in fashionable
life, caught up from collegians and brokers, accustomed to meet men in
public life, in hotels, a very "jolly" companion, with a fund of good
sense that made her entirely capable of managing her own affairs. Mr.
King was at the moment conversing with still another young lady, who had
more years than the last-named-short, compact figure, round girlish face,
good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing, self-possessed in manner,
sensible-who made ready and incisive comments, and seemed to have thought
deeply on a large range of topics, but had a sort of downright
practicality and cool independence, with all her femininity of bearing,
that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It occurred to Mr. King to guess
that Miss Selina Morton might be from Boston, which she was not, but it
was with a sort of shock of surprise that he learned later that this
young girl, moving about in society in the innocent panoply of girlhood,
was a young doctor, who had no doubt looked through and through him with
her keen eyes, studied him in the light of heredity, constitutional
tendencies, habits, and environment, as a possible patient. It almost
made him ill to think of it. Here were types enough for one morning; but
there was still another.
The artist had seated himself on a rock a little distance from the house,
and was trying to catch some of the figures as they appeared up the path,
and a young girl was looking over his shoulder with an amused face, just
as he was getting an elderly man in a long flowing duster, straggling
gray hair, hat on the back of his head, large iron-rimmed spectacles,
with a baggy umbrella, who stopped breathless at the summit, with a wild
glare of astonishment at the view. This young girl, whom the careless
observer might pass without a second glance, was discovered on better
acquaintance to express in her face and the lines of her figure some
subtle intellectual quality not easily interpreted. Marion Lamont, let
us say at once, was of Southern origin, born in London during the
temporary residence of her parents there, and while very young deprived
by death of her natural protectors. She had a small, low voice, fine
hair of a light color, which contrasted with dark eyes, waved back from
her forehead, delicate, sensitive features--indeed, her face, especially
in conversation with any one, almost always had a wistful, appealing
look; in figure short and very slight, lithe and graceful, full of
unconscious artistic poses, fearless and sure-footed as a gazelle in
climbing about the rocks, leaping from stone to stone, and even making
her way up a tree that had convenient branches, if the whim took her,
using her hands and arms like a gymnast, and performing whatever feat of.
daring or dexterity as if the exquisitely molded form was all instinct
with her indomitable will, and obeyed it, and always with an air of
refinement and spirited breeding. A child of nature in seeming, but yet
a woman who was not to be fathomed by a chance acquaintance.
The old man with the spectacles was presently overtaken by a stout,
elderly woman, who landed in the exhausted condition of a porpoise that
has come ashore, and stood regardless of everything but her own weight,
while member after member of the party straggled up. No sooner did this
group espy the artist than they moved in his direction. "There's a
painter." "I wonder what he's painting." "Maybe he'll paint us." "Let's
see what he's doing." "I should like to see a man paint." And the crowd
flowed on, getting in front of the sketcher, and creeping round behind
him for a peep over his shoulder. The artist closed his sketch-book and
retreated, and the stout woman, balked of that prey, turned round a
moment to the view, exclaimed, "Ain't that elegant!" and then waddled off
to the hotel.
"I wonder," Mr. King was saying, "if these excursionists are
representative of general American life?"
"If they are," said the artist, "there's little here for my purpose. A
good many of them seem to be foreigners, or of foreign origin. Just as
soon as these people get naturalized, they lose the picturesqueness they
had abroad."
"Did it never occur to your highness that they may prefer to be
comfortable rather than picturesque, and that they may be ignorant that
they were born for artistic purposes?" It was the low voice of Miss
Lamont, and that demure person looked up as if she really wanted
information.
"I doubt about the comfort," the artist began to reply.
"And so do I," said Miss Sumner. "What on earth do you suppose made
those girls come up here in white dresses, blowing about in the wind, and
already drabbled? Did you ever see such a lot of cheap millinery? I
haven't seen a woman yet with the least bit of style."
"Poor things, they look as if they'd never had a holiday before in their
lives, and didn't exactly know what to do with it," apologized Miss
Lamont.
"Don't you believe it. They've been to more church and Sunday-school
picnics than you ever attended. Look over there!"
It was a group seated about their lunch-baskets. A young gentleman, the
comedian of the patty, the life of the church sociable, had put on the
hat of one of the girls, and was making himself so irresistibly funny in
it that all the girls tittered, and their mothers looked a little
shamefaced and pleased.
"Well," said Mr. King, "that's the only festive sign I've seen. It's more
like a funeral procession than a pleasure excursion. What impresses me is
the extreme gravity of these people--no fun, no hilarity, no letting
themselves loose for a good time, as they say. Probably they like it, but
they seem to have no capacity for enjoying themselves; they have no
vivacity, no gayety--what a contrast to a party in France or Germany off
for a day's pleasure--no devices, no resources."
"Yes, it's all sad, respectable, confoundedly uninteresting. What does
the doctor say?" asked the artist.
"I know what the doctor will say," put in Miss Summer, "but I tell you
that what this crowd needs is missionary dressmakers and tailors. If I
were dressed that way I should feel and act just as they do. Well,
Selina?"
"It's pretty melancholy. The trouble is constant grinding work and bad
food. I've been studying these people. The women are all--"
"Ugly," suggested the artist.
"Well, ill-favored, scrimped; that means ill-nurtured simply. Out of the
three hundred there are not half a dozen well-conditioned, filled out
physically in comfortable proportions. Most of the women look as if they
had been dragged out with indoor work and little intellectual life, but
the real cause of physical degeneration is bad cooking. If they lived
more out-of-doors, as women do in Italy, the food might not make so much
difference, but in our climate it is the prime thing. This poor physical
state accounts for the want of gayety and the lack of beauty. The men,
on the whole, are better than the women, that is, the young men. I don't
know as these people are overworked, as the world goes. I dare say,
Nettie, there's not a girl in this crowd who could dance with you through
a season. They need to be better fed, and to have more elevating
recreations-something to educate their taste."
"I've been educating the taste of one excursionist this morning, a
good-faced workman, who was prying about everywhere with a curious air,
and said he never'd been on an excursion before. He came up to me in the
office, deferentially asked me if I would go into the parlor with him,
and, pointing to something hanging on the wall, asked, 'What is that?'
'That,' I said, 'is a view from Sunset Rock, and a very good one.' 'Yes,'
he continued, walking close up to it, 'but what is it?' 'Why, it's a
painting.' 'Oh, it isn't the place?' 'No, no; it's a painting in oil,
done with a brush on a piece of canvas--don't you see--,made to look like
the view over there from the rock, colors and all.' 'Yes, I thought,
perhaps--you can see a good ways in it. It's pooty.' 'There's another
one,' I said--'falls, water coming down, and trees.' 'Well, I declare,
so it is! And that's jest a make-believe? I s'pose I can go round and
look?' 'Certainly.' And the old fellow tiptoed round the parlor,
peering at all the pictures in a confused state of mind, and with a
guilty look of enjoyment. It seems incredible that a person should
attain his age with such freshness of mind. But I think he is the only
one of the party who even looked at the paintings."
"I think it's just pathetic," said Miss Lamont. "Don't you, Mr. Forbes?"
"No; I think it's encouraging. It's a sign of an art appreciation in
this country. That man will know a painting next time he sees one, and
then he won't rest till he has bought a chromo, and so he will go on."
"And if he lives long enough, he will buy one of Mr. Forbes's paintings."
"But not the one that Miss Lamont is going to sit for."
When Mr. King met the party at the dinner-table, the places of Miss
Lamont and Mr. Forbes were still vacant. The other ladies looked
significantly at them, and one of them said, "Don't you think there's
something in it? don't you think they are interested in each other?" Mr.
King put down his soup-spoon, too much amazed to reply. Do women never
think of anything but mating people who happen to be thrown together?
Here were this young lady and his friend, who had known each other for
three days, perhaps, in the most casual way, and her friends had her
already as good as married to him and off on a wedding journey. All that
Mr. King said, after apparent deep cogitation, was, "I suppose if it were
here it would have to be in a traveling-dress," which the women thought
frivolous.
Yet it was undeniable that the artist and Marion had a common taste for
hunting out picturesque places in the wood-paths, among the rocks, and on
the edges of precipices, and they dragged the rest of the party many a
mile through wildernesses of beauty. Sketching was the object of all
these expeditions, but it always happened--there seemed a fatality in it
that whenever they halted anywhere for a rest or a view, the Lamont girl
was sure to take an artistic pose, which the artist couldn't resist, and
his whole occupation seemed to be drawing her, with the Catskills for a
background. "There," he would say, "stay just as you are; yes, leaning a
little so"--it was wonderful how the lithe figure adapted itself to any
background--"and turn your head this way, looking at me." The artist
began to draw, and every time he gave a quick glance upwards from his
book, there were the wistful face and those eyes. "Confound it! I beg
your pardon-the light. Will you please turn your eyes a little off, that
way-so." There was no reason why the artist should be nervous, the face
was perfectly demure; but the fact is that art will have only one
mistress. So the drawing limped on from day to day, and the excursions
became a matter of course. Sometimes the party drove, extending their
explorations miles among the hills, exhilarated by the sparkling air,
excited by the succession of lovely changing prospects, bestowing their
compassion upon the summer boarders in the smartly painted
boarding-houses, and comparing the other big hotels with their own. They
couldn't help looking down on the summer boarders, any more than
cottagers at other places can help a feeling of superiority to people in
hotels. It is a natural desire to make an aristocratic line somewhere.
Of course they saw the Kaaterskill Falls, and bought twenty-five cents'
worth of water to pour over them, and they came very near seeing the
Haines Falls, but were a little too late.
"Have the falls been taken in today?" asked Marion, seriously.
"I'm real sorry, miss," said the proprietor, "but there's just been a
party here and taken the water. But you can go down and look if you want
to, and it won't cost you a cent."
They went down, and saw where the falls ought to be. The artist said it
was a sort of dry-plate process, to be developed in the mind afterwards;
Mr. King likened it to a dry smoke without lighting the cigar; and the
doctor said it certainly had the sanitary advantage of not being damp.
The party even penetrated the Platerskill Cove, and were well rewarded by
its exceeding beauty, as is every one who goes there. There are sketches
of all these lovely places in a certain artist's book, all looking,
however, very much alike, and consisting principally of a graceful figure
in a great variety of unstudied attitudes.
"Isn't this a nervous sort of a place?" the artist asked his friend, as
they sat in his chamber overlooking the world.
"Perhaps it is. I have a fancy that some people are born to enjoy the
valley, and some the mountains."
"I think it makes a person nervous to live on a high place. This feeling
of constant elevation tires one; it gives a fellow no such sense of
bodily repose as he has in a valley. And the wind, it's constantly
nagging, rattling the windows and banging the doors. I can't escape the
unrest of it." The artist was turning the leaves and contemplating the
poverty of his sketch-book. "The fact is, I get better subjects on the
seashore."
"Probably the sea would suit us better. By the way, did I tell you that
Miss Lamont's uncle came last night from Richmond? Mr. De Long, uncle on
the mother's side. I thought there was French blood in her."
"What is he like?"
"Oh, a comfortable bachelor, past middle age; business man; Southern;
just a little touch of the 'cyar' for 'car.' Said he was going to take
his niece to Newport next week. Has Miss Lamont said anything about
going there?"
"Well, she did mention it the other day."
The house was filling up, and, King thought, losing its family aspect. He
had taken quite a liking for the society of the pretty invalid girl, and
was fond of sitting by her, seeing the delicate color come back to her
cheeks, and listening to her shrewd little society comments. He thought
she took pleasure in having him push her wheel-chair up and down the
piazza at least she rewarded him by grateful looks, and complimented him
by asking his advice about reading and about being useful to others. Like
most young girls whose career of gayety is arrested as hers was, she felt
an inclination to coquet a little with the serious side of life. All this
had been pleasant to Mr. King, but now that so many more guests had come,
he found himself most of the time out of business. The girl's chariot
was always surrounded by admirers and sympathizers. All the young men
were anxious to wheel her up and down by the hour; there was always a
strife for this sweet office; and at night, when the vehicle had been
lifted up the first flight, it was beautiful to see the eagerness of
sacrifice exhibited by these young fellows to wheel her down the long
corridor to her chamber. After all, it is a kindly, unselfish world,
full of tenderness for women, and especially for invalid women who are
pretty. There was all day long a competition of dudes and elderly
widowers and bachelors to wait on her. One thought she needed a little
more wheeling; another volunteered to bring her a glass of water; there
was always some one to pick up her fan, to recover her handkerchief (why
is it that the fans and handkerchiefs of ugly women seldom go astray?),
to fetch her shawl--was there anything they could do? The charming
little heiress accepted all the attentions with most engaging sweetness.
Say what you will, men have good hearts.
Yes, they were going to Newport. King and Forbes, who had not had a
Fourth of July for some time, wanted to see what it was like at Newport.
Mr. De Long would like their company. But before they went the artist
must make one more trial at a sketch-must get the local color. It was a
large party that went one morning to see it done under the famous ledge
of rocks on the Red Path. It is a fascinating spot, with its coolness,
sense of seclusion, mosses, wild flowers, and ferns. In a small grotto
under the frowning wall of the precipice is said to be a spring, but it
is difficult to find, and lovers need to go a great many times in search
of it. People not in love can sometimes find a damp place in the sand.
The question was where Miss Lamont should pose. Should she nestle under
the great ledge, or sit on a projecting rock with her figure against the
sky? The artist could not satisfy himself, and the girl, always
adventurous, kept shifting her position, climbing about on the jutting
ledge, until she stood at last on the top of the precipice, which was
some thirty or forty feet high. Against the top leaned a dead balsam,
just as some tempest had cast it, its dead branches bleached and scraggy.
Down this impossible ladder the girl announced her intention of coming.
"No, no," shouted a chorus of voices; "go round; it's unsafe; the limbs
will break; you can't get through them; you'll break your neck." The
girl stood calculating the possibility. The more difficult the feat
seemed, the more she longed to try it.
"For Heaven's sake don't try it, Miss Lamont," cried the artist.
"But I want to. I think I must. You can sketch me in the act. It will
be something new."
And before any one could interpose, the resolute girl caught hold of the
balsam and swung off. A boy or a squirrel would have made nothing of the
feat. But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that
balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing
each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It
needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast. To transfer her hold
from one limb to another, and work downward, keeping her skirts neatly
gathered about her feet, was an achievement that the spectators could
appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult. And
the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl. The artist
had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down,
clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began. "Work
fast," said the girl. "It's hard hanging on." But the pencil wouldn't
work. The artist made a lot of wild marks. He would have given the
world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye
upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook. It was no use. The
danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the
spectators. All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she
fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.
Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that
was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and
broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt
every movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms,
but this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The
girl was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck. The young
fellows were very anxious that the artist should keep at his work; they
would catch her. There was a pause; the girl had come to the last limb;
she was warily meditating a slide or a leap; the young men were quite
ready to sacrifice themselves; but somehow, no one could tell exactly
how, the girl swung low, held herself suspended by her hands for an
instant, and then dropped into the right place--trust a woman for that;
and the artist, his face flushed, set her down upon the nearest flat
rock. Chorus from the party, "She is saved!"
"And my sketch is gone up again."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Forbes." The girl looked full of innocent regret. "But
when I was up there I had to come down that tree. I couldn't help it,
really."
IV
NEWPORT
On the Fourth of July, at five o'clock in the morning, the porters called
the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction. Modern
civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal appearance
as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society after a night
in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a sleeping-car. To get
into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to get out of them in the
morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors a hard rub. It is
wonderful, however, considering the twisting and scrambling in the berth
and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation of humanity in the
washroom at the end of the car, how presentable people make themselves in
a short space of time. One realizes the debt of the ordinary man to
clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that commonly people do not
see each other in the morning until art has done its best for them. To
meet the public eye, cross and tousled and disarranged, requires either
indifference or courage. It is disenchanting to some of our cherished
ideals. Even the trig, irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks
banged-up, and nothing of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked
and paper-collared, he comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to
drum.
Our travelers came out quite as well as could be expected, the artist
sleepy and a trifle disorganized, Mr. King in a sort of facetious humor
that is more dangerous than grumbling, Mr. De Long yawning and stretching
and declaring that he had not slept a wink, while Marion alighted upon
the platform unruffled in plumage, greeting the morning like a bird.
There were the usual early loafers at the station, hands deep in pockets,
ruminant, listlessly observant. No matter at what hour of day or night a
train may arrive or depart at a country station in America, the loafers
are so invariably there in waiting that they seem to be a part of our
railway system. There is something in the life and movement that seems
to satisfy all the desire for activity they have.
Even the most sleepy tourist could not fail to be impressed with the
exquisite beauty of the scene at Wickford Harbor, where the boat was
taken for Newport. The slow awaking of morning life scarcely disturbed
its tranquillity. Sky and sea and land blended in a tone of refined
gray. The shores were silvery, a silvery light came out of the east,
streamed through the entrance of the harbor, and lay molten and glowing
on the water. The steamer's deck and chairs and benches were wet with
dew, the noises in transferring the baggage and getting the boat under
way were all muffled and echoed in the surrounding silence. The
sail-boats that lay at anchor on the still silver surface sent down long
shadows, and the slim masts seemed driven down into the water to hold the
boats in place. The little village was still asleep. It was such a
contrast; the artist was saying to Marion, as they leaned over the
taffrail, to the new raw villages in the Catskills. The houses were
large, and looked solid and respectable, many of them were shingled on
the sides, a spire peeped out over the green trees, and the hamlet was at
once homelike and picturesque. Refinement is the note of the landscape.
Even the old warehouses dropping into the water, and the decaying piles
of the wharves, have a certain grace. How graciously the water makes
into the land, following the indentations, and flowing in little streams,
going in and withdrawing gently and regretfully, and how the shore puts
itself out in low points, wooing the embrace of the sea--a lovely union.
There is no haze, but all outlines are softened in the silver light. It
is like a dream, and there is no disturbance of the repose when a family
party, a woman, a child, and a man come down to the shore, slip into a
boat, and scull away out by the lighthouse and the rocky entrance of the
harbor, off, perhaps, for a day's pleasure. The artist has whipped out
his sketch-book to take some outlines of the view, and his comrade,
looking that way, thinks this group a pleasing part of the scene, and
notes how the salt, dewy morning air has brought the color into the
sensitive face of the girl. There are not many such hours in a lifetime,
he is also thinking, when nature can be seen in such a charming mood, and
for the moment it compensates for the night ride.
The party indulged this feeling when they landed, still early, at the
Newport wharf, and decided to walk through the old town up to the hotel,
perfectly well aware that after this no money would hire them to leave
their beds and enjoy this novel sensation at such an hour. They had the
street to themselves, and the promenade was one of discovery, and had
much the interest of a landing in a foreign city.
"It is so English," said the artist.
"It is so colonial," said Mr. King, "though I've no doubt that any one of
the sleeping occupants of these houses would be wide-awake instantly, and
come out and ask you to breakfast, if they heard you say it is so
English."
"If they were not restrained," Marion suggested, "by the feeling that
that would not be English. How fine the shade trees, and what brilliant
banks of flowers!"
"And such lawns! We cannot make this turf in Virginia," was the
reflection of Mr. De Long.
"Well, colonial if you like," the artist replied to Mr. King. "What is
best is in the colonial style; but you notice that all the new houses are
built to look old, and that they have had Queen Anne pretty bad, though
the colors are good."
"That's the way with some towns. Queen Anne seems to strike them all of
a sudden, and become epidemic. The only way to prevent it is to
vaccinate, so to speak, with two or three houses, and wait; then it is
not so likely to spread."
Laughing and criticising and admiring, the party strolled along the
shaded avenue to the Ocean House. There were as yet no signs of life at
the Club, or the Library, or the Casino; but the shops were getting open,
and the richness and elegance of the goods displayed in the windows were
the best evidence of the wealth and refinement of the expected customers
--culture and taste always show themselves in the shops of a town. The
long gray-brown front of the Casino, with its shingled sides and hooded
balconies and galleries, added to the already strong foreign impression
of the place. But the artist was dissatisfied. It was not at all his
idea of Independence Day; it was like Sunday, and Sunday without any
foreign gayety. He had expected firing of cannon and ringing of
bells--there was not even a flag out anywhere; the celebration of the
Fourth seemed to have shrunk into a dull and decorous avoidance of all
excitement. "Perhaps," suggested Miss Lamont, "if the New-Englanders
keep the Fourth of July like Sunday, they will by and by keep Sunday like
the Fourth of July. I hear it is the day for excursions on this coast."
Mr. King was perfectly well aware that in going to a hotel in Newport he
was putting himself out of the pale of the best society; but he had a
fancy for viewing this society from the outside, having often enough seen
it from the inside. And perhaps he had other reasons for this eccentric
conduct. He had, at any rate, declined the invitation of his cousin,
Mrs. Bartlett Glow, to her cottage on the Point of Rocks. It was not
without regret that he did this, for his cousin was a very charming
woman, and devoted exclusively to the most exclusive social life. Her
husband had been something in the oil line in New York, and King had
watched with interest his evolution from the business man into the
full-blown existence of a man of fashion. The process is perfectly
charted. Success in business, membership in a good club, tandem in the
Park, introduction to a good house, marriage to a pretty girl of family
and not much money, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a Newport villa. His name
had undergone a like evolution. It used to be written on his business
card, Jacob B. Glow. It was entered at the club as J. Bartlett Glow. On
the wedding invitations it was Mr. Bartlett Glow, and the dashing pair
were always spoken of at Newport as the Bartlett-Glows.
When Mr. King descended from his room at the Ocean House, although it was
not yet eight o'clock, he was not surprised to see Mr. Benson tilted back
in one of the chairs on the long piazza, out of the way of the scrubbers,
with his air of patient waiting and observation. Irene used to say that
her father ought to write a book--"Life as Seen from Hotel Piazzas." His
only idea of recreation when away from business seemed to be sitting
about on them.
"The women-folks," he explained to Mr. King, who took a chair beside him,
"won't be down for an hour yet. I like, myself, to see the show open."
"Are there many people here?"
"I guess the house is full enough. But I can't find out that anybody is
actually stopping here, except ourselves and a lot of schoolmarms come to
attend a convention. They seem to enjoy it. The rest, those I've talked
with, just happen to be here for a day or so, never have been to a hotel
in Newport before, always stayed in a cottage, merely put up here now to
visit friends in cottages. You'll see that none of them act like they
belonged to the hotel. Folks are queer."
At a place we were last summer all the summer boarders, in
boarding-houses round, tried to act like they were staying at the big
hotel, and the hotel people swelled about on the fact of being at a
hotel. Here you're nobody. I hired a carriage by the week, driver in
buttons, and all that. It don't make any difference. I'll bet a gold
dollar every cottager knows it's hired, and probably they think by the
drive."
"It's rather stupid, then, for you and the ladies."
"Not a bit of it. It's the nicest place in America: such grass, such
horses, such women, and the drive round the island--there's nothing like
it in the country. We take it every day. Yes, it would be a little
lonesome but for the ocean. It's a good deal like a funeral procession,
nobody ever recognizes you, not even the hotel people who are in hired
hacks. If I were to come again, Mr. King, I'd come in a yacht, drive up
from it in a box on two wheels, with a man clinging on behind with his
back to me, and have a cottage with an English gardener. That would
fetch 'em. Money won't do it, not at a hotel. But I'm not sure but I
like this way best. It's an occupation for a man to keep up a cottage."
"And so you do not find it dull?"
"No. When we aren't out riding, she and Irene go on to the cliffs, and I
sit here and talk real estate. It's about all there is to talk of."
There was an awkward moment or two when the two parties met in the lobby
and were introduced before going in to breakfast. There was a little
putting up of guards on the part of the ladies. Between Irene and Marion
passed that rapid glance of inspection, that one glance which includes a
study and the passing of judgment upon family, manners, and dress, down
to the least detail. It seemed to be satisfactory, for after a few words
of civility the two girls walked in together, Irene a little dignified,
to be sure, and Marion with her wistful, half-inquisitive expression. Mr.
King could not be mistaken in thinking Irene's manner a little
constrained and distant to him, and less cordial than it was to Mr.
Forbes, but the mother righted the family balance.
"I'm right glad you've come, Mr. King. It's like seeing somebody from
home. I told Irene that when you came I guess we should know somebody.
It's an awful fashionable place."
"And you have no acquaintances here?"
"No, not really. There's Mrs. Peabody has a cottage here, what they call
a cottage, but there no such house in Cyrusville. We drove past it. Her
daughter was to school with Irene. We've met 'em out riding several
times, and Sally (Miss Peabody) bowed to Irene, and pa and I bowed to
everybody, but they haven't called. Pa says it's because we are at a
hotel, but I guess it's been company or something. They were real good
friends at school."
Mr. King laughed. "Oh, Mrs. Benson, the Peabodys were nobodys only a few
years ago. I remember when they used to stay at one of the smaller
hotels."
"Well, they seem nice, stylish people, and I'm sorry on Irene's account."
At breakfast the party had topics enough in common to make conversation
lively. The artist was sure he should be delighted with the beauty and
finish of Newport. Miss Lamont doubted if she should enjoy it as much as
the freedom and freshness of the Catskills. Mr. King amused himself with
drawing out Miss Benson on the contrast with Atlantic City. The
dining-room was full of members of the Institute, in attendance upon the
annual meeting, graybearded, long-faced educators, devotees of theories
and systems, known at a glance by a certain earnestness of manner and
intensity of expression, middle-aged women of a resolute, intellectual
countenance, and a great crowd of youthful schoolmistresses, just on the
dividing line between domestic life and self-sacrifice, still full of
sentiment, and still leaning perhaps more to Tennyson and Lowell than to
mathematics and Old English.
"They have a curious, mingled air of primness and gayety, as if gayety
were not quite proper," the artist began. "Some of them look downright
interesting, and I've no doubt they are all excellent women."
"I've no doubt they are all good as gold," put in Mr. King. "These women
are the salt of New England." (Irene looked up quickly and
appreciatively at the speaker.) "No fashionable nonsense about them.
What's in you, Forbes, to shy so at a good woman?"
"I don't shy at a good woman--but three hundred of them! I don't want
all my salt in one place. And see here--I appeal to you, Miss Lamont
--why didn't these girls dress simply, as they do at home, and not
attempt a sort of ill-fitting finery that is in greater contrast to
Newport than simplicity would be?"
"If you were a woman," said Marion, looking demurely, not at Mr. Forbes,
but at Irene, "I could explain it to you. You don't allow anything for
sentiment and the natural desire to please, and it ought to be just
pathetic to you that these girls, obeying a natural instinct, missed the
expression of it a little."
"Men are such critics," and Irene addressed the remark to Marion, "they
pretend to like intellectual women, but they can pardon anything better
than an ill-fitting gown. Better be frivolous than badly dressed."
"Well," stoutly insisted Forbes, "I'll take my chance with the
well-dressed ones always; I don't believe the frumpy are the most
sensible."
"No; but you make out a prima facie case against a woman for want of
taste in dress, just as you jump at the conclusion that because a woman
dresses in such a way as to show she gives her mind to it she is of the
right sort. I think it's a relief to see a convention of women devoted
to other things who are not thinking of their clothes."
"Pardon me; the point I made was that they are thinking of their clothes,
and thinking erroneously."
"Why don't you ask leave to read a paper, Forbes, on the relation of
dress to education?" asked Mr. King.
They rose from the table just as Mrs. Benson was saying that for her part
she liked these girls, they were so homelike; she loved to hear them sing
college songs and hymns in the parlor. To sing the songs of the students
is a wild, reckless dissipation for girls in the country.
When Mr. King and Irene walked up and down the corridor after breakfast
the girl's constraint seemed to have vanished, and she let it be seen
that she had sincere pleasure in renewing the acquaintance. King himself
began to realize how large a place the girl's image had occupied in his
mind. He was not in love--that would be absurd on such short
acquaintance--but a thought dropped into the mind ripens without
consciousness, and he found that he had anticipated seeing Irene again
with decided interest. He remembered exactly how she looked at Fortress
Monroe, especially one day when she entered the parlor, bowing right and
left to persons she knew, stopping to chat with one and another, tall,
slender waist swelling upwards in symmetrical lines, brown hair,
dark-gray eyes--he recalled every detail, the high-bred air (which was
certainly not inherited), the unconscious perfect carriage, and his
thinking in a vague way that such ease and grace meant good living and
leisure and a sound body. This, at any rate, was the image in his mind
--a sufficiently distracting thing for a young man to carry about with
him; and now as he walked beside her he was conscious that there was
something much finer in her than the image he had carried with him, that
there was a charm of speech and voice and expression that made her
different from any other woman he had ever seen. Who can define this
charm, this difference? Some women have it for the universal man--they
are desired of every man who sees them; their way to marriage (which is
commonly unfortunate) is over a causeway of prostrate forms, if not of
cracked hearts; a few such women light up and make the romance of
history. The majority of women fortunately have it for one man only, and
sometimes he never appears on the scene at all! Yet every man thinks his
choice belongs to the first class; even King began to wonder that all
Newport was not raving over Irene's beauty. The present writer saw her
one day as she alighted from a carriage at the Ocean House, her face
flushed with the sea air, and he remembers that he thought her a fine
girl. "By George, that's a fine woman!" exclaimed a New York bachelor,
who prided himself on knowing horses and women and all that; but the
country is full of fine women--this to him was only one of a thousand.
What were this couple talking about as they promenaded, basking in each
other's presence? It does not matter. They were getting to know each
other, quite as much by what they did not say as by what they did say, by
the thousand little exchanges of feeling and sentiment which are
all-important, and never appear even in a stenographer's report of a
conversation. Only one thing is certain about it, that the girl could
recall every word that Mr. King said, even his accent and look, long
after he had forgotten even the theme of the talk. One thing, however,
he did carry away with him, which set him thinking. The girl had been
reading the "Life of Carlyle," and she took up the cudgels for the old
curmudgeon, as King called him, and declared that, when all was said,
Mrs. Carlyle was happier with him than she would have been with any other
man in England. "What woman of spirit wouldn't rather mate with an
eagle, and quarrel half the time, than with a humdrum barn-yard fowl?"
And Mr. Stanhope King, when he went away, reflected that he who had
fitted himself for the bar, and traveled extensively, and had a moderate
competence, hadn't settled down to any sort of career. He had always an
intention of doing something in a vague way; but now the thought that he
was idle made him for the first time decidedly uneasy, for he had an
indistinct notion that Irene couldn't approve of such a life.
This feeling haunted him as he was making a round of calls that day. He
did not return to lunch or dinner--if he had done so he would have found
that lunch was dinner and that dinner was supper--another vital
distinction between the hotel and the cottage. The rest of the party had
gone to the cliffs with the artist, the girls on a pretense of learning
to sketch from nature. Mr. King dined with his cousin.
"You are a bad boy, Stanhope," was the greeting of Mrs. Bartlett Glow,
"not to come to me. Why did you go to the hotel?"
"Oh, I thought I'd see life; I had an unaccountable feeling of
independence. Besides, I've a friend with me, a very clever artist, who
is re-seeing his country after an absence of some years. And there are
some other people."
"Oh, yes. What is her name?"
"Why, there is quite a party. We met them at different places. There's
a very bright New York girl, Miss Lamont, and her uncle from Richmond."
("Never heard of her," interpolated Mrs. Glow.) "And a Mr. and Mrs.
Benson and their daughter, from Ohio. Mr. Benson has made money; Mrs.
Benson, good-hearted old lady, rather plain and--"
"Yes, I know the sort; had a falling-out with Lindley Murray in her youth
and never made it up. But what I want to know is about the girl. What
makes you beat about the bush so? What's her name?"
"Irene. She is an uncommonly clever girl; educated; been abroad a good
deal, studying in Germany; had all advantages; and she has cultivated
tastes; and the fact is that out in Cyrusville--that is where they live
--You know how it is here in America when the girl is educated and the
old people are not--"
"The long and short of it is, you want me to invite them here. I suppose
the girl is plain, too--takes after her mother?"
"Not exactly. Mr. Forbes--that's my friend--says she's a beauty. But if
you don't mind, Penelope, I was going to ask you to be a little civil to
them."
"Well, I'll admit she is handsome--a very striking-looking girl. I've
seen them driving on the Avenue day after day. Now, Stanhope, I don't
mind asking them here to a five o'clock; I suppose the mother will have
to come. If she was staying with somebody here it would be easier. Yes,
I'll do it to oblige you, if you will make yourself useful while you are
here. There are some girls I want you to know, and mind, my young
friend, that you don't go and fall in love with a country girl whom
nobody knows, out of the set. It won't be comfortable."
"You are always giving me good advice, Penelope, and I should be a
different man if I had profited by it."
"Don't be satirical, because you've coaxed me to do you a favor."
Late in the evening the gentlemen of the hotel party looked in at the
skating-rink, a great American institution that has for a large class
taken the place of the ball, the social circle, the evening meeting. It
seemed a little incongruous to find a great rink at Newport, but an
epidemic is stronger than fashion, and even the most exclusive summer
resort must have its rink. Roller-skating is said to be fine exercise,
but the benefit of it as exercise would cease to be apparent if there
were a separate rink for each sex. There is a certain exhilaration in
the lights and music and the lively crowd, and always an attraction in
the freedom of intercourse offered. The rink has its world as the opera
has, its romances and its heroes. The frequenters of the rink know the
young women and the young men who have a national reputation as adepts,
and their exhibitions are advertised and talked about as are the
appearances of celebrated 'prime donne' and 'tenori' at the opera. The
visitors had an opportunity to see one of these exhibitions. After a
weary watching of the monotonous and clattering round and round of the
swinging couples or the stumbling single skaters, the floor was cleared,
and the darling of the rink glided upon the scene. He was a slender,
handsome fellow, graceful and expert to the nicest perfection in his
profession. He seemed not so much to skate as to float about the floor,
with no effort except volition. His rhythmic movements were followed
with pleasure, but it was his feats of dexterity, which were more
wonderful than graceful, that brought down the house. It was evident
that he was a hero to the female part of the spectators, and no doubt his
charming image continued to float round and round in the brain of many a
girl when she put her, head on the pillow that night. It is said that a
good many matches which are not projected or registered in heaven are
made at the rink.
At the breakfast-table it appeared that the sketching-party had been a
great success--for everybody except the artist, who had only some rough
memoranda, like notes for a speech, to show. The amateurs had made
finished pictures.
Miss Benson had done some rocks, and had got their hardness very well.
Miss Lamont's effort was more ambitious; her picture took in no less than
miles of coast, as much sea as there was room for on the paper, a navy of
sail-boats, and all the rocks and figures that were in the foreground,
and it was done with a great deal of naivete and conscientiousness. When
it was passed round the table, the comments were very flattering.
"It looks just like it," said Mr. Benson.
"It's very comprehensive," remarked Mr. Forbes.
"What I like, Marion," said Mr. De Long, holding it out at arm's-length,
"is the perspective; it isn't an easy thing to put ships up in the sky."
"Of course," explained Irene, "it was a kind of hazy day."
"But I think Miss Lamont deserves credit for keeping the haze out of it."
King was critically examining it, turning his head from side to side. "I
like it; but I tell you what I think it lacks: it lacks atmosphere. Why
don't you cut a hole in it, Miss Lamont, and let the air in?"
"Mr. King," replied Miss Lamont, quite seriously, "you are a real friend,
I can only repay you by taking you to church this morning."
"You didn't make much that time, King," said Forbes, as he lounged out of
the room.
After church King accepted a seat in the Benson carriage for a drive on
the Ocean Road. He who takes this drive for the first time is enchanted
with the scene, and it has so much variety, deliciousness in curve and
winding, such graciousness in the union of sea and shore, such charm of
color, that increased acquaintance only makes one more in love with it. A
good part of its attraction lies in the fickleness of its aspect. Its
serene and soft appearance might pall if it were not now and then, and
often suddenly, and with little warning, transformed into a wild coast,
swept by a tearing wind, enveloped in a thick fog, roaring with the noise
of the angry sea slapping the rocks and breaking in foam on the fragments
its rage has cast down. This elementary mystery and terror is always
present, with one familiar with the coast, to qualify the gentleness of
its lovelier aspects. It has all moods. Perhaps the most exhilarating
is that on a brilliant day, when shore and sea sparkle in the sun, and
the waves leap high above the cliffs, and fall in diamond showers.
This Sunday the shore was in its most gracious mood, the landscape as if
newly created. There was a light, luminous fog, which revealed just
enough to excite the imagination, and refined every outline and softened
every color. Mr. King and Irene left the carriage to follow the road,
and wandered along the sea path. What softness and tenderness of color
in the gray rocks, with the browns and reds of the vines and lichens!
They went out on the iron fishing-stands, and looked down at the shallow
water. The rocks under water took on the most exquisite shades--purple
and malachite and brown; the barnacles clung to them; the long sea-weeds,
in half a dozen varieties, some in vivid colors, swept over them, flowing
with the restless tide, like the long locks of a drowned woman's hair.
King, who had dabbled a little in natural history, took great delight in
pointing out to Irene this varied and beautiful life of the sea; and the
girl felt a new interest in science, for it was all pure science, and she
opened her heart to it, not knowing that love can go in by the door of
science as well as by any other opening. Was Irene really enraptured by
the dear little barnacles and the exquisite sea-weeds? I have seen a
girl all of a flutter with pleasure in a laboratory when a young chemist
was showing her the retorts and the crooked tubes and the glass wool and
the freaks of color which the alkalies played with the acids. God has
made them so, these women, and let us be thankful for it.
What a charm there was about everything! Occasionally the mist became so
thin that a long line of coast and a great breadth of sea were visible,
with the white sails drifting.
"There's nothing like it," said King--"there's nothing like this island.
It seems as if the Creator had determined to show man, once for all, a
landscape perfectly refined, you might almost say with the beauty of
high-breeding, refined in outline, color, everything softened into
loveliness, and yet touched with the wild quality of picturesqueness."
"It's just a dream at this moment," murmured Irene. They were standing
on a promontory of rock. "See those figures of people there through the
mist--silhouettes only. And look at that vessel--there--no--it has
gone."
As she was speaking, a sail-vessel began to loom up large in the
mysterious haze. But was it not the ghost of a ship? For an instant it
was coming, coming; it was distinct; and when it was plainly in sight it
faded away, like a dissolving view, and was gone. The appearance was
unreal. What made it more spectral was the bell on the reefs, swinging
in its triangle, always sounding, and the momentary scream of the
fog-whistle. It was like an enchanted coast. Regaining the carriage,
they drove out to the end, Agassiz's Point, where, when the mist lifted,
they saw the sea all round dotted with sails, the irregular coasts and
islands with headlands and lighthouses, all the picture still, land and
water in a summer swoon.
Late that afternoon all the party were out upon the cliff path in front
of the cottages. There is no more lovely sea stroll in the world, the
way winding over the cliff edge by the turquoise sea, where the turf,
close cut and green as Erin, set with flower beds and dotted with noble
trees, slopes down, a broad pleasure park, from the stately and
picturesque villas. But it was a social mistake to go there on Sunday.
Perhaps it is not the height of good form to walk there any day, but Mr.
King did not know that the fashion had changed, and that on Sunday this
lovely promenade belongs to the butlers and the upper maids, especially
to the butlers, who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the
weather is good. As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon, our
party walked in a dumb-show, listening to the soft swish of the waves on
the rocks below, and watching the figures of other promenaders, who were
good enough ladies and gentlemen in this friendly mist.
The next day Mr. King made a worse mistake. He remembered that at high
noon everybody went down to the first beach, a charming sheltered place
at the bottom of the bay, where the rollers tumble in finely from the
south, to bathe or see others bathe. The beach used to be lined with
carriages at that hour, and the surf, for a quarter of a mile, presented
the appearance of a line of picturesquely clad skirmishers going out to
battle with the surf. Today there were not half a dozen carriages and
omnibuses altogether, and the bathers were few-nursery maids, fragments
of a day-excursion, and some of the fair conventionists. Newport was not
there. Mr. King had led his party into another social blunder. It has
ceased to be fashionable to bathe at Newport.
Strangers and servants may do so, but the cottagers have withdrawn their
support from the ocean. Saltwater may be carried to the house and used
without loss of caste, but bathing in the surf is vulgar. A gentleman
may go down and take a dip alone--it had better be at an early hour--and
the ladies of the house may be heard to apologize for his eccentricity,
as if his fondness for the water were abnormal and quite out of
experience. And the observer is obliged to admit that promiscuous
bathing is vulgar, as it is plain enough to be seen when it becomes
unfashionable. It is charitable to think also that the cottagers have
made it unfashionable because it is vulgar, and not because it is a cheap
and refreshing pleasure accessible to everybody.
Nevertheless, Mr. King's ideas of Newport were upset. "It's a little off
color to walk much on the cliffs; you lose caste if you bathe in the
surf. What can you do?"
"Oh," explained Miss Lamont, "you can make calls; go to teas and
receptions and dinners; belong to the Casino, but not appear there much;
and you must drive on the Ocean Road, and look as English as you can.
Didn't you notice that Redfern has an establishment on the Avenue? Well,
the London girls wear what Redfern tells them to wear-much to the
improvement of their appearance--and so it has become possible for a
New-Yorker to become partially English without sacrificing her native
taste."
Before lunch Mrs. Bartlett Glow called on the Bensons, and invited them
to a five-o'clock tea, and Miss Lamont, who happened to be in the parlor,
was included in the invitation. Mrs. Glow was as gracious as possible,
and especially attentive to the old lady, who purred with pleasure, and
beamed and expanded into familiarity under the encouragement of the woman
of the world. In less than ten minutes Mrs. Glow had learned the chief
points in the family history, the state of health and habits of pa (Mr.
Benson), and all about Cyrusville and its wonderful growth. In all this
Mrs. Glow manifested a deep interest, and learned, by observing out of
the corner of her eye, that Irene was in an agony of apprehension, which
she tried to conceal under an increasing coolness of civility. "A nice
lady," was Mrs. Benson's comment when Mrs. Glow had taken herself away
with her charmingly-scented air of frank cordiality--"a real nice lady.
She seemed just like our, folks."
Irene heaved a deep sigh. "I suppose we shall have to go."
"Have to go, child? I should think you'd like to go. I never saw such a
girl--never. Pa and me are just studying all the time to please you, and
it seems as if--" And the old lady's voice broke down.
"Why, mother dear"--and the girl, with tears in her eyes, leaned over her
and kissed her fondly, and stroked her hair--"you are just as good and
sweet as you can be; and don't mind me; you know I get in moods
sometimes."
The old lady pulled her down and kissed her, and looked in her face with
beseeching eyes.
"What an old frump the mother is!" was Mrs. Glow's comment to Stanhope,
when she next met him; "but she is immensely amusing."
"She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman," replied King, a little sharply.
"Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half
gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious!
her parents are impossible--just impossible. And don't you think she's a
little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of
course, but too mental, don't you know--shows that first. You know what
I mean."
"But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual--go
in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political
economy, and all that."
"Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are
going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's
different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't
interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the
Town and County Club next Saturday."
"That will be too intellectual for Miss Benson. I suppose the topic will
be Transcendentalism?"
"No; we have had that. Professor Spor, of Cambridge, is going to lecture
on Bacteria--if that's the way you pronounce it--those mites that get
into everything."
"I should think it would be very improving. I'll tell Miss Benson that
if she stays in Newport she must improve her mind,
"You can make yourself as disagreeable as you like to me, but mind you
are on your good behavior at dinner tonight, for the Misses Pelham will
be here."
The five-o'clock at Mrs. Bartlett Glow's was probably an event to nobody
in Newport except Mrs. Benson. To most it was only an incident in the
afternoon round and drive, but everybody liked to go there, for it is one
of the most charming of the moderate-sized villas. The lawn is planted
in exquisite taste, and the gardener has set in the open spaces of green
the most ingenious devices of flowers and foliage plants, and nothing
could be more enchanting than the view from the wide veranda on the sea
side. In theory, the occupants lounge there, read, embroider, and swing
in hammocks; in point of fact, the breeze is usually so strong that these
occupations are carried on indoors.
The rooms were well filled with a moving, chattering crowd when the
Bensons arrived, but it could not be said that their entrance was
unnoticed, for Mr. Benson was conspicuous, as Irene had in vain hinted to
her father that he would be, in his evening suit, and Mrs. Benson's
beaming, extra-gracious manner sent a little shiver of amusement through
the polite civility of the room.
"I was afraid we should be too late," was Mrs. Benson's response to the
smiling greeting of the hostess, with a most friendly look towards the
rest of the company. "Mr. Benson is always behindhand in getting dressed
for a party, and he said he guessed the party could wait, and--"
Before the sentence was finished Mrs. Benson found herself passed on and
in charge of a certain general, who was charged by the hostess to get her
a cup of tea. Her talk went right on, however, and Irene, who was still
standing by the host, noticed that wherever her mother went there was a
lull in the general conversation, a slight pause as if to catch what this
motherly old person might be saying, and such phrases as, "It doesn't
agree with me, general; I can't eat it," "Yes, I got the rheumatiz in
New Orleans, and he did too," floated over the hum of talk.
In the introduction and movement that followed Irene became one of a
group of young ladies and gentlemen who, after the first exchange of
civilities, went on talking about matters of which she knew nothing,
leaving her wholly out of the conversation. The matters seemed to be
very important, and the conversation was animated: it was about so-and-so
who was expected, or was or was not engaged, or the last evening at the
Casino, or the new trap on the Avenue--the delightful little chit-chat by
means of which those who are in society exchange good understandings, but
which excludes one not in the circle. The young gentleman next to Irene
threw in an explanation now and then, but she was becoming thoroughly
uncomfortable. She could not be unconscious, either, that she was the
object of polite transient scrutiny by the ladies, and of glances of
interest from gentlemen who did not approach her. She began to be
annoyed by the staring (the sort of stare that a woman recognizes as
impudent admiration) of a young fellow who leaned against the mantel--a
youth in English clothes who had caught very successfully the air of an
English groom. Two girls near her, to whom she had been talking, began
speaking in lowered voices in French, but she could not help overhearing
them, and her face flushed hotly when she found that her mother and her
appearance were the subject of their foreign remarks.
Luckily at the moment Mr. King approached, and Irene extended her hand
and said, with a laugh, "Ah, monsieur," speaking in a very pretty Paris
accent, and perhaps with unnecessary distinctness, "you were quite right:
the society here is very different from Cyrusville; there they all talk
about each other."
Mr. King, who saw that something had occurred, was quick-witted enough to
reply jestingly in French, as they moved away, but he asked, as soon as
they were out of ear-shot, "What is it?"
"Nothing," said the girl, recovering her usual serenity. "I only said
something for the sake of saying something; I didn't mean to speak so
disrespectfully of my own town. But isn't it singular how local and
provincial society talk is everywhere? I must look up mother, and then I
want you to take me on the veranda for some air. What a delightful house
this is of your cousin's!"
The two young ladies who had dropped into French looked at each other for
a moment after Irene moved away, and one of them spoke for both when she
exclaimed: "Did you ever see such rudeness in a drawing-room! Who could
have dreamed that she understood?" Mrs. Benson had been established very
comfortably in a corner with Professor Slem, who was listening with great
apparent interest to her accounts of the early life in Ohio. Irene
seemed relieved to get away into the open air, but she was in a mood that
Mr. King could not account for. Upon the veranda they encountered Miss
Lamont and the artist, whose natural enjoyment of the scene somewhat
restored her equanimity. Could there be anything more refined and
charming in the world than this landscape, this hospitable, smiling
house, with the throng of easy-mannered, pleasant-speaking guests,
leisurely flowing along in the conventional stream of social comity. One
must be a churl not to enjoy it. But Irene was not sorry when,
presently, it was time to go, though she tried to extract some comfort
from her mother's enjoyment of the occasion. It was beautiful. Mr.
Benson was in a calculating mood. He thought it needed a great deal of
money to make things run so smoothly.
Why should one inquire in such a paradise if things do run smoothly?
Cannot one enjoy a rose without pulling it up by the roots? I have no
patience with those people who are always looking on the seamy side. I
agree with the commercial traveler who says that it will only be in the
millennium that all goods will be alike on both sides. Mr. King made the
acquaintance in Newport of the great but somewhat philosophical Mr.
Snodgrass, who is writing a work on "The Discomforts of the Rich," taking
a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He declares that
their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies, jealousies,
disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the dictionary of
disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those of the poor, and
that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles are real and
unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these are set
forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration that
King said no one could read the book without tears for the rich of
Newport, and he asked Mr. Snodgrass why he did not organize a society for
their relief. But the latter declared that it was not a matter for
levity. The misery is real. An imaginary case would illustrate his
meaning. Suppose two persons quarrel about a purchase of land, and one
builds a stable on his lot so as to shut out his neighbor's view of the
sea. Would not the one suffer because he could not see the ocean, and
the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on to
argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he gave,
less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small that it
had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact his
satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of
his neighbor. Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a philosophical
explanation of this. He says that if every man designed his own cottage,
or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas, and developed his
grounds and landscape according to his own tastes, working it out
himself, with the help of specialists, he would be satisfied. But when
owners have no ideas about architecture or about gardening, and their
places are the creation of some experimenting architect and a foreign
gardener, and the whole effort is not to express a person's individual
taste and character, but to make a show, then discontent as to his own
will arise whenever some new and more showy villa is built. Mr. Benson,
who was poking about a good deal, strolling along the lanes and getting
into the rears of the houses, said, when this book was discussed, that
his impression was that the real object of these fine places was to
support a lot of English gardeners, grooms, and stable-boys. They are a
kind of aristocracy. They have really made Newport (that is the summer,
transient Newport, for it is largely a transient Newport). "I've been
inquiring," continued Mr. Benson, "and you'd be surprised to know the
number of people who come here, buy or build expensive villas, splurge
out for a year or two, then fail or get tired of it, and disappear."
Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport. By the
parvenu--his definition may not be scientific--he seems to mean a person
who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the
strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other sort
of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in
getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard,
and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like
himself. And this is misery.
But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr. Snodgrass
--you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out. They
thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in
America. Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art
has generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement. They
did not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled in,
and have a gate with an inscription, "None but Millionaires allowed
here." It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come
into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists
are satisfied with. A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second
Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it. The photographers and the
water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado
canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide. The rock of this
locality is a curious study. It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and
cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure. The rock is
sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks.
Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by a
saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the
appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife.
The landscape is beautiful.
"All the lines are so simple," the artist explained. "The shore, the
sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage to
enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with the
long, sweeping lines."
"You don't like trees?" asked Miss Lamont.
"Yes, in themselves. But trees are apt to be in the way. There are too
many trees in America. It is not often you can get a broad, simple
effect like this."
It happened to be a day when the blue of the sea was that of the
Mediterranean, and the sky and sea melted into each other, so that a
distant sail-boat seemed to be climbing into the heavens. The waves
rolled in blue on the white sand beach, and broke in silver. Three young
girls on horseback galloping in a race along the hard beach at the moment
gave the needed animation to a very pretty picture.
North of this the land comes down to the sea in knolls of rock breaking
off suddenly-rocks gray with lichen, and shaded with a touch of other
vegetation. Between these knifeback ledges are plots of sea-green grass
and sedge, with little ponds, black, and mirroring the sky. Leaving this
wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because
few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm
land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads,
flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the
apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque as olives.
The younger members of the party climbed up into this paradise one day,
leaving the elders in their carriages. They came into a new world, as
unlike Newport as if they had been a thousand miles away. The spot was
wilder than it looked from a distance. The high ridges of rock lay
parallel, with bosky valleys and ponds between, and the sea shining in
the south--all in miniature. On the way to the ridges they passed clean
pasture fields, bowlders, gray rocks, aged cedars with flat tops like the
stone-pines of Italy. It was all wild but exquisite, a refined wildness
recalling the pictures of Rousseau.
Irene and Mr. King strolled along one of the ridges, and sat down on a
rock looking off upon the peaceful expanse, the silver lines of the
curving shores, and the blue sea dotted with white sails.
"Ah," said the girl, with an inspiration, "this is the sort of
five-o'clock I like."
"And I'm sure I'd rather be here with you than at the Blims' reception,
from which we ran away."
"I thought," said Irene, not looking at him, and jabbing the point of her
parasol into the ground, "I thought you liked Newport."
"So I do, or did. I thought you would like it. But, pardon me, you seem
somehow different from what you were at Fortress Monroe, or even at
lovely Atlantic City," this with a rather forced laugh.
"Do I? Well, I suppose I am; that is, different from what you thought
me. I should hate this place in a week more, beautiful as it is."
"Your mother is pleased here?"
The girl looked up quickly. "I forgot to tell you how much she thanked
you for the invitation to your cousin's. She was delighted there."
"And you were not?"
"I didn't say so; you were very kind."
"Oh, kind; I didn't mean to be kind. I was purely selfish in wanting you
to go. Cannot you believe, Miss Benson, that I had some pride in having
my friends see you and know you?"
"Well, I will be as frank as you are, Mr. King. I don't like being shown
off. There, don't look displeased. I didn't mean anything
disagreeable."
"But I hoped you understood my motives better by this time."
"I did not think about motives, but the fact is" (another jab of the
parasol), "I was made desperately uncomfortable, and always shall be
under such circumstances, and, my friend--I should like to believe you
are my friend--you may as well expect I always will be."
"I cannot do that. You under--"
"I just see things as they are," Irene went on, hastily. "You think I am
different here. Well, I don't mind saying that when I made your
acquaintance I thought you different from any man I had met." But now it
was out, she did mind saying it; and stopped, confused, as if she had
confessed something. But she continued, almost immediately: "I mean I
liked your manner to women; you didn't appear to flatter, and you didn't
talk complimentary nonsense."
"And now I do?"
"No. Not that. But everything is somehow changed here. Don't let's
talk of it. There's the carriage."
Irene arose, a little flushed, and walked towards the point. Mr. King,
picking his way along behind her over the rocks, said, with an attempt at
lightening the situation, "Well, Miss Benson, I'm going to be just as
different as ever a man was."
V
NARRAGANSETT PIER AND NEWPORT AGAIN; MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND PLYMOUTH
We have heard it said that one of the charms, of Narragansett Pier is
that you can see Newport from it. The summer dwellers at the Pier talk a
good deal about liking it better than Newport; it is less artificial and
more restful. The Newporters never say anything about the Pier. The
Pier people say that it is not fair to judge it when you come direct from
Newport, but the longer you stay there the better you like it; and if any
too frank person admits that he would not stay in Narragansett a day if
he could afford to live in Newport, he is suspected of aristocratic
proclivities.
In a calm summer morning, such as our party of pilgrims chose for an
excursion to the Pier, there is no prettier sail in the world than that
out of the harbor, by Conanicut Island and Beaver-tail Light. It is a
holiday harbor, all these seas are holiday seas--the yachts, the sail
vessels, the puffing steamers, moving swiftly from one headland to
another, or loafing about the blue, smiling sea, are all on pleasure
bent. The vagrant vessels that are idly watched from the rocks at the
Pier may be coasters and freight schooners engaged seriously in trade,
but they do not seem so. They are a part of the picture, always to be
seen slowly dipping along in the horizon, and the impression is that they
are manoeuvred for show, arranged for picturesque effect, and that they
are all taken in at night.
The visitors confessed when they landed that the Pier was a contrast to
Newport. The shore below the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy
rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall. Fronting this
unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages of
the cheap sort. At the end of this row of hotels is a fine granite
Casino, spacious, solid, with wide verandas, and a tennis-court--such a
building as even Newport might envy. Then come more hotels, a cluster of
cheap shops, and a long line of bath-houses facing a lovely curving
beach. Bathing is the fashion at the Pier, and everybody goes to the
beach at noon. The spectators occupy chairs on the platform in front of
the bath-houses, or sit under tents erected on the smooth sand. At high
noon the scene is very lively, and even picturesque, for the ladies here
dress for bathing with an intention of pleasing. It is generally
supposed that the angels in heaven are not edified by this promiscuous
bathing, and by the spectacle of a crowd of women tossing about in the
surf, but an impartial angel would admit that many of the costumes here
are becoming, and that the effect of the red and yellow caps, making a
color line in the flashing rollers, is charming. It is true that there
are odd figures in the shifting melee--one solitary old gentleman, who
had contrived to get his bathing-suit on hind-side before, wandered along
the ocean margin like a lost Ulysses; and that fat woman and fat man were
never intended for this sort of exhibition; but taken altogether, with
its colors, and the silver flash of the breaking waves, the scene was
exceedingly pretty. Not the least pretty part of it was the fringe of
children tumbling on the beach, following the retreating waves, and
flying from the incoming rollers with screams of delight. Children,
indeed, are a characteristic of Narragansett Pier--children and mothers.
It might be said to be a family place; it is a good deal so on Sundays,
and occasionally when the "business men" come down from the cities to see
how their wives and children get on at the hotels.
After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take
lunch--sometimes through a straw--and after dinner everybody goes for a
stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome
villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as
usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but an
ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith.
Nowhere on this coast are the rocks more imposing, and nowhere do they
offer so many studies in color. The visitor's curiosity is excited by a
massive granite tower which rises out of a mass of tangled woods planted
on the crest of the hill, and his curiosity is not satisfied on nearer
inspection, when he makes his way into this thick and gloomy forest, and
finds a granite cottage near the tower, and the signs of neglect and
wildness that might mark the home of a recluse. What is the object of
this noble tower? If it was intended to adorn the landscape, why was it
ruined by piercing it irregularly with square windows like those of a
factory?
One has to hold himself back from being drawn into the history and
romance of this Narragansett shore. Down below the bathing beach is the
pretentious wooden pile called Canonchet, that already wears the air of
tragedy. And here, at this end, is the mysterious tower, and an ugly
unfinished dwelling-house of granite, with the legend "Druid's Dream"
carved over the entrance door; and farther inland, in a sandy and shrubby
landscape, is Kendall Green, a private cemetery, with its granite
monument, surrounded by heavy granite posts, every other one of which is
hollowed in the top as a receptacle for food for birds. And one reads
there these inscriptions: "Whatever their mode of faith, or creed, who
feed the wandering birds, will themselves be fed." "Who helps the
helpless, Heaven will help." This inland region, now apparently deserted
and neglected, was once the seat of colonial aristocracy, who exercised a
princely hospitality on their great plantations, exchanged visits and ran
horses with the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas, and were known as
far as Kentucky, and perhaps best known for their breed of Narragansett
pacers. But let us get back to the shore.
In wandering along the cliff path in the afternoon, Irene and Mr. King
were separated from the others, and unconsciously extended their stroll,
looking for a comfortable seat in the rocks. The day was perfect. The
sky had only a few fleecy, high-sailing clouds, and the great expanse of
sea sparkled under the hectoring of a light breeze. The atmosphere was
not too clear on the horizon for dreamy effects; all the headlands were
softened and tinged with opalescent colors. As the light struck them,
the sails which enlivened the scene were either dark spots or shining
silver sheets on the delicate blue. At one spot on this shore rises a
vast mass of detached rock, separated at low tide from the shore by
irregular bowlders and a tiny thread of water. In search of a seat the
two strollers made their way across this rivulet over the broken rocks,
passed over the summit of the giant mass, and established themselves in a
cavernous place close to the sea. Here was a natural seat, and the bulk
of the seamed and colored ledge, rising above their heads and curving
around them, shut them out of sight of the land, and left them alone with
the dashing sea, and the gulls that circled and dipped their silver wings
in their eager pursuit of prey. For a time neither spoke. Irene was
looking seaward, and Mr. King, who had a lower seat, attentively watched
the waves lapping the rocks at their feet, and the fine profile and trim
figure of the girl against the sky. He thought he had never seen her
looking more lovely, and yet he had a sense that she never was so remote
from him. Here was an opportunity, to be sure, if he had anything to
say, but some fine feeling of propriety restrained him from taking
advantage of it. It might not be quite fair, in a place so secluded and
remote, and with such sentimental influences, shut in as they were to the
sea and the sky.
"It seems like a world by itself," she began, as in continuation of her
thought. "They say you can see Gay Head Light from here."
"Yes. And Newport to the left there, with its towers and trees rising
out of the sea. It is quite like the Venice Lagoon in this light."
"I think I like Newport better at this distance. It is very poetical. I
don't think I like what is called the world much, when I am close to it."
The remark seemed to ask for sympathy, and Mr. King ventured: "Are you
willing to tell me, Miss Benson, why you have not seemed as happy at
Newport as elsewhere? Pardon me; it is not an idle question." Irene,
who seemed to be looking away beyond Gay Head, did not reply. "I should
like to know if I have been in any way the cause of it. We agreed to be
friends, and I think I have a friend's right to know." Still no
response. "You must see--you must know," he went on, hurriedly, "that it
cannot be a matter of indifference to me."
"It had better be," she said, as if speaking deliberately to herself, and
still looking away. But suddenly she turned towards him, and the tears
sprang to her eyes, and the words rushed out fiercely, "I wish I had
never left Cyrusville. I wish I had never been abroad. I wish I had
never been educated. It is all a wretched mistake."
King was unprepared for such a passionate outburst. It was like a rift
in a cloud, through which he had a glimpse of her real life. Words of
eager protest sprang to his lips, but, before they could be uttered,
either her mood had changed or pride had come to the rescue, for she
said: "How silly I am! Everybody has discontented days. Mr. King,
please don't ask me such questions. If you want to be a friend, you will
let me be unhappy now and then, and not say anything about it."
"But, Miss Benson--Irene--"
"There--'Miss Benson' will do very well."
"Well, Miss--Irene, then, there was something I wanted to say to you the
other day in Paradise--"
"Look, Mr. King. Did you see that wave? I'm sure it is nearer our feet
than when we sat down here."
"Oh, that's just an extra lift by the wind. I want to tell you. I must
tell you that life--has all changed since I met you--Irene, I--"
"There! There's no mistake-about that. The last wave came a foot higher
than the other!"
King sprang up. "Perhaps it is the tide. I'll go and see." He ran up
the rock, leaped across the fissures, and looked over on the side they
had ascended. Sure enough, the tide was coming in. The stones on which
they had stepped were covered, and a deep stream of water, rising with
every pulsation of the sea, now, where there was only a rivulet before.
He hastened back. "There is not a moment to lose. We are caught by the
tide, and if we are not off in five minutes we shall be prisoners here
till the turn."
He helped her up the slope and over the chasm. The way was very plain
when they came on, but now he could not find it. At the end of every
attempt was a precipice. And the water was rising. A little girl on the
shore shouted to them to follow along a ledge she pointed out, then
descend between two bowlders to the ford. Precious minutes were lost in
accomplishing this circuitous descent, and then they found the
stepping-stones under water, and the sea-weed swishing about the slippery
rocks with the incoming tide. It was a ridiculous position for lovers,
or even "friends"--ridiculous because it had no element of danger except
the ignominy of getting wet. If there was any heroism in seizing Irene
before she could protest, stumbling with his burden among the slimy
rocks, and depositing her, with only wet shoes, on the shore, Mr. King
shared it, and gained the title of "Life-preserver." The adventure ended
with a laugh.
The day after the discovery and exploration of Narragansett, Mr. King
spent the morning with his cousin at the Casino. It was so pleasant that
he wondered he had not gone there oftener, and that so few people
frequented it. Was it that the cottagers were too strong for the Casino
also, which was built for the recreation of the cottagers, and that they
found when it came to the test that they could not with comfort come into
any sort of contact with popular life? It is not large, but no summer
resort in Europe has a prettier place for lounging and reunion. None
have such an air of refinement and exclusiveness. Indeed, one of the
chief attractions and entertainments in the foreign casinos and
conversation-halls is the mingling there of all sorts of peoples, and the
animation arising from diversity of conditions. This popular commingling
in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic countries, but it will
not answer in a republic.
The Newport Casino is in the nature of a club of the best society. The
building and grounds express the most refined taste. Exteriorly the
house is a long, low Queen Anne cottage, with brilliant shops on the
ground-floor, and above, behind the wooded balconies, is the clubroom.
The tint of the shingled front is brown, and all the colors are low and
blended. Within, the court is a mediaeval surprise. It is a miniature
castle, such as might serve for an opera scene. An extension of the
galleries, an ombre, completes the circle around the plot of
close-clipped green turf. The house itself is all balconies, galleries,
odd windows half overgrown and hidden by ivy, and a large gilt clock-face
adds a touch of piquancy to the antique charm of the facade. Beyond the
first court is a more spacious and less artificial lawn, set with fine
trees, and at the bottom of it is the brown building containing ballroom
and theatre, bowling-alley and closed tennis-court, and at an angle with
the second lawn is a pretty field for lawn-tennis. Here the tournaments
are held, and on these occasions, and on ball nights, the Casino is
thronged.
If the Casino is then so exclusive, why is it not more used as a
rendezvous and lounging-place? Alas! it must be admitted that it is not
exclusive. By an astonishing concession in the organization any person
can gain admittance by paying the sum of fifty cents. This tax is
sufficient to exclude the deserving poor, but it is only an inducement to
the vulgar rich, and it is even broken down by the prodigal excursionist,
who commonly sets out from home with the intention of being reckless for
one day. It is easy to see, therefore, why the charm of this delightful
place is tarnished.
The band was playing this morning--not rink music--when Mrs. Glow and
King entered and took chairs on the ombre. It was a very pretty scene;
more people were present than usual of a morning. Groups of half a dozen
had drawn chairs together here and there, and were chatting and laughing;
two or three exceedingly well-preserved old bachelors, in the smart rough
morning suits of the period, were entertaining their lady friends with
club and horse talk; several old gentlemen were reading newspapers; and
there were some dowager-looking mammas, and seated by them their cold,
beautiful, high-bred daughters, who wore their visible exclusiveness like
a garment, and contrasted with some other young ladies who were
promenading with English-looking young men in flannel suits, who might be
described as lawn-tennis young ladies conscious of being in the mode, but
wanting the indescribable atmosphere of high-breeding. Doubtless the
most interesting persons to the student of human life were the young
fellows in lawn-tennis suits. They had the languid air which is so
attractive at their age, of having found out life, and decided that it is
a bore. Nothing is worth making an exertion about, not even pleasure.
They had come, one could see, to a just appreciation of their value in
life, and understood quite well the social manners of the mammas and
girls in whose company they condescended to dawdle and make, languidly,
cynical observations. They had, in truth, the manner of playing at
fashion and elegance as in a stage comedy. King could not help thinking
there was something theatrical about them altogether, and he fancied that
when he saw them in their "traps" on the Avenue they were going through
the motions for show and not for enjoyment. Probably King was mistaken
in all this, having been abroad so long that he did not understand the
evolution of the American gilded youth.
In a pause of the music Mrs. Bartlett Glow and Mr. King were standing
with a group near the steps that led down to the inner lawn. Among them
were the Postlethwaite girls, whose beauty and audacity made such a
sensation in Washington last winter. They were bantering Mr. King about
his Narragansett excursion, his cousin having maliciously given the party
a hint of his encounter with the tide at the Pier. . . Just at this
moment, happening to glance across the lawn, he saw the Bensons coming
towards the steps, Mrs. Benson waddling over the grass and beaming
towards the group, Mr. Benson carrying her shawl and looking as if he had
been hired by the day, and Irene listlessly following. Mrs. Glow saw
them at the same moment, but gave no other sign of her knowledge than by
striking into the banter with more animation. Mr. King intended at once
to detach himself and advance to meet the Bensons. But he could not
rudely break away from the unfinished sentence of the younger
Postlethwaite girl, and the instant that was concluded, as luck would
have it, an elderly lady joined the group, and Mrs. Glow went through the
formal ceremony of introducing King to her. He hardly knew how it
happened, only that he made a hasty bow to the Bensons as he was shaking
hands with the ceremonious old lady, and they had gone to the door of
exit. He gave a little start as if to follow them, which Mrs. Glow
noticed with a laugh and the remark, "You can catch them if you run," and
then he weakly submitted to his fate. After all, it was only an accident
which would hardly need a word of explanation. But what Irene saw was
this: a distant nod from Mrs. Glow, a cool survey and stare from the
Postlethwaite girls, and the failure of Mr. King to recognize his friends
any further than by an indifferent bow as he turned to speak to another
lady. In the raw state of her sensitiveness she felt all this as a
terrible and perhaps intended humiliation.
King did not return to the hotel till evening, and then he sent up his
card to the Bensons. Word came back that the ladies were packing, and
must be excused. He stood at the office desk and wrote a hasty note to
Irene, attempting an explanation of what might seem to her a rudeness,
and asked that he might see her a moment. And then he paced the corridor
waiting for a reply. In his impatience the fifteen minutes that he
waited seemed an hour. Then a bell-boy handed him this note:
"MY DEAR MR. KING,--No explanation whatever was needed. We never
shall forget your kindness. Good-by.
IRENE BENSON"
He folded the note carefully and put it in his breast pocket, took it out
and reread it, lingering over the fine and dainty signature, put it back
again, and walked out upon the piazza. It was a divine night, soft and
sweet-scented, and all the rustling trees were luminous in the electric
light. From a window opening upon a balcony overhead came the clear
notes of a barytone voice enunciating the oldfashioned words of an
English ballad, the refrain of which expressed hopeless separation.
The eastern coast, with its ragged outline of bays, headlands,
indentations, islands, capes, and sand-spits, from Watch Hill, a favorite
breezy resort, to Mount Desert, presents an almost continual chain of
hotels and summer cottages. In fact, the same may be said of the whole
Atlantic front from Mount Desert down to Cape May. It is to the traveler
an amazing spectacle. The American people can no longer be reproached
for not taking any summer recreation. The amount of money invested to
meet the requirements of this vacation idleness is enormous. When one is
on the coast in July or August it seems as if the whole fifty millions of
people had come down to lie on the rocks, wade in the sand, and dip into
the sea. But this is not the case. These crowds are only a fringe of
the pleasure-seeking population. In all the mountain regions from North
Carolina to the Adirondacks and the White Hills, along the St. Lawrence
and the lakes away up to the Northwest, in every elevated village, on
every mountain-side, about every pond, lake, and clear stream, in the
wilderness and the secluded farmhouse, one encounters the traveler, the
summer boarder, the vacation idler, one is scarcely out of sight of the
American flag flying over a summer resort. In no other nation, probably,
is there such a general summer hejira, no other offers on such a vast
scale such a variety of entertainment, and it is needless to say that
history presents no parallel to this general movement of a people for a
summer outing. Yet it is no doubt true that statistics, which always
upset a broad generous statement such as I have made, would show that the
majority of people stay at home in the summer, and it is undeniable that
the vexing question for everybody is where to go in July and August.
But there are resorts suited to all tastes, and to the economical as well
as to the extravagant. Perhaps the strongest impression one has in
visiting the various watering-places in the summer-time, is that the
multitudes of every-day folk are abroad in search of enjoyment. On the
New Bedford boat for Martha's Vineyard our little party of tourists
sailed quite away from Newport life--Stanhope with mingled depression and
relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything common,
while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the salt
breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing and her
eyes sparkling with enjoyment. The passengers and scene, Stanhope was
thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a landing at
Naushon Island, when he was reminded somehow of Scotland, as much perhaps
by the wild furzy appearance of the island as by the "gentle-folks" who
went ashore.
The boat lingered for the further disembarkation of a number of horses
and carriages, with a piano and a cow. There was a farmer's lodge at the
landing, and over the rocks and amid the trees the picturesque roof of
the villa of the sole proprietor of the island appeared, and gave a
feudal aspect to the domain. The sweet grass affords good picking for
sheep, and besides the sheep the owner raises deer, which are destined to
be chased and shot in the autumn.
The artist noted that there were several distinct types of women on
board, besides the common, straight-waisted, flat-chested variety. One
girl who was alone, with a city air, a neat, firm figure, in a traveling
suit of elegant simplicity, was fond of taking attitudes about the rails,
and watching the effect produced on the spectators. There was a
blue-eyed, sharp-faced, rather loose-jointed young girl, who had the
manner of being familiar with the boat, and talked readily and freely
with anybody, keeping an eye occasionally on her sister of eight years, a
child with a serious little face in a poke-bonnet, who used the language
of a young lady of sixteen, and seemed also abundantly able to take care
of herself. What this mite of a child wants of all things, she
confesses, is a pug-faced dog. Presently she sees one come on board in
the arms of a young lady at Wood's Holl. "No," she says, "I won't ask
her for it; the lady wouldn't give it to me, and I wouldn't waste my
breath;" but she draws near to the dog, and regards it with rapt
attention. The owner of the dog is a very pretty black-eyed girl with
banged hair, who prattles about herself and her dog with perfect freedom.
She is staying at Cottage City, lives at Worcester, has been up to Boston
to meet and bring down her dog, without which she couldn't live another
minute. "Perhaps," she says, "you know Dr. Ridgerton, in Worcester; he's
my brother. Don't you know him? He's a chiropodist."
These girls are all types of the skating-rink--an institution which is
beginning to express itself in American manners.
The band was playing on the pier when the steamer landed at Cottage City
(or Oak Bluff, as it was formerly called), and the pier and the gallery
leading to it were crowded with spectators, mostly women a pleasing
mingling of the skating-rink and sewing-circle varieties--and gayety was
apparently about setting in with the dusk. The rink and the, ground
opposite the hotel were in full tilt. After supper King and Forbes took
a cursory view of this strange encampment, walking through the streets of
fantastic tiny cottages among the scrub oaks, and saw something of family
life in the painted little boxes, whose wide-open front doors gave to
view the whole domestic economy, including the bed, centre-table, and
melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank promenade by the
beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the lovely night.
Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of the rink,
calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the nearly
empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who did not
come to a soothing tune, something like China--"Why do we mourn departed
friends?" A procession of lasses coming up the broad walk, advancing out
of the shadows of night, was heard afar off as the stalwart singers
strode on, chanting in high nasal voices that lovely hymn, which seems to
suit the rink as well as the night promenade and the campmeeting:
"We shall me--um um--we shall me-eet, me-eet--um um
--we shall meet,
In the sweet by-am-by, by-am-by-um um-by-am-by.
On the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-te-ful shore."
In the morning this fairy-like settlement, with its flimsy and eccentric
architecture, took on more the appearance of reality. The season was
late, as usual, and the hotels were still waiting for the crowds that
seem to prefer to be late and make a rushing carnival of August, but the
tiny cottages were nearly all occupied. At 10 A.M. the band was playing
in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the
three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the
bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive
with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a
raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving,
displaying the human form in graceful curves. The crowd was an immensely
good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the
water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although
many of the tightly-fitting costumes left less to the imagination than
would have been desired by a poet describing the scene as a phase of the
'comedie humaine.' The band, having played out its hour, trudged back to
the hotel pier to toot while the noon steamboat landed its passengers, in
order to impress the new arrivals with the mad joyousness of the place.
The crowd gathered on the high gallery at the end of the pier added to
this effect of reckless holiday enjoyment. Miss Lamont was infected with
this gayety, and took a great deal of interest in this peripatetic band,
which was playing again on the hotel piazza before dinner, with a sort of
mechanical hilariousness. The rink band opposite kept up a lively
competition, grinding out go-round music, imparting, if one may say so, a
glamour to existence. The band is on hand at the pier at four o'clock to
toot again, and presently off, tramping to some other hotel to satisfy
the serious pleasure of this people.
While Mr. King could not help wondering how all this curious life would
strike Irene--he put his lonesomeness and longing in this way--and what
she would say about it, he endeavored to divert his mind by a study of
the conditions, and by some philosophizing on the change that had come
over American summer life within a few years. In his investigations he
was assisted by Mr. De Long, to whom this social life was absolutely new,
and who was disposed to regard it as peculiarly Yankee--the staid
dissipation of a serious-minded people. King, looking at it more
broadly, found this pasteboard city by the sea one of the most
interesting developments of American life. The original nucleus was the
Methodist camp-meeting, which, in the season, brought here twenty
thousand to thirty thousand people at a time, who camped and picnicked in
a somewhat primitive style. Gradually the people who came here
ostensibly for religious exercises made a longer and more permanent
occupation, and, without losing its ephemeral character, the place grew
and demanded more substantial accommodations. The spot is very
attractive. Although the shore looks to the east, and does not get the
prevailing southern breeze, and the beach has little surf, both water and
air are mild, the bathing is safe and agreeable, and the view of the
illimitable sea dotted with sails and fishing-boats is always pleasing. A
crowd begets a crowd, and soon the world's people made a city larger than
the original one, and still more fantastic, by the aid of paint and the
jigsaw. The tent, however, is the type of all the dwelling-houses. The
hotels, restaurants, and shops follow the usual order of flamboyant
seaside architecture. After a time the Baptists established a camp,
ground on the bluffs on the opposite side of the inlet. The world's
people brought in the commercial element in the way of fancy shops for
the sale of all manner of cheap and bizarre "notions," and introduced the
common amusements. And so, although the camp-meetings do not begin till
late in August, this city of play-houses is occupied the summer long. The
shops and shows represent the taste of the million, and although there is
a similarity in all these popular coast watering-places, each has a
characteristic of its own. The foreigner has a considerable opportunity
of studying family life, whether he lounges through the narrow, sometimes
circular, streets by night, when it appears like a fairy encampment, or
by daylight, when there is no illusion. It seems to be a point of
etiquette to show as much of the interiors as possible, and one can learn
something of cooking and bed-making and mending, and the art of doing up
the back hair. The photographer revels here in pictorial opportunities.
The pictures of these bizarre cottages, with the family and friends
seated in front, show very serious groups. One of the Tabernacle--a vast
iron hood or dome erected over rows of benches that will seat two or
three thousand people--represents the building when it is packed with an
audience intent upon the preacher. Most of the faces are of a grave,
severe type, plain and good, of the sort of people ready to die for a
notion. The impression of these photographs is that these people abandon
themselves soberly to the pleasures of the sea and of this packed,
gregarious life, and get solid enjoyment out of their recreation.
Here, as elsewhere on the coast, the greater part of the population
consists of women and children, and the young ladies complain of the
absence of men--and, indeed, something is desirable in society besides
the superannuated and the boys in round-abouts.
The artist and Miss Lamont, in search of the picturesque, had the
courage, although the thermometer was in the humor to climb up to ninety
degrees, to explore the Baptist encampment. They were not rewarded by
anything new except at the landing, where, behind the bath-houses, the
bathing suits were hung out to dry, and presented a comical spectacle,
the humor of which seemed to be lost upon all except themselves. It was
such a caricature of humanity! The suits hanging upon the line and
distended by the wind presented the appearance of headless, bloated
forms, fat men and fat women kicking in the breeze, and vainly trying to
climb over the line. It was probably merely fancy, but they declared
that these images seemed larger, more bloated, and much livelier than
those displayed on the Cottage City side. When travelers can be
entertained by trifles of this kind it shows that there is an absence of
more serious amusement. And, indeed, although people were not wanting,
and music was in the air, and the bicycle and tricycle stable was well
patronized by men and women, and the noon bathing was well attended, it
was evident that the life of Cottage City was not in full swing by the
middle of July.
The morning on which our tourists took the steamer for Wood's Holl the
sea lay shimmering in the heat, only stirred a little by the land breeze,
and it needed all the invigoration of the short ocean voyage to brace
them up for the intolerably hot and dusty ride in the cars through the
sandy part of Massachusetts. So long as the train kept by the indented
shore the route was fairly picturesque; all along Buzzard Bay and Onset
Bay and Monument Beach little cottages, gay with paint and fantastic
saw-work explained, in a measure, the design of Providence in permitting
this part of the world to be discovered; but the sandy interior had to be
reconciled to the deeper divine intention by a trial of patience and the
cultivation of the heroic virtues evoked by a struggle for existence, of
fitting men and women for a better country. The travelers were
confirmed, however, in their theory of the effect of a sandy country upon
the human figure. This is not a juicy land, if the expression can be
tolerated, any more than the sandy parts of New Jersey, and its
unsympathetic dryness is favorable to the production--one can hardly say
development of the lean, enduring, flat-chested, and angular style of
woman.
In order to reach Plymouth a wait of a couple of hours was necessary at
one of the sleepy but historic villages. There was here no tavern, no
restaurant, and nobody appeared to have any license to sell anything for
the refreshment of the travelers. But at some distance from the station,
in a two-roomed dwelling-house, a good woman was found who was willing to
cook a meal of victuals, as she explained, and a sign on her front door
attested, she had a right to do. What was at the bottom of the local
prejudice against letting the wayfaring man have anything to eat and
drink, the party could not ascertain, but the defiant air of the woman
revealed the fact that there was such a prejudice. She was a noble,
robust, gigantic specimen of her sex, well formed, strong as an ox, with
a resolute jaw, and she talked, through tightly-closed teeth, in an
aggressive manner. Dinner was ordered, and the party strolled about the
village pending its preparation; but it was not ready when they returned.
"I ain't goin' to cook no victuals," the woman explained, not
ungraciously, "till I know folks is goin' to eat it." Knowledge of the
world had made her justly cautious. She intended to set out a good meal,
and she had the true housewife's desire that it should be eaten, that
there should be enough of it, and that the guests should like it. When
she waited on the table she displayed a pair of arms that would
discourage any approach to familiarity, and disincline a timid person to
ask twice for pie; but in point of fact, as soon as the party became her
bona-fide guests, she was royally hospitable, and only displayed anxiety
lest they should not eat enough.
"I like folks to be up and down and square," she began saying, as she
vigilantly watched the effect of her culinary skill upon the awed little
party. "Yes, I've got a regular hotel license; you bet I have. There's
been folks lawed in this town for sellin' a meal of victuals and not
having one. I ain't goin' to be taken in by anybody. I warn't raised in
New Hampshire to be scared by these Massachusetts folks. No, I hain't
got a girl now. I had one a spell, but I'd rather do my own work. You
never knew what a girl was doin' or would do. After she'd left I found a
broken plate tucked into the ash-barrel. Sho! you can't depend on a
girl. Yes, I've got a husband. It's easier to manage him. Well, I tell
you a husband is better than a girl. When you tell him to do anything,
you know it's going to be done. He's always about, never loafin' round;
he can take right hold and wash dishes, and fetch water, and anything."
King went into the kitchen after dinner and saw this model husband, who
had the faculty of making himself generally useful, holding a baby on one
arm, and stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other. He
looked hot but resigned. There has been so much said about the position
of men in Massachusetts that the travelers were glad of this evidence
that husbands are beginning to be appreciated. Under proper training
they are acknowledged to be "better than girls."
It was late afternoon when they reached the quiet haven of Plymouth--a
place where it is apparently always afternoon, a place of memory and
reminiscences, where the whole effort of the population is to hear and to
tell some old thing. As the railway ends there, there is no danger of
being carried beyond, and the train slowly ceases motion, and stands
still in the midst of a great and welcome silence. Peace fell upon the
travelers like a garment, and although they had as much difficulty in
landing their baggage as the early Pilgrims had in getting theirs ashore,
the circumstance was not able to disquiet them much. It seemed natural
that their trunks should go astray on some of the inextricably
interlocked and branching railways, and they had no doubt that when they
had made the tour of the State they would be discharged, as they finally
were, into this cul-de-sac.
The Pilgrims have made so much noise in the world, and so powerfully
affected the continent, that our tourists were surprised to find they had
landed in such a quiet place, and that the spirit they have left behind
them is one of such tranquillity. The village has a charm all its own.
Many of the houses are old-fashioned and square, some with colonial doors
and porches, irregularly aligned on the main street, which is arched by
ancient and stately elms. In the spacious door-yards the lindens have
had room and time to expand, and in the beds of bloom the flowers, if not
the very ones that our grandmothers planted, are the sorts that they
loved. Showing that the town has grown in sympathy with human needs and
eccentricities, and is not the work of a surveyor, the streets are
irregular, forming picturesque angles and open spaces.
Nothing could be imagined in greater contrast to a Western town, and a
good part of the satisfaction our tourists experienced was in the absence
of anything Western or "Queen Anne" in the architecture.
In the Pilgrim Hall--a stone structure with an incongruous
wooden-pillared front--they came into the very presence of the early
worthies, saw their portraits on the walls, sat in their chairs, admired
the solidity of their shoes, and imbued themselves with the spirit of the
relics of their heroic, uncomfortable lives. In the town there was
nothing to disturb the serenity of mind acquired by this communion. The
Puritan interdict of unseemly excitement still prevailed, and the streets
were silent; the artist, who could compare it with the placidity of
Holland towns, declared that he never walked in a village so silent;
there was no loud talking; and even the children played without noise,
like little Pilgrims. . . God bless such children, and increase their
numbers! It might have been the approach of Sunday--if Sunday is still
regarded in eastern Massachusetts--that caused this hush, for it was now
towards sunset on Saturday, and the inhabitants were washing the fronts
of the houses with the hose, showing how cleanliness is next to silence.
Possessed with the spirit of peace, our tourists, whose souls had been
vexed with the passions of many watering-places, walked down Leyden
Street (the first that was laid out), saw the site of the first house,
and turned round Carver Street, walking lingeringly, so as not to break
the spell, out upon the hill-Cole's Hill--where the dead during the first
fearful winter were buried. This has been converted into a beautiful
esplanade, grassed and graveled and furnished with seats, and overlooks
the old wharves, some coal schooners, and shabby buildings, on one of
which is a sign informing the reckless that they can obtain there
clam-chowder and ice-cream, and the ugly, heavy granite canopy erected
over the "Rock." No reverent person can see this rock for the first time
without a thrill of excitement. It has the date of 1620 cut in it, and
it is a good deal cracked and patched up, as if it had been much landed
on, but there it is, and there it will remain a witness to a great
historic event, unless somebody takes a notion to cart it off uptown
again. It is said to rest on another rock, of which it formed a part
before its unfortunate journey, and that lower rock as everybody knows,
rests upon the immutable principle of self-government. The stone lies
too far from the water to enable anybody to land on it now, and it is
protected from vandalism by an iron grating. The sentiment of the hour
was disturbed by the advent of the members of a baseball nine, who
wondered why the Pilgrims did not land on the wharf, and, while thrusting
their feet through the grating in a commendable desire to touch the
sacred rock, expressed a doubt whether the feet of the Pilgrims were
small enough to slip through the grating and land on the stone. It seems
that there is nothing safe from the irreverence of American youth.
Has any other coast town besides Plymouth had the good sense and taste to
utilize such an elevation by the water-side as an esplanade? It is a
most charming feature of the village, and gives it what we call a foreign
air. It was very lovely in the afterglow and at moonrise. Staid
citizens with their families occupied the benches, groups were chatting
under the spreading linden-tree at the north entrance, and young maidens
in white muslin promenaded, looking seaward, as was the wont of Puritan
maidens, watching a receding or coming Mayflower. But there was no loud
talking, no laughter, no outbursts of merriment from the children, all
ready to be transplanted to the Puritan heaven! It was high tide, and
all the bay was silvery with a tinge of color from the glowing sky. The
long, curved sand-spit-which was heavily wooded when the Pilgrims
landed-was silvery also, and upon its northern tip glowed the white
sparkle in the lighthouse like the evening-star. To the north, over the
smooth pink water speckled with white sails, rose Captain Hill, in
Duxbury, bearing the monument to Miles Standish. Clarke's Island (where
the Pilgrims heard a sermon on the first Sunday), Saguish Point, and
Gurnett Headland (showing now twin white lights) appear like a long
island intersected by thin lines of blue water. The effect of these
ribbons of alternate sand and water, of the lights and the ocean (or
Great Bay) beyond, was exquisite.
Even the unobtrusive tavern at the rear of the esplanade, ancient, feebly
lighted, and inviting, added something to the picturesqueness of the
scene. The old tree by the gate--an English linden--illuminated by the
street lamps and the moon, had a mysterious appearance, and the tourists
were not surprised to learn that it has a romantic history. The story is
that the twig or sapling from which it grew was brought over from England
by a lover as a present to his mistress, that the lovers quarreled almost
immediately, that the girl in a pet threw it out of the window when she
sent her lover out of the door, and that another man picked it up and
planted it where it now grows. The legend provokes a good many
questions. One would like to know whether this was the first case of
female rebellion in Massachusetts against the common-law right of a man
to correct a woman with a stick not thicker than his little finger--a
rebellion which has resulted in the position of man as the tourists saw
him where the New Hampshire Amazon gave them a meal of victuals; and
whether the girl married the man who planted the twig, and, if so,
whether he did not regret that he had not kept it by him.
This is a world of illusions. By daylight, when the tide was out, the
pretty silver bay of the night before was a mud flat, and the tourists,
looking over it from Monument Hill, lost some of their respect for the
Pilgrim sagacity in selecting a landing-place. They had ascended the
hill for a nearer view of the monument, King with a reverent wish to read
the name of his Mayflower ancestor on the tablet, the others in a spirit
of cold, New York criticism, for they thought the structure, which is
still unfinished, would look uglier near at hand than at a distance. And
it does. It is a pile of granite masonry surmounted by symbolic figures.
"It is such an unsympathetic, tasteless-looking thing!" said Miss Lamont.
"Do you think it is the worst in the country?"
"I wouldn't like to say that," replied the artist, "when the competition
in this direction is so lively. But just look at the drawing" (holding
up his pencil with which he had intended to sketch it). "If it were
quaint, now, or rude, or archaic, it might be in keeping, but bad drawing
is just vulgar. I should think it had been designed by a carpenter, and
executed by a stone-mason."
"Yes," said the little Lamont, who always fell in with the most
abominable opinions the artist expressed; "it ought to have been made of
wood, and painted and sanded."
"You will please remember," mildly suggested King, who had found the name
he was in search of, "that you are trampling on my ancestral
sensibilities, as might be expected of those who have no ancestors who
ever landed or ever were buried anywhere in particular. I look at the
commemorative spirit rather than the execution of the monument."
"So do I," retorted the girl; "and if the Pilgrims landed in such a
vulgar, ostentatious spirit as this, I'm glad my name is not on the
tablet."
The party were in a better mood when they had climbed up Burial Hill,
back of the meeting-house, and sat down on one of the convenient benches
amid the ancient gravestones, and looked upon the wide and magnificent
prospect. A soft summer wind waved a little the long gray grass of the
ancient resting-place, and seemed to whisper peace to the weary
generation that lay there. What struggles, what heroisms, the names on
the stones recalled! Here had stood the first fort of 1620, and here the
watchtower of 1642, from the top of which the warder espied the lurking
savage, or hailed the expected ship from England. How much of history
this view recalled, and what pathos of human life these graves made real.
Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries ago--captains,
elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved, children a span long,
maidens in the blush of womanhood--half the tender inscriptions are
illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to fall. What a pitiful
attempt to keep the world mindful of the departed!
VI
MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA, ISLES OF SHOALS
Mr. Stanhope King was not in very good spirits. Even Boston did not make
him cheerful. He was half annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont
drifting along in such laughing good-humor with the world, as if a summer
holiday was just a holiday without any consequences or responsibilities.
It was to him a serious affair ever since that unsatisfactory note from
Miss Benson; somehow the summer had lost its sparkle. And yet was it not
preposterous that a girl, just a single girl, should have the power to
change for a man the aspect of a whole coast-by her presence to make it
iridescent with beauty, and by her absence to take all the life out of
it? And a simple girl from Ohio! She was not by any means the prettiest
girl in the Newport Casino that morning, but it was her figure that he
remembered, and it was the look of hurt sensibility in her eyes that
stayed with him. He resented the attitude of the Casino towards her, and
he hated himself for his share in it. He would write to her..... He
composed letter after letter in his mind, which he did not put on paper.
How many millions of letters are composed in this way! It is a favorite
occupation of imaginative people; and as they say that no thoughts or
mental impressions are ever lost, but are all registered--made, as it
were, on a "dry-plate," to be developed hereafter--what a vast
correspondence must be lying in the next world, in the Dead-letter Office
there, waiting for the persons to whom it is addressed, who will all
receive it and read it some day! How unpleasant and absurd it will be to
read, much of it! I intend to be careful, for my part, about composing
letters of this sort hereafter. Irene, I dare say, will find a great
many of them from Mr. King, thought out in those days. But he mailed
none of them to her. What should he say? Should he tell her that he
didn't mind if her parents were what Mrs. Bartlett Glow called
"impossible"? If he attempted any explanation, would it not involve the
offensive supposition that his social rank was different from hers? Even
if he convinced her that he recognized no caste in American society, what
could remove from her mind the somewhat morbid impression that her
education had put her in a false position? His love probably could not
shield her from mortification in a society which, though indefinable in
its limits and code, is an entity more vividly felt than the government
of the United States.
"Don't you think the whole social atmosphere has changed," Miss Lamont
suddenly asked, as they were running along in the train towards
Manchester-by-the-Sea, "since we got north of Boston? I seem to find it
so. Don't you think it's more refined, and, don't you know, sort of
cultivated, and subdued, and Boston? You notice the gentlemen who get
out at all these stations, to go to their country-houses, how highly
civilized they look, and ineffably respectable and intellectual, all of
them presidents of colleges, and substantial bank directors, and possible
ambassadors, and of a social cult (isn't that the word?) uniting brains
and gentle manners."
"You must have been reading the Boston newspapers; you have hit the idea
prevalent in these parts, at any rate. I was, however, reminded myself
of an afternoon train out of London, say into Surrey, on which you are
apt to encounter about as high a type of civilized men as anywhere."
"And you think this is different from a train out of New York?" asked the
artist.
"Yes. New York is more mixed. No one train has this kind of tone. You
see there more of the broker type and politician type, smarter apparel
and nervous manners, but, dear me, not this high moral and intellectual
respectability."
"Well," said the artist, "I'm changing my mind about this country. I
didn't expect so much variety. I thought that all the watering-places
would be pretty much alike, and that we should see the same people
everywhere. But the people are quite as varied as the scenery."
"There you touch a deep question--the refining or the vulgarizing
influence of man upon nature, and the opposite. Now, did the summer
Bostonians make this coast refined, or did this coast refine the
Bostonians who summer here?"
"Well, this is primarily an artistic coast; I feel the influence of it;
there is a refined beauty in all the lines, and residents have not
vulgarized it much. But I wonder what Boston could have done for the
Jersey coast?"
In the midst of this high and useless conversation they came to the
Masconomo House, a sort of concession, in this region of noble villas and
private parks, to the popular desire to get to the sea. It is a long,
low house, with very broad passages below and above, which give lightness
and cheerfulness to the interior, and each of the four corners of the
entrance hall has a fireplace. The pillars of the front and back piazzas
are pine stems stained, with the natural branches cut in unequal lengths,
and look like the stumps for the bears to climb in the pit at Berne. Set
up originally with the bark on, the worms worked underneath it in secret,
at a novel sort of decoration, until the bark came off and exposed the
stems most beautifully vermiculated, giving the effect of fine carving.
Back of the house a meadow slopes down to a little beach in a curved bay
that has rocky headlands, and is defended in part by islands of rock.
The whole aspect of the place is peaceful. The hotel does not assert
itself very loudly, and if occasionally transient guests appear with
flash manners, they do not affect the general tone of the region.
One finds, indeed, nature and social life happily blended, the
exclusiveness being rather protective than offensive. The special charm
of this piece of coast is that it is bold, much broken and indented,
precipices fronting the waves, promontories jutting out, high rocky
points commanding extensive views, wild and picturesque, and yet softened
by color and graceful shore lines, and the forest comes down to the edge
of the sea. And the occupants have heightened rather than lessened this
picturesqueness by adapting their villas to a certain extent to the rocks
and inequalities in color and form, and by means of roads, allies, and
vistas transforming the region into a lovely park.
Here, as at Newport, is cottage life, but the contrast of the two places
is immense. There is here no attempt at any assembly or congregated
gayety or display. One would hesitate to say that the drives here have
more beauty, but they have more variety. They seem endless, through
odorous pine woods and shady lanes, by private roads among beautiful
villas and exquisite grounds, with evidences everywhere of wealth to be
sure, but of individual taste and refinement. How sweet and cool are
these winding ways in the wonderful woods, overrun with vegetation, the
bayberry, the sweet-fern, the wild roses, wood-lilies, and ferns! and it
is ever a fresh surprise at a turn to find one's self so near the sea,
and to open out an entrancing coast view, to emerge upon a promontory and
a sight of summer isles, of lighthouses, cottages, villages--Marblehead,
Salem, Beverly. What a lovely coast! and how wealth and culture have set
their seal on it.
It possesses essentially the same character to the north, although the
shore is occasionally higher and bolder, as at the picturesque promontory
of Magnolia, and Cape Ann exhibits more of the hotel and popular life.
But to live in one's own cottage, to choose his calling and dining
acquaintances, to make the long season contribute something to
cultivation in literature, art, music--to live, in short, rather more for
one's self than for society--seems the increasing tendency of the men of
fortune who can afford to pay as much for an acre of rock and sand at
Manchester as would build a decent house elsewhere. The tourist does not
complain of this, and is grateful that individuality has expressed itself
in the great variety of lovely homes, in cottages very different from
those on the Jersey coast, showing more invention, and good in form and
color.
There are New-Yorkers at Manchester, and Bostonians at Newport; but who
was it that said New York expresses itself at Newport, and Boston at
Manchester and kindred coast settlements? This may be only fancy. Where
intellectual life keeps pace with the accumulation of wealth, society is
likely to be more natural, simpler, less tied to artificial rules, than
where wealth runs ahead. It happens that the quiet social life of
Beverly, Manchester, and that region is delightful, although it is a home
rather than a public life. Nowhere else at dinner and at the chance
evening musicale is the foreigner more likely to meet sensible men who
are good talkers, brilliant and witty women who have the gift of being
entertaining, and to have the events of the day and the social and
political problems more cleverly discussed. What is the good of wealth
if it does not bring one back to freedom, and the ability to live
naturally and to indulge the finer tastes in vacation-time?
After all, King reflected, as the party were on their way to the Isles of
Shoals, what was it that had most impressed him at Manchester? Was it
not an evening spent in a cottage amid the rocks, close by the water, in
the company of charming people? To be sure, there were the magical
reflection of the moonlight and the bay, the points of light from the
cottages on the rocky shore, the hum and swell of the sea, and all the
mystery of the shadowy headlands; but this was only a congenial setting
for the music, the witty talk, the free play of intellectual badinage,
and seriousness, and the simple human cordiality that were worth all the
rest.
What a kaleidoscope it is, this summer travel, and what an entertainment,
if the tourist can only keep his "impression plates" fresh to take the
new scenes, and not sink into the state of chronic grumbling at hotels
and minor discomforts! An interview at a ticket-office, a whirl of an
hour on the rails, and to Portsmouth, anchored yet to the colonial times
by a few old houses, and resisting with its respectable provincialism the
encroachments of modern smartness, and the sleepy wharf in the sleepy
harbor, where the little steamer is obligingly waiting for the last
passenger, for the very last woman, running with a bandbox in one hand,
and dragging a jerked, fretting child by the other hand, to make the
hour's voyage to the Isles of Shoals.
(The shrewd reader objects to the bandbox as an anachronism: it is no
longer used. If I were writing a novel, instead of a veracious
chronicle, I should not have introduced it, for it is an anachronism. But
I was powerless, as a mere narrator, to prevent the woman coming aboard
with her bandbox. No one but a trained novelist can make a
long-striding, resolute, down-East woman conform to his notions of
conduct and fashion.)
If a young gentleman were in love, and the object of his adoration were
beside him, he could not have chosen a lovelier day nor a prettier scene
than this in which to indulge his happiness; and if he were in love, and
the object absent, he could scarcely find a situation fitter to nurse his
tender sentiment. Doubtless there is a stage in love when scenery of the
very best quality becomes inoperative. There was a couple on board
seated in front of the pilot-house, who let the steamer float along the
pretty, long, landlocked harbor, past the Kittery Navy-yard, and out upon
the blue sea, without taking the least notice of anything but each other.
They were on a voyage of their own, Heaven help them! probably without
any chart, a voyage of discovery, just as fresh and surprising as if they
were the first who ever took it. It made no difference to them that
there was a personally conducted excursion party on board, going, they
said, to the Oceanic House on Star Island, who had out their maps and
guide-books and opera-glasses, and wrung the last drop of the cost of
their tickets out of every foot of the scenery. Perhaps it was to King a
more sentimental journey than to anybody else, because he invoked his
memory and his imagination, and as the lovely shores opened or fell away
behind the steamer in ever-shifting forms of beauty, the scene was in
harmony with both his hope and his longing. As to Marion and the artist,
they freely appropriated and enjoyed it. So that mediaeval structure,
all tower, growing out of the rock, is Stedman's Castle--just like him,
to let his art spring out of nature in that way. And that is the famous
Kittery Navy-yard!
"What do they do there, uncle?" asked the girl, after scanning the place
in search of dry-docks and vessels and the usual accompaniments of a
navy-yard.
"Oh, they make 'repairs,' principally just before an election. It is
very busy then."
"What sort of repairs?"
"Why, political repairs; they call them naval in the department. They
are always getting appropriations for them. I suppose that this country
is better off for naval repairs than any other country in the world."
"And they are done here?"
"No; they are done in the department. Here is where the voters are. You
see, we have a political navy. It costs about as much as those navies
that have ships and guns, but it is more in accord with the peaceful
spirit of the age. Did you never hear of the leading case of 'repairs'
of a government vessel here at Kittery? The 'repairs' were all done
here, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; the vessel lay all the time at
Portsmouth, Virginia. How should the department know that there were two
places of the same name? It usually intends to have 'repairs' and the
vessel in the same navy-yard."
The steamer was gliding along over smooth water towards the seven blessed
isles, which lay there in the sun, masses of rock set in a sea sparkling
with diamond points. There were two pretty girls in the pilot-house, and
the artist thought their presence there accounted for the serene voyage,
for the masts of a wrecked schooner rising out of the shallows to the
north reminded him that this is a dangerous coast. But he said the
passengers would have a greater sense of security if the usual placard
(for the benefit of the captain) was put up: "No flirting with the girl
at the wheel."
At a distance nothing could be more barren than these islands, which
Captain John Smith and their native poet have enveloped in a halo of
romance, and it was not until the steamer was close to it that any
landing-place was visible on Appledore, the largest of the group.
The boat turned into a pretty little harbor among the rocks, and the
settlement was discovered: a long, low, old-fashioned hotel with piazzas,
and a few cottages, perched on the ledges, the door-yards of which were
perfectly ablaze with patches of flowers, masses of red, yellow,
purple-poppies, marigolds, nasturtiums, bachelor's-buttons, lovely
splashes of color against the gray lichen-covered rock. At the landing
is an interior miniature harbor, walled in, and safe for children to
paddle about and sail on in tiny boats. The islands offer scarcely any
other opportunity for bathing, unless one dare take a plunge off the
rocks.
Talk of the kaleidoscope! At a turn of the wrist, as it were, the
elements of society had taken a perfectly novel shape here. Was it only
a matter of grouping and setting, or were these people different from all
others the tourists had seen? There was a lively scene in the hotel
corridor, the spacious office with its long counters and post-office,
when the noon mail was opened and the letters called out. So many pretty
girls, with pet dogs of all degrees of ugliness (dear little objects of
affection overflowing and otherwise running to waste--one of the most
pathetic sights in this sad world), jaunty suits with a nautical cut, for
boating and rock-climbing, family groups, so much animation and
excitement over the receipt of letters, so much well-bred chaffing and
friendliness, such an air of refinement and "style," but withal so
homelike. These people were "guests" of the proprietors, who
nevertheless felt a sort of proprietorship themselves in the little
island, and were very much like a company together at sea. For living on
this island is not unlike being on shipboard at sea, except that this
rock does not heave about in a nauseous way.
Mr. King discovered by the register that the Bensons had been here (of
all places in the world, he thought this would be the ideal one for a few
days with her), and Miss Lamont had a letter from Irene, which she did
not offer to read.
"They didn't stay long," she said, as Mr. King seemed to expect some
information out of the letter, "and they have gone on to Bar Harbor. I
should like to stop here a week; wouldn't you?"
"Ye-e-s," trying to recall the mood he was in before he looked at the
register; "but--but" (thinking of the words "gone on to Bar Harbor") "it
is a place, after all, that you can see in a short time--go all over it
in half a day."
"But you want to sit about on the rocks, and look at the sea, and dream."
"I can't dream on an island-not on a small island. It's too cooped up;
you get a feeling of being a prisoner."
"I suppose you wish 'that little isle had wings, and you and I within its
shady--'"
"There's one thing I will not stand, Miss Lamont, and that's Moore."
"Come, let's go to Star Island."
The party went in the tug Pinafore, which led a restless, fussy life,
puffing about among these islands, making the circuit of Appledore at
fixed hours, and acting commonly as a ferry. Star Island is smaller than
Appledore and more barren, but it has the big hotel (and a different
class of guests from those on Appledore), and several monuments of
romantic interest. There is the ancient stone church, rebuilt some time
in this century; there are some gravestones; there is a monument to
Captain John Smith, the only one existing anywhere to that interesting
adventurer--a triangular shaft, with a long inscription that could not
have been more eulogistic if he had composed it himself. There is
something pathetic in this lonely monument when we recall Smith's own
touching allusion to this naked rock, on which he probably landed when he
once coasted along this part of New England, as being his sole possession
in the world at the end of his adventurous career:
"No lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren
rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs and sharpe whins you can
hardly pass them; without either grasse or wood, but three or foure
short shrubby old cedars."
Every tourist goes to the south end of Star Island, and climbs down on
the face of the precipice to the "Chair," a niche where a school-teacher
used to sit as long ago as 1848. She was sitting there one day when a
wave came up and washed her away into the ocean. She disappeared. But
she who loses her life shall save it. That one thoughtless act of hers
did more for her reputation than years of faithful teaching, than all her
beauty, grace, and attractions. Her "Chair" is a point of pilgrimage.
The tourist looks at it, guesses at its height above the water, regards
the hungry sea with aversion, re-enacts the drama in his imagination,
sits in the chair, has his wife sit in it, has his boy and girl sit in it
together, wonders what the teacher's name was, stops at the hotel and
asks the photograph girl, who does not know, and the proprietor, who says
it's in a book somewhere, and finally learns that it was Underhill, and
straightway forgets it when he leaves the island.
What a delicious place it is, this Appledore, when the elements favor!
The party were lodged in a little cottage, whence they overlooked the
hotel and the little harbor, and could see all the life of the place,
looking over the bank of flowers that draped the rocks of the door-yard.
How charming was the miniature pond, with the children sailing round and
round, and the girls in pretty costumes bathing, and sunlight lying so
warm upon the greenish-gray rocks! But the night, following the glorious
after-glow, the red sky, all the level sea, and the little harbor
burnished gold, the rocks purple--oh! the night, when the moon came! Oh,
Irene! Great heavens! why will this world fall into such a sentimental
fit, when all the sweetness and the light of it are away at Bar Harbor!
Love and moonlight, and the soft lapse of the waves and singing? Yes,
there are girls down by the landing with a banjo, and young men singing
the songs of love, the modern songs of love dashed with college slang.
The banjo suggests a little fastness; and this new generation carries off
its sentiment with some bravado and a mocking tone. Presently the tug
Pinafore glides up to the landing, the engineer flings open the furnace
door, and the glowing fire illumines the interior, brings out forms and
faces, and deepens the heavy shadows outside. It is like a cavern scene
in the opera. A party of ladies in white come down to cross to Star.
Some of these insist upon climbing up to the narrow deck, to sit on the
roof and enjoy the moonlight and the cinders. Girls like to do these
things, which are more unconventional than hazardous, at watering-places.
What a wonderful effect it is, the masses of rock, water, sky, the night,
all details lost in simple lines and forms! On the piazza of the cottage
is a group of ladies and gentlemen in poses more or less graceful; one
lady is in a hammock; on one side is the moonlight, on the other come
gleams from the curtained windows touching here and there a white
shoulder, or lighting a lovely head; the vines running up on strings and
half enclosing the piazza make an exquisite tracery against the sky, and
cast delicate shadow patterns on the floor; all the time music within,
the piano, the violin, and the sweet waves of a woman's voice singing the
songs of Schubert, floating out upon the night. A soft wind blows out of
the west.
The northern part of Appledore Island is an interesting place to wander.
There are no trees, but the plateau is far from barren. The gray rocks
crop out among bayberry and huckleberry bushes, and the wild rose, very
large and brilliant in color, fairly illuminates the landscape, massing
its great bushes. Amid the chaotic desert of broken rocks farther south
are little valleys of deep green grass, gay with roses. On the savage
precipices at the end one may sit in view of an extensive sweep of coast
with a few hills, and of other rocky islands, sails, and ocean-going
steamers. Here are many nooks and hidden corners to dream in and make
love in, the soft sea air being favorable to that soft-hearted
occupation.
One could easily get attached to the place, if duty and Irene did not
call elsewhere. Those who dwell here the year round find most
satisfaction when the summer guests have gone and they are alone with
freaky nature. "Yes," said the woman in charge of one of the cottages,"
I've lived here the year round for sixteen years, and I like it. After
we get fixed up comfortable for winter, kill a critter, have pigs, and
make my own sassengers, then there ain't any neighbors comin' in, and
that's what I like."
VII
BAR HARBOR
The attraction of Bar Harbor is in the union of mountain and sea; the
mountains rise in granite majesty right out of the ocean. The traveler
expects to find a repetition of Mount Athos rising six thousand feet out
of the AEgean.
The Bar-Harborers made a mistake in killing--if they did kill--the
stranger who arrived at this resort from the mainland, and said it would
be an excellent sea-and-mountain place if there were any mountains or any
sea in sight. Instead, if they had taken him in a row-boat and pulled
him out through the islands, far enough, he would have had a glimpse of
the ocean, and if then he had been taken by the cog-railway seventeen
hundred feet to the top of Green Mountain, he would not only have found
himself on firm, rising ground, but he would have been obliged to confess
that, with his feet upon a solid mountain of granite, he saw innumerable
islands and, at a distance, a considerable quantity of ocean. He would
have repented his hasty speech. In two days he would have been a
partisan of the place, and in a week he would have been an owner of real
estate there.
There is undeniably a public opinion in Bar Harbor in favor of it, and
the visitor would better coincide with it. He is anxiously asked at
every turn how he likes it, and if he does not like it he is an object of
compassion. Countless numbers of people who do not own a foot of land
there are devotees of the place. Any number of certificates to its
qualities could be obtained, as to a patent medicine, and they would all
read pretty much alike, after the well-known formula: "The first bottle I
took did, me no good, after the second I was worse, after the third I
improved, after the twelfth I walked fifty miles in one day; and now I
never do without it, I take never less than fifty bottles a year." So it
would be: "At first I felt just as you do, shut-in place, foggy, stayed
only two days. Only came back again to accompany friends, stayed a week,
foggy, didn't like it. Can't tell how I happened to come back again,
stayed a month, and I tell you, there is no place like it in America.
Spend all my summers here."
The genesis of Bar Harbor is curious and instructive. For many years,
like other settlements on Mount Desert Island; it had been frequented by
people who have more fondness for nature than they have money, and who
were willing to put up with wretched accommodations, and enjoyed a mild
sort of "roughing it." But some society people in New York, who have the
reputation of setting the mode, chanced to go there; they declared in
favor of it; and instantly, by an occult law which governs fashionable
life, Bar Harbor became the fashion. Everybody could see its preeminent
attractions. The word was passed along by the Boudoir Telephone from
Boston to New Orleans, and soon it was a matter of necessity for a
debutante, or a woman of fashion, or a man of the world, or a blase boy,
to show themselves there during the season. It became the scene of
summer romances; the student of manners went there to study the "American
girl." The notion spread that it was the finest sanitarium on the
continent for flirtations; and as trade is said to follow the flag, so in
this case real-estate speculation rioted in the wake of beauty and
fashion.
There is no doubt that the "American girl" is there, as she is at divers
other sea-and-land resorts; but the present peculiarity of this
watering-place is that the American young man is there also. Some
philosophers have tried to account for this coincidence by assuming that
the American girl is the attraction to the young man. But this seems to
me a misunderstanding of the spirit of this generation. Why are young
men quoted as "scarce" in other resorts swarming with sweet girls,
maidens who have learned the art of being agreeable, and interesting
widows in the vanishing shades of an attractive and consolable grief?
No. Is it not rather the cold, luminous truth that the American girl
found out that Bar Harbor, without her presence, was for certain reasons,
such as unconventionality, a bracing air, opportunity for boating, etc.,
agreeable to the young man? But why do elderly people go there? This
question must have been suggested by a foreigner, who is ignorant that in
a republic it is the young ones who know what is best for the elders.
Our tourists passed a weary, hot day on the coast railway of Maine.
Notwithstanding the high temperature, the country seemed cheerless, the
sunlight to fall less genially than in more fertile regions to the south,
upon a landscape stripped of its forests, naked, and unpicturesque. Why
should the little white houses of the prosperous little villages on the
line of the rail seem cold and suggest winter, and the land seem scrimped
and without an atmosphere? It chanced so, for everybody knows that it is
a lovely coast. The artist said it was the Maine Law. But that could not
be, for the only drunken man encountered on their tour they saw at the
Bangor Station, where beer was furtively sold.
They were plunged into a cold bath on the steamer in the half-hour's sail
from the end of the rail to Bar Harbor. The wind was fresh, white-caps
enlivened the scene, the spray dashed over the huge pile of baggage on
the bow, the passengers shivered, and could little enjoy the islands and
the picturesque shore, but fixed eyes of hope upon the electric lights
which showed above the headlands, and marked the site of the hotels and
the town in the hidden harbor. Spits of rain dashed in their faces, and
in some discomfort they came to the wharf, which was alive with vehicles
and tooters for the hotels. In short, with its lights and noise, it had
every appearance of being an important place, and when our party, holding
on to their seats in a buckboard, were whirled at a gallop up to
Rodick's, and ushered into a spacious office swarming with people, they
realized that they were entering upon a lively if somewhat haphazard
life. The first confused impression was of a bewildering number of slim,
pretty girls, nonchalant young fellows in lawn-tennis suits, and
indefinite opportunities in the halls and parlors and wide piazzas for
promenade and flirtations.
Rodick's is a sort of big boarding-house, hesitating whether to be a
hotel or not, no bells in the rooms, no bills of fare (or rarely one), no
wine-list, a go-as-you-please, help-yourself sort of place, which is
popular because it has its own character, and everybody drifts into it
first or last. Some say it is an acquired taste; that people do not take
to it at first. The big office is a sort of assembly-room, where new
arrivals are scanned and discovered, and it is unblushingly called the
"fish-pond" by the young ladies who daily angle there. Of the
unconventional ways of the establishment Mr. King had an illustration
when he attempted to get some washing done. Having read a notice that
the hotel had no laundry, he was told, on applying at the office, that if
he would bring his things down there they would try to send them out for
him. Not being accustomed to carrying about soiled clothes, he declined
this proposal, and consulted a chambermaid. She told him that ladies
came to the house every day for the washing, and that she would speak to
one of them. No result following this, after a day King consulted the
proprietor, and asked him point blank, as a friend, what course he would
pursue if he were under the necessity of having washing done in that
region. The proprietor said that Mr. King's wants should be attended to
at once. Another day passed without action, when the chambermaid was
again applied to. "There's a lady just come in to the hall I guess will
do it."
"Is she trustworthy?"
"Don't know, she washes for the woman in the room next to you." And the
lady was at last secured.
Somebody said that those who were accustomed to luxury at home liked
Rodick's, and that those who were not grumbled. And it was true that
fashion for the moment elected to be pleased with unconventionality,
finding a great zest in freedom, and making a joke of every
inconvenience. Society will make its own rules, and although there are
several other large hotels, and good houses as watering-place hotels go,
and cottage-life here as elsewhere is drawing away its skirts from hotel
life, society understood why a person might elect to stay at Rodick's.
Bar Harbor has one of the most dainty and refined little hotels in the
world-the Malvern. Any one can stay there who is worth two millions of
dollars, or can produce a certificate from the Recorder of New York that
he is a direct descendant of Hendrick Hudson or Diedrich Knickerbocker.
It is needless to say that it was built by a Philadelphian--that is to
say one born with a genius for hotel-keeping. But though a guest at the
Malvern might not eat with a friend at Rodick's, he will meet him as a
man of the world on friendly terms.
Bar Harbor was indeed an interesting society study. Except in some of
the cottages, it might be said that society was on a lark. With all the
manners of the world and the freemasonry of fashionable life, it had
elected to be unconventional. The young ladies liked to appear in
nautical and lawn-tennis toilet, carried so far that one might refer to
the "cut of their jib," and their minds were not much given to any
elaborate dressing for evening. As to the young gentlemen, if there were
any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but
delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the
ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the
morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap
to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in
state-prisons the stripes run round. This neglige costume was adhered to
even in the ballroom. To be sure, the ballroom was little frequented,
only an adventurous couple now and then gliding over the floor, and
affording scant amusement to the throng gathered on the piazza and about
the open windows. Mrs. Montrose, a stately dame of the old school, whose
standard was the court in the days of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster,
disapproved of this laxity, and when a couple of young fellows in striped
array one evening whirled round the room together, with brier-wood pipes
in their mouths, she was scandalized. If the young ladies shared her
sentiments they made no resolute protests, remembering perhaps the
scarcity of young men elsewhere, and thinking that it is better to be
loved by a lawn-tennis suit than not to be loved at all. The daughters
of Mrs. Montrose thought they should draw the line on the brier-wood
pipe.
Dancing, however, is not the leading occupation at Bar Harbor, it is
rather neglected. A cynic said that the chief occupation was to wait at
the "fishpond" for new arrivals--the young ladies angling while their
mothers and chaperons--how shall we say it to complete the figure?--held
the bait. It is true that they did talk in fisherman's lingo about this,
asked each other if they had a nibble or a bite, or boasted that they had
hauled one in, or complained that it was a poor day for fishing. But
this was all chaff, born of youthful spirits and the air of the place. If
the young men took airs upon themselves under the impression they were in
much demand, they might have had their combs cut if they had heard how
they were weighed and dissected and imitated, and taken off as to their
peculiarities, and known, most of them, by sobriquets characteristic of
their appearance or pretentions. There was one young man from the West,
who would have been flattered with the appellation of "dude," so
attractive in the fit of his clothes, the manner in which he walked and
used his cane and his eyeglass, that Mr. King wanted very much to get him
and bring him away in a cage. He had no doubt that he was a favorite
with every circle and wanted in every group, and the young ladies did
seem to get a great deal of entertainment out of him. He was not like
the young man in the Scriptures except that he was credited with having
great possessions.
No, the principal occupation at Bar Harbor was not fishing in the house.
It was outdoor exercise, incessant activity in driving, walking, boating,
rowing and sailing--bowling, tennis, and flirtation. There was always an
excursion somewhere, by land or sea, watermelon parties, races in the
harbor in which the girls took part, drives in buckboards which they
organized--indeed, the canoe and the buckboard were in constant demand.
In all this there was a pleasing freedom--of course under proper
chaperonage. And such delightful chaperons as they were, their business
being to promote and not to hinder the intercourse of the sexes!
This activity, this desire to row and walk and drive and to become
acquainted, was all due to the air. It has a peculiar quality. Even the
skeptic has to admit this. It composes his nerves to sleep, it
stimulates to unwonted exertion. The fanatics of the place declare that
the fogs are not damp as at other resorts on the coast. Fashion can make
even a fog dry. But the air is delicious. In this latitude, and by
reason of the hills, the atmosphere is pure and elastic and stimulating,
and it is softened by the presence of the sea. This union gives a
charming effect. It is better than the Maine Law. The air being like
wine, one does not need stimulants. If one is addicted to them and is
afraid to trust the air, he is put to the trouble of sneaking into masked
places, and becoming a party to petty subterfuges for evading the law.
And the wretched man adds to the misdemeanor of this evasion the moral
crime of consuming bad liquor.
"Everybody" was at Bar Harbor, or would be there in course of the season.
Mrs. Cortlandt was there, and Mrs. Pendragon of New Orleans, one of the
most brilliant, amiable, and charming of women. I remember her as far
back as the seventies. A young man like Mr. King, if he could be called
young, could not have a safer and more sympathetic social adviser. Why
are not all handsome women cordial, good-tempered, and well-bred! And
there were the Ashleys--clever mother and three daughters, au-fait girls,
racy and witty talkers; I forget whether they were last from Paris,
Washington, or San Francisco. Family motto: "Don't be dull." All the Van
Dams from New York, and the Sleiderheifers and Mulligrubs of New Jersey,
were there for the season, some of them in cottages. These families are
intimate, even connected by marriage, with the Bayardiers of South
Carolina and the Lontoons of Louisiana. The girls are handsome, dashing
women, without much information, but rattling talkers, and so exclusive!
and the young men, with a Piccadilly air, fancy that they belong to the
"Prince of Wales set," you know. There is a good deal of monarchical
simplicity in our heterogeneous society.
Mrs. Cortlandt was quite in her element here as director-general of
expeditions and promoter of social activity. "I have been expecting
you," she was kind enough to say to Mr. King the morning after his
arrival. "Kitty Van Sanford spied you last night, and exclaimed, 'There,
now, is a real reinforcement!" You see that you are mortgaged already."
"It's very kind of you to expect me. Is there anybody else here I know?"
"Several hundreds, I should say. If you cannot find friends here, you
are a subject for an orphan-asylum. And you have not seen anybody?"
"Well, I was late at breakfast."
"And you have not looked on the register?"
"Yes, I did run my eye over the register."
"And you are standing right before me and trying to look as if you did
not know that Irene Benson is in the house. I didn't think, Mr. King, it
had gone that far-indeed I didn't. You know I'm in a manner responsible
for it. And I heard all about you at Newport. She's a heart of gold,
that girl."
"Did she--did Miss Benson say anything about Newport?"
"No. Why?"
"Oh, I didn't know but she might have mentioned how she liked it."
"I don't think she liked it as much as her mother did. Mrs. Benson talks
of nothing else. Irene said nothing special to me. I don't know what
she may have said to Mr. Meigs," this wily woman added, in the most
natural manner.
"Who is Mr. Meigs?"
"Mr. Alfred Meigs, Boston. He is a rich widower, about forty--the most
fascinating age for a widower, you know. I think he is conceited, but he
is really a most entertaining man; has traveled all over the world
--Egypt, Persia--lived in Japan, prides himself a little on never having
been in Colorado or Florida."
"What does he do?"
"Do? He drives Miss Benson to Otter Cliffs, and out on the Cornice Road,
about seven days in the week, and gets up sailing-parties and all that in
the intervals."
"I mean his occupation."
"Isn't that occupation enough? Well, he has a library and a little
archaeological museum, and prints monographs on art now and then. If he
were a New-Yorker, you know, he would have a yacht instead of a library.
There they are now."
A carriage with a pair of spirited horses stood at the bottom of the
steps on the entrance side. Mrs. Cortlandt and King turned the corner of
the piazza and walked that way. On the back seat were Mrs. Benson and
Mrs. Simpkins. The gentleman holding the reins was just helping Irene to
the high seat in front. Mr. King was running down the long flight of
steps. Mrs. Benson saw him, bowed most cordially, and called his name.
Irene, turning quickly, also bowed--he thought there was a flush on her
face. The gentleman, in the act of starting the horses, raised his hat.
King was delighted to notice that he was bald. He had a round head,
snugly-trimmed beard slightly dashed with gray, was short and a trifle
stout--King thought dumpy. "I suppose women like that kind of man," he
said to Mrs. Cortlandt when the carriage was out of sight.
Why not? He has perfect manners; he knows the world--that is a great
point, I can tell you, in the imagination of a girl; he is rich; and he
is no end obliging."
"How long has he been here?"
"Several days. They happened to come up from the Isles of Shoals
together. He is somehow related to the Simpkinses. There! I've wasted
time enough on you. I must go and see Mrs. Pendragon about a watermelon
party to Jordan Pond. You'll see, I'll arrange something."
King had no idea what a watermelon party was, but he was pleased to think
that it was just the sort of thing that Mr. Meigs would shine in. He
said to himself that he hated dilettante snobs. His bitter reflections
were interrupted by the appearance of Miss Lamont and the artist, and
with them Mr. Benson. The men shook hands with downright heartiness.
Here is a genuine man, King was thinking.
"Yes. We are still at it," he said, with his humorous air of
resignation. "I tell my wife that I'm beginning to understand how old
Christian felt going through Vanity Fair. We ought to be pretty near the
Heavenly Gates by this time. I reckoned she thought they opened into
Newport. She said I ought to be ashamed to ridicule the Bible. I had to
have my joke. It's queer how different the world looks to women."
"And how does it look to men?" asked Miss Lamont.
"Well, my dear young lady, it looks like a good deal of fuss, and
tolerably large bills."
"But what does it matter about the bills if you enjoy yourself?"
"That's just it. Folks work harder to enjoy themselves than at anything
else I know. Half of them spend more money than they can afford to, and
keep under the harrow all the time, just because they see others spend
money."
"I saw your wife and daughter driving away just now," said King, shifting
the conversation to a more interesting topic.
"Yes. They have gone to take a ride over what they call here the
Cornneechy. It's a pretty enough road along the bay, but Irene says it's
about as much like the road in Europe they name it from as Green Mountain
is like Mount Blanck. Our folks seem possessed to stick a foreign name
on to everything. And the road round through the scrub to Eagle Lake
they call Norway. If Norway is like that, it's pretty short of timber.
If there hadn't been so much lumbering here, I should like it better.
There is hardly a decent pine-tree left. Mr. Meigs--they have gone
riding with Mr. Meigs--says the Maine government ought to have a Maine
law that amounts to something--one that will protect the forests, and
start up some trees on the coast."
"Is Mr. Meigs in the lumber business?" asked King.
"Only for scenery, I guess. He is great on scenery. He's a Boston man.
I tell the women that he is what I call a bric-er-brac man. But you come
to set right down with him, away from women, and he talks just as
sensible as anybody. He is shrewd enough. It beats all how men are with
men and with women."
Mr. Benson was capable of going on in this way all day. But the artist
proposed a walk up to Newport, and Mr. King getting Mrs. Pendragon to
accompany them, the party set out. It is a very agreeable climb up
Newport, and not difficult; but if the sun is out, one feels, after
scrambling over the rocks and walking home by the dusty road, like taking
a long pull at a cup of shandygaff. The mountain is a solid mass of
granite, bare on top, and commands a noble view of islands and ocean, of
the gorge separating it from Green Mountain, and of that respectable
hill. For this reason, because it is some two or three hundred feet
lower than Green Mountain, and includes that scarred eminence in its
view, it is the most picturesque and pleasing elevation on the island. It
also has the recommendation of being nearer to the sea than its sister
mountain. On the south side, by a long slope, it comes nearly to the
water, and the longing that the visitor to Bar Harbor has to see the
ocean is moderately gratified. The prospect is at once noble and poetic.
Mrs. Pendragon informed Mr. King that he and Miss Lamont and Mr. Forbes
were included in the watermelon party that was to start that afternoon at
five o'clock. The plan was for the party to go in buckboards to Eagle
Lake, cross that in the steamer, scramble on foot over the "carry" to
Jordan Pond, take row-boats to the foot of that, and find at a farmhouse
there the watermelons and other refreshments, which would be sent by the
shorter road, and then all return by moonlight in the buckboards.
This plan was carried out. Mrs. Cortlandt, Mrs. Pendragon, and Mrs.
Simpkins were to go as chaperons, and Mr. Meigs had been invited by Mrs.
Cortlandt, King learned to his disgust, also to act as a chaperon. All
the proprieties are observed at Bar Harbor. Half a dozen long buckboards
were loaded with their merry freight. At the last Mrs. Pendragon pleaded
a headache, and could not go. Mr. King was wandering about among the
buckboards to find an eligible seat. He was not put in good humor by
finding that Mr. Meigs had ensconced himself beside Irene, and he was
about crowding in with the Ashley girls--not a bad fate--when word was
passed down the line from Mrs. Cortlandt, who was the autocrat of the
expedition, that Mr. Meigs was to come back and take a seat with Mrs.
Simpkins in the buckboard with the watermelons. She could not walk
around the "carry"; she must go by the direct road, and of course she
couldn't go alone. There was no help for it, and Mr. Meigs, looking as
cheerful as an undertaker in a healthy season, got down from his seat and
trudged back. Thus two chaperons were disposed of at a stroke, and the
young men all said that they hated to assume so much responsibility. Mr.
King didn't need prompting in this emergency; the wagons were already
moving, and before Irene knew exactly what had happened, Mr. King was
begging her pardon for the change, and seating himself beside her. And
he was thinking, "What a confoundedly clever woman Mrs. Cortlandt is!"
There is an informality about a buckboard that communicates itself at
once to conduct. The exhilaration of the long spring-board, the
necessity of holding on to something or somebody to prevent being tossed
overboard, put occupants in a larkish mood that they might never attain
in an ordinary vehicle. All this was favorable to King, and it relieved
Irene from an embarrassment she might have felt in meeting him under
ordinary circumstances. And King had the tact to treat himself and their
meeting merely as accidents.
"The American youth seem to have invented a novel way of disposing of
chaperons," he said. "To send them in one direction and the party
chaperoned in another is certainly original."
"I'm not sure the chaperons like it. And I doubt if it is proper to pack
them off by themselves, especially when one is a widow and the other is a
widower."
"It's a case of chaperon eat chaperon. I hope your friend didn't mind
it. I had nearly despaired of finding a seat."
"Mr. Meigs? He did not say he liked it, but he is the most obliging of
men."
"I suppose you have pretty well seen the island?"
"We have driven about a good deal. We have seen Southwest Harbor, and
Somes's Sound and Schooner Head, and the Ovens and Otter Cliffs--there's
no end of things to see; it needs a month. I suppose you have been up
Green Mountain?"
"No. I sent Mr. Forbes."
"You ought to go. It saves buying a map. Yes, I like the place
immensely. You mustn't judge of the variety here by the table at
Rodick's. I don't suppose there's a place on the coast that compares
with it in interest; I mean variety of effects and natural beauty. If the
writers wouldn't exaggerate so, talk about 'the sublimity of the
mountains challenging the eternal grandeur of the sea'!"
"Don't use such strong language there on the back seat," cried Miss
Lamont. "This is a pleasure party. Mr. Van Dusen wants to know why Maud
S. is like a salamander?"
"He is not to be gratified, Marion. If it is conundrums, I shall get out
and walk."
Before the conundrum was guessed, the volatile Van Dusen broke out into,
"Here's a how d'e do!" One of the Ashley girls in the next wagon caught
up the word with, "Here's a state of things!" and the two buckboards went
rattling down the hill to Eagle Lake in a "Mikado" chorus.
"The Mikado troupe seems to have got over here in advance of Sullivan,"
said Mr. King to Irene. "I happened to see the first representation."
"Oh, half these people were in London last spring. They give you the
impression that they just run over to the States occasionally. Mr. Van
Dusen says he keeps his apartments in whatever street it is off
Piccadilly, it's so much more convenient."
On the steamer crossing the lake, King hoped for an opportunity to make
an explanation to Irene. But when the opportunity came he found it very
difficult to tell what it was he wanted to explain, and so blundered on
in commonplaces.
"You like Bar Harbor so well," he said, "that I suppose your father will
be buying a cottage here?"
"Hardly. Mr. Meigs" (King thought there was too much Meigs in the
conversation) "said that he had once thought of doing so, but he likes
the place too well for that. He prefers to come here voluntarily. The
trouble about owning a cottage at a watering-place is that it makes a
duty of a pleasure. You can always rent, father says. He has noticed
that usually when a person gets comfortably established in a summer
cottage he wants to rent it."
"And you like it better than Newport?"
"On some accounts--the air, you know, and--"
"I want to tell you," he said breaking in most illogically--"I want to
tell you, Miss Benson, that it was all a wretched mistake at Newport that
morning. I don't suppose you care, but I'm afraid you are not quite just
to me."
"I don't think I was unjust." The girl's voice was low, and she spoke
slowly. "You couldn't help it. We can't any of us help it. We cannot
make the world over, you know." And she looked up at him with a faint
little smile.
"But you didn't understand. I didn't care for any of those people. It
was just an accident. Won't you believe me? I do not ask much. But I
cannot have you think I'm a coward."
"I never did, Mr. King. Perhaps you do not see what society is as I do.
People think they can face it when they cannot. I can't say what I mean,
and I think we'd better not talk about it."
The boat was landing; and the party streamed up into the woods, and with
jest and laughter and feigned anxiety about danger and assistance, picked
its way over the rough, stony path. It was such a scramble as young
ladies enjoy, especially if they are city bred, for it seems to them an
achievement of more magnitude than to the country lasses who see nothing
uncommon or heroic in following a cow-path. And the young men like it
because it brings out the trusting, dependent, clinging nature of girls.
King wished it had been five miles long instead of a mile and a half. It
gave him an opportunity to show his helpful, considerate spirit. It was
necessary to take her hand to help her over the bad spots, and either the
bad spots increased as they went on, or Irene was deceived about it. What
makes a path of this sort so perilous to a woman's heart? Is it because
it is an excuse for doing what she longs to do? Taking her hand recalled
the day on the rocks at Narragansett, and the nervous clutch of her
little fingers, when the footing failed, sent a delicious thrill through
her lover. King thought himself quite in love with Forbes--there was the
warmest affection between the two--but when he hauled the artist up a
Catskill cliff there wasn't the least of this sort of a thrill in the
grip of hands. Perhaps if women had the ballot in their hands all this
nervous fluid would disappear out of the world.
At Jordan Pond boats were waiting. It is a pretty fresh-water pond
between high sloping hills, and twin peaks at the north end give it even
picturesqueness. There are a good many trout in it--at least that is the
supposition, for the visitors very seldom get them out. When the boats
with their chattering passengers had pushed out into the lake and
accomplished a third of the voyage, they were met by a skiff containing
the faithful chaperons Mrs. Simpkins and Mr. Meigs. They hailed, but Mr.
King, who was rowing his boat, did not slacken speed. "Are you much
tired, Miss Benson?" shouted Mr. Meigs. King didn't like this assumption
of protection. "I've brought you a shawl."
"Hang his paternal impudence!" growled King, under his breath, as he
threw himself back with a jerk on the oars that nearly sent Irene over
the stern of the boat.
Evidently the boat-load, of which the Ashley girls and Mr. Van Dusen were
a part, had taken the sense of this little comedy, for immediately they
struck up:
"For he is going to marry Yum-Yum--
Yum-Yum!
For he is going to marry Yum-Yum--
Yum-Yum!"
This pleasantry passed entirely over the head of Irene, who had not heard
the "Mikado," but King accepted it as a good omen, and forgave its
impudence. It set Mr. Meigs thinking that he had a rival.
At the landing, however, Mr. Meigs was on hand to help Irene out, and a
presentation of Mr. King followed. Mr. Meigs was polite even to
cordiality, and thanked him for taking such good care of her. Men will
make such blunders sometimes.
"Oh, we are old friends," she said carelessly.
Mr. Meigs tried to mend matters by saying that he had promised Mrs.
Benson, you know, to look after her. There was that in Irene's manner
that said she was not to be appropriated without leave. But the
consciousness that her look betrayed this softened her at once towards
Mr. Meigs, and decidedly improved his chances for the evening. The
philosopher says that women are cruelest when they set out to be kind.
The supper was an 'al fresco' affair, the party being seated about on
rocks and logs and shawls spread upon the grass near the farmer's house.
The scene was a very pretty one, at least the artist thought so, and Miss
Lamont said it was lovely, and the Ashley girls declared it was just
divine. There was no reason why King should not enjoy the chaff and
merriment and the sunset light which touched the group, except that the
one woman he cared to serve was enveloped in the attentions of Mr. Meigs.
The drive home in the moonlight was the best part of the excursion, or it
would have been if there had not been a general change of seats ordered,
altogether, as Mr. King thought, for the accommodation of the Boston man.
It nettled him that Irene let herself fall to the escort of Mr. Meigs,
for women can always arrange these things if they choose, and he had only
a melancholy satisfaction in the college songs and conundrums that
enlivened the festive buckboard in which he was a passenger. Not that he
did not join in the hilarity, but it seemed only a poor imitation of
pleasure. Alas, that the tone of one woman's voice, the touch of her
hand, the glance of her eye, should outweigh the world!
Somehow, with all the opportunities, the suit of our friend did not
advance beyond a certain point. Irene was always cordial, always
friendly, but he tried in vain to ascertain whether the middle-aged man
from Boston had touched her imagination. There was a boating party the
next evening in Frenchman's Bay, and King had the pleasure of pulling
Miss Benson and Miss Lamont out seaward under the dark, frowning cliffs
until they felt the ocean swell, and then of making the circuit of
Porcupine Island. It was an enchanting night, full of mystery. The rock
face of the Porcupine glistened white in the moonlight as if it were
encrusted with salt, the waves beat in a continuous roar against its
base, which is honeycombed by the action of the water, and when the boat
glided into its shadow it loomed up vast and wonderful. Seaward were the
harbor lights, the phosphorescent glisten of the waves, the dim forms of
other islands; all about in the bay row-boats darted in and out of the
moonlight, voices were heard calling from boat to boat, songs floated
over the water, and the huge Portland steamer came plunging in out of the
night, a blazing, trembling monster. Not much was said in the boat, but
the impression of such a night goes far in the romance of real life.
Perhaps it was this impression that made her assent readily to a walk
next morning with Mr. King along the bay. The shore is nearly all
occupied by private cottages, with little lawns running down to the
granite edge of the water. It is a favorite place for strolling; couples
establish themselves with books and umbrellas on the rocks, children are
dabbling in the coves, sails enliven the bay, row-boats dart about, the
cawing of crows is heard in the still air. Irene declared that the scene
was idyllic. The girl was in a most gracious humor, and opened her life
more to King than she had ever done before. By such confidences usually
women invite avowals, and as the two paced along, King felt the moment
approach when there would be the most natural chance in the world for him
to tell this woman what she was to him; at the next turn in the shore, by
that rock, surely the moment would come. What is this airy nothing by
which women protect themselves in such emergencies, by a question, by a
tone, an invisible strong barrier that the most impetuous dare not
attempt to break?
King felt the subtle restraint which he could not define or explain. And
before he could speak she said: "We are going away tomorrow." "We? And
who are we?" "Oh, the Simpkinses and our whole family, and Mr. Meigs."
"And where?"
"Mr. Meigs has persuaded mother into the wildest scheme. It is nothing
less than to leap from, here across all the intervening States to the
White Sulphur Springs in Virginia. Father falls into the notion because
he wants to see more of the Southerners, Mrs. Simpkins and her daughter
are crazy to go, and Mr. Meigs says he has been trying to get there all
his life, and in August the season is at its height. It was all arranged
before I was consulted, but I confess I rather like it. It will be a
change."
"Yes, I should think it would be delightful," King replied, rather
absent-mindedly. "It's a long journey, a very long journey. I should
think it would be too long a journey for Mr. Meigs--at his time of life."
It was not a fortunate remark, and still it might be; for who could tell
whether Irene would not be flattered by this declaration of his jealousy
of Mr. Meigs. But she passed it over as not serious, with the remark
that the going did not seem to be beyond the strength of her father.
The introduction of Mr. Meigs in the guise of an accepted family friend
and traveling companion chilled King and cast a gloom over the landscape.
Afterwards he knew that he ought to have dashed in and scattered this
encompassing network of Meigs, disregarded the girl's fence of reserve,
and avowed his love. More women are won by a single charge at the right
moment than by a whole campaign of strategy.
On the way back to the hotel he was absorbed in thought, and he burst
into the room where Forbes was touching up one of his sketches, with a
fully-formed plan. "Old fellow, what do you say to going to Virginia?"
Forbes put in a few deliberate touches, moving his head from side to
side, and with aggravating slowness said, "What do you want to go to
Virginia for?"
"Why White Sulphur, of course; the most characteristic watering-place in
America. See the whole Southern life there in August; and there's the
Natural Bridge."
"I've seen pictures of the Natural Bridge. I don't know as I care much"
(still contemplating the sketch from different points of view, and softly
whistling) "for the whole of Southern life."
"See here, Forbes, you must have some deep design to make you take that
attitude."
"Deep design!" replied Forbes, facing round. "I'll be hanged if I see
what you are driving at. I thought it was Saratoga and Richfield, and
mild things of that sort."
"And the little Lamont. I know we talked of going there with her and her
uncle; but we can go there afterwards. I tell you what I'll do: I'll go
to Richfield, and stay till snow comes, if you will take a dip with me
down into Virginia first. You ought to do it for your art. It's
something new, picturesque--negroes, Southern belles, old-time manners.
You cannot afford to neglect it."
"I don't see the fun of being yanked all over the United States in the
middle of August."
"You want shaking up. You've been drawing seashores with one figure in
them till your pictures all look like--well, like Lamont and water."
"That's better," Forbes retorted, "than Benson and gruel."
And the two got into a huff. The artist took his sketch-book and went
outdoors, and King went to his room to study the guide-books and the map
of Virginia. The result was that when the friends met for dinner, King
said:
"I thought you might do it for me, old boy."
And Forbes replied: "Why didn't you say so? I don't care a rap where I
go. But it's Richfield afterwards."
VIII
NATURAL BRIDGE, WHITE SULFUR
What occurred at the parting between the artist and the little Lamont at
Bar Harbor I never knew. There was that good comradeship between the
two, that frank enjoyment of each other's society, without any
sentimental nonsense, so often seen between two young people in America,
which may end in a friendship of a summer, or extend to the cordial
esteem of a lifetime, or result in marriage. I always liked the girl;
she had such a sunny temper, such a flow of originality in her mental
attitude towards people and things without being a wit or a critic, and
so much piquancy in all her little ways. She would take to matrimony, I
should say, like a duck to water, with unruffled plumage, but as a wife
she would never be commonplace, or anything but engaging, and, as the
saying is, she could make almost any man happy. And, if unmarried, what
a delightful sister-in-law she would be, especially a deceased wife's
sister!
I never imagined that she was capable of a great passion, as was Irene
Benson, who under a serene exterior was moved by tides of deep feeling,
subject to moods, and full of aspirations and longings which she herself
only dimly knew the meaning of. With Irene marriage would be either
supreme happiness or extreme wretchedness, no half-way acceptance of a
conventional life. With such a woman life is a failure, either tragic or
pathetic, without a great passion given and returned. It is fortunate,
considering the chances that make unions in society, that for most men
and women the "grand passion" is neither necessary nor possible. I did
not share King's prejudice against Mr. Meigs. He seemed to me, as the
world goes, a 'bon parti,' cultivated by travel and reading, well-bred,
entertaining, amiable, possessed of an ample fortune, the ideal husband
in the eyes of a prudent mother. But I used to think that if Irene,
attracted by his many admirable qualities, should become his wife, and
that if afterwards the Prince should appear and waken the slumbering
woman's heart in her, what a tragedy would ensue. I can imagine their
placid existence if the Prince should not appear, and I can well believe
that Irene and Stanhope would have many a tumultuous passage in the
passionate symphony of their lives. But, great heavens, is the ideal
marriage a Holland!
If Marion had shed any tears overnight, say on account of a little
lonesomeness because her friend was speeding away from her southward,
there were no traces of them when she met her uncle at the
breakfast-table, as bright and chatty as usual, and in as high spirits as
one can maintain with the Rodick coffee.
What a world of shifting scenes it is! Forbes had picked up his traps
and gone off with his unreasonable companion like a soldier. The day
after, when he looked out of the window of his sleeping-compartment at
half-past four, he saw the red sky of morning, and against it the spires
of Philadelphia.
At ten o'clock the two friends were breakfasting comfortably in the car,
and running along down the Cumberland Valley. What a contrast was this
rich country, warm with color and suggestive of abundance, to the pale
and scrimped coast land of Maine denuded of its trees! By afternoon they
were far down the east valley of the Shenandoah, between the Blue Ridge
and the Massanutten range, in a country broken, picturesque, fertile, so
attractive that they wondered there were so few villages on the route,
and only now and then a cheap shanty in sight; and crossing the divide to
the waters of the James, at sundown, in the midst of a splendid effect of
mountains and clouds in a thunderstorm, they came to Natural Bridge
station, where a coach awaited them.
This was old ground to King, who had been telling the artist that the two
natural objects east of the Rocky Mountains that he thought entitled to
the epithet "sublime" were Niagara Falls and the Natural Bridge; and as
for scenery, he did not know of any more noble and refined than this
region of the Blue Ridge. Take away the Bridge altogether, which is a
mere freak, and the place would still possess, he said, a charm unique.
Since the enlargement of hotel facilities and the conversion of this
princely domain into a grand park, it has become a favorite summer
resort. The gorge of the Bridge is a botanical storehouse, greater
variety of evergreens cannot be found together anywhere else in the
country, and the hills are still clad with stately forests. In opening
drives, and cutting roads and vistas to give views, the proprietor has
shown a skill and taste in dealing with natural resources, both in regard
to form and the development of contrasts of color in foliage, which are
rare in landscape gardening on this side of the Atlantic. Here is the
highest part of the Blue Ridge, and from the gentle summit of Mount
Jefferson the spectator has in view a hundred miles of this remarkable
range, this ribbed mountain structure, which always wears a mantle of
beauty, changeable purple and violet.
After supper there was an illumination of the cascade, and the ancient
gnarled arbor-vita: trees that lean over it-perhaps the largest known
specimens of this species-of the gorge and the Bridge. Nature is apt to
be belittled by this sort of display, but the noble dignity of the vast
arch of stone was superior to this trifling, and even had a sort of
mystery added to its imposing grandeur. It is true that the flaming
bonfires and the colored lights and the tiny figures of men and women
standing in the gorge within the depth of the arch made the scene
theatrical, but it was strange and weird and awful, like the fantasy of a
Walpurgis' Night or a midnight revel in Faust.
The presence of the colored brother in force distinguished this from
provincial resorts at the North, even those that employ this color as
servants. The flavor of Old Virginia is unmistakable, and life drops
into an easy-going pace under this influence. What fine manners, to be
sure! The waiters in the diningroom, in white ties and dress-coats, move
on springs, starting even to walk with a complicated use of all the
muscles of the body, as if in response to the twang of a banjo; they do
nothing without excessive motion and flourish. The gestures and
good-humored vitality expended in changing plates would become the leader
of an orchestra. Many of them, besides, have the expression of
class-leaders--of a worldly sort. There were the aristocratic
chambermaid and porter, who had the air of never having waited on any but
the first families. And what clever flatterers and readers of human
nature! They can tell in a moment whether a man will be complimented by
the remark, "I tuk you for a Richmond gemman, never shod have know'd you
was from de Norf," or whether it is best to say, "We depen's on de gemmen
frum de Norf; folks down hyer never gives noflin; is too pore." But to a
Richmond man it is always, "The Yankee is mighty keerful of his money; we
depen's on the old sort, marse." A fine specimen of the "Richmond
darkey" of the old school-polite, flattering, with a venerable head of
gray wool, was the bartender, who mixed his juleps with a flourish as if
keeping time to music. "Haven't I waited on you befo', sah? At Capon
Springs? Sorry, sah, but tho't I knowed you when you come in. Sorry,
but glad to know you now, sah. If that julep don't suit you, sah, throw
it in my face."
A friendly, restful, family sort of place, with music, a little mild
dancing, mostly performed by children, in the pavilion, driving and
riding-in short, peace in the midst of noble scenery. No display of
fashion, the artist soon discovered, and he said he longed to give the
pretty girls some instruction in the art of dress. Forbes was a
missionary of "style." It hurt his sense of the fitness of things to see
women without it. He used to say that an ill-dressed woman would spoil
the finest landscape. For such a man, with an artistic feeling so
sensitive, the White Sulphur Springs is a natural goal. And he and his
friend hastened thither with as much speed as the Virginia railways,
whose time-tables are carefully adjusted to miss all connections, permit.
"What do you think of a place," he wrote Miss Lamont--the girl read me a
portion of his lively letter that summer at Saratoga--"into which you
come by a belated train at half-past eleven at night, find friends
waiting up for you in evening costume, are taken to a champagne supper at
twelve, get to your quarters at one, and have your baggage delivered to
you at two o'clock in the morning?" The friends were lodged in "Paradise
Row"--a whimsical name given to one of the quarters assigned to single
gentlemen. Put into these single-room barracks, which were neat but
exceedingly primitive in their accommodations, by hilarious negro
attendants who appeared to regard life as one prolonged lark, and who
avowed that there was no time of day or night when a mint-julep or any
other necessary of life would not be forthcoming at a moment's warning,
the beginning of their sojourn at "The White" took on an air of
adventure, and the two strangers had the impression of having dropped
into a garrison somewhere on the frontier. But when King stepped out
upon the gallery, in the fresh summer morning, the scene that met his
eyes was one of such peaceful dignity, and so different from any in his
experience, that he was aware that he had come upon an original
development of watering-place life.
The White Sulphur has been for the better part of a century, as everybody
knows, the typical Southern resort, the rendezvous of all that was most
characteristic in the society of the whole South, the meeting-place of
its politicians, the haunt of its belles, the arena of gayety, intrigue,
and fashion. If tradition is to be believed, here in years gone by were
concocted the measures that were subsequently deployed for the government
of the country at Washington, here historic matches were made, here
beauty had triumphs that were the talk of a generation, here hearts were
broken at a ball and mended in Lovers' Walk, and here fortunes were
nightly lost and won. It must have been in its material conditions a
primitive place in the days of its greatest fame. Visitors came to it in
their carriages and unwieldy four-horse chariots, attended by troops of
servants, making slow but most enjoyable pilgrimages over the mountain
roads, journeys that lasted a week or a fortnight, and were every day
enlivened by jovial adventure. They came for the season. They were all
of one social order, and needed no introduction; those from Virginia were
all related to each other, and though life there was somewhat in the
nature of a picnic, it had its very well-defined and ceremonious code of
etiquette. In the memory of its old habitues it was at once the freest
and the most aristocratic assembly in the world. The hotel was small and
its arrangements primitive; a good many of the visitors had their own
cottages, and the rows of these cheap structures took their names from
their occupants. The Southern presidents, the senators, and statesmen,
the rich planters, lived in cottages which still have an historic
interest in their memory. But cottage life was never the exclusive
affair that it is elsewhere; the society was one body, and the hotel was
the centre.
Time has greatly changed the White Sulphur; doubtless in its physical
aspect it never was so beautiful and attractive as it is today, but all
the modern improvements have not destroyed the character of the resort,
which possesses a great many of its primitive and old-time peculiarities.
Briefly the White is an elevated and charming mountain region, so cool,
in fact, especially at night, that the "season" is practically limited to
July and August, although I am not sure but a quiet person, who likes
invigorating air, and has no daughters to marry off, would find it
equally attractive in September and October, when the autumn foliage is
in its glory. In a green rolling interval, planted with noble trees and
flanked by moderate hills, stands the vast white caravansary, having wide
galleries and big pillars running round three sides. The front and two
sides are elevated, the galleries being reached by flights of steps, and
affording room underneath for the large billiard and bar-rooms. From the
hotel the ground slopes down to the spring, which is surmounted by a
round canopy on white columns, and below is an opening across the stream
to the race-track, the servants' quarters, and a fine view of receding
hills. Three sides of this charming park are enclosed by the cottages
and cabins, which back against the hills, and are more or less embowered
in trees. Most of these cottages are built in blocks and rows, some
single rooms, others large enough to accommodate a family, but all
reached by flights of steps, all with verandas, and most of them
connected by galleries. Occasionally the forest trees have been left,
and the galleries built around them. Included in the premises are two
churches, a gambling-house, a couple of country stores, and a
post-office. There are none of the shops common at watering-places for
the sale of fancy articles, and, strange to say, flowers are not
systematically cultivated, and very few are ever to be had. The hotel
has a vast dining-room, besides the minor eating-rooms for children and
nurses, a large ballroom, and a drawing-room of imposing dimensions.
Hotel and cottages together, it is said, can lodge fifteen hundred
guests.
The natural beauty of the place is very great, and fortunately there is
not much smart and fantastic architecture to interfere with it. I cannot
say whether the knowledge that Irene was in one of the cottages affected
King's judgment, but that morning, when he strolled to the upper part of
the grounds before breakfast, he thought he had never beheld a scene of
more beauty and dignity, as he looked over the mass of hotel buildings,
upon the park set with a wonderful variety of dark green foliage, upon
the elevated rows of galleried cottages marked by colonial simplicity,
and the soft contour of the hills, which satisfy the eye in their
delicate blending of every shade of green and brown. And after an
acquaintance of a couple of weeks the place seemed to him ravishingly
beautiful.
King was always raving about the White Sulphur after he came North, and
one never could tell how much his judgment was colored by his peculiar
experiences there. It was my impression that if he had spent those two
weeks on a barren rock in the ocean, with only one fair spirit for his
minister, he would have sworn that it was the most lovely spot on the
face of the earth. He always declared that it was the most friendly,
cordial society at this resort in the country. At breakfast he knew
scarcely any one in the vast dining-room, except the New Orleans and
Richmond friends with whom he had a seat at table. But their
acquaintance sufficed to establish his position. Before dinner-time he
knew half a hundred; in the evening his introductions had run up into the
hundreds, and he felt that he had potential friends in every Southern
city; and before the week was over there was not one of the thousand
guests he did not know or might not know. At his table he heard Irene
spoken of and her beauty commented on. Two or three days had been enough
to give her a reputation in a society that is exceedingly sensitive to
beauty. The men were all ready to do her homage, and the women took her
into favor as soon as they saw that Mr. Meigs, whose social position was
perfectly well known, was of her party. The society of the White Sulphur
seems perfectly easy of access, but the ineligible will find that it is
able, like that of Washington, to protect itself. It was not without a
little shock that King heard the good points, the style, the physical
perfections, of Irene so fully commented on, and not without some alarm
that he heard predicted for her a very successful career as a belle.
Coming out from breakfast, the Benson party were encountered on the
gallery, and introductions followed. It was a trying five minutes for
King, who felt as guilty, as if the White Sulphur were private property
into which he had intruded without an invitation. There was in the
civility of Mr. Meigs no sign of an invitation. Mrs. Benson said she was
never so surprised in her life, and the surprise seemed not exactly an
agreeable one, but Mr. Benson looked a great deal more pleased than
astonished. The slight flush in Irene's face as she greeted him might
have been wholly due to the unexpectedness of the meeting. Some of the
gentlemen lounged off to the office region for politics and cigars, the
elderly ladies took seats upon the gallery, and the rest of the party
strolled down to the benches under the trees.
"So Miss Benson was expecting you!" said Mrs. Farquhar, who was walking
with King. It is enough to mention Mrs. Farquhar's name to an habitue of
the Springs. It is not so many years ago since she was a reigning belle,
and as noted for her wit and sparkling raillery as for her beauty. She
was still a very handsome woman, whose original cleverness had been
cultivated by a considerable experience of social life in this country as
well as in London and Paris.
"Was she? I'm sure I never told her I was coming here."
"No, simple man. You were with her at Bar Harbor, and I suppose she
never mentioned to you that she was coming here?"
"But why did you think she expected me?"
"You men are too aggravatingly stupid. I never saw astonishment better
feigned. I dare say it imposed upon that other admirer of hers also.
Well, I like her, and I'm going to be good to her." This meant a good
deal. Mrs. Farquhar was related to everybody in Virginia--that is,
everybody who was anybody before the war--and she could count at that
moment seventy-five cousins, some of them first and some of them
double-first cousins, at the White Sulphur. Mrs. Farquhar's remark meant
that all these cousins and all their friends the South over would stand
by Miss Benson socially from that moment.
The morning german had just begun in the ballroom. The gallery was
thronged with spectators, clustering like bees about the large windows,
and the notes of the band came floating out over the lawn, bringing to
the groups there the lulling impression that life is all a summer
holiday.
"And they say she is from Ohio. It is right odd, isn't it? but two or
three of the prettiest women here are from that State. There is Mrs.
Martin, sweet as a jacqueminot. I'd introduce you if her husband were
here. Ohio! Well, we get used to it. I should have known the father
and mother were corn-fed. I suppose you prefer the corn-feds to the
Confeds. But there's homespun and homespun. You see those under the
trees yonder? Georgia homespun! Perhaps you don't see the difference. I
do."
"I suppose you mean provincial."
"Oh, dear, no. I'm provincial. It is the most difficult thing to be in
these leveling days. But I am not going to interest you in myself. I am
too unselfish. Your Miss Benson is a fine girl, and it does not matter
about her parents. Since you Yankees upset everything by the war, it is
really of no importance who one's mother is. But, mind, this is not my
opinion. I'm trying to adjust myself. You have no idea how
reconstructed I am."
And with this Mrs. Farquhar went over to Miss Benson, and chatted for a
few moments, making herself particularly agreeable to Mr. Meigs, and
actually carried that gentleman off to the spring, and then as an escort
to her cottage, shaking her fan as she went away at Mr. King and Irene,
and saying, "It is a waste of time for you youngsters not to be in the
german."
The german was just ended, and the participants were grouping themselves
on the gallery to be photographed, the usual custom for perpetuating the
memory of these exercises, which only take place every other morning. And
since something must be done, as there are only six nights for dancing in
the week, on the off mornings there are champagne and fruit parties on
the lawn.
It was not about the german, however, that King was thinking. He was
once more beside the woman he loved, and all the influences of summer and
the very spirit of this resort were in his favor. If I cannot win her
here, he was saying to himself, the Meigs is in it. They talked about
the journey, about Luray, where she had been, and about the Bridge, and
the abnormal gayety of the Springs.
"The people are all so friendly," she said, "and strive so much to put
the stranger at his ease, and putting themselves out lest time hang heavy
on one's hands. They seem somehow responsible."
"Yes," said King, "the place is unique in that respect. I suppose it is
partly owing to the concentration of the company in and around the
hotel."
"But the sole object appears to me to be agreeable, and make a real
social life. At other like places nobody seems to care what becomes of
anybody else."
"Doubtless the cordiality and good feeling are spontaneous, though
something is due to manner, and a habit of expressing the feeling that
arises. Still, I do not expect to find any watering-place a paradise.
This must be vastly different from any other if it is not full of cliques
and gossip and envy underneath. But we do not go to a summer resort to
philosophize. A market is a market, you know."
"I don't know anything about markets, and this cordiality may all be on
the surface, but it makes life very agreeable, and I wish our Northerners
would catch the Southern habit of showing sympathy where it exists."
"Well, I'm free to say that I like the place, and all its easy-going
ways, and I have to thank you for a new experience."
"Me? Why so?"
"Oh, I wouldn't have come if it had not been for your suggestion--I mean
for your--your saying that you were coming here reminded me that it was a
place I ought to see."
"I'm glad to have served you as a guide-book."
"And I hope you are not sorry that I--"
At this moment Mrs. Benson and Mr. Meigs came down with the announcement
of the dinner hour, and the latter marched off with the ladies with a
"one-of-the-family" air.
The party did not meet again till evening in the great drawing-room. The
business at the White Sulphur is pleasure. And this is about the order
of proceedings: A few conscientious people take an early glass at the
spring, and later patronize the baths, and there is a crowd at the
post-office; a late breakfast; lounging and gossip on the galleries and
in the parlor; politics and old-fogy talk in the reading-room and in the
piazza corners; flirtation on the lawn; a german every other morning at
eleven; wine-parties under the trees; morning calls at the cottages;
servants running hither and thither with cooling drinks; the bar-room not
absolutely deserted and cheerless at any hour, day or night; dinner from
two to four; occasionally a riding-party; some driving; though there were
charming drives in every direction, few private carriages, and no display
of turn-outs; strolls in Lovers' Walk and in the pretty hill paths;
supper at eight, and then the full-dress assembly in the drawing-room,
and a "walk around" while the children have their hour in the ballroom;
the nightly dance, witnessed by a crowd on the veranda, followed
frequently by a private german and a supper given by some lover of his
kind, lasting till all hours in the morning; and while the majority of
the vast encampment reposes in slumber, some resolute spirits are
fighting the tiger, and a light gleaming from one cottage and another
shows where devotees of science are backing their opinion of the relative
value of chance bits of pasteboard, in certain combinations, with a
liberality and faith for which the world gives them no credit. And lest
their life should become monotonous, the enterprising young men are
continually organizing entertainments, mock races, comical games. The
idea seems to prevail that a summer resort ought to be a place of
enjoyment.
The White Sulphur is the only watering-place remaining in the United
States where there is what may be called an "assembly," such as might
formerly be seen at Saratoga or at Ballston Spa in Irving's young days.
Everybody is in the drawing-room in the evening, and although, in the
freedom of the place, full dress is not exacted, the habit of parade in
full toilet prevails. When King entered the room the scene might well be
called brilliant, and even bewildering, so that in the maze of beauty and
the babble of talk he was glad to obtain the services of Mrs. Farquhar as
cicerone. Between the rim of people near the walls and the elliptical
centre was an open space for promenading, and in this beauty and its
attendant cavalier went round and round in unending show. This is called
the "tread-mill." But for the seriousness of this frank display, and the
unflagging interest of the spectators, there would have been an element
of high comedy in it. It was an education to join a wall group and hear
the free and critical comments on the style, the dress, the physical
perfection, of the charming procession. When Mrs. Farquhar and King had
taken a turn or two, they stood on one side to enjoy the scene.
"Did you ever see so many pretty girls together before? If you did,
don't you dare say so."
"But at the North the pretty women are scattered in a thousand places.
You have here the whole South to draw on. Are they elected as
representatives from the various districts, Mrs. Farquhar?"
"Certainly. By an election that your clumsy device of the ballot is not
equal to. Why shouldn't beauty have a reputation? You see that old lady
in the corner? Well, forty years ago the Springs just raved over her;
everybody in the South knew her; I suppose she had an average of seven
proposals a week; the young men went wild about her, followed her,
toasted her, and fought duels for her possession--you don't like duels?
--why, she was engaged to three men at one time, and after all she went
off with a worthless fellow."
"That seems to me rather a melancholy history."
"Well, she is a most charming old lady; just as entertaining! I must
introduce you. But this is history. Now look! There's the belle of
Mobile, that tall, stately brunette. And that superb figure, you
wouldn't guess she is the belle of Selma. There is a fascinating girl.
What a mixture of languor and vivacity! Creole, you know; full blood.
She is the belle of New Orleans--or one of them. Oh! do you see that
Paris dress? I must look at it again when it comes around; she carries
it well, too--belle of Richmond. And, see there; there's one of the
prettiest girls in the South--belle of Macon. And that handsome woman
--Nashville?--Louisville? See, that's the new-comer from Ohio." And so
the procession went on, and the enumeration--belle of Montgomery, belle
of Augusta, belle of Charleston, belle of Savannah, belle of Atlanta
--always the belle of some place.
"No, I don't expect you to say that these are prettier than Northern
women; but just between friends, Mr. King, don't you think the North
might make a little more of their beautiful women? Yes, you are right;
she is handsome" (King was bowing to Irene, who was on the arm of Mr.
Meigs), "and has something besides beauty. I see what you mean" (King
had not intimated that he meant anything), "but don't you dare to say
it."
"Oh, I'm quite subdued."
"I wouldn't trust you. I suppose you Yankees cannot help your critical
spirit."
"Critical? Why, I've heard more criticism in the last half-hour from
these spectators than in a year before. And--I wonder if you will let me
say it?"
"Say on."
"Seems to me that the chief topic here is physical beauty--about the
shape, the style, the dress, of women, and whether this or that one is
well made and handsome."
"Well, suppose beauty is worshiped in the South--we worship what we have;
we haven't much money now, you know. Would you mind my saying that Mr.
Meigs is a very presentable man?"
"You may say what you like about Mr. Meigs."
"That's the reason I took him away this morning."
"Thank you."
"He is full of information, and so unobtrusive--"
"I hadn't noticed that."
"And I think he ought to be encouraged. I'll tell you what you ought to
do, Mr. King: you ought to give a german. If you do not, I shall put Mr.
Meigs up to it--it is the thing to do here."
"Mr. Meigs give a german!"--[Dance, cotillion--always lively. D.W.]
"Why not? You see that old beau there, the one smiling and bending
towards her as he walks with the belle of Macon? He does not look any
older than Mr. Meigs. He has been coming here for fifty years; he owns
up to sixty-five and the Mexican war; it's my firm belief that he was out
in 1812. Well, he has led the german here for years. You will find
Colonel Fane in the ballroom every night. Yes, I shall speak to Mr.
Meigs."
The room was thinning out. King found himself in front of a row of
dowagers, whose tongues were still going about the departing beauties.
"No mercy there," he heard a lady say to her companion; "that's a jury
for conviction every time." What confidential communication Mrs.
Farquhar made to Mr. Meigs, King never knew, but he took advantage of the
diversion in his favor to lead Miss Benson off to the ballroom.
IX
OLD SWEET AND WHITE SULFUR
The days went by at the White Sulphur on the wings of incessant gayety.
Literally the nights were filled with music, and the only cares that
infested the day appeared in the anxious faces of the mothers as the
campaign became more intricate and uncertain. King watched this with the
double interest of spectator and player. The artist threw himself into
the melee with abandon, and pacified his conscience by an occasional
letter to Miss Lamont, in which he confessed just as many of his
conquests and defeats as he thought it would be good for her to know.
The colored people, who are a conspicuous part of the establishment, are
a source of never-failing interest and amusement. Every morning the
mammies and nurses with their charges were seated in a long, shining row
on a part of the veranda where there was most passing and repassing,
holding a sort of baby show, the social consequence of each one depending
upon the rank of the family who employed her, and the dress of the
children in her charge. High-toned conversation on these topics occupied
these dignified and faithful mammies, upon whom seemed to rest to a
considerable extent the maintenance of the aristocratic social
traditions. Forbes had heard that while the colored people of the South
had suspended several of the ten commandments, the eighth was especially
regarded as nonapplicable in the present state of society. But he was
compelled to revise this opinion as to the White Sulphur. Nobody ever
locked a door or closed a window. Cottages most remote were left for
hours open and without guard, miscellaneous articles of the toilet were
left about, trunks were not locked, waiters, chambermaids, porters,
washerwomen, were constantly coming and going, having access to the rooms
at all hours, and yet no guest ever lost so much as a hairpin or a cigar.
This fashion of trust and of honesty so impressed the artist that he said
he should make an attempt to have it introduced elsewhere. This sort of
esprit de corps among the colored people was unexpected, and he wondered
if they are not generally misunderstood by writers who attribute to them
qualities of various kinds that they do not possess. The negro is not
witty or consciously humorous, or epigrammatic. The humor of his actions
and sayings lies very much in a certain primitive simplicity. Forbes
couldn't tell, for instance, why he was amused at a remark he heard one
morning in the store. A colored girl sauntered in, looking about
vacantly. "You ain't got no cotton, is you?" "Why, of course we have
cotton." "Well" (the girl only wanted an excuse to say something), "I
only ast, is you?"
Sports of a colonial and old English flavor that have fallen into disuse
elsewhere varied the life at the White. One day the gentlemen rode in a
mule-race, the slowest mule to win, and this feat was followed by an
exhibition of negro agility in climbing the greased pole and catching the
greased pig; another day the cavaliers contended on the green field
surrounded by a brilliant array of beauty and costume, as two Amazon
baseball nines, the one nine arrayed in yellow cambric frocks and
sun-bonnets, and the other in bright red gowns--the whiskers and big
boots and trousers adding nothing whatever to the illusion of the female
battle.
The two tables, King's and the Benson's, united in an expedition to the
Old Sweet, a drive of eighteen miles. Mrs. Farquhar arranged the affair,
and assigned the seats in the carriages. It is a very picturesque drive,
as are all the drives in this region, and if King did not enjoy it, it
was not because Mrs. Farquhar was not even more entertaining than usual.
The truth is that a young man in love is poor company for himself and for
everybody else. Even the object of his passion could not tolerate him
unless she returned it. Irene and Mr. Meigs rode in the carriage in
advance of his, and King thought the scenery about the tamest he had ever
seen, the roads bad, the horses slow. His ill-humor, however, was
concentrated on one spot; that was Mr. Meigs's back; he thought he had
never seen a more disagreeable back, a more conceited back. It ought to
have been a delightful day; in his imagination it was to be an eventful
day. Indeed, why shouldn't the opportunity come at the Old Sweet, at the
end of the drive?--there was something promising in the name. Mrs.
Farquhar was in a mocking mood all the way. She liked to go to the Old
Sweet, she said, because it was so intolerably dull; it was a sensation.
She thought, too, that it might please Miss Benson, there was such a
fitness in the thing--the old sweet to the Old Sweet. "And he is not so
very old either," she added; "just the age young girls like. I should
think Miss Benson in danger--seriously, now--if she were three or four
years younger."
The Old Sweet is, in fact, a delightful old-fashioned resort, respectable
and dull, with a pretty park, and a crystal pond that stimulates the
bather like a glass of champagne, and perhaps has the property of
restoring youth. King tried the spring, which he heard Mrs. Farquhar
soberly commending to Mr. Meigs; and after dinner he manoeuvred for a
half-hour alone with Irene. But the fates and the women were against
him. He had the mortification to see her stroll away with Mr. Meigs to a
distant part of the grounds, where they remained in confidential
discourse until it was time to return.
In the rearrangement of seats Mrs. Farquhar exchanged with Irene. Mrs.
Farquhar said that it was very much like going to a funeral each way. As
for Irene, she was in high, even feverish spirits, and rattled away in a
manner that convinced King that she was almost too happy to contain
herself.
Notwithstanding the general chaff, the singing, and the gayety of Irene,
the drive seemed to him intolerably long. At the half-way house, where
in the moonlight the horses drank from a shallow stream, Mr. Meigs came
forward to the carriage and inquired if Miss Benson was sufficiently
protected against the chilliness of the night. King had an impulse to
offer to change seats with him; but no, he would not surrender in the
face of the enemy. It would be more dignified to quietly leave the
Springs the next day.
It was late at night when the party returned. The carriage drove to the
Benson cottage; King helped Irene to alight, coolly bade her good-night,
and went to his barracks. But it was not a good night to sleep. He
tossed about, he counted every step of the late night birds on his
gallery; he got up and lighted a cigar, and tried dispassionately to
think the matter over. But thinking was of no use. He took pen and
paper; he would write a chill letter of farewell; he would write a manly
avowal of his passion; he would make such an appeal that no woman could
resist it. She must know, she did know--what was the use of writing? He
sat staring at the blank prospect. Great heavens! what would become of
his life if he lost the only woman in the world? Probably the world
would go on much the same. Why, listen to it! The band was playing on
the lawn at four o'clock in the morning. A party was breaking up after a
night of german and a supper, and the revelers were dispersing. The
lively tunes of "Dixie," "Marching through Georgia," and "Home, Sweet
Home," awoke the echoes in all the galleries and corridors, and filled
the whole encampment with a sad gayety. Dawn was approaching.
Good-nights and farewells and laughter were heard, and the voice of a
wanderer explaining to the trees, with more or less broken melody, his
fixed purpose not to go home till morning.
Stanhope King might have had a better though still a sleepless night if
he had known that Mr. Meigs was packing his trunks at that hour to the
tune of "Home, Sweet Home," and if he had been aware of the scene at the
Benson cottage after he bade Irene good-night. Mrs. Benson had a light
burning, and the noise of the carriage awakened her. Irene entered the
room, saw that her mother was awake, shut the door carefully, sat down on
the foot of the bed, said, "It's all over, mother," and burst into the
tears of a long-repressed nervous excitement.
"What's over, child?" cried Mrs. Benson, sitting bolt-upright in bed.
"Mr. Meigs. I had to tell him that it couldn't be. And he is one of the
best men I ever knew."
"You don't tell me you've gone and refused him, Irene?"
"Please don't scold me. It was no use. He ought to have seen that I did
not care for him, except as a friend. I'm so sorry!"
"You are the strangest girl I ever saw." And Mrs. Benson dropped back on
the pillow again, crying herself now, and muttering, "I'm sure I don't
know what you do want."
When King came out to breakfast he encountered Mr. Benson, who told him
that their friend Mr. Meigs had gone off that morning--had a sudden
business call to Boston. Mr. Benson did not seem to be depressed about
it. Irene did not appear, and King idled away the hours with his equally
industrious companion under the trees. There was no german that morning,
and the hotel band was going through its repertoire for the benefit of a
champagne party on the lawn. There was nothing melancholy about this
party; and King couldn't help saying to Mrs. Farquhar that it hardly
represented his idea of the destitution and depression resulting from the
war; but she replied that they must do something to keep up their
spirits.
"And I think," said the artist, who had been watching, from the little
distance at which they sat, the table of the revelers, "that they will
succeed. Twenty-six bottles of champagne, and not many more guests! What
a happy people, to be able to enjoy champagne before twelve o'clock!"
"Oh, you never will understand us!" said Mrs. Farquhar; "there is nothing
spontaneous in you."
"We do not begin to be spontaneous till after dinner," said King.
"And then it is all calculated. Think of Mr. Forbes counting the
bottles! Such a dreadfully mercenary spirit! Oh, I have been North.
Because you are not so open as we are, you set up for being more
virtuous."
"And you mean," said King, "that frankness and impulse cover a multitude
of--"
"I don't mean anything of the sort. I just mean that conventionality
isn't virtue. You yourself confessed that you like the Southern openness
right much, and you like to come here, and you like the Southern people
as they are at home."
"Well?"
"And now will you tell me, Mr. Prim, why it is that almost all Northern
people who come South to live become more Southern than the Southerners
themselves; and that almost all Southern people who go North to live
remain just as Southern as ever?"
"No. Nor do I understand any more than Dr. Johnson did why the Scotch,
who couldn't scratch a living at home, and came up to London, always kept
on bragging about their native land and abused the metropolis."
This sort of sparring went on daily, with the result of increasing
friendship between the representatives of the two geographical sections,
and commonly ended with the declaration on Mrs. Farquhar's part that she
should never know that King was not born in the South except for his
accent; and on his part that if Mrs. Farquhar would conceal her
delightful Virginia inflection she would pass everywhere at the North for
a Northern woman.
"I hear," she said, later, as they sat alone, "that Mr. Meigs has beat a
retreat, saving nothing but his personal baggage. I think Miss Benson is
a great goose. Such a chance for an establishment and a position! You
didn't half appreciate him."
"I'm afraid I did not."
"Well, it is none of my business; but I hope you understand the
responsibility of the situation. If you do not, I want to warn you about
one thing: don't go strolling off before sunset in the Lovers' Walk. It
is the most dangerous place. It is a fatal place. I suppose every turn
in it, every tree that has a knoll at the foot where two persons can sit,
has witnessed a tragedy, or, what is worse, a comedy. There are legends
enough about it to fill a book. Maybe there is not a Southern woman
living who has not been engaged there once at least. I'll tell you a
little story for a warning. Some years ago there was a famous belle here
who had the Springs at her feet, and half a dozen determined suitors.
One of them, who had been unable to make the least impression on her
heart, resolved to win her by a stratagem. Walking one evening on the
hill with her, the two stopped just at a turn in the walk--I can show you
the exact spot, with a chaperon--and he fell into earnest discourse with
her. She was as cool and repellant as usual. Just then he heard a party
approaching; his chance had come. The moment the party came in sight he
suddenly kissed her. Everybody saw it. The witnesses discreetly turned
back. The girl was indignant. But the deed was done. In half an hour
the whole Springs would know it. She was compromised. No explanations
could do away with the fact that she had been kissed in Lovers' Walk.
But the girl was game, and that evening the engagement was announced in
the drawing-room. Isn't that a pretty story?"
However much Stanhope might have been alarmed at this recital, he
betrayed nothing of his fear that evening when, after walking to the
spring with Irene, the two sauntered along and unconsciously, as it
seemed, turned up the hill into that winding path which has been trodden
by generations of lovers with loitering steps--steps easy to take and so
hard to retrace! It is a delightful forest, the walk winding about on
the edge of the hill, and giving charming prospects of intervales,
stream, and mountains. To one in the mood for a quiet hour with nature,
no scene could be more attractive.
The couple walked on, attempting little conversation, both apparently
prepossessed and constrained. The sunset was spoken of, and when Irene
at length suggested turning back, that was declared to be King's object
in ascending the hill to a particular point; but whether either of them
saw the sunset, or would have known it from a sunrise, I cannot say. The
drive to the Old Sweet was pleasant. Yes, but rather tiresome. Mr. Meigs
had gone away suddenly. Yes; Irene was sorry his business should have
called him away. Was she very sorry? She wouldn't lie awake at night
over it, but he was a good friend. The time passed very quickly here.
Yes; one couldn't tell how it went; the days just melted away; the two
weeks seemed like a day. They were going away the next day. King said
he was going also.
"And," he added, as if with an effort, "when the season is over, Miss
Benson, I am going to settle down to work."
"I'm glad of that," she said, turning upon him a face glowing with
approval.
"Yes, I have arranged to go on with practice in my uncle's office. I
remember what you said about a dilettante life."
"Why, I never said anything of the kind."
"But you looked it. It is all the same."
They had come to the crown of the hill, and stood looking over the
intervales to the purple mountains. Irene was deeply occupied in tying
up with grass a bunch of wild flowers. Suddenly he seized her hand.
"Irene!"
"No, no," she cried, turning away. The flowers dropped from her hand.
"You must listen, Irene. I love you--I love you."
She turned her face towards him; her lips trembled; her eyes were full of
tears; there was a great look of wonder and tenderness in her face.
"Is it all true?"
She was in his arms. He kissed her hair, her eyes--ah me! it is the old
story. It had always been true. He loved her from the first, at
Fortress Monroe, every minute since. And she--well, perhaps she could
learn to love him in time, if he was very good; yes, maybe she had loved
him a little at Fortress Monroe. How could he? what was there in her to
attract him? What a wonder it was that she could tolerate him! What
could she see in him?
So this impossible thing, this miracle, was explained? No, indeed! It
had to be inquired into and explained over and over again, this
absolutely new experience of two people loving each other.
She could speak now of herself, of her doubt that he could know his own
heart and be stronger than the social traditions, and would not mind, as
she thought he did at Newport--just a little bit--the opinions of other
people. I do not by any means imply that she said all this bluntly, or
that she took at all the tone of apology; but she contrived, as a woman
can without saying much, to let him see why she had distrusted, not the
sincerity, but the perseverance of his love. There would never be any
more doubt now. What a wonder it all is.
The two parted--alas! alas! till supper-time!
I don't know why scoffers make so light of these partings--at the foot of
the main stairs of the hotel gallery, just as Mrs. Farquhar was
descending. Irene's face was radiant as she ran away from Mrs. Farquhar.
"Bless you, my children! I see my warning was in vain, Mr. King. It is
a fatal walk. It always was in our family. Oh, youth! youth!" A shade
of melancholy came over her charming face as she turned alone towards the
spring.
X
LONG BRANCH, OCEAN GROVE
Mrs. Farquhar, Colonel Fane, and a great many of their first and second
cousins were at the station the morning the Bensons and King and Forbes
departed for the North. The gallant colonel was foremost in his
expressions of regret, and if he had been the proprietor of Virginia, and
of the entire South added thereto, and had been anxious to close out the
whole lot on favorable terms to the purchaser, he would not have
exhibited greater solicitude as to the impression the visitors had
received. This solicitude was, however, wholly in his manner--and it is
the traditional-manner that has nearly passed away--for underneath all
this humility it was plain to be seen that the South had conferred a
great favor, sir, upon these persons by a recognition of their merits.
"I am not come to give you good-by, but au revoir," said Mrs. Farquhar to
Stanhope and Irene, who were standing apart. "I hate to go North in the
summer, it is so hot and crowded and snobbish, but I dare say I shall
meet you somewhere, for I confess I don't like to lose sight of so much
happiness. No, no, Miss Benson, you need not thank me, even with a
blush; I am not responsible for this state of things. I did all I could
to warn you, and I tell you now that my sympathy is with Mr. Meigs, who
never did either of you any harm, and I think has been very badly
treated."
"I don't know any one, Mrs. Farquhar, who is so capable of repairing his
injuries as yourself," said King.
"Thank you; I'm not used to such delicate elephantine compliments. It is
just like a man, Miss Benson, to try to kill two birds with one stone
--get rid of a rival by sacrificing a useless friend. All the same, au
revoir."
"We shall be glad to see you," replied Irene, "you know that, wherever we
are; and we will try to make the North tolerable for you."
"Oh, I shall hide my pride and go. If you were not all so rich up there!
Not that I object to wealth; I enjoy it. I think I shall take to that
old prayer: 'May my lot be with the rich in this world, and with the
South in the next!'"
I suppose there never was such a journey as that from the White Sulphur
to New York. If the Virginia scenery had seemed to King beautiful when
he came down, it was now transcendently lovely. He raved about it, when
I saw him afterwards--the Blue Ridge, the wheat valleys, the commercial
advantages, the mineral resources of the State, the grand old traditional
Heaven knows what of the Old Dominion; as to details he was obscure, and
when I pinned him down, he was not certain which route they took. It is
my opinion that the most costly scenery in the world is thrown away upon
a pair of newly plighted lovers.
The rest of the party were in good spirits. Even Mrs. Benson, who was at
first a little bewildered at the failure of her admirably planned
campaign, accepted the situation with serenity.
"So you are engaged!" she said, when Irene went to her with the story of
the little affair in Lovers' Walk. "I suppose he'll like it. He always
took a fancy to Mr. King. No, I haven't any objections, Irene, and I
hope you'll be happy. Mr. King was always very polite to me--only he
didn't never seem exactly like our folks. We only want you to be happy."
And the old lady declared with a shaky voice, and tears streaming down
her cheeks, that she was perfectly happy if Irene was.
Mr. Meigs, the refined, the fastidious, the man of the world, who had
known how to adapt himself perfectly to Mrs. Benson, might nevertheless
have been surprised at her implication that he was "like our folks."
At the station in Jersey City--a place suggestive of love and romance and
full of tender associations--the party separated for a few days, the
Bensons going to Saratoga, and King accompanying Forbes to Long Branch,
in pursuance of an agreement which, not being in writing, he was unable
to break. As the two friends went in the early morning down to the coast
over the level salt meadows, cut by bayous and intersected by canals,
they were curiously reminded both of the Venice lagoons and the plains of
the Teche; and the artist went into raptures over the colors of the
landscape, which he declared was Oriental in softness and blending.
Patriotic as we are, we still turn to foreign lands for our comparisons.
Long Branch and its adjuncts were planned for New York excursionists who
are content with the ocean and the salt air, and do not care much for the
picturesque. It can be described in a phrase: a straight line of sandy
coast with a high bank, parallel to it a driveway, and an endless row of
hotels and cottages. Knowing what the American seaside cottage and hotel
are, it is unnecessary to go to Long Branch to have an accurate picture
of it in the mind. Seen from the end of the pier, the coast appears to
be all built up--a thin, straggling city by the sea. The line of
buildings is continuous for two miles, from Long Branch to Elberon;
midway is the West End, where our tourists were advised to go as the best
post of observation, a medium point of respectability between the
excursion medley of one extremity and the cottage refinement of the
other, and equally convenient to the races, which attract crowds of
metropolitan betting men and betting women. The fine toilets of these
children of fortune are not less admired than their fashionable
race-course manners. The satirist who said that Atlantic City is typical
of Philadelphia, said also that Long Branch is typical of New York. What
Mr. King said was that the satirist was not acquainted with the good
society of either place.
All the summer resorts get somehow a certain character, but it is not
easy always to say how it is produced. The Long Branch region was the
resort of politicians, and of persons of some fortune who connect
politics with speculation. Society, which in America does not identify
itself with politics as it does in England, was not specially attracted
by the newspaper notoriety of the place, although, fashion to some extent
declared in favor of Elberon.
In the morning the artist went up to the pier at the bathing hour.
Thousands of men, women, and children were tossing about in the lively
surf promiscuously, revealing to the spectators such forms as Nature had
given them, with a modest confidence in her handiwork. It seemed to the
artist, who was a student of the human figure, that many of these people
would not have bathed in public if Nature had made them self-conscious.
All down the shore were pavilions and bath-houses, and the scene at a
distance was not unlike that when the water is occupied by schools of
leaping mackerel. An excursion steamer from New York landed at the pier.
The passengers were not of any recognized American type, but mixed
foreign races a crowd of respectable people who take their rare holidays
rather seriously, and offer little of interest to an artist. The boats
that arrive at night are said to bring a less respectable cargo.
It is a pleasant walk or drive down to Elberon when there is a
sea-breeze, especially if there happen to be a dozen yachts in the
offing. Such elegance as this watering-place has lies in this direction;
the Elberon is a refined sort of hotel, and has near it a group of pretty
cottages, not too fantastic for holiday residences, and even the
"greeny-yellowy" ones do not much offend, for eccentricities of color are
toned down by the sea atmosphere. These cottages have excellent lawns
set with brilliant beds of flowers; and the turf rivals that of Newport;
but without a tree or shrub anywhere along the shore the aspect is too
unrelieved and photographically distinct. Here as elsewhere the cottage
life is taking the place of hotel life.
There were few handsome turn-outs on the main drive, and perhaps the
popular character of the place was indicated by the use of omnibuses
instead of carriages. For, notwithstanding Elberon and such fashion as
is there gathered, Long Branch lacks "style." After the White Sulphur,
it did not seem to King alive with gayety, nor has it any society. In the
hotel parlors there is music in the evenings, but little dancing except
by children. Large women, offensively dressed, sit about the veranda,
and give a heavy and "company" air to the drawing-rooms. No, the place
is not gay. The people come here to eat, to bathe, to take the air; and
these are reasons enough for being here. Upon the artist, alert for
social peculiarities, the scene made little impression, for to an artist
there is a limit to the interest of a crowd showily dressed, though they
blaze with diamonds.
It was in search of something different from this that King and Forbes
took the train and traveled six miles to Asbury Park and Ocean Grove.
These great summer settlements are separated by a sheet of fresh water
three-quarters of a mile long; its sloping banks are studded with pretty
cottages, its surface is alive with boats gay with awnings of red and
blue and green, and seats of motley color, and is altogether a fairy
spectacle. Asbury Park is the worldly correlative of Ocean Grove, and
esteems itself a notch above it in social tone. Each is a city of small
houses, and each is teeming with life, but Ocean Grove, whose centre is
the camp-meeting tabernacle, lodges its devotees in tents as well as
cottages, and copies the architecture of Oak Bluffs. The inhabitants of
the two cities meet on the two-mile-long plank promenade by the sea.
Perhaps there is no place on the coast that would more astonish the
foreigner than Ocean Grove, and if he should describe it faithfully he
would be unpopular with its inhabitants. He would be astonished at the
crowds at the station, the throngs in the streets, the shops and stores
for supplying the wants of the religious pilgrims, and used as he might
be to the promiscuous bathing along our coast, he would inevitably
comment upon the freedom existing here. He would see women in their
bathing dresses, wet and clinging, walking in the streets of the town,
and he would read notices posted up by the camp-meeting authorities
forbidding women so clad to come upon the tabernacle ground. He would
also read placards along the beach explaining the reason why decency in
bathing suits is desirable, and he would wonder why such notices should
be necessary. If, however, he walked along the shore at bathing times he
might be enlightened, and he would see besides a certain simplicity of
social life which sophisticated Europe has no parallel for. A peculiar
custom here is sand-burrowing. To lie in the warm sand, which
accommodates itself to any position of the body, and listen to the dash
of the waves, is a dreamy and delightful way of spending a summer day.
The beach for miles is strewn with these sand-burrowers in groups of two
or three or half a dozen, or single figures laid out like the effigies of
Crusaders. One encounters these groups sprawling in all attitudes, and
frequently asleep in their promiscuous beds. The foreigner is forced to
see all this, because it is a public exhibition. A couple in bathing
suits take a dip together in the sea, and then lie down in the sand. The
artist proposed to make a sketch of one of these primitive couples, but
it was impossible to do so, because they lay in a trench which they had
scooped in the sand two feet deep, and had hoisted an umbrella over their
heads. The position was novel and artistic, but beyond the reach of the
artist. It was a great pity, because art is never more agreeable than
when it concerns itself with domestic life.
While this charming spectacle was exhibited at the beach, afternoon
service was going on in the tabernacle, and King sought that in
preference. The vast audience under the canopy directed its eyes to a
man on the platform, who was violently gesticulating and shouting at the
top of his voice. King, fresh from the scenes of the beach, listened a
long time, expecting to hear some close counsel on the conduct of life,
but he heard nothing except the vaguest emotional exhortation. By this
the audience were apparently unmoved, for it was only when the preacher
paused to get his breath on some word on which he could dwell by reason
of its vowels, like w-o-r-l-d or a-n-d, that he awoke any response from
his hearers. The spiritual exercise of prayer which followed was even
more of a physical demonstration, and it aroused more response. The
officiating minister, kneeling at the desk, gesticulated furiously,
doubled up his fists and shook them on high, stretched out both arms, and
pounded the pulpit. Among people of his own race King had never before
seen anything like this, and he went away a sadder if not a wiser man,
having at least learned one lesson of charity--never again to speak
lightly of a negro religious meeting.
This vast city of the sea has many charms, and is the resort of thousands
of people, who find here health and repose. But King, who was immensely
interested in it all as one phase of American summer life, was glad that
Irene was not at Ocean Grove.
XI
SARATOGA
It was the 22d of August, and the height of the season at Saratoga.
Familiar as King had been with these Springs, accustomed as the artist
was to foreign Spas, the scene was a surprise to both. They had been
told that fashion had ceased to patronize it, and that its old-time
character was gone. But Saratoga is too strong for the whims of fashion;
its existence does not depend upon its decrees; it has reached the point
where it cannot be killed by the inroads of Jew or Gentile. In ceasing
to be a society centre, it has become in a manner metropolitan; for the
season it is no longer a provincial village, but the meeting-place of as
mixed and heterogeneous a throng as flows into New York from all the
Union in the autumn shopping period.
It was race week, but the sporting men did not give Saratoga their
complexion. It was convention time, but except in the hotel corridors
politicians were not the feature of the place. One of the great hotels
was almost exclusively occupied by the descendants of Abraham, but the
town did not at all resemble Jerusalem. Innumerable boarding-houses
swarmed with city and country clergymen, who have a well-founded
impression that the waters of the springs have a beneficent relation to
the bilious secretions of the year, but the resort had not an oppressive
air of sanctity. Nearly every prominent politician in the State and a
good many from other States registered at the hotels, but no one seemed
to think that the country was in danger. Hundreds of men and women were
there because they had been there every year for thirty or forty years
back, and they have no doubt that their health absolutely requires a week
at Saratoga; yet the village has not the aspect of a sanitarium. The
hotel dining-rooms and galleries were thronged with large, overdressed
women who glittered with diamonds and looked uncomfortable in silks and
velvets, and Broadway was gay with elegant equipages, but nobody would go
to Saratoga to study the fashions. Perhaps the most impressive spectacle
in this lowly world was the row of millionaires sunning themselves every
morning on the piazza of the States, solemn men in black broadcloth and
white hats, who said little, but looked rich; visitors used to pass that
way casually, and the townspeople regarded them with a kind of awe, as if
they were the king-pins of the whole social fabric; but even these
magnates were only pleasing incidents in the kaleidoscopic show.
The first person King encountered on the piazza of the Grand Union was
not the one he most wished to see, although it could never be otherwise
than agreeable to meet his fair cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow. She was in a
fresh morning toilet, dainty, comme il faut, radiant, with that
unobtrusive manner of "society" which made the present surroundings,
appear a trifle vulgar to King, and to his self-disgust forced upon him
the image of Mrs. Benson.
"You here?" was his abrupt and involuntary exclamation.
"Yes--why not?" And then she added, as if from the Newport point of view
some explanation were necessary: "My husband thinks he must come here for
a week every year to take the waters; it's an old habit, and I find it
amusing for a few days. Of course there is nobody here. Will you take
me to the spring? Yes, Congress. I'm too old to change. If I believed
the pamphlets the proprietors write about each other's springs I should
never go to either of them."
Mrs. Bartlett Glow was not alone in saying that nobody was there. There
were scores of ladies at each hotel who said the same thing, and who
accounted for their own presence there in the way she did. And they were
not there at all in the same way they would be later at Lenox. Mrs.
Pendragon, of New Orleans, who was at the United States, would have said
the same thing, remembering the time when the Southern colony made a very
distinct impression upon the social life of the place; and the Ashleys,
who had put up at the Congress Hall in company with an old friend, a
returned foreign minister, who stuck to the old traditions--even the
Ashleys said they were only lookers-on at the pageant.
Paying their entrance, and passing through the turnstile in the pretty
pavilion gate, they stood in the Congress Spring Park. The band was
playing in the kiosk; the dew still lay on the flowers and the green
turf; the miniature lake sparkled in the sun. It is one of the most
pleasing artificial scenes in the world; to be sure, nature set the great
pine-trees on the hills, and made the graceful little valley, but art and
exquisite taste have increased the apparent size of the small plot of
ground, and filled it with beauty. It is a gem of a place with a
character of its own, although its prettiness suggests some foreign Spa.
Groups of people, having taken the water, were strolling about the
graveled paths, sitting on the slopes overlooking the pond, or wandering
up the glen to the tiny deer park.
"So you have been at the White Sulphur?" said Mrs. Glow. "How did you
like it?"
"Immensely. It's the only place left where there is a congregate social
life."
"You mean provincial life. Everybody knows everybody else."
"Well," King retorted, with some spirit, "it is not a place where people
pretend not to know each other, as if their salvation depended on it."
"Oh, I see; hospitable, frank, cordial-all that. Stanhope, do you know,
I think you are a little demoralized this summer. Did you fall in love
with a Southern belle? Who was there?"
"Well, all the South, pretty much. I didn't fall in love with all the
belles; we were there only two weeks. Oh! there was a Mrs. Farquhar
there."
"Georgiana Randolph! Georgie! How did she look? We were at Madame
Sequin's together, and a couple of seasons in Paris. Georgie! She was
the handsomest, the wittiest, the most fascinating woman I ever saw. I
hope she didn't give you a turn?"
"Oh, no. But we were very good friends. She is a very handsome woman
--perhaps you would expect me to say handsome still; but that seems a
sort of treason to her mature beauty."
"And who else?"
"Oh, the Storbes from New Orleans, the Slifers from Mobile--no end of
people--some from Philadelphia--and Ohio."
"Ohio? Those Bensons!" said she, turning sharply on him.
"Yes, those Bensons, Penelope. Why not?"
"Oh, nothing. It's a free country. I hope, Stanhope, you didn't
encourage her. You might make her very unhappy."
"I trust not," said King stoutly. "We are engaged."
"Engaged!" repeated Mrs. Glow, in a tone that implied a whole world of
astonishment and improbability.
"Yes, and you are just in time to congratulate us. There they are!" Mr.
Benson, Mrs. Benson, and Irene were coming down the walk from the deer
park. King turned to meet them, but Mrs. Glow was close at his side, and
apparently as pleased at seeing them again as the lover. Nothing could be
more charming than the grace and welcome she threw into her salutations.
She shook hands with Mr. Benson; she was delighted to meet Mrs. Benson
again, and gave her both her little hands; she almost embraced Irene,
placed a hand on each shoulder, kissed her on the cheek, and said
something in a low voice that brought the blood to the girl's face and
suffused her eyes with tenderness.
When the party returned to the hotel the two women were walking lovingly
arm in arm, and King was following after, in the more prosaic atmosphere
of Cyrusville, Ohio. The good old lady began at once to treat King as
one of the family; she took his arm, and leaned heavily on it, as they
walked, and confided to him all her complaints. The White Sulphur
waters, she said, had not done her a mite of good; she didn't know but
she'd oughter see a doctor, but he said that it warn't nothing but
indigestion. Now the White Sulphur agreed with Irene better than any
other place, and I guess that I know the reason why, Mr. King, she said,
with a faintly facetious smile. Meantime Mrs. Glow was talking to Irene
on the one topic that a maiden is never weary of, her lover; and so
adroitly mingled praises of him with flattery of herself that the girl's
heart went out to her in entire trust.
"She is a charming girl," said Mrs. Glow to King, later. "She needs a
little forming, but that will be easy when she is separated from her
family. Don't interrupt me. I like her. I don't say I like it. But if
you will go out of your set, you might do a great deal worse. Have you
written to your uncle and to your aunt?"
"No; I don't know why, in a matter wholly personal to myself, I should
call a family council. You represent the family completely, Penelope."
"Yes. Thanks to my happening to be here. Well, I wouldn't write to them
if I were you. It's no use to disturb the whole connection now. By the
way, Imogene Cypher was at Newport after you left; she is more beautiful
than ever--just lovely; no other girl there had half the attention."
"I am glad to hear it," said King, who did not fancy the drift their
conversation was taking. "I hope she will make a good match. Brains are
not necessary, you know."
"Stanhope, I never said that--never. I might have said she wasn't a bas
bleu. No more is she. But she has beauty, and a good temper, and money.
It isn't the cleverest women who make the best wives, sir."
"Well, I'm not objecting to her being a wife. Only it does not follow
that, because my uncle and aunts are in love with her, I should want to
marry her."
"I said nothing about marriage, my touchy friend. I am not advising you
to be engaged to two women at the same time. And I like Irene
immensely."
It was evident that she had taken a great fancy to the girl. They were
always together; it seemed to happen so, and King could hardly admit to
himself that Mrs. Glow was de trop as a third. Mr. Bartlett Glow was
very polite to King and his friend, and forever had one excuse and
another for taking them off with him--the races or a lounge about town.
He showed them one night, I am sorry to say, the inside of the Temple of
Chance and its decorous society, its splendid buffet, the quiet tables of
rouge et noir, and the highly respectable attendants--aged men,
whitehaired, in evening costume, devout and almost godly in appearance,
with faces chastened to resignation and patience with a wicked world,
sedate and venerable as the deacons in a Presbyterian church. He was
lonesome and wanted company, and, besides, the women liked to be by
themselves occasionally.
One might be amused at the Saratoga show without taking an active part in
it, and indeed nobody did seem to take a very active part in it.
Everybody was looking on. People drove, visited the springs--in a vain
expectation that excessive drinking of the medicated waters would
counteract the effect of excessive gormandizing at the hotels--sat about
in the endless rows of armchairs on the piazzas, crowded the heavily
upholstered parlors, promenaded in the corridors, listened to the music
in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and thronged the stairways
and passages, and blocked up the entrance to the ballrooms. Balls? Yes,
with dress de rigueur, many beautiful women in wonderful toilets, a few
debutantes, a scarcity of young men, and a delicious band--much better
music than at the White Sulphur.
And yet no society. But a wonderful agglomeration, the artist was
saying. It is a robust sort of place. If Newport is the queen of the
watering-places, this is the king. See how well fed and fat the people
are, men and women large and expansive, richly dressed, prosperous
--looking! What a contrast to the family sort of life at the White
Sulphur! Here nobody, apparently, cares for anybody else--not much; it
is not to be expected that people should know each other in such a
heterogeneous concern; you see how comparatively few greetings there are
on the piazzas and in the parlors. You notice, too, that the types are
not so distinctively American as at the Southern resort--full faces,
thick necks--more like Germans than Americans. And then the everlasting
white hats. And I suppose it is not certain that every man in a tall
white hat is a politician, or a railway magnate, or a sporting man.
These big hotels are an epitome of expansive, gorgeous American life. At
the Grand Union, King was No. 1710, and it seemed to him that he walked
the length of the town to get to his room after ascending four stories.
He might as well, so far as exercise was concerned, have taken an
apartment outside. And the dining-room. Standing at the door, he had a
vista of an eighth of a mile of small tables, sparkling with brilliant
service of glass and porcelain, chandeliers and frescoed ceiling. What
perfect appointments! what well-trained waiters!--perhaps they were not
waiters, for he was passed from one "officer" to another "officer" down
to his place. At the tables silent couples and restrained family
parties, no hilarity, little talking; and what a contrast this was to the
happy-go-lucky service and jollity of the White Sulphur! Then the
interior parks of the United States and the Grand Union, with corridors
and cottages, close-clipped turf, banks of flowers, forest trees,
fountains, and at night, when the band filled all the air with seductive
strains, the electric and the colored lights, gleaming through the
foliage and dancing on fountains and greensward, made a scene of
enchantment. Each hotel was a village in itself, and the thousands of
guests had no more in common than the frequenters of New York hotels and
theatres. But what a paradise for lovers!
"It would be lonesome enough but for you, Irene," Stanhope said, as they
sat one night on the inner piazza of the Grand Union, surrendering
themselves to all the charms of the scene.
"I love it all," she said, in the full tide of her happiness.
On another evening they were at the illumination of the Congress Spring
Park. The scene seemed the creation of magic. By a skillful arrangement
of the colored globes an illusion of vastness was created, and the little
enclosure, with its glowing lights, was like the starry heavens for
extent. In the mass of white globes and colored lanterns of paper the
eye was deceived as to distances. The allies stretched away
interminably, the pines seemed enormous, and the green hillsides
mountainous. Nor were charming single effects wanting. Down the winding
walk from the hill, touched by a distant electric light, the loitering
people, in couples and in groups, seemed no more in real life than the
supernumeraries in a scene at the opera. Above, in the illuminated
foliage, were doubtless a castle and a broad terrace, with a row of
statues, and these gay promenaders were ladies and cavaliers in an
old-time masquerade. The gilded kiosk on the island in the centre of the
miniature lake and the fairy bridge that leads to it were outlined by
colored globes; and the lake, itself set about with brilliants, reflected
kiosk and bridge and lights, repeating a hundredfold the fantastic scene,
while from their island retreat the band sent out through the illumined
night strains of sentiment and gayety and sadness. In the intervals of
the music there was silence, as if the great throng were too deeply
enjoying this feast of the senses to speak. Perhaps a foreigner would
have been impressed with the decorous respectability of the assembly; he
would have remarked that there were no little tables scattered about the
ground, no boys running about with foaming mugs of beer, no noise, no
loud talking; and how restful to all the senses!
Mrs. Bartlett Glow had the whim to devote herself to Mrs. Benson, and was
repaid by the acquisition of a great deal of information concerning the
social and domestic, life in Cyrusville, Ohio, and the maternal ambition
for Irene. Stanhope and Irene sat a little apart from the others, and
gave themselves up to the witchery of the hour. It would not be easy to
reproduce in type all that they said; and what was most important to
them, and would be most interesting to the reader, are the things they
did not say--the half exclamations, the delightful silences, the tones,
the looks that are the sign language of lovers. It was Irene who first
broke the spell of this delightful mode of communication, and in a pause
of the music said, "Your cousin has been telling me of your relatives in
New York, and she told me more of yourself than you ever did."
"Very likely. Trust your friends for that. I hope she gave me a good
character."
"Oh, she has the greatest admiration for you, and she said the family
have the highest expectations of your career. Why didn't you tell me you
were the child of such hopes? It half frightened me."
"It must be appalling. What did she say of my uncle and aunts?"
"Oh, I cannot tell you, except that she raised an image in my mind of an
awful vision of ancient family and exclusiveness, the most fastidious,
delightful, conventional people, she said, very old family, looked down
upon Washington Irving, don't you know, because he wrote. I suppose she
wanted to impress me with the value of the prize I've drawn, dear. But I
should like you just as well if your connections had not looked down on
Irving. Are they so very high and mighty?"
"Oh, dear, no. Much like other people. My aunts are the dearest old
ladies, just a little nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that are
not--well, of course, they live in a rather small world. My uncle is a
bachelor, rather particular, not what you would call a genial old man;
been abroad a good deal, and moved mostly in our set; sometimes I think
he cares more for his descent than for his position at the bar, which is
a very respectable one, by the way. You know what an old bachelor is who
never has had anybody to shake him out of his contemplation of his
family?"
"Do you think," said Irene, a little anxiously, letting her hand rest a
moment upon Stanhope's, "that they will like poor little me? I believe I
am more afraid of the aunts than of the uncle. I don't believe they will
be as nice as your cousin."
"Of course they will like you. Everybody likes you. The aunts are just
a little old-fashioned, that is all. Habit has made them draw a social
circle with a small radius. Some have one kind of circle, some another.
Of course my aunts are sorry for any one who is not descended from the
Van Schlovenhovens--the old Van Schlovenhoven had the first brewery of
the colony in the time of Peter Stuyvesant. In New York it's a family
matter, in Philadelphia it's geographical. There it's a question whether
you live within the lines of Chestnut Street and Spruce Street--outside
of these in the city you are socially impossible: Mrs. Cortlandt told me
that two Philadelphia ladies who had become great friends at a summer
resort--one lived within and the other without the charmed lines--went
back to town together in the autumn. At the station when they parted,
the 'inside' lady said to the other: 'Good-by. It has been such a
pleasure to know you! I suppose I shall see you sometimes at
Moneymaker's!' Moneymaker's is the Bon Marche of Philadelphia."
The music ceased; the band were hurrying away; the people all over the
grounds were rising to go, lingering a little, reluctant to leave the
enchanting scene. Irene wished, with a sigh, that it might never end;
unreal as it was, it was more native to her spirit than that future which
her talk with Stanhope had opened to her contemplation. An ill-defined
apprehension possessed her in spite of the reassuring presence of her
lover and her perfect confidence in the sincerity of his passion; and
this feeling was somehow increased by the appearance of Mrs. Glow with
her mother; she could not shake off the uneasy suggestion of the
contrast.
At the hour when the ladies went to their rooms the day was just
beginning for a certain class of the habitues. The parlors were nearly
deserted, and few chairs were occupied on the piazzas, but the ghosts of
another generation seemed to linger, especially in the offices and
barroom. Flitting about were to be seen the social heroes who had a
notoriety thirty and forty years ago in the newspapers. This dried-up
old man in a bronze wig, scuffling along in list slippers, was a famous
criminal lawyer in his day; this gentleman, who still wears an air of
gallantry, and is addressed as General, had once a reputation for
successes in the drawing-room as well as on the field of Mars; here is a
genuine old beau, with the unmistakable self-consciousness of one who has
been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst of
his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air of
being on the stage. These people all have the "nightcap" habit, and
drift along towards the bar-room--the last brilliant scene in the drama
of the idle day, the necessary portal to the realm of silence and sleep.
This is a large apartment, brightly lighted, with a bar extending across
one end of it. Modern taste is conspicuous here, nothing is gaudy,
colors are subdued, and its decorations are simple even the bar itself is
refined, substantial, decorous, wanting entirely the meretricious glitter
and barbarous ornamentation of the old structures of this sort, and the
attendants have wholly laid aside the smart antics of the former
bartender, and the customers are swiftly and silently served by the
deferential waiters. This is one of the most striking changes that King
noticed in American life.
There is a certain sort of life-whether it is worth seeing is a question
that we can see nowhere else, and for an hour Mr. Glow and King and
Forbes, sipping their raspberry shrub in a retired corner of the
bar-room, were interested spectators of the scene. Through the padded
swinging doors entered, as in a play, character after character. Each
actor as he entered stopped for a moment and stared about him, and in
this act revealed his character-his conceit, his slyness, his bravado,
his self-importance. There was great variety, but practically one
prevailing type, and that the New York politician. Most of them were
from the city, though the country politician apes the city politician as
much as possible, but he lacks the exact air, notwithstanding the black
broadcloth and the white hat. The city men are of two varieties--the
smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured,
gross, fat old fellow. One after another they glide in, with an always
conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one
with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another
leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink "My respects"--all
rather solemn and stiff, impressed perhaps by the decorousness of the
place, and conscious of their good clothes. Enter together three stout
men, a yard across the shoulders, each with an enormous development in
front, waddle up to the bar, attempt to form a triangular group for
conversation, but find themselves too far apart to talk in that position,
and so arrange themselves side by side--a most distinguished-looking
party, like a portion of a swell-front street in Boston. To them
swaggers up a young sport, like one of Thackeray's figures in the "Irish
Sketch-Book"--short, in a white hat, poor face, impudent manner, poses
before the swell fronts, and tosses off his glass. About a little table
in one corner are three excessively "ugly mugs," leering at each other
and pouring down champagne. These men are all dressed as nearly like
gentlemen as the tailor can make them, but even he cannot change their
hard, brutal faces. It is not their fault that money and clothes do not
make a gentleman; they are well fed and vulgarly prosperous, and if you
inquire you will find that their women are in silks and laces. This is a
good place to study the rulers of New York; and impressive as they are in
appearance, it is a relief to notice that they unbend to each other, and
hail one another familiarly as "Billy" and "Tommy." Do they not ape what
is most prosperous and successful in American life? There is one who in
make-up, form, and air, even to the cut of his side-whiskers, is an exact
counterpart of the great railway king. Here is a heavy-faced young
fellow in evening dress, perhaps endeavoring to act the part of a
gentleman, who has come from an evening party unfortunately a little
"slewed," but who does not know how to sustain the character, for
presently he becomes very familiar and confidential with the dignified
colored waiter at the buffet, who requires all his native politeness to
maintain the character of a gentleman for two.
If these men had millions, could they get any more enjoyment out of life?
To have fine clothes, drink champagne, and pose in a fashionable bar-room
in the height of the season--is not this the apotheosis of the "heeler"
and the ward "worker"? The scene had a fascination for the artist, who
declared that he never tired watching the evolutions of the foreign
element into the full bloom of American citizenship.
XII
LAKE GEORGE, AND SARATOGA AGAIN
The intimacy between Mrs. Bartlett Glow and Irene increased as the days
went by. The woman of society was always devising plans for Irene's
entertainment, and winning her confidence by a thousand evidences of
interest and affection. Pleased as King was with this at first, he began
to be annoyed at a devotion to which he could have no objection except
that it often came between him and the enjoyment of the girl's society
alone; and latterly he had noticed that her manner was more grave when
they were together, and that a little something of reserve mingled with
her tenderness.
They made an excursion one day to Lake George--a poetical pilgrimage that
recalled to some of the party (which included some New Orleans friends)
the romance of early days. To the Bensons and the artist it was all new,
and to King it was seen for the first time in the transforming atmosphere
of love. To men of sentiment its beauties will never be exhausted; but
to the elderly and perhaps rheumatic tourist the draughty steamboats do
not always bring back the remembered delight of youth. There is no
pleasanter place in the North for a summer residence, but there is a
certain element of monotony and weariness inseparable from an excursion:
travelers have been known to yawn even on the Rhine. It was a gray day,
the country began to show the approach of autumn, and the view from the
landing at Caldwell's, the head of the lake, was never more pleasing. In
the marshes the cat-tails and the faint flush of color on the alders and
soft maples gave a character to the low shore, and the gentle rise of the
hills from the water's edge combined to make a sweet and peaceful
landscape.
The tourists find the steamer waiting for them at the end of the rail,
and if they are indifferent to the war romances of the place, as most of
them are, they hurry on without a glance at the sites of the famous old
forts St. George and William Henry. Yet the head of the lake might well
detain them a few hours though they do not care for the scalping Indians
and their sometime allies the French or the English. On the east side
the lake is wooded to the shore, and the jutting points and charming bays
make a pleasant outline to the eye. Crosbyside is the ideal of a summer
retreat, nestled in foliage on a pretty point, with its great trees on a
sloping lawn, boathouses and innumerable row and sail boats, and a lovely
view, over the blue waters, of a fine range of hills. Caldwell itself,
on the west side, is a pretty tree-planted village in a break in the
hills, and a point above it shaded with great pines is a favorite
rendezvous for pleasure parties, who leave the ground strewn with
egg-shells and newspapers. The Fort William Henry Hotel was formerly the
chief resort on the lake. It is a long, handsome structure, with broad
piazzas, and low evergreens and flowers planted in front. The view from
it, under the great pines, of the lake and the northern purple hills, is
lovely. But the tide of travel passes it by, and the few people who were
there seemed lonesome. It is always so. Fashion demands novelty; one
class of summer boarders and tourists drives out another, and the people
who want to be sentimental at this end of the lake now pass it with a
call, perhaps a sigh for the past, and go on to fresh pastures where
their own society is encamped.
Lake George has changed very much within ten years; hotels and great
boarding-houses line the shores; but the marked difference is in the
increase of cottage life. As our tourists sailed down the lake they were
surprised by the number of pretty villas with red roofs peeping out from
the trees, and the occupation of every island and headland by gay and
often fantastic summer residences. King had heard this lake compared
with Como and Maggiore, and as a patriot he endeavored to think that its
wild and sylvan loveliness was more pleasing than the romantic beauty of
the Italian lakes. But the effort failed. In this climate it is
impossible that Horicon should ever be like Como. Pretty hills and
forests and temporary summer structures cannot have the poetic or the
substantial interest of the ancient villages and towns clinging to the
hills, the old stone houses, the vines, the ruins, the atmosphere of a
long civilization. They do the lovely Horicon no service who provoke
such comparisons.
The lake has a character of its own. As the traveler sails north and
approaches the middle of the lake, the gems of green islands multiply,
the mountains rise higher, and shouldering up in the sky seem to bar a
further advance; toward sunset the hills, which are stately but lovely, a
silent assembly of round and sharp peaks, with long, graceful slopes,
take on exquisite colors, violet, bronze, and green, and now and again a
bold rocky bluff shines like a ruby in the ruddy light. Just at dusk the
steamer landed midway in the lake at Green Island, where the scenery is
the boldest and most romantic; from the landing a park-like lawn, planted
with big trees, slopes up to a picturesque hotel. Lights twinkled from
many a cottage window and from boats in the bay, and strains of music
saluted the travelers. It was an enchanting scene.
The genius of Philadelphia again claims the gratitude of the tourist, for
the Sagamore Hotel is one of the most delightful hostelries in the world.
A peculiar, interesting building, rambling up the slope on different
levels, so contrived that all the rooms are outside, and having a
delightful irregularity, as if the house had been a growth. Naturally a
hotel so dainty in its service and furniture, and so refined, was crowded
to its utmost capacity. The artist could find nothing to complain of in
the morning except that the incandescent electric light in his chamber
went out suddenly at midnight and left him in blank darkness in the most
exciting crisis of a novel. Green Island is perhaps a mile long. A
bridge connects it with the mainland, and besides the hotel it has a
couple of picturesque stone and timber cottages. At the north end are
the remains of the English intrenchments of 1755--signs of war and hate
which kindly nature has almost obliterated with sturdy trees. With the
natural beauty of the island art has little interfered; near the hotel is
the most stately grove of white birches anywhere to be seen, and their
silvery sheen, with occasional patches of sedge, and the tender sort of
foliage that Corot liked to paint, gives an exceptional refinement to the
landscape. One needs, indeed, to be toned up by the glimpses, under the
trees, over the blue water, of the wooded craggy hills, with their
shelf-like ledges, which are full of strength and character. The charm
of the place is due to this combination of loveliness and granitic
strength.
Irene long remembered the sail of that morning, seated in the bow of the
steamer with King, through scenes of ever-changing beauty, as the boat
wound about the headlands and made its calls, now on one side and now on
the other, at the pretty landings and decorated hotels. On every hand
was the gayety of summer life--a striped tent on a rocky point with a
platform erected for dancing, a miniature bark but on an island, and a
rustic arched bridge to the mainland, gaudy little hotels with winding
paths along the shore, and at all the landings groups of pretty girls and
college lads in boating costume. It was wonderful how much these holiday
makers were willing to do for the entertainment of the passing travelers.
A favorite pastime in this peaceful region was the broom drill, and its
execution gave an operatic character to the voyage. When the steamer
approaches, a band of young ladies in military ranks, clad in light
marching costume, each with a broom in place of a musket, descend to the
landing and delight the spectators with their warlike manoeuvres. The
march in the broom-drill is two steps forward and one step back, a mode
of progression that conveys the notion of a pleasing indecision of
purpose, which is foreign to the character of these handsome Amazons, who
are quite able to hold the wharf against all comers. This act of war in
fancy, dress, with its two steps forward and one back, and the singing of
a song, is one of the most fatal to the masculine peace of mind in the
whole history of carnage.
Mrs. Bartlett Glow, to be sure, thought it would be out of place at the
Casino; but even she had to admit that the American girl who would
bewitch the foreigner with her one, two, and one, and her flourish of
broom on Lake George, was capable of freezing his ardor by her cool
good-breeding at Newport.
There was not much more to be done at Saratoga. Mrs. Benson had tried
every spring in the valley, and thus anticipated a remedy, as Mr. Benson
said, for any possible "complaint" that might visit her in the future.
Mr. Benson himself said that he thought it was time for him to move to a
new piazza, as he had worn out half the chairs at the Grand Union. The
Bartlett-Glows were already due at Richfield; in fact, Penelope was
impatient to go, now that she had persuaded the Bensons to accompany her;
and the artist, who had been for some time grumbling that there was
nothing left in Saratoga to draw except corks, reminded King of his
agreement at Bar Harbor, and the necessity he felt for rural retirement
after having been dragged all over the continent.
On the last day Mr. Glow took King and Forbes off to the races, and
Penelope and the Bensons drove to the lake. King never could tell why he
consented to this arrangement, but he knew in a vague way that it is
useless to attempt to resist feminine power, that shapes our destiny in
spite of all our rough-hewing of its outlines. He had become very uneasy
at the friendship between Irene and Penelope, but he could give no reason
for his suspicion, for it was the most natural thing in the world for his
cousin to be interested in the girl who was about to come into the
family. It seemed also natural that Penelope should be attracted by her
nobility of nature. He did not know till afterwards that it was this
very nobility and unselfishness which Penelope saw could be turned to
account for her own purposes. Mrs. Bartlett Glow herself would have said
that she was very much attached to Irene, and this would have been true;
she would have said also that she pitied her, and this would have been
true; but she was a woman whose world was bounded by her own social
order, and she had no doubt in her own mind that she was loyal to the
best prospects of her cousin, and, what was of more importance, that she
was protecting her little world from a misalliance when she preferred
Imogene Cypher to Irene Benson. In fact, the Bensons in her set were
simply an unthinkable element. It disturbed the established order of
things. If any one thinks meanly of Penelope for counting upon the
heroism of Irene to effect her unhappiness, let him reflect of how little
consequence is the temporary happiness of one or two individuals compared
with the peace and comfort of a whole social order. And she might also
well make herself believe that she was consulting the best interests of
Irene in keeping her out of a position where she might be subject to so
many humiliations. She was capable of crying over the social adventures
of the heroine of a love story, and taking sides with her against the
world, but as to the actual world itself, her practical philosophy taught
her that it was much better always, even at the cost of a little
heartache in youth, to go with the stream than against it.
The lake at Saratoga is the most picturesque feature of the region, and
would alone make the fortune of any other watering-place. It is always a
surprise to the stranger, who has bowled along the broad drive of five
miles through a pleasing but not striking landscape, to come suddenly,
when he alights at the hotel, upon what seems to be a "fault," a sunken
valley, and to look down a precipitous, grassy, tree-planted slope upon a
lake sparkling at the bottom and reflecting the enclosing steep shores.
It is like an aqua-marine gem countersunk in the green landscape. Many
an hour had Irene and Stanhope passed in dreamy contemplation of it. They
had sailed down the lake in the little steamer, they had whimsically
speculated about this and that couple who took their ices or juleps under
the trees or on the piazza of the hotel, and the spot had for them a
thousand tender associations. It was here that Stanhope had told her
very fully the uneventful story of his life, and it was here that she had
grown into full sympathy with his aspirations for the future.
It was of all this that Irene thought as she sat talking that day with
Penelope on a bench at the foot of the hill by the steamboat landing. It
was this very future that the woman of the world was using to raise in
the mind of Irene a morbid sense of her duty. Skillfully with this was
insinuated the notion of the false and contemptible social pride and
exclusiveness of Stanhope's relations, which Mrs. Bartlett Glow
represented as implacable while she condemned it as absurd. There was
not a word of opposition to the union of Irene and Stanhope: Penelope was
not such a bungler as to make that mistake. It was not her cue to
definitely suggest a sacrifice for the welfare of her cousin. If she let
Irene perceive that she admired the courage in her that could face all
these adverse social conditions that were conjured up before her, Irene
could never say that Penelope had expressed anything of the sort. Her
manner was affectionate, almost caressing; she declared that she felt a
sisterly interest in her. This was genuine enough. I am not sure that
Mrs. Bartlett Glow did not sometimes waver in her purpose when she was in
the immediate influence of the girl's genuine charm, and felt how sincere
she was. She even went so far as to wish to herself that Irene had been
born in her own world.
It was not at all unnatural that Irene should have been charmed by
Penelope, and that the latter should gradually have established an
influence over her. She was certainly kind-hearted, amiable, bright,
engaging. I think all those who have known her at Newport, or in her New
York home, regard her as one of the most charming women in the world. Nor
is she artificial, except as society requires her to be, and if she
regards the conventions of her own set as the most important things in
life, therein she does not differ from hosts of excellent wives and
mothers. Irene, being utterly candid herself, never suspected that
Penelope had at all exaggerated the family and social obstacles, nor did
it occur to her to doubt Penelope's affection for her. But she was not
blind. Being a woman, she comprehended perfectly the indirection of a
woman's approaches, and knew well enough by this time that Penelope,
whatever her personal leanings, must feel with her family in regard to
this engagement. And that she, who was apparently her friend, and who
had Stanhope's welfare so much at heart, did so feel was an added reason
why Irene was drifting towards a purpose of self-sacrifice. When she was
with Stanhope such a sacrifice seemed as impossible as it would be cruel,
but when she was with Mrs. Bartlett Glow, or alone, the subject took
another aspect. There is nothing more attractive to a noble woman of
tender heart than a duty the performance of which will make her suffer. A
false notion of duty has to account for much of the misery in life.
It was under this impression that Irene passed the last evening at
Saratoga with Stanhope on the piazza of the hotel--an evening that the
latter long remembered as giving him the sweetest and the most
contradictory and perplexing glimpses of a woman's heart.
XIII
RICHFIELD SPRINGS, COOPERSTOWN
After weeks of the din of Strauss and Gungl, the soothing strains of the
Pastoral Symphony. Now no more the kettle-drum and the ceaseless
promenade in showy corridors, but the oaten pipe under the spreading
maples, the sheep feeding on the gentle hills of Otsego, the carnival of
the hop-pickers. It is time to be rural, to adore the country, to speak
about the dew on the upland pasture, and the exquisite view from Sunset
Hill. It is quite English, is it not? this passion for quiet, refined
country life, which attacks all the summer revelers at certain periods in
the season, and sends them in troops to Richfield or Lenox or some other
peaceful retreat, with their simple apparel bestowed in modest fourstory
trunks. Come, gentle shepherdesses, come, sweet youths in white flannel,
let us tread a measure on the greensward, let us wander down the lane,
let us pass under the festoons of the hop-vines, let us saunter in the
paths of sentiment, that lead to love in a cottage and a house in town.
Every watering-place has a character of its own, and those who have given
little thought to this are surprised at the endless variety in the
American resorts. But what is even more surprising is the influence that
these places have upon the people that frequent them, who appear to
change their characters with their surroundings. One woman in her season
plays many parts, dashing in one place, reserved in another, now gay and
active, now listless and sentimental, not at all the same woman at
Newport that she is in the Adirondack camps, one thing at Bar Harbor and
quite another at Saratoga or at Richfield. Different tastes, to be sure,
are suited at different resorts, but fashion sends a steady procession of
the same people on the round of all.
The charm of Richfield Springs is in the character of the landscape. It
is a limestone region of gentle slopes and fine lines; and although it is
elevated, the general character is refined rather than bold, the fertile
valleys in pleasing irregularity falling away from rounded wooded hills
in a manner to produce the impression of peace and repose. The lay of
the land is such that an elevation of a few hundred feet gives a most
extensive prospect, a view of meadows and upland pastures, of lakes and
ponds, of forests hanging in dark masses on the limestone summits, of
fields of wheat and hops, and of distant mountain ranges. It is scenery
that one grows to love, and that responds to one's every mood in variety
and beauty. In a whole summer the pedestrian will not exhaust the
inspiring views, and the drives through the gracious land, over hills,
round the lakes, by woods and farms, increase in interest as one knows
them better. The habitues of the place, year after year, are at a loss
for words to convey their peaceful satisfaction.
In this smiling country lies the pretty village of Richfield, the rural
character of which is not entirely lost by reason of the hotels,
cottages, and boardinghouses which line the broad principal street. The
centre of the town is the old Spring House and grounds. When our
travelers alighted in the evening at this mansion, they were reminded of
an English inn, though it is not at all like an inn in England except in
its atmosphere of comfort. The building has rather a colonial character,
with its long corridors and pillared piazzas; built at different times,
and without any particular plans except to remain old-fashioned, it is
now a big, rambling white mass of buildings in the midst of maple-trees,
with so many stairs and passages on different levels, and so many nooks
and corners, that the stranger is always getting lost in it--turning up
in the luxurious smoking-room when he wants to dine, and opening a door
that lets him out into the park when he is trying to go to bed. But
there are few hotels in the country where the guests are so well taken
care of.
This was the unbought testimony of Miss Lamont, who, with her uncle, had
been there long enough to acquire the common anxiety of sojourners that
the newcomers should be pleased, and who superfluously explained the
attractions of the place to the artist, as if in his eyes, that rested on
her, more than one attraction was needed. It was very pleasant to see
the good comradeship that existed between these two, and the frank
expression of their delight in meeting again. Here was a friendship
without any reserve, or any rueful misunderstandings, or necessity for
explanations. Irene's eyes followed them with a wistful look as they
went off together round the piazza and through the parlors, the girl
playing the part of the hostess, and inducting him into the mild gayeties
of the place.
The height of the season was over, she said; there had been tableaux and
charades, and broom-drills, and readings and charity concerts. Now the
season was on the sentimental wane; every night the rooms were full of
whist-players, and the days were occupied in quiet strolling over the
hills, and excursions to Cooperstown and Cherry Valley and "points of
view," and visits to the fields to see the hop-pickers at work. If there
were a little larking about the piazzas in the evening, and a group here
and there pretending to be merry over tall glasses with ice and straws in
them, and lingering good-nights at the stairways, why should the aged and
rheumatic make a note of it? Did they not also once prefer the dance to
hobbling to the spring, and the taste of ginger to sulphur?
Of course the raison d'etre of being here is the sulphur spring. There
is no doubt of its efficacy. I suppose it is as unpleasant as any in the
country. Everybody smells it, and a great many drink it. The artist
said that after using it a week the blind walk, the lame see, and the
dumb swear. It renews youth, and although the analyzer does not say that
it is a "love philter," the statistics kept by the colored autocrat who
ladles out the fluid show that there are made as many engagements at
Richfield as at any other summer fair in the country.
There is not much to chronicle in the peaceful flow of domestic life,
and, truth to say, the charm of Richfield is largely in its restfulness.
Those who go there year after year converse a great deal about their
liking for it, and think the time well spent in persuading new arrivals
to take certain walks and drives. It was impressed upon King that he
must upon no account omit a visit to Rum Hill, from the summit of which
is had a noble prospect, including the Adirondack Mountains. He tried
this with a walking party, was driven back when near the summit by a
thunder, storm, which offered a series of grand pictures in the sky and
on the hills, and took refuge in a farmhouse which was occupied by a band
of hop-pickers. These adventurers are mostly young girls and young men
from the cities and factory villages, to whom this is the only holiday of
the year. Many of the pickers, however, are veterans. At this season
one meets them on all the roads, driving from farm to farm in lumber
wagons, carrying into the dull rural life their slang, and "Captain
Jinks" songs, and shocking free manners. At the great hop fields they
lodge all together in big barracks, and they make lively for the time
whatever farmhouse they occupy. They are a "rough lot," and need very
much the attention of the poet and the novelist, who might (if they shut
their eyes) make this season as romantic as vintage-time on the Rhine, or
"moonshining" on the Southern mountains. The hop field itself, with its
tall poles draped in graceful vines which reach from pole to pole, and
hang their yellowing fruit in pretty festoons and arbors, is much more
picturesque than the vine-clad hills.
Mrs. Bartlett Glow found many acquaintances here from New York and
Philadelphia and Newport, and, to do her justice, she introduced Irene to
them and presently involved her in so many pleasure parties and
excursions that she and King were scarcely ever alone together. When
opportunity offered for a stroll a deux, the girl's manner was so
constrained that King was compelled to ask the reason of it. He got very
little satisfaction, and the puzzle of her conduct was increased by her
confession that she loved him just the same, and always should.
"But something has come between us," he said. "I think I have the right
to be treated with perfect frankness."
"So you have," she replied. "There is nothing--nothing at least that
changes my feeling towards you."
"But you think that mine is changed for you?"
"No, not that, either, never that;" and her voice showed excitement as
she turned away her head. "But don't you know, Stanhope, you have not
known me very long, and perhaps you have been a little hasty, and--how
shall I say it?--if you had more time to reflect, when you go back to
your associates and your active life, it might somehow look differently
to you, and your prospects--"
"Why, Irene, I have no prospects without you. I love you; you are my
life. I don't understand. I am just yours, and nothing you can do will
ever make it any different for me; but if you want to be free--"
"No, no," cried the girl, trying in vain to restrain her agitation and
her tears, "not that. I don't want to be free. But you will not
understand. Circumstances are so cruel, and if, Stanhope, you ever
should regret when it is too late! It would kill me. I want you to be
happy. And, Stanhope, promise me that, whatever happens, you will not
think ill of me."
Of course he promised, he declared that nothing could happen, he vowed,
and he protested against this ridiculous phantom in her mind. To a man,
used to straightforward cuts in love as in any other object of his
desire, this feminine exaggeration of conscientiousness is wholly
incomprehensible. How under heavens a woman could get a kink of duty in
her mind which involved the sacrifice of herself and her lover was past
his fathoming.
The morning after this conversation, the most of which the reader has
been spared, there was an excursion to Cooperstown. The early start of
the tally-ho coaches for this trip is one of the chief sensations of the
quiet village. The bustle to collect the laggards, the importance of the
conductors and drivers, the scramble up the ladders, the ruses to get
congenial seat-neighbors, the fine spirits of everybody evoked by the
fresh morning air, and the elevation on top of the coaches, give the
start an air of jolly adventure. Away they go, the big red-and-yellow
arks, swinging over the hills and along the well-watered valleys, past
the twin lakes to Otsego, over which hangs the romance of Cooper's tales,
where a steamer waits. This is one of the most charming of the little
lakes that dot the interior of New York; without bold shores or anything
sensational in its scenery, it is a poetic element in a refined and
lovely landscape. There are a few fishing-lodges and summer cottages on
its banks (one of them distinguished as "Sinners' Rest"), and a hotel or
two famous for dinners; but the traveler would be repaid if there were
nothing except the lovely village of Cooperstown embowered in maples at
the foot. The town rises gently from the lake, and is very picturesque
with its church spires and trees and handsome mansions; and nothing could
be prettier than the foreground, the gardens, the allees of willows, the
long boat wharves with hundreds of rowboats and sail-boats, and the exit
of the Susquehanna River, which here swirls away under drooping foliage,
and begins its long journey to the sea. The whole village has an air of
leisure and refinement. For our tourists the place was pervaded by the
spirit of the necromancer who has woven about it a spell of romance; but
to the ordinary inhabitants the long residence of the novelist here was
not half so important as that of the very distinguished citizen who had
made a great fortune out of some patent, built here a fine house, and
adorned his native town. It is not so very many years since Cooper died,
and yet the boatmen and loungers about the lake had only the faintest
impression of the man-there was a writer by that name, one of them said,
and some of his family lived near the house of the great man already
referred to. The magician who created Cooperstown sleeps in the old
English-looking church-yard of the Episcopal church, in the midst of the
graves of his relations, and there is a well-worn path to his head-stone.
Whatever the common people of the town may think, it is that grave that
draws most pilgrims to the village. Where the hillside cemetery now is,
on the bank of the lake, was his farm, which he visited always once and
sometimes twice a day. He commonly wrote only from ten to twelve in the
morning, giving the rest of the time to his farm and the society of his
family. During the period of his libel suits, when the newspapers
represented him as morose and sullen in his retirement, he was, on the
contrary, in the highest spirits and the most genial mood. "Deer-slayer"
was written while this contest was at its height. Driving one day from
his farm with his daughter, he stopped and looked long over his favorite
prospect on the lake, and said, "I must write one more story, dear, about
our little lake." At that moment the "Deerslayer" was born. He was
silent the rest of the way home, and went immediately to his library and
began the story.
The party returned in a moralizing vein. How vague already in the
village which his genius has made known over the civilized world is the
fame of Cooper! To our tourists the place was saturated with his
presence, but the new generation cares more for its smart prosperity than
for all his romance. Many of the passengers on the boat had stopped at a
lakeside tavern to dine, preferring a good dinner to the associations
which drew our sentimentalists to the spots that were hallowed by the
necromancer's imagination. And why not? One cannot live in the past
forever. The people on the boat who dwelt in Cooperstown were not
talking about Cooper, perhaps had not thought of him for a year. The
ladies, seated in the bow of the boat, were comparing notes about their
rheumatism and the measles of their children; one of them had been to the
funeral of a young girl who was to have been married in the autumn, poor
thing, and she told her companion who were at the funeral, and how they
were dressed, and how little feeling Nancy seemed to show, and how
shiftless it was not to have more flowers, and how the bridegroom bore
up-well, perhaps it's an escape, she was so weakly.
The day lent a certain pensiveness to all this; the season was visibly
waning; the soft maples showed color, the orchards were heavy with fruit,
the mountain-ash hung out its red signals, the hop-vines were yellowing,
and in all the fence corners the golden-rod flamed and made the meanest
high-road a way of glory. On Irene fell a spell of sadness that affected
her lover. Even Mrs. Bartlett-Glow seemed touched by some regret for the
fleeting of the gay season, and the top of the coach would have been
melancholy enough but for the high spirits of Marion and the artist,
whose gayety expanded in the abundance of the harvest season. Happy
natures, unrestrained by the subtle melancholy of a decaying year!
The summer was really going. On Sunday the weather broke in a violent
storm of wind and rain, and at sunset, when it abated, there were
portentous gleams on the hills, and threatening clouds lurking about the
sky. It was time to go. Few people have the courage to abide the
breaking of the serenity of summer, and remain in the country for the
more glorious autumn days that are to follow. The Glows must hurry back
to Newport. The Bensons would not be persuaded out of their fixed plan
to "take in," as Mr. Benson expressed it, the White Mountains. The
others were going to Niagara and the Thousand Islands; and when King told
Irene that he would much rather change his route and accompany her, he
saw by the girl's manner that it was best not to press the subject. He
dreaded to push an explanation, and, foolish as lovers are, he was wise
for once in trusting to time. But he had a miserable evening. He let
himself be irritated by the lightheartedness of Forbes. He objected to
the latter's whistling as he went about his room packing up his traps. He
hated a fellow that was always in high spirits. "Why, what has come over
you, old man?" queried the artist, stopping to take a critical look at
his comrade. "Do you want to get out of it? It's my impression that you
haven't taken sulphur water enough."
On Monday morning there was a general clearing out. The platform at the
station was crowded. The palace-cars for New York, for Niagara, for
Albany, for the West, were overflowing. There was a pile of trunks as
big as a city dwelling-house. Baby-carriages cumbered the way; dogs were
under foot, yelping and rending the tender hearts of their owners; the
porters staggered about under their loads, and shouted till they were
hoarse; farewells were said; rendezvous made--alas! how many
half-fledged hopes came to an end on that platform! The artist thought
he had never seen so many pretty girls together in his life before, and
each one had in her belt a bunch of goldenrod. Summer was over, sure
enough.
At Utica the train was broken up, and its cars despatched in various
directions. King remembered that it was at Utica that the younger Cato
sacrificed himself. In the presence of all the world Irene bade him
good-by. "It will not be for long," said King, with an attempt at
gayety. "Nothing is for long," she said with the same manner. And then
added in a low tone, as she slipped a note into his hand, "Do not think
ill of me."
King opened the note as soon as he found his seat in the car, and this
was what he read as the train rushed westward towards the Great Fall:
"MY DEAR FRIEND,--How can I ever say it? It is best that we
separate. I have thought and thought; I have struggled with myself.
I think that I know it is best for you. I have been happy--ah me!
Dear, we must look at the world as it is. We cannot change it--if
we break our hearts, we cannot. Don't blame your cousin. It is
nothing that she has done. She has been as sweet and kind to me as
possible, but I have seen through her what I feared, just how it is.
Don't reproach me. It is hard now. I know it. But I believe that
you will come to see it as I do. If it was any sacrifice that I
could make, that would be easy. But to think that I had sacrificed
you, and that you should some day become aware of it! You are free.
I am not silly. It is the future I am thinking of. You must take
your place in the world where your lot is cast. Don't think I have
a foolish pride. Perhaps it is pride that tells me not to put
myself in a false position; perhaps it is something else. Never
think it is want of heart in.
"Good-by.
"IRENE"
As King finished this he looked out of the window.
The landscape was black.
XIV
NIAGARA
In the car for Niagara was an Englishman of the receptive, guileless,
thin type, inquisitive and overflowing with approval of everything
American--a type which has now become one of the common features of
travel in this country. He had light hair, sandy side-whiskers, a face
that looked as if it had been scrubbed with soap and sandpaper, and he
wore a sickly yellow traveling-suit. He was accompanied by his wife, a
stout, resolute matron, in heavy boots, a sensible stuff gown, with a lot
of cotton lace fudged about her neck, and a broad brimmed hat with a
vegetable garden on top. The little man was always in pursuit of
information, in his guide-book or from his fellow-passengers, and
whenever he obtained any he invariably repeated it to his wife, who said
"Fancy!" and "Now, really!" in a rising inflection that expressed
surprise and expectation.
The conceited American, who commonly draws himself into a shell when he
travels, and affects indifference, and seems to be losing all natural
curiosity, receptivity, and the power of observation, is pretty certain
to undervalue the intelligence of this class of English travelers, and
get amusement out of their peculiarities instead of learning from them
how to make everyday of life interesting. Even King, who, besides his
national crust of exclusiveness, was today wrapped in the gloom of
Irene's letter, was gradually drawn to these simple, unpretending people.
He took for granted their ignorance of America--ignorance of America
being one of the branches taught in the English schools--and he soon
discovered that they were citizens of the world. They not only knew the
Continent very well, but they had spent a winter in Egypt, lived a year
in India, and seen something of China and much of Japan. Although they
had been scarcely a fortnight in the United States, King doubted if there
were ten women in the State of New York, not professional teachers, who
knew as much of the flora of the country as this plain-featured,
rich-voiced woman. They called King's attention to a great many features
of the landscape he had never noticed before, and asked him a great many
questions about farming and stock and wages that he could not answer. It
appeared that Mr. Stanley Stubbs, Stoke-Cruden--for that was the name and
address of the present discoverers of America--had a herd of short-horns,
and that Mrs. Stubbs was even more familiar with the herd-book than her
husband. But before the fact had enabled King to settle the position of
his new acquaintance satisfactorily to himself, Mrs. Stubbs upset his
estimate by quoting Tennyson.
"Your great English poet is very much read here," King said, by way of
being agreeable.
"So we have heard," replied Mrs. Stubbs. "Mr. Stubbs reads Tennyson
beautifully. He has thought of giving some readings while we are here.
We have been told that the Americans are very fond of readings."
"Yes," said King, "they are devoted to them, especially readings by
Englishmen in their native tongue. There is a great rage now for
everything English; at Newport hardly anything else is spoken."
Mrs. Stubbs looked for a moment as if this might be an American joke; but
there was no smile upon King's face, and she only said, "Fancy! You must
make a note of Newport, dear. That is one of the places we must see. Of
course Mr. Stubbs has never read in public, you know. But I suppose that
would make no difference, the Americans are so kind and so appreciative."
"Not the least difference," replied King. "They are used to it."
"It is a wonderful country," said Mr. Stubbs.
"Most interesting," chimed in Mrs. Stubbs; "and so odd!
"You know, Mr. King, we find some of the Americans so clever. We have
been surprised, really. It makes us feel quite at home. At the hotels
and everywhere, most obliging."
"Do you make a long stay?"
"Oh, no. We just want to study the people and the government, and see
the principal places. We were told that Albany is the capital, instead
of New York; it's so odd, you know. And Washington is another capital.
And there is Boston. It must be very confusing." King began to suspect
that he must be talking with the editor of the Saturday Review. Mr.
Stubbs continued: "They told us in New York that we ought to go to
Paterson on the Island of Jersey, I believe. I suppose it is as
interesting as Niagara. We shall visit it on our return. But we came
over more to see Niagara than anything else. And from there we shall run
over to Chicago and the Yosemite. Now we are here, we could not think of
going back without a look at the Yosemite."
King said that thus far he had existed without seeing the Yosemite, but
he believed that next to Chicago it was the most attractive place in the
country.
It was dark when they came into the station at Niagara--dark and silent.
Our American tourists, who were accustomed to the clamor of the hackmen
here, and expected to be assaulted by a horde of wild Comanches in plain
clothes, and torn limb from baggage, if not limb from limb, were unable
to account for this silence, and the absence of the common highwaymen,
until they remembered that the State had bought the Falls, and the agents
of the government had suppressed many of the old nuisances. It was
possible now to hear the roar of the cataract.
This unaccustomed human stillness was ominous to King. He would have
welcomed a Niagara of importunity and imprecations; he was bursting with
impatience to express himself; it seemed as if he would die if he were
silent an hour longer under that letter. Of course the usual American
relief of irritability and impatience suggested itself. He would
telegraph; only electricity was quick enough and fiery enough for his
mood. But what should he telegraph? The telegraph was not invented for
love-making, and is not adapted to it. It is ridiculous to make love by
wire. How was it possible to frame a message that should be commercial
on its face, and yet convey the deepest agony and devotion of the
sender's heart? King stood at the little telegraph window, looking at
the despatcher who was to send it, and thought of this. Depressed and
intent as he was, the whimsicality of the situation struck him. What
could he say? It illustrates our sheeplike habit of expressing ourselves
in the familiar phrase or popular slang of the day that at the instant
the only thing King could think of to send was this: "Hold the fort, for
I am coming." The incongruity of this made him smile, and he did not
write it. Finally he composed this message, which seemed to him to have
a businesslike and innocent aspect: "Too late. Impossible for me to
change. Have invested everything. Expect letter." Mechanically he
counted the words when he had written this. On the fair presumption that
the company would send "everything" as one word, there were still two
more than the conventional ten, and, from force of habit, he struck out
the words "for me." But he had no sooner done this than he felt a sense
of shame. It was contemptible for a man in love to count his words, and
it was intolerable to be haggling with himself at such a crisis over the
expense of a despatch. He got cold over the thought that Irene might
also count them, and see that the cost of this message of passion had
been calculated. And with recklessness he added: "We reach the Profile
House next week, and I am sure I can convince you I am right."
King found Niagara pitched to the key of his lacerated and tumultuous
feelings. There were few people at the Cataract House, and either the
bridal season had not set in, or in America a bride has been evolved who
does not show any consciousness of her new position. In his present mood
the place seemed deserted, the figures of the few visitors gliding about
as in a dream, as if they too had been subdued by the recent commission
which had silenced the drivers, and stopped the mills, and made the park
free, and was tearing down the presumptuous structures along the bank. In
this silence, which emphasized the quaking of the earth and air, there
was a sense of unknown, impending disaster. It was not to be borne
indoors, and the two friends went out into the night.
On the edge of the rapids, above the hotel, the old bath-house was in
process of demolition, its shaking piazza almost overhanging the flood.
Not much could be seen from it, but it was in the midst of an elemental
uproar. Some electric lamps shining through the trees made high lights
on the crests of the rapids, while the others near were in shadow and
dark. The black mass of Goat Island appeared under the lightning flashes
in the northwest sky, and whenever these quick gleams pierced the gloom
the frail bridge to the island was outlined for a moment, and then
vanished as if it had been swept away, and there could only be seen
sparks of light in the houses on the Canadian shore, which seemed very
near. In this unknown, which was rather felt than seen, there was a
sense of power and of mystery which overcame the mind; and in the black
night the roar, the cruel haste of the rapids, tossing white gleams and
hurrying to the fatal plunge, begat a sort of terror in the spectators.
It was a power implacable, vengeful, not to be measured. They strolled
down to Prospect Park. The gate was closed; it had been the scene of an
awful tragedy but a few minutes before. They did not know it, but they
knew that the air shuddered, and as they skirted the grounds along the
way to the foot-bridge the roar grew in their stunned ears. There,
projected out into the night, were the cables of steel holding the frail
platform over the abyss of night and terror. Beyond was Canada. There
was light enough in the sky to reveal, but not to dissipate, the
appalling insecurity. What an impious thing it seemed to them, this
trembling structure across the chasm! They advanced upon it. There were
gleams on the mill cascades below, and on the mass of the American Fall.
Below, down in the gloom, were patches of foam, slowly circling around in
the eddy--no haste now, just sullen and black satisfaction in the awful
tragedy of the fall. The whole was vague, fearful. Always the roar, the
shuddering of the air. I think that a man placed on this bridge at
night, and ignorant of the cause of the aerial agitation and the wild
uproar, could almost lose his reason in the panic of the scene. They
walked on; they set foot on Her Majesty's dominions; they entered the
Clifton House--quite American, you know, with its new bar and office. A
subdued air about everybody here also, and the same quaking, shivering,
and impending sense of irresponsible force. Even "two fingers," said the
artist, standing at the bar, had little effect in allaying the impression
of the terror out there. When they returned the moon was coming up,
rising and struggling and making its way slowly through ragged masses of
colored clouds. The river could be plainly seen now, smooth, deep,
treacherous; the falls on the American side showed fitfully like patches
of light and foam; the Horseshoe, mostly hidden by a cold silver mist,
occasionally loomed up a white and ghostly mass. They stood for a long
time looking down at the foot of the American Fall, the moon now showing
clearly the plunge of the heavy column--a column as stiff as if it were
melted silver-hushed and frightened by the weird and appalling scene.
They did not know at that moment that there where their eyes were
riveted, there at the base of the fall, a man's body was churning about,
plunged down and cast up, and beaten and whirled, imprisoned in the
refluent eddy. But a body was there. In the morning a man's overcoat
was found on the parapet at the angle of the fall. Someone then
remembered that in the evening, just before the park gate closed, he had
seen a man approach the angle of the wall where the overcoat was found.
The man was never seen after that. Night first, and then the hungry
water, swallowed him. One pictures the fearful leap into the dark, the
midway repentance, perhaps, the despair of the plunge. A body cast in
here is likely to tarry for days, eddying round and round, and tossed in
that terrible maelstrom, before a chance current ejects it, and sends it
down the fierce rapids below. King went back to the hotel in a terror of
the place, which did not leave him so long as he remained. His room
quivered, the roar filled all the air. Is not life real and terrible
enough, he asked himself, but that brides must cast this experience also
into their honeymoon?
The morning light did not efface the impressions of the night, the
dominating presence of a gigantic, pitiless force, a blind passion of
nature, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Shut the windows and lock the
door, you could not shut out the terror of it. The town did not seem
safe; the bridges, the buildings on the edge of the precipices with their
shaking casements, the islands, might at any moment be engulfed and
disappear. It was a thing to flee from.
I suspect King was in a very sensitive mood; the world seemed for the
moment devoid of human sympathy, and the savageness and turmoil played
upon his bare nerves. The artist himself shrank from contact with this
overpowering display, and said that he could not endure more than a day
or two of it. It needed all the sunshine in the face of Miss Lamont and
the serenity of her cheerful nature to make the situation tolerable, and
even her sprightliness was somewhat subdued. It was a day of big,
broken, high-sailing clouds, with a deep blue sky and strong sunlight.
The slight bridge to Goat Island appeared more presumptuous by daylight,
and the sharp slope of the rapids above it gave a new sense of the
impetuosity of the torrent. As they walked slowly on, past the now
abandoned paper-mills and the other human impertinences, the elemental
turmoil increased, and they seemed entering a world the foundations of
which were broken up. This must have been a good deal a matter of
impression, for other parties of sightseers were coming and going,
apparently unawed, and intent simply on visiting every point spoken of in
the guide-book, and probably unconscious of the all-pervading terror. But
King could not escape it, even in the throng descending and ascending the
stairway to Luna Island. Standing upon the platform at the top, he
realized for the first time the immense might of the downpour of the
American Fall, and noted the pale green color, with here and there a
violet tone, and the white cloud mass spurting out from the solid color.
On the foam-crested river lay a rainbow forming nearly a complete circle.
The little steamer Maid of the Mist was coming up, riding the waves,
dashed here and there by conflicting currents, but resolutely steaming
on--such is the audacity of man--and poking her venturesome nose into the
boiling foam under the Horseshoe. On the deck are pigmy passengers in
oil-skin suits, clumsy figures, like arctic explorers. The boat tosses
about like a chip, it hesitates and quivers, and then, slowly swinging,
darts away down the current, fleeing from the wrath of the waters, and
pursued by the angry roar.
Surely it is an island of magic, unsubstantial, liable to go adrift and
plunge into the canon. Even in the forest path, where the great tree
trunks assure one of stability and long immunity, this feeling cannot be
shaken off. Our party descended the winding staircase in the tower, and
walked on the shelf under the mighty ledge to the entrance of the Cave of
the Winds. The curtain of water covering this entrance was blown back
and forth by the wind, now leaving the platform dry and now deluging it.
A woman in the pathway was beckoning frantically and calling to a man who
stood on the platform, entirely unconscious of danger, looking up to the
green curtain and down into the boiling mist. It was Mrs. Stubbs; but
she was shouting against Niagara, and her husband mistook her pantomime
for gestures of wonder and admiration. Some moments passed, and then the
curtain swung in, and tons of water drenched the Englishman, and for an
instant hid him from sight. Then, as the curtain swung back, he was seen
clinging to the handrail, sputtering and astonished at such treatment. He
came up the bank dripping, and declaring that it was extraordinary, most
extraordinary, but he wouldn't have missed it for the world. From this
platform one looks down the narrow, slippery stairs that are lost in the
boiling mist, and wonders at the daring that built these steps down into
that hell, and carried the frail walk of planks over the bowlders outside
the fall. A party in oil-skins, making their way there, looked like lost
men and women in a Dante Inferno. The turbulent waters dashed all about
them; the mist occasionally wrapped them from sight; they clung to the
rails, they tried to speak to each other; their gestures seemed motions
of despair. Could that be Eurydice whom the rough guide was tenderly
dragging out of the hell of waters, up the stony path, that singular
figure in oil-skin trousers, who disclosed a pretty face inside her hood
as she emerged? One might venture into the infernal regions to rescue
such a woman; but why take her there? The group of adventurers stopped a
moment on the platform, with the opening into the misty cavern for a
background, and the artist said that the picture was, beyond all power of
the pencil, strange and fantastic. There is nothing, after all, that the
human race will not dare for a new sensation.
The walk around Goat Island is probably unsurpassed in the world for
wonder and beauty. The Americans have every reason to be satisfied with
their share of the fall; they get nowhere one single grand view like that
from the Canada side, but infinitely the deepest impression of majesty
and power is obtained on Goat Island. There the spectator is in the
midst of the war of nature. From the point over the Horseshoe Fall our
friends, speaking not much, but more and more deeply moved, strolled
along in the lovely forest, in a rural solemnity, in a local calm, almost
a seclusion, except for the ever-present shuddering roar in the air. On
the shore above the Horseshoe they first comprehended the breadth, the
great sweep, of the rapids. The white crests of the waves in the west
were coming out from under a black, lowering sky; all the foreground was
in bright sunlight, dancing, sparkling, leaping, hurrying on, converging
to the angle where the water becomes a deep emerald at the break and
plunge. The rapids above are a series of shelves, bristling with jutting
rocks and lodged trunks of trees, and the wildness of the scene is
intensified by the ragged fringe of evergreens on the opposite shore.
Over the whole island the mist, rising from the caldron, drifts in spray
when the wind is rable; but on this day the forest was bright and
cheerful, and as the strollers went farther away from the Great Fall; the
beauty of the scene began to steal away its terror. The roar was still
dominant, but far off and softened, and did not crush the ear. The
triple islands, the Three Sisters, in their picturesque wildness appeared
like playful freaks of nature in a momentary relaxation of the savage
mood. Here is the finest view of the river; to one standing on the
outermost island the great flood seems tumbling out of the sky. They
continued along the bank of the river. The shallow stream races by
headlong, but close to the edge are numerous eddies, and places where one
might step in and not be swept away. At length they reached the point
where the river divides, and the water stands for an instant almost
still, hesitating whether to take the Canadian or American plunge. Out a
little way from the shore the waves leap and tumble, and the two currents
are like race-horses parted on two ways to the goal. Just at this point
the water swirls and lingers; having lost all its fierceness and haste,
and spreads itself out placidly, dimpling in the sun. It may be a
treacherous pause, this water may be as cruel as that which rages below
and exults in catching a boat or a man and bounding with the victim over
the cataract; but the calm was very grateful to the stunned and buffeted
visitors; upon their jarred nerves it was like the peace of God.
"The preacher might moralize here," said King. "Here is the parting of
the ways for the young man; here is a moment of calm in which he can
decide which course he will take. See, with my hand I can turn the water
to Canada or to America! So momentous is the easy decision of the
moment."
"Yes," said the artist, "your figure is perfect. Whichever side the
young man takes, he goes to destruction."
"Or," continued King, appealing to Miss Lamont against this illogical
construction, "this is the maiden at the crucial instant of choosing
between two impetuous suitors."
"You mean she will be sorry, whichever she chooses?"
"You two practical people would spoil any illustration in the world. You
would divest the impressive drop of water on the mountain summit, which
might go to the Atlantic or to the Pacific, of all moral character by
saying that it makes no difference which ocean it falls into."
The relief from the dread of Niagara felt at this point of peace was only
temporary. The dread returned when the party approached again the
turmoil of the American Fall, and fell again under the influence of the
merciless haste of the flood. And there every islet, every rock, every
point, has its legend of terror; here a boat lodged with a man in it, and
after a day and night of vain attempts to rescue him, thousands of people
saw him take the frightful leap, throwing up his arms as he went over;
here a young woman slipped, and was instantly whirled away out of life;
and from that point more than one dazed or frantic visitor had taken the
suicidal leap. Death was so near here and so easy!
One seems in less personal peril on the Canadian side, and has more the
feeling of a spectator and less that of a participant in the wild uproar.
Perhaps there is more sense of force, but the majesty of the scene is
relieved by a hundred shifting effects of light and color. In the
afternoon, under a broken sky, the rapids above the Horseshoe reminded
one of the seashore on a very stormy day. Impeded by the rocks, the
flood hesitated and even ran back, as if reluctant to take the final
plunge! The sienna color of the water on the table contrasted sharply
with the emerald at the break of the fall. A rainbow springing out of
the centre of the caldron arched clear over the American cataract, and
was one moment bright and the next dimly seen through the mist, which
boiled up out of the foam of waters and swayed in the wind. Through this
veil darted adventurous birds, flashing their wings in the prismatic
colors, and circling about as if fascinated by the awful rush and
thunder. With the shifting wind and the passing clouds the scene was in
perpetual change; now the American Fall was creamy white, and the mist
below dark, and again the heavy mass was gray and sullen, and the mist
like silver spray. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is the force of
nature so overpowering to the mind, and as the eye wanders from the chaos
of the fall to the far horizon, where the vast rivers of rapids are
poured out of the sky, one feels that this force is inexhaustible and
eternal.
If our travelers expected to escape the impression they were under by
driving down to the rapids and whirlpool below, they were mistaken.
Nowhere is the river so terrible as where it rushes, as if maddened by
its narrow bondage, through the canon. Flung down the precipice and
forced into this contracted space, it fumes and tosses and rages with
vindictive fury, driving on in a passion that has almost a human quality
in it. Restrained by the walls of stone from being destructive, it seems
to rave at its own impotence, and when it reaches the whirlpool it is
like a hungry animal, returning and licking the shore for the prey it has
missed. But it has not always wanted a prey. Now and again it has a
wreck or a dead body to toss and fling about. Although it does not need
the human element of disaster to make this canon grewsome, the keepers of
the show places make the most of the late Captain Webb. So vivid were
their narratives that our sympathetic party felt his presence
continually, saw the strong swimmer tossed like a chip, saw him throw up
his hands, saw the agony in his face at the spot where he was last seen.
There are several places where he disappeared, each vouched for by
credible witnesses, so that the horror of the scene is multiplied for the
tourist. The late afternoon had turned gray and cold, and dashes of rain
fell as our party descended to the whirlpool. As they looked over the
heaped-up and foaming waters in this eddy they almost expected to see
Captain Webb or the suicide of the night before circling round in the
maelstrom. They came up out of the gorge silent, and drove back to the
hotel full of nervous apprehension.
King found no telegram from Irene, and the place seemed to him
intolerable. The artist was quite ready to go on in the morning; indeed,
the whole party, although they said it was unreasonable, confessed that
they were almost afraid to stay longer; the roar, the trembling, the
pervading sense of a blind force and rage, inspired a nameless dread. The
artist said, the next morning at the station, that he understood the
feelings of Lot.
XV
THE THOUSAND ISLES
The occupation of being a red man, a merchant of baskets and beadwork, is
taken up by so many traders with a brogue and a twang at our
watering-places that it is difficult for the traveler to keep alive any
sentiment about this race. But at a station beyond Lewiston our tourists
were reminded of it, and of its capacity for adopting our civilization in
its most efflorescent development. The train was invaded by a band of
Indians, or, to speak correctly, by an Indian band. There is nothing in
the world like a brass band in a country town; it probably gives more
pleasure to the performers than any other sort of labor. Yet the delight
it imparts to the listeners is apt to be tempered by a certain sense of
incongruity between the peaceful citizens who compose it and the
bellicose din they produce. There is a note of barbarism in the brassy
jar and clamor of the instruments, enhanced by the bewildering ambition
of each player to force through his piece the most noise and jangle,
which is not always covered and subdued into a harmonious whole by the
whang of the bass drum.
There was nothing of this incongruity between this band of Tuscaroras and
their occupation. Unaccustomed to associate the North American Indian
with music, the traveler at once sees the natural relation of the Indians
with the brass band. These Tuscaroras were stalwart fellows,
broad-faced, big-limbed, serious, and they carried themselves with a
clumsy but impressive dignity. There was no uniformity in their apparel,
yet each one wore some portion of a martial and resplendent dress--an
ornamented kepi, or a scarlet sash, or big golden epaulets, or a military
coat braided with yellow. The leader, who was a giant, and carried the
smallest instrument, outshone all the others in his incongruous splendor.
No sooner had they found seats at one end of the car than they
unlimbered, and began through their various reluctant instruments to
deploy a tune. Although the tune did not get well into line, the effect
was marvelous. The car was instantly filled to bursting. Miss Lamont,
who was reading at the other end of the car, gave a nervous start, and
looked up in alarm. King and Forbes promptly opened windows, but this
gave little relief. The trombone pumped and growled, the trumpet blared,
the big brass instrument with a calyx like the monstrous tropical
water-lily quivered and howled, and the drum, banging into the discord,
smashed every tympanum in the car. The Indians looked pleased. No
sooner had they broken one tune into fragments than they took up another,
and the car roared and rattled and jarred all the way to the lonely
station where the band debarked, and was last seen convoying a straggling
Odd-Fellows' picnic down a country road.
The incident, trivial in itself, gave rise to serious reflections
touching the capacity and use of the red man in modern life. Here is a
peaceful outlet for all his wild instincts. Let the government turn all
the hostiles on the frontier into brass bands, and we shall hear no more
of the Indian question.
The railway along the shore of Lake Ontario is for the most part
monotonous. After leaving the picturesque highlands about Lewiston, the
country is flat, and although the view over the lovely sheet of blue
water is always pleasing, there is something bleak even in summer in this
vast level expanse from which the timber has been cut away. It may have
been mere fancy, but to the tourists the air seemed thin, and the scene,
artistically speaking, was cold and colorless. With every desire to do
justice to the pretty town of Oswego, which lies on a gentle slope by the
lake, it had to them an out-of-doors, unprotected, remote aspect. Seen
from the station, it did not appear what it is, the handsomest city on
Lake Ontario, with the largest starch factory in the world.
It was towards evening when the train reached Cape Vincent, where the
steamer waited to transport passengers down the St. Lawrence. The
weather had turned cool; the broad river, the low shores, the long
islands which here divide its lake-like expanse, wanted atmospheric
warmth, and the tourists could not escape the feeling of lonesomeness, as
if they were on the other side of civilization, rather than in one of the
great streams of summer frolic and gayety. It was therefore a very
agreeable surprise to them when a traveling party alighted from one of
the cars, which had come from Rome, among whom they recognized Mrs.
Farquhar.
"I knew my education never could be complete," said that lady as she
shook hands, "and you never would consider me perfectly in the Union
until I had seen the Thousand Islands; and here I am, after many Yankee
tribulations."
"And why didn't you come by Niagara?" asked Miss Lamont.
"My dear, perhaps your uncle could tell you that I saw enough of Niagara
when I was a young lady, during the war. The cruelest thing you Yankees
did was to force us, who couldn't fight, to go over there for sympathy.
The only bearable thing about the fall of Richmond was that it relieved
me from that Fall. But where," she added, turning to King, "are the rest
of your party?"
"If you mean the Bensons," said he, with a rather rueful countenance, "I
believe they have gone to the White Mountains."
"Oh, not lost, but gone before. You believe? If you knew the nights I
have lain awake thinking about you two, or you three! I fear you have
not been wide-awake enough yourself."
"I knew I could depend on you, Mrs. Farquhar, for that."
The steamer was moving off, taking a wide sweep to follow the channel.
The passengers were all engaged in ascertaining the names of the islands
and of the owners of the cottages and club-houses. "It is a kind of
information I have learned to dispense with," said Mrs. Farquhar. And
the tourists, except three or four resolutely inquisitive, soon tired of
it. The islands multiplied; the boat wound in and out among them in
narrow straits. To sail thus amid rocky islets, hirsute with firs,
promised to be an unfailing pleasure. It might have been, if darkness
had not speedily fallen. But it is notable how soon passengers on a
steamer become indifferent and listless in any sort of scenery. Where
the scenery is monotonous and repeats itself mile after mile and hour
after hour, an intolerable weariness falls upon the company. The
enterprising group who have taken all the best seats in the bow, with the
intention of gormandizing the views, exhibit little staying power; either
the monotony or the wind drives them into the cabin. And passengers in
the cabin occupying chairs and sofas, surrounded by their baggage, always
look bored and melancholy.
"I always think," said Mrs. Farquhar, "that I am going to enjoy a ride on
a steamer, but I never do. It is impossible to get out of a draught, and
the progress is so slow that variety enough is not presented to the eye
to keep one from ennui." Nevertheless, Mrs. Farquhar and King remained
on deck, in such shelter as they could find, during the three hours'
sail, braced up by the consciousness that they were doing their duty in
regard to the enterprise that has transformed this lovely stream into a
highway of display and enjoyment. Miss Lamont and the artist went below,
frankly confessing that they could see all that interested them from the
cabin windows. And they had their reward; for in this little cabin,
where supper was served, a drama was going on between the cook and the
two waiting-maids and the cabin boy, a drama of love and coquetry and
jealousy and hope deferred, quite as important to those concerned as any
of the watering-place comedies, and played with entire unconsciousness of
the spectators.
The evening was dark, and the navigation in the tortuous channels
sometimes difficult, and might have been dangerous but for the
lighthouses. The steamer crept along in the shadows of the low islands,
making frequent landings, and never long out of sight of the
illuminations of hotels and cottages. Possibly by reason of these
illuminations this passage has more variety by night than by day. There
was certainly a fascination about this alternating brilliancy and gloom.
On nearly every island there was at least a cottage, and on the larger
islands were great hotels, camp-meeting establishments, and houses and
tents for the entertainment of thousands of people. Late as it was in
the season, most of the temporary villages and solitary lodges were
illuminated; colored lamps were set about the grounds, Chinese lanterns
hung in the evergreens, and on half a dozen lines radiating from the
belfry of the hotel to the ground, while all the windows blazed and
scintillated. Occasionally as the steamer passed these places of
irrepressible gayety rockets were let off, Bengal-lights were burned, and
once a cannon attempted to speak the joy of the sojourners. It was like
a continued Fourth of July, and King's heart burned within him with
national pride. Even Mrs. Farquhar had to admit that it was a fairy
spectacle. During the months of July and August this broad river, with
its fantastic islands, is at night simply a highway of glory. The
worldlings and the camp-meeting gatherings vie with each other in the
display of colored lights and fireworks. And such places as the Thousand
Islands Park, Wellesley and Wesley parks, and so on, twinkling with lamps
and rosy with pyrotechnics, like sections of the sky dropped upon the
earth, create in the mind of the steamer pilgrim an indescribable earthly
and heavenly excitement. He does not look upon these displays as
advertisements of rival resorts, but as generous contributions to the
hilarity of the world.
It is, indeed, a marvelous spectacle, this view for thirty or forty
miles, and the simple traveler begins to realize what American enterprise
is when it lays itself out for pleasure. These miles and miles of
cottages, hotels, parks, and camp-meetings are the creation of only a few
years, and probably can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere in the world for
rapidity of growth. But the strongest impression the traveler has is of
the public spirit of these summer sojourners, speculators, and religious
enthusiasts. No man lives to himself alone, or builds his cottage for
his selfish gratification. He makes fantastic carpentry, and paints and
decorates and illuminates and shows fireworks, for the genuine sake of
display. One marvels that a person should come here for rest and
pleasure in a spirit of such devotion to the public weal, and devote
himself night after night for months to illuminating his house and
lighting up his island, and tearing open the sky with rockets and shaking
the air with powder explosions, in order that the river may be
continually en fete.
At half-past eight the steamer rounded into view of the hotels and
cottages at Alexandria Bay, and the enchanting scene drew all the
passengers to the deck.
The Thousand Islands Hotel, and the Crossman House, where our party found
excellent accommodations, were blazing and sparkling like the spectacular
palaces in an opera scene. Rows of colored lamps were set thickly along
the shore, and disposed everywhere among the rocks on which the Crossman
House stands; lights glistened from all the islands, from a thousand
row-boats, and in all the windows. It was very like Venice, seen from
the lagoon, when the Italians make a gala-night.
If Alexandria Bay was less enchanting as a spectacle by daylight, it was
still exceedingly lovely and picturesque; islands and bays and winding
waterways could not be better combined for beauty, and the structures
that taste or ambition has raised on the islands or rocky points are well
enough in keeping with the general holiday aspect. One of the prettiest
of these cottages is the Bonnicastle of the late Dr. Holland, whose
spirit more or less pervades this region. It is charmingly situated on a
projecting point of gray rocks veined with color, enlivened by touches of
scarlet bushes and brilliant flowers planted in little spots of soil,
contrasting with the evergreen shrubs. It commands a varied and
delicious prospect, and has an air of repose and peace.
I am sorry to say that while Forbes and Miss Lamont floated, so to speak,
in all this beauty, like the light-hearted revelers they were, King was
scarcely in a mood to enjoy it. It seemed to him fictitious and a little
forced. There was no message for him at the Crossman House. His
restlessness and absentmindedness could not escape the observation of
Mrs. Farquhar, and as the poor fellow sadly needed a confidante, she was
soon in possession of his story.
"I hate slang," she said, when he had painted the situation black enough
to suit Mrs. Bartlett Glow even, "and I will not give my sex away, but I
know something of feminine doubtings and subterfuges, and I give you my
judgment that Irene is just fretting herself to death, and praying that
you may have the spirit to ride rough-shod over her scruples. Yes, it is
just as true in this prosaic time as it ever was, that women like to be
carried off by violence. In their secret hearts, whatever they may say,
they like to see a knight batter down the tower and put all the garrison
except themselves to the sword. I know that I ought to be on Mrs. Glow's
side. It is the sensible side, the prudent side; but I do admire
recklessness in love. Probably you'll be uncomfortable, perhaps unhappy
--you are certain to be if you marry to please society and not yourself
--but better a thousand times one wild rush of real passion, of
self-forgetting love, than an age of stupid, conventional affection
approved by your aunt. Oh, these calculating young people!" Mrs.
Farquhar's voice trembled and her eyes flashed. "I tell you, my friend,
life is not worth living in a conventional stagnation. You see in
society how nature revenges itself when its instincts are repressed."
Mrs. Farquhar turned away, and King saw that her eyes were full of tears.
She stood a moment looking away over the sparkling water to the soft
islands on the hazy horizon. Was she thinking of her own marriage? Death
had years ago dissolved it, and were these tears, not those of mourning,
but for the great experience possible in life, so seldom realized, missed
forever? Before King could frame, in the tumult of his own thoughts, any
reply, she turned towards him again, with her usual smile, half of
badinage and half of tenderness, and said:
"Come, this is enough of tragedy for one day; let us go on the Island
Wanderer, with the other excursionists, among the isles of the blest."
The little steamer had already its load, and presently was under way,
puffing and coughing, on its usual afternoon trip among the islands. The
passengers were silent, and appeared to take the matter seriously--a
sort of linen-duster congregation, of the class who figure in the homely
dialect poems of the Northern bards, Mrs. Farquhar said. They were
chiefly interested in knowing the names of the successful people who had
built these fantastic dwellings, and who lived on illuminations. Their
curiosity was easily gratified, for in most cases the owners had painted
their names, and sometimes their places of residence, in staring white
letters on conspicuous rocks. There was also exhibited, for the benefit
of invalids, by means of the same white paint, here and there the name of
a medicine that is a household word in this patent-right generation. So
the little steamer sailed, comforted by these remedies, through the
strait of Safe Nervine, round the bluff of Safe Tonic, into the open bay
of Safe Liver Cure. It was a healing voyage, and one in which enterprise
was so allied with beauty that no utilitarian philosopher could raise a
question as to the market value of the latter.
The voyage continued as far as Gananoque, in Canada, where the passengers
went ashore, and wandered about in a disconsolate way to see nothing.
King said, however, that he was more interested in the place than in any
other he had seen, because there was nothing interesting in it; it was
absolutely without character, or a single peculiarity either of Canada or
of the United States. Indeed, this north shore seemed to all the party
rather bleak even in summertime, and the quality of the sunshine thin.
It was, of course, a delightful sail, abounding in charming views, up
"lost channels," through vistas of gleaming water overdrooped by tender
foliage, and now and then great stretches of sea, and always islands,
islands.
"Too many islands too much alike," at length exclaimed Mrs. Farquhar,
"and too many tasteless cottages and temporary camping structures."
The performance is, indeed, better than the prospectus. For there are
not merely the poetical Thousand Islands; by actual count there are
sixteen hundred and ninety-two. The artist and Miss Lamont were trying
to sing a fine song they discovered in the Traveler's Guide, inspired
perhaps by that sentimental ditty, "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of
Greece," beginning,
"O Thousand Isles! O Thousand Isles!"
It seemed to King that a poem might be constructed more in accordance
with the facts and with the scientific spirit of the age. Something like
this:
"O Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two Isles!
O Islands 1692!
Where the fisher spreads his wiles,
And the muskallonge goes through!
Forever the cottager gilds the same
With nightly pyrotechnic flame;
And it's O the Isles!
The 1692!"
Aside from the pyrotechnics, the chief occupations of this place are
boating and fishing. Boats abound--row-boats, sail-boats, and
steam-launches for excursion parties. The river consequently presents an
animated appearance in the season, and the prettiest effects are produced
by the white sails dipping about among the green islands. The favorite
boat is a canoe with a small sail stepped forward, which is steered
without centre-board or rudder, merely by a change of position in the
boat of the man who holds the sheet. While the fishermen are here, it
would seem that the long, snaky pickerel is the chief game pursued and
caught. But this is not the case when the fishermen return home, for
then it appears that they have been dealing mainly with muskallonge, and
with bass by the way. No other part of the country originates so many
excellent fish stories as the Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-two Islands, and
King had heard so many of them that he suspected there must be fish in
these waters. That afternoon, when they returned from Gananoque he
accosted an old fisherman who sat in his boat at the wharf awaiting a
customer.
"I suppose there is fishing here in the season?"
The man glanced up, but deigned no reply to such impertinence.
"Could you take us where we would be likely to get any muskallonge?"
"Likely?" asked the man. "What do you suppose I am here for?"
"I beg your pardon. I'm a stranger here. I'd like to try my hand at a
muskallonge. About how do they run here as to size?"
"Well," said the fisherman, relenting a little, "that depends upon who
takes you out. If you want a little sport, I can take you to it. They
are running pretty well this season, or were a week ago."
"Is it too late?"
"Well, they are scarcer than they were, unless you know where to go. I
call forty pounds light for a muskallonge; fifty to seventy is about my
figure. If you ain't used to this kind of fishing, and go with me, you'd
better tie yourself in the boat. They are a powerful fish. You see that
little island yonder? A muskallonge dragged me in this boat four times
round that island one day, and just as I thought I was tiring him out he
jumped clean over the island, and I had to cut the line."
King thought he had heard something like this before, and he engaged the
man for the next day. That evening was the last of the grand
illuminations for the season, and our party went out in the Crossman
steam-launch to see it. Although some of the cottages were vacated, and
the display was not so extensive as in August, it was still marvelously
beautiful, and the night voyage around the illuminated islands was
something long to be remembered.
There were endless devices of colored lamps and lanterns, figures of
crosses, crowns, the Seal of Solomon, and the most strange effects
produced on foliage and in the water by red and green and purple fires.
It was a night of enchantment, and the hotel and its grounds on the dark
background of the night were like the stately pleasure-house in "Kubla
Khan."
But the season was drawing to an end. The hotels, which could not find
room for the throngs on Saturday night, say, were nearly empty on Monday,
so easy are pleasure-seekers frightened away by a touch of cold,
forgetting that in such a resort the most enjoyable part of the year
comes with the mellow autumn days. That night at ten o'clock the band
was scraping away in the deserted parlor, with not another person in
attendance, without a single listener. Miss Lamont happened to peep
through the window-blinds from the piazza and discover this residuum of
gayety. The band itself was half asleep, but by sheer force of habit it
kept on, the fiddlers drawing the perfunctory bows, and the melancholy
clarionet men breathing their expressive sighs. It was a dismal sight.
The next morning the band had vanished.
The morning was lowering, and a steady rain soon set in for the day. No
fishing, no boating; nothing but drop, drop, and the reminiscence of past
pleasure. Mist enveloped the islands and shut out the view. Even the
spirits of Mrs. Farquhar were not proof against this, and she tried to
amuse herself by reconstructing the season out of the specimens of guests
who remained, who were for the most part young ladies who had duty
written on their faces, and were addicted to spectacles.
"It could not have been," she thought, "ultrafashionable or madly gay. I
think the good people come here; those who are willing to illuminate."
"Oh, there is a fast enough life at some of the hotels in the summer,"
said the artist.
"Very likely. Still, if I were recruiting for schoolmarms, I should come
here. I like it thoroughly, and mean to be here earlier next year. The
scenery is enchanting, and I quite enjoy being with 'Proverbial
Philosophy' people."
Late in the gloomy afternoon King went down to the office, and the clerk
handed him a letter. He took it eagerly, but his countenance fell when
he saw that it bore a New York postmark, and had been forwarded from
Richfield. It was not from Irene. He put it in his pocket and went
moodily to his room. He was in no mood to read a homily from his uncle.
Ten minutes after, he burst into Forbes's room with the open letter in
his hand.
"See here, old fellow, I'm off to the Profile House. Can you get ready?"
"Get ready? Why, you can't go anywhere tonight."
"Yes I can. The proprietor says he will send us across to Redwood to
catch the night train for Ogdensburg."
"But how about the Lachine Rapids? You have been talking about those
rapids for two months. I thought that was what we came here for."
"Do you want to run right into the smallpox at Montreal?"
"Oh, I don't mind. I never take anything of that sort."
"But don't you see that it isn't safe for the Lamonts and Mrs. Farquhar
to go there?"
"I suppose not; I never thought of that. You have dragged me all over
the continent, and I didn't suppose there was any way of escaping the
rapids. But what is the row now? Has Irene telegraphed you that she has
got over her chill?"
"Read that letter."
Forbes took the sheet and read:
"NEW YORK, September 2, 1885.
"MY DEAR STANHOPE,--We came back to town yesterday, and I find a
considerable arrears of business demanding my attention. A suit has been
brought against the Lavalle Iron Company, of which I have been the
attorney for some years, for the possession of an important part of its
territory, and I must send somebody to Georgia before the end of this
month to look up witnesses and get ready for the defense. If you are
through your junketing by that time, it will be an admirable opportunity
for you to learn the practical details of the business . . . . Perhaps
it may quicken your ardor in the matter if I communicate to you another
fact. Penelope wrote me from Richfield, in a sort of panic, that she
feared you had compromised your whole future by a rash engagement with a
young lady from Cyrusville, Ohio--a Miss Benson-and she asked me to use
my influence with you. I replied to her that I thought that, in the
language of the street, you had compromised your future, if that were
true, for about a hundred cents on the dollar. I have had business
relations with Mr. Benson for twenty years. He is the principal owner in
the Lavalle Iron Mine, and he is one of the most sensible, sound, and
upright men of my acquaintance. He comes of a good old New England
stock, and if his daughter has the qualities of her father and I hear
that she has been exceedingly well educated besides she is not a bad
match even for a Knickerbocker.
"Hoping that you will be able to report at the office before the end of
the month,
"I am affectionately yours,
"SCHUYLER BREVOORT."
"Well, that's all right," said the artist, after a pause. "I suppose the
world might go on if you spend another night in this hotel. But if you
must go, I'll bring on the women and the baggage when navigation opens in
the morning."
XVI
WHITE MOUNTAINS, LENNOX
The White Mountains are as high as ever, as fine in sharp outline against
the sky, as savage, as tawny; no other mountains in the world of their
height so well keep, on acquaintance, the respect of mankind. There is a
quality of refinement in their granite robustness; their desolate, bare
heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at
sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious. Powerful as
man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them. He can reduce the
valleys and the show "freaks" of nature to his own moral level, but the
vast bulks and the summits remain for the most part haughty and pure.
Yet undeniably something of the romance of adventure in a visit to the
White Hills is wanting, now that the railways penetrate every valley, and
all the physical obstacles of the journey are removed. One can never
again feel the thrill that he experienced when, after a weary all-day
jolting in the stage-coach, or plodding hour after hour on foot, he
suddenly came in view of a majestic granite peak. Never again by the new
rail can he have the sensation that he enjoyed in the ascent of Mount
Washington by the old bridlepath from Crawford's, when, climbing out of
the woods and advancing upon that marvelous backbone of rock, the whole
world opened upon his awed vision, and the pyramid of the summit stood up
in majesty against the sky. Nothing, indeed, is valuable that is easily
obtained. This modern experiment of putting us through the world--the
world of literature, experience, and travel--at excursion rates is of
doubtful expediency.
I cannot but think that the White Mountains are cheapened a little by the
facilities of travel and the multiplication of excellent places of
entertainment. If scenery were a sentient thing, it might feel indignant
at being vulgarly stared at, overrun and trampled on, by a horde of
tourists who chiefly value luxurious hotels and easy conveyance. It
would be mortified to hear the talk of the excursionists, which is more
about the quality of the tables and the beds, and the rapidity with which
the "whole thing can be done," than about the beauty and the sublimity of
nature. The mountain, however, was made for man, and not man for the
mountain; and if the majority of travelers only get out of these hills
what they are capable of receiving, it may be some satisfaction to the
hills that they still reserve their glories for the eyes that can
appreciate them. Perhaps nature is not sensitive about being run after
for its freaks and eccentricities. If it were, we could account for the
catastrophe, a few years ago, in the Franconia Notch flume. Everybody
went there to see a bowlder which hung suspended over the stream in the
narrow canon. This curiosity attracted annually thousands of people, who
apparently cared more for this toy than for anything else in the region.
And one day, as if tired of this misdirected adoration, nature organized
a dam on the side of Mount Lafayette, filled it with water, and then
suddenly let loose a flood which tore open the canon, carried the bowlder
away, and spread ruin far and wide. It said as plainly as possible, you
must look at me, and not at my trivial accidents. But man is an
ingenious creature, and nature is no match for him. He now goes, in
increasing number, to see where the bowlder once hung, and spends his
time in hunting for it in the acres of wreck and debris. And in order to
satisfy reasonable human curiosity, the proprietors of the flume have
been obliged to select a bowlder and label it as the one that was
formerly the shrine of pilgrimage.
In his college days King had more than once tramped all over this region,
knapsack on back, lodging at chance farmhouses and second-class hotels,
living on viands that would kill any but a robust climber, and enjoying
the life with a keen zest only felt by those who are abroad at all hours,
and enabled to surprise Nature in all her varied moods. It is the chance
encounters that are most satisfactory; Nature is apt to be whimsical to
him who approaches her of set purpose at fixed hours. He remembered also
the jolting stage-coaches, the scramble for places, the exhilaration of
the drive, the excitement of the arrival at the hotels, the sociability
engendered by this juxtaposition and jostle of travel. It was therefore
with a sense of personal injury that, when he reached Bethlehem junction,
he found a railway to the Profile House, and another to Bethlehem. In
the interval of waiting for his train he visited Bethlehem Street, with
its mile of caravansaries, big boarding-houses, shops, and city veneer,
and although he was delighted, as an American, with the "improvements"
and with the air of refinement, he felt that if he wanted retirement and
rural life, he might as well be with the hordes in the depths of the
Adirondack wilderness. But in his impatience to reach his destination he
was not sorry to avail himself of the railway to the Profile House. And
he admired the ingenuity which had carried this road through nine miles
of shabby firs and balsams, in a way absolutely devoid of interest, in
order to heighten the effect of the surprise at the end in the sudden
arrival at the Franconia Notch. From whichever way this vast white hotel
establishment is approached, it is always a surprise. Midway between
Echo Lake and Profile Lake, standing in the very jaws of the Notch,
overhung on the one side by Cannon Mountain and on the other by a bold
spur of Lafayette, it makes a contrast between the elegance and order of
civilization and the untouched ruggedness and sublimity of nature
scarcely anywhere else to be seen.
The hotel was still full, and when King entered the great lobby and
office in the evening a very animated scene met his eye. A big fire of
logs was blazing in the ample chimney-place; groups were seated about at
ease, chatting, reading, smoking; couples promenaded up and down; and
from the distant parlor, through the long passage, came the sound of the
band. It was easy to see at a glance that the place had a distinct
character, freedom from conventionality, and an air of reposeful
enjoyment. A large proportion of the assembly being residents for the
summer, there was so much of the family content that the transient
tourists could little disturb it by the introduction of their element of
worry and haste.
King found here many acquaintances, for fashion follows a certain
routine, and there is a hidden law by which the White Mountains break the
transition from the sea-coast to Lenox. He was therefore not surprised
to be greeted by Mrs. Cortlandt, who had arrived the day before with her
usual train.
"At the end of the season," she said, "and alone?"
"I expect to meet friends here."
"So did I; but they have gone, or some of them have."
"But mine are coming tomorrow. Who has gone?"
"Mrs. Pendragon and the Bensons. But I didn't suppose I could tell you
any news about the Bensons."
"I have been out of the way of the newspapers lately. Did you happen to
hear where they have gone?"
"Somewhere around the mountains. You need not look so indifferent; they
are coming back here again. They are doing what I must do; and I wish
you would tell me what to see. I have studied the guide-books till my
mind is a blank. Where shall I go?"
"That depends. If you simply want to enjoy yourselves, stay at this
hotel--there is no better place--sit on the piazza, look at the
mountains, and watch the world as it comes round. If you want the best
panoramic view of the mountains, the Washington and Lafayette ranges
together, go up to the Waumbec House. If you are after the best single
limited view in the mountains, drive up to the top of Mount Willard, near
the Crawford House--a delightful place to stay in a region full of
associations, Willey House, avalanche, and all that. If you would like
to take a walk you will remember forever, go by the carriage road from
the top of Mount Washington to the Glen House, and look into the great
gulfs, and study the tawny sides of the mountains. I don't know anything
more impressive hereabouts than that. Close to, those granite ranges
have the color of the hide of the rhinoceros; when you look up to them
from the Glen House, shouldering up into the sky, and rising to the
cloud-clapped summit of Washington, it is like a purple highway into the
infinite heaven. No, you must not miss either Crawford's or the Glen
House; and as to Mount Washington, that is a duty."
"You might personally conduct us and expound by the way."
King said he would like nothing better. Inquiry failed to give him any
more information of the whereabouts of the Bensons; but the clerk said
they were certain to return to the Profile House. The next day the party
which had been left behind at Alexandria Bay appeared, in high spirits,
and ready for any adventure. Mrs. Farquhar declared at once that she had
no scruples about going up Washington, commonplace as the trip was, for
her sympathies were now all with the common people. Of course Mount
Washington was of no special importance, now that the Black Mountains
were in the Union, but she hadn't a bit of prejudice.
King praised her courage and her patriotism. But perhaps she did not
know how much she risked. He had been talking with some habitue's of the
Profile, who had been coming here for years, and had just now for the
first time been up Mount Washington, and they said that while the trip
was pleasant enough, it did not pay for the exertion. Perhaps Mrs.
Farquhar did not know that mountain-climbing was disapproved of here as
sea-bathing was at Newport. It was hardly the thing one would like to
do, except, of course, as a mere lark, and, don't you know, with a party.
Mrs. Farquhar said that was just the reason she wanted to go. She was
willing to make any sacrifice; she considered herself just a missionary
of provincialism up North, where people had become so cosmopolitan that
they dared not enjoy anything. She was an enemy of the Boston
philosophy. What is the Boston philosophy? Why, it is not to care about
anything you do care about.
The party that was arranged for this trip included Mrs. Cortlandt and her
bevy of beauty and audacity, Miss Lamont and her uncle, Mrs. Farquhar,
the artist, and the desperate pilgrim of love. Mrs. Farquhar vowed to
Forbes that she had dragged King along at the request of the proprietor
of the hotel, who did not like to send a guest away, but he couldn't have
all the trees at Profile Lake disfigured with his cutting and carving.
People were running to him all the while to know what it meant with "I.
B.," " I. B.," " I. B.," everywhere, like a grove of Baal.
From the junction to Fabyan's they rode in an observation car, all open,
and furnished with movable chairs, where they sat as in a balcony. It
was a picturesque load of passengers. There were the young ladies in
trim traveling-suits, in what is called compact fighting trim; ladies in
mourning; ladies in winter wraps; ladies in Scotch wraps; young men with
shawl-straps and opera-glasses, standing, legs astride, consulting maps
and imparting information; the usual sweet pale girl with a bundle of
cat-tails and a decorative intention; and the nonchalant young man in a
striped English boating cap, who nevertheless spoke American when he said
anything.
As they were swinging slowly along the engine suddenly fell into a panic,
puffing and sending up shrill shrieks of fear in rapid succession. There
was a sedate cow on the track. The engine was agitated, it shrieked more
shrilly, and began backing in visible terror. Everybody jumped and stood
up, and the women clung to the men, all frightened. It was a beautiful
exhibition of the sweet dependence of the sex in the hour of danger. The
cow was more terrible than a lion on the track. The passengers all
trembled like the engine. In fact, the only calm being was the cow,
which, after satisfying her curiosity, walked slowly off, wondering what
it was all about.
The cog-wheel railway is able to transport a large number of
excursionists to the top of the mountain in the course of the morning.
The tourists usually arrive there about the time the mist has crept up
from the valleys and enveloped everything. Our party had the common
experience. The Summit House, the Signal Station, the old Tip-top House,
which is lashed down with cables, and rises ten feet higher than the
highest crag, were all in the clouds. Nothing was to be seen except the
dim outline of these buildings.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Farquhar, as they stumbled along over the slippery
stones, "what people come here for."
"Just what we came for," answered Forbes, "to say they have been on top
of the mountain."
They took refuge in the hotel, but that also was invaded by the damp,
chill atmosphere, wrapped in and pervaded by the clouds. From the
windows nothing more was to be seen than is visible in a Russian steam
bath. But the tourists did not mind. They addressed themselves to the
business in hand. This was registering their names. A daily newspaper
called Among the Clouds is published here, and every person who gets his
name on the register in time can see it in print before the train goes.
When the train descends, every passenger has one of these two-cent
certificates of his exploit. When our party entered, there was a great
run on the register, especially by women, who have a repugnance, as is
well known, to seeing their names in print. In the room was a hot stove,
which was more attractive than the cold clouds, but unable to compete in
interest with the register. The artist, who seemed to be in a sardonic
mood, and could get no chance to enter his name, watched the scene, while
his friends enjoyed the view of the stove. After registering, the
visitors all bought note-paper with a chromo heading, "Among the Clouds,"
and a natural wild-flower stuck on the corner, and then rushed to the
writing-room in order to indite an epistle "from the summit." This is
indispensable.
After that they were ready for the Signal Station. This is a great
attraction. The sergeant in charge looked bored to death, and in the
mood to predict the worst kind of weather. He is all day beset with a
crowd craning their necks to look at him, and bothered with ten thousand
questions. He told King that the tourists made his life miserable; they
were a great deal worse than the blizzards in the winter. And the
government, he said, does not take this into account in his salary.
Occasionally there was an alarm that the mist was getting thin, that the
clouds were about to break, and a rush was made out-of-doors, and the
tourists dispersed about on the rocks. They were all on the qui vine to
see the hotel or the boarding-house they had left in the early morning.
Excursionists continually swarmed in by rail or by carriage road. The
artist, who had one of his moods for wanting to see nature, said there
were too many women; he wanted to know why there were always so many
women on excursions. "You can see nothing but excursionists; whichever
way you look, you see their backs." These backs, looming out of the
mist, or discovered in a rift, seemed to enrage him.
At length something actually happened. The curtain of cloud slowly
lifted, exactly as in a theatre; for a moment there was a magnificent
view of peaks, forests, valleys, a burst of sunshine on the lost world,
and then the curtain dropped, amid a storm of "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and
intense excitement. Three or four times, as if in response to the call
of the spectators, this was repeated, the curtain lifting every time on a
different scene, and then it was all over, and the heavy mist shut down
on the registered and the unregistered alike. But everybody declared
that they preferred it this way; it was so much better to have these
wonderful glimpses than a full view. They would go down and brag over
their good-fortune.
The excursionists by-and-by went away out of the clouds, gliding
breathlessly down the rails. When snow covers this track, descent is
sometimes made on a toboggan, but it is such a dangerous venture that all
except the operatives are now forbidden to try it. The velocity attained
of three and a half miles in three minutes may seem nothing to a
locomotive engineer who is making up time; it might seem slow to a lover
whose sweetheart was at the foot of the slide; to ordinary mortals a mile
a minute is quite enough on such an incline.
Our party, who would have been much surprised if any one had called them
an excursion, went away on foot down the carriage road to the Glen House.
A descent of a few rods took them into the world of light and sun, and
they were soon beyond the little piles of stones which mark the spots
where tourists have sunk down bewildered in the mist and died of
exhaustion and cold. These little mounds help to give Mount Washington
its savage and implacable character. It is not subdued by all the roads
and rails and scientific forces. For days it may lie basking and smiling
in the sun, but at any hour it is liable to become inhospitable and
pitiless, and for a good part of the year the summit is the area of
elemental passion.
How delightful it was to saunter down the winding road into a region of
peace and calm; to see from the safe highway the great giants in all
their majesty; to come to vegetation, to the company of familiar trees,
and the haunts of men! As they reached the Glen House all the line of
rugged mountain-peaks was violet in the reflected rays. There were
people on the porch who were looking at this spectacle. Among them the
eager eyes of King recognized Irene.
"Yes, there she is," cried Mrs. Farquhar; "and there--oh, what a
treacherous North----is Mr. Meigs also."
It was true. There was Mr. Meigs, apparently domiciled with the Benson
family. There might have been a scene, but fortunately the porch was
full of loungers looking at the sunset, and other pedestrians in couples
and groups were returning from afternoon strolls. It might be the crisis
of two lives, but to the spectator nothing more was seen than the
everyday meeting of friends and acquaintances. A couple say good-night
at the door of a drawing-room. Nothing has happened--nothing except a
look, nothing except the want of pressure of the hand. The man lounges
off to the smoking-room, cool and indifferent; the woman, in her chamber,
falls into a passion of tears, and at the end of a wakeful night comes
into a new world, hard and cold and uninteresting. Or the reverse
happens. It is the girl who tosses the thing off with a smile, perhaps
with a sigh, as the incident of a season, while the man, wounded and
bitter, loses a degree of respect for woman, and pitches his life
henceforth on a lower plane.
In the space of ten steps King passed through an age of emotions, but the
strongest one steadied him. There was a general movement, exclamations,
greetings, introductions. King was detained a moment by Mr. and Mrs.
Benson; he even shook hands with Mr. Meigs, who had the tact to turn
immediately from the group and talk with somebody else; while Mrs.
Farquhar and Miss Lamont and Mrs. Cortlandt precipitated themselves upon
Irene in a little tempest of cries and caresses and delightful feminine
fluttering. Truth to say, Irene was so overcome by these greetings that
she had not the strength to take a step forward when King at length
approached her. She stood with one hand grasping the back of the chair.
She knew that that moment would decide her life. Nothing is more
admirable in woman, nothing so shows her strength, as her ability to face
in public such a moment. It was the critical moment for King--how
critical the instant was, luckily, he did not then know. If there had
been in his eyes any doubt, any wavering, any timidity, his cause would
have been lost. But there was not. There was infinite love and
tenderness, but there was also resolution, confidence, possession,
mastery. There was that that would neither be denied nor turned aside,
nor accept any subterfuge. If King had ridden up on a fiery steed,
felled Meigs with his "mailed hand," and borne away the fainting girl on
his saddle pommel, there could have been no more doubt of his resolute
intention. In that look all the mists of doubt that her judgment had
raised in Irene's mind to obscure love vanished. Her heart within her
gave a great leap of exultation that her lover was a man strong enough to
compel, strong enough to defend. At that instant she knew that she could
trust him against the world. In that moment, while he still held her
hand, she experienced the greatest joy that woman ever knows--the bliss
of absolute surrender.
"I have come," he said, "in answer to your letter. And this is my
answer."
She had it in his presence, and read it in his eyes. With the delicious
sense thrilling her that she was no longer her own master there came a
new timidity. She had imagined that if ever she should meet Mr. King
again, she should defend her course, and perhaps appear in his eyes in a
very heroic attitude. Now she only said, falteringly, and looking down,
"I--I hoped you would come."
That evening there was a little dinner given in a private parlor by Mr.
Benson in honor of the engagement of his daughter. It was great larks
for the young ladies whom Mrs. Cortlandt was chaperoning, who behaved
with an elaboration of restraint and propriety that kept Irene in a
flutter of uneasiness. Mr. Benson, in mentioning the reason for the
"little spread," told the story of Abraham Lincoln's sole response to
Lord Lyons, the bachelor minister of her majesty, when he came officially
to announce the marriage of the Prince of Wales--"Lord Lyons, go thou and
do likewise;" and he looked at Forbes when he told it, which made Miss
Lamont blush, and appear what the artist had described her to King--the
sweetest thing in life. Mrs. Benson beamed with motherly content, and
was quite as tearful as ungrammatical, but her mind was practical and
forecasting. "There'll have to be," she confided to Miss Lamont, "more
curtains in the parlor, and I don't know but new paper." Mr. Meigs was
not present. Mrs. Farquhar noticed this, and Mrs. Benson remembered that
he had said something about going down to North Conway, which gave King
an opportunity to say to Mrs. Farquhar that she ought not to despair, for
Mr. Meigs evidently moved in a circle, and was certain to cross her path
again. "I trust so," she replied. "I've been his only friend through
all this miserable business." The dinner was not a great success. There
was too much self-consciousness all round, and nobody was witty and
brilliant.
The next morning King took Irene to the Crystal Cascade. When he used to
frequent this pretty spot as a college boy, it had seemed to him the
ideal place for a love scene-much better than the steps of a hotel. He
said as much when they were seated at the foot of the fall. It is a
charming cascade fed by the water that comes down Tuckerman's Ravine. But
more beautiful than the fall is the stream itself, foaming down through
the bowlders, or lying in deep limpid pools which reflect the sky and the
forest. The water is as cold as ice and as clear as cut glass; few
mountain streams in the world, probably, are so absolutely without color.
"I followed it up once," King was saying, by way of filling in the pauses
with personal revelations, "to the source. The woods on the side are
dense and impenetrable, and the only way was to keep in the stream and
climb over the bowlders. There are innumerable slides and cascades and
pretty falls, and a thousand beauties and surprises. I finally came to a
marsh, a thicket of alders, and around this the mountain closed in an
amphitheatre of naked perpendicular rock a thousand feet high. I made my
way along the stream through the thicket till I came to a great bank and
arch of snow--it was the last of July--from under which the stream
flowed. Water dripped in many little rivulets down the face of the
precipices--after a rain there are said to be a thousand cascades there.
I determined to climb to the summit, and go back by the Tip-top House.
It does not look so from a little distance, but there is a rough, zigzag
sort of path on one side of the amphitheatre, and I found this, and
scrambled up. When I reached the top the sun was shining, and although
there was nothing around me but piles of granite rocks, without any sign
of a path, I knew that I had my bearings so that I could either reach the
house or a path leading to it. I stretched myself out to rest a few
moments, and suddenly the scene was completely shut in by a fog. [Irene
put out her hand and touched King's.] I couldn't tell where the sun was,
or in what direction the hut lay, and the danger was that I would wander
off on a spur, as the lost usually do. But I knew where the ravine was,
for I was still on the edge of it."
"Why," asked Irene, trembling at the thought of that danger so long ago
--"why didn't you go back down the ravine?"
"Because," and King took up the willing little hand and pressed it to his
lips, and looked steadily in her eyes--"because that is not my way. It
was nothing. I made what I thought was a very safe calculation, starting
from the ravine as a base, to strike the Crawford bridle-path at least a
quarter of a mile west of the house. I hit it--but it shows how little
one can tell of his course in a fog--I struck it within a rod of the
house! It was lucky for me that I did not go two rods further east."
Ah me! how real and still present the peril seemed to the girl! "You
will solemnly promise me, solemnly, will you not, Stanhope, never to go
there again--never--without me?"
The promise was given. "I have a note," said King, after the promise was
recorded and sealed, "to show you. It came this morning. It is from
Mrs. Bartlett Glow."
"Perhaps I'd rather not see it," said Irene, a little stiffly.
"Oh, there is a message to you. I'll read it."
It was dated at Newport.
"MY DEAR STANHOPE,--The weather has changed. I hope it is more
congenial where you are. It is horrid here. I am in a bad humor,
chiefly about the cook. Don't think I'm going to inflict a letter
on you. You don't deserve it besides. But I should like to know
Miss Benson's address. We shall be at home in October, late, and I
want her to come and make me a little visit. If you happen to see
her, give her my love, and believe me your affectionate cousin,
PENELOPE."
The next day they explored the wonders of the Notch, and the next were
back in the serene atmosphere of the Profile House. How lovely it all
was; how idyllic; what a bloom there was on the hills; how amiable
everybody seemed; how easy it was to be kind and considerate! King
wished he could meet a beggar at every turn. I know he made a great
impression on some elderly maiden ladies at the hotel, who thought him
the most gentlemanly and good young man they had ever seen. Ah! if one
could always be in love and always young!
They went one day by invitation, Irene and Marion and King and the
artist--as if it made any difference where they went--to Lonesome Lake, a
private pond and fishing-lodge on the mountain-top, under the ledge of
Cannon. There, set in a rim of forest and crags, lies a charming little
lake--which the mountain holds like a mirror for the sky and the clouds
and the sailing hawks--full of speckled trout, which have had to be
educated by skillful sportsmen to take the fly. From this lake one sees
the whole upper range of Lafayette, gray and purple against the sky. On
the bank is a log cabin touched with color, with great chimneys, and as
luxuriously comfortable as it is picturesque.
While dinner was preparing, the whole party were on the lake in boats,
equipped with fishing apparatus, and if the trout had been in half as
willing humor as the fisher, it would have been a bad day for them. But
perhaps they apprehended that it was merely a bridal party, and they were
leaping all over the lake, flipping their tails in the sun, and scorning
all the visible wiles. Fish, they seemed to say, are not so easily
caught as men.
There appeared to be a good deal of excitement in the boat that carried
the artist and Miss Lamont. It was fly-fishing under extreme
difficulties. The artist, who kept his flies a good deal of the time out
of the boat, frankly confessed that he would prefer an honest worm and
hook, or a net, or even a grappling-iron. Miss Lamont, with a great deal
of energy, kept her line whirling about, and at length, on a successful
cast, landed the artist's hat among the water-lilies. There was nothing
discouraging in this, and they both resumed operations with cheerfulness
and enthusiasm. But the result of every other cast was entanglement of
each other's lines, and King noticed that they spent most of their time
together in the middle of the boat, getting out of snarls. And at last,
drifting away down to the outlet, they seemed to have given up fishing
for the more interesting occupation. The clouds drifted on; the fish
leaped; the butcher-bird called from the shore; the sun was purpling
Lafayette. There were kinks in the leader that would not come out, the
lines were inextricably tangled. The cook made the signals for dinner,
and sent his voice echoing over the lake time and again before these
devoted anglers heard or heeded. At last they turned the prow to the
landing, Forbes rowing, and Marion dragging her hand in the water, and
looking as if she had never cast a line. King was ready to pull the boat
on to the float, and Irene stood by the landing expectant. In the bottom
of the boat was one poor little trout, his tail curled up and his spots
faded.
"Whose trout is that?" asked Irene.
"It belongs to both of us," said Forbes, who seemed to have some
difficulty in adjusting his oars.
"But who caught it?"
"Both of us," said Marion, stepping out of the boat; "we really did."
There was a heightened color in her face and a little excitement in her
manner as she put her arm round Irene's waist and they walked up to the
cabin. "Yes, it is true, but you are not to say anything about it yet,
dear, for Mr. Forbes has to make his way, you know."
When they walked down the mountain the sun was setting. Half-way down,
at a sharp turn in the path, the trees are cut away just enough to make a
frame, in which Lafayette appears like an idealized picture of a
mountain. The sun was still on the heights, which were calm, strong,
peaceful. They stood gazing at this heavenly vision till the rose had
deepened into violet, and then with slow steps descended through the
fragrant woods.
In October no region in the North has a monopoly of beauty, but there is
a certain refinement, or it may be a repose, in the Berkshire Hills which
is in a manner typical of a distinct phase of American fashion. There is
here a note of country life, of retirement, suggestive of the
old-fashioned "country-seat." It is differentiated from the caravansary
or the cottage life in the great watering-places. Perhaps it expresses
in a sincerer way an innate love of rural existence. Perhaps it is only
a whim of fashion. Whatever it may be, there is here a moment of pause,
a pensive air of the closing scene. The estates are ample, farms in
fact, with a sort of villa and park character, woods, pastures, meadows.
When the leaves turn crimson and brown and yellow, and the frequent lakes
reflect the tender sky and the glory of the autumn foliage, there is much
driving over the hills from country place to country place; there are
lawn-tennis parties on the high lawns, whence the players in the pauses
of the game can look over vast areas of lovely country; there are
open-air fetes, chance meetings at the clubhouse, chats on the highway,
walking excursions, leisurely dinners. In this atmosphere one is on the
lookout for an engagement, and a wedding here has a certain eclat. When
one speaks of Great Barrington or Stockbridge or Lenox in the autumn, a
certain idea of social position is conveyed.
Did Their Pilgrimage end on these autumn heights? To one of them, I
know, the colored landscape, the dreamy atmosphere, the unique glory that
comes in October days, were only ecstatic suggestions of the life that
opened before her. Love is victorious over any mood of nature, even when
exquisite beauty is used to heighten the pathos of decay. Irene raved
about the scenery. There is no place in the world beautiful enough to
have justified her enthusiasm, and there is none ugly enough to have
killed it.
I do not say that Irene's letters to Mr. King were entirely taken up with
descriptions of the beauty of Lenox. That young gentleman had gone on
business to Georgia. Mr. and Mrs. Benson were in Cyrusville. Irene was
staying with Mrs. Farquhar at the house of a friend. These letters had a
great deal of Lovers' Latin in them--enough to have admitted the writer
into Yale College if this were a qualification. The letters she received
were equally learned, and the fragments Mrs. Farquhar was permitted to
hear were so interrupted by these cabalistic expressions that she finally
begged to be excused. She said she did not doubt that to be in love was
a liberal education, but pedantry was uninteresting. Latin might be
convenient at this stage; but later on, for little tiffs and
reconciliations, French would be much more useful.
One of these letters southward described a wedding. The principals in it
were unknown to King, but in the minute detail of the letter there was a
personal flavor which charmed him. He would have been still more charmed
could he have seen the girl's radiant face as she dashed it off. Mrs.
Farquhar watched her with a pensive interest awhile, went behind her
chair, and, leaning over, kissed her forehead, and then with slow step
and sad eyes passed out to the piazza, and stood with her face to the
valley and the purple hills. But it was a faded landscape she saw.
WASHINGTON IRVING
By Charles Dudley Warner
1891
EDITOR'S NOTE
WASHINGTON IRVING, the first biography published in the American Men of
Letters Series, came out in December, 1881. It was an expansion of a
biographical and critical sketch prefixed to the first volume of a new
edition of Irving's works which began to appear in 1880. It was entitled
the Geoffrey Crayon edition, and was in twenty-seven volumes, which were
brought out, in most cases, in successive months. The first volume
appeared in April. The essay was subsequently published during the same
year in a volume entitled "Studies of Irving," which contained also
Bryant's oration and George P. Putnam's personal reminiscences.
"The Work of Washington Irving" was published early in August, 1893.
Originally it was delivered as a lecture to the Brooklyn Institute of
Arts and Sciences on April 3, 1893, the one hundred and tenth anniversary
of Irving's birth.
T. R. L.
WASHINGTON IRVING
I
PRELIMINARY
It is over twenty years since the death of Washington Irving removed that
personal presence which is always a powerful, and sometimes the sole,
stimulus to the sale of an author's books, and which strongly affects the
contemporary judgment of their merits. It is nearly a century since his
birth, which was almost coeval with that of the Republic, for it took
place the year the British troops evacuated the city of New York, and
only a few months before General Washington marched in at the head of the
Continental army and took possession of the metropolis. For fifty years
Irving charmed and instructed the American people, and was the author who
held, on the whole, the first place in their affections. As he was the
first to lift American literature into the popular respect of Europe,
so for a long time he was the chief representative of the American name
in the world of letters. During this period probably no citizen of the
Republic, except the Father of his Country, had so wide a reputation as
his namesake, Washington Irving.
It is time to inquire what basis this great reputation had in enduring
qualities, what portion of it was due to local and favoring
circumstances, and to make an impartial study of the author's literary
rank and achievement.
The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating
of all. The popularity of an author seems to depend quite as much upon
fashion or whim as upon a change in taste or in literary form. Not only
is contemporary judgment often at fault, but posterity is perpetually
revising its opinion. We are accustomed to say that the final rank of an
author is settled by the slow consensus of mankind in disregard of the
critics; but the rank is after all determined by the few best minds of
any given age, and the popular judgment has very little to do with it.
Immediate popularity, or currency, is a nearly valueless criterion of
merit. The settling of high rank even in the popular mind does not
necessarily give currency; the so-called best authors are not those most
widely read at any given time. Some who attain the position of classics
are subject to variations in popular and even in scholarly favor or
neglect. It happens to the princes of literature to encounter periods of
varying duration when their names are revered and their books are not
read. The growth, not to say the fluctuation, of Shakespeare's
popularity is one of the curiosities of literary history. Worshiped by
his contemporaries, apostrophized by Milton only fourteen pears after his
death as the "dear son of memory, great heir to fame,"
"So sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die,"
he was neglected by the succeeding age, the subject of violent extremes
of opinion in the eighteenth century, and so lightly esteemed by some
that Hume could doubt if he were a poet "capable of furnishing a proper
entertainment to a refined and intelligent audience," and attribute to
the rudeness of his "disproportioned and misshapen" genius the "reproach
of barbarism" which the English nation had suffered from all its
neighbors. Only recently has the study of him by English scholars--I do
not refer to the verbal squabbles over the text--been proportioned to his
preeminence, and his fame is still slowly asserting itself among foreign
peoples.
There are already signs that we are not to accept as the final judgment
upon the English contemporaries of Irving the currency their writings
have now. In the case of Walter Scott, although there is already visible
a reaction against a reaction, he is not, at least in America, read by
this generation as he was by the last. This faint reaction is no doubt a
sign of a deeper change impending in philosophic and metaphysical
speculation. An age is apt to take a lurch in a body one way or another,
and those most active in it do not always perceive how largely its
direction is determined by what are called mere systems of philosophy.
The novelist may not know whether he is steered by Kant, or Hegel, or
Schopenhauer. The humanitarian novel, the fictions of passion, of
realism, of doubt, the poetry and the essays addressed to the mood of
unrest, of questioning, to the scientific spirit and to the shifting
attitudes of social change and reform, claim the attention of an age that
is completely adrift in regard to the relations of the supernatural and
the material, the ideal and the real. It would be natural if in such a
time of confusion the calm tones of unexaggerated literary art should be
not so much heeded as the more strident voices. Yet when the passing
fashion of this day is succeeded by the fashion of another, that which is
most acceptable to the thought and feeling of the present may be without
an audience; and it may happen that few recent authors will be read as
Scott and the writers of the early part of this century will be read.
It may, however, be safely predicted that those writers of fiction worthy
to be called literary artists will best retain their hold who have
faithfully painted the manners of their own time.
Irving has shared the neglect of the writers of his generation. It would
be strange, even in America, if this were not so. The development of
American literature (using the term in its broadest sense) in the past
forty years is greater than could have been expected in a nation which
had its ground to clear, its wealth to win, and its new governmental
experiment to adjust; if we confine our view to the last twenty years,
the national production is vast in amount and encouraging in quality.
It suffices to say of it here, in a general way, that the most vigorous
activity has been in the departments of history, of applied science, and
the discussion of social and economic problems. Although pure literature
has made considerable gains, the main achievement has been in other
directions. The audience of the literary artist has been less than that
of the reporter of affairs and discoveries and the special correspondent.
The age is too busy, too harassed, to have time for literature; and
enjoyment of writings like those of Irving depends upon leisure of mind.
The mass of readers have cared less for form than for novelty and news
and the satisfying of a recently awakened curiosity. This was inevitable
in an era of journalism, one marked by the marvelous results attained in
the fields of religion, science, and art, by the adoption of the
comparative method. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the vigor
and intellectual activity of the age than a living English writer, who
has traversed and illuminated almost every province of modern thought,
controversy, and scholarship; but who supposes that Mr. Gladstone has
added anything to permanent literature? He has been an immense force in
his own time, and his influence the next generation will still feel and
acknowledge, while it reads, not the writings of Mr. Gladstone, but,
maybe, those of the author of "Henry Esmond" and the biographer of "Rab
and His Friends." De Quincey divides literature into two sorts, the
literature of power and the literature of knowledge. The latter is of
necessity for to-day only, and must be revised to-morrow. The definition
has scarcely De Quincey's usual verbal felicity, but we can apprehend the
distinction he intended to make.
It is to be noted also, and not with regard to Irving only, that the
attention of young and old readers has been so occupied and distracted by
the flood of new books, written with the single purpose of satisfying the
wants of the day, produced and distributed with marvelous cheapness and
facility, that the standard works of approved literature remain for the
most part unread upon the shelves. Thirty years ago Irving was much read
in America by young people, and his clear style helped to form a good
taste and correct literary habits. It is not so now. The manufacturers
of books, periodicals, and newspapers for the young keep the rising
generation fully occupied, with a result to its taste and mental fiber
which, to say the least of it, must be regarded with some apprehension.
The "plant," in the way of money and writing industry invested in the
production of juvenile literature, is so large and is so permanent an
interest, that it requires more discriminating consideration than can be
given to it in a passing paragraph.
Besides this, and with respect to Irving in particular, there has been in
America a criticism--sometimes called the destructive, sometimes the
Donnybrook Fair--that found "earnestness" the only amusing thing in the
world, that brought to literary art the test of utility, and disparaged
what is called the "Knickerbocker School" (assuming Irving to be the head
of it) as wanting in purpose and virility, a merely romantic development
of the post-Revolutionary period. And it has been to some extent the
fashion to damn with faint admiration the pioneer if not the creator of
American literature as the "genial" Irving.
Before I pass to an outline of the career of this representative American
author, it is necessary to refer for a moment to certain periods, more or
less marked, in our literature. I do not include in it the works of
writers either born in England or completely English in training, method,
and tradition, showing nothing distinctively American in their writings
except the incidental subject. The first authors whom we may regard as
characteristic of the new country--leaving out the productions of
speculative theology--devoted their genius to politics. It is in the
political writings immediately preceding and following the Revolution
--such as those of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson that the new
birth of a nation of original force and ideas is declared. It has been
said, and I think the statement can be maintained, that for any parallel
to those treatises on the nature of government, in respect to originality
and vigor, we must go back to classic times. But literature, that is,
literature which is an end in itself and not a means to something else,
did not exist in America before Irving. Some foreshadowings (the
autobiographical fragment of Franklin was not published till 1817) of its
coming may be traced, but there can be no question that his writings were
the first that bore the national literary stamp, that he first made the
nation conscious of its gift and opportunity, and that he first announced
to trans-Atlantic readers the entrance of America upon the literary
field. For some time he was our only man of letters who had a reputation
beyond seas.
Irving was not, however, the first American who made literature a
profession and attempted to live on its fruits. This distinction belongs
to Charles Brockden Brown, who was born in Philadelphia, January 27,
1771, and, before the appearance in a newspaper of Irving's juvenile
essays in 1802, had published several romances, which were hailed as
original and striking productions by his contemporaries, and even
attracted attention in England. As late as 1820 a prominent British
review gives Mr. Brown the first rank in our literature as an original
writer and characteristically American. The reader of to-day who has the
curiosity to inquire into the correctness of this opinion will, if he is
familiar with the romances of the eighteenth century, find little
originality in Brown's stories, and nothing distinctively American.
The figures who are moved in them seem to be transported from the pages
of foreign fiction to the New World, not as it was, but as it existed in
the minds of European sentimentalists.
Mr. Brown received a fair education in a classical school in his native
city, and studied law, which he abandoned on the threshold of practice,
as Irving did, and for the same reason. He had the genuine literary
impulse, which he obeyed against all the arguments and entreaties of his
friends. Unfortunately, with a delicate physical constitution he had a
mind of romantic sensibility, and in the comparative inaction imposed by
his frail health he indulged in visionary speculation, and in solitary
wanderings which developed the habit of sentimental musing. It was
natural that such reveries should produce morbid romances. The tone of
them is that of the unwholesome fiction of his time, in which the
"seducer" is a prominent and recognized character in social life, and
female virtue is the frail sport of opportunity. Brown's own life was
fastidiously correct, but it is a curious commentary upon his estimate of
the natural power of resistance to vice in his time, that he regarded his
feeble health as good fortune, since it protected him from the
temptations of youth and virility.
While he was reading law he constantly exercised his pen in the
composition of essays, some of which were published under the title of
the "Rhapsodist;" but it was not until 1797 that his career as an author
began, by the publication of "Alcuin: a Dialogue on the Rights of Women."
This and the romances which followed it show the powerful influence upon
him of the school of fiction of William Godwin, and the movement of
emancipation of which Mary Wollstonecraft was the leader. The period of
social and political ferment during which "Alcuin" was put forth was not
unlike that which may be said to have reached its height in extravagance
and millennial expectation in 1847-48. In "Alcuin" are anticipated most
of the subsequent discussions on the right of women to property and to
self-control, and the desirability of revising the marriage relation.
The injustice of any more enduring union than that founded upon the
inclination of the hour is as ingeniously urged in "Alcuin" as it has
been in our own day.
Mr. Brown's reputation rests upon six romances: "Wieland," "Ormond,"
"Arthur Mervyn," "Edgar Huntly," "Clara Howard," and "Jane Talbot." The
first five were published in the interval between the spring of 1798 and
the summer of 1801, in which he completed his thirtieth year. "Jane
Talbot" appeared somewhat later. In scenery and character, these
romances are entirely unreal. There is in them an affectation of
psychological purpose which is not very well sustained, and a somewhat
clumsy introduction of supernatural machinery. Yet they have a power of
engaging the attention in the rapid succession of startling and uncanny
incidents and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes
dangerously near the ludicrous. Brown had not a particle of humor.
Of literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the
style is to a certain extent unformed and immature, it is neither feeble
nor obscure, and admirably serves the author's purpose of creating what
the children call a "crawly" impression. There is undeniable power in
many of his scenes, notably in the descriptions of the yellow fever in
Philadelphia, found in the romance of "Arthur Mervyn." There is,
however, over all of them a false and pallid light; his characters are
seen in a spectral atmosphere. If a romance is to be judged, not by
literary rules, but by its power of making an impression upon the mind,
such power as a ghastly story has, told by the chimney-corner on a
tempestuous night, then Mr. Brown's romances cannot be dismissed without
a certain recognition. But they never represented anything distinctively
American, and their influence upon American literature is scarcely
discernible.
Subsequently Mr. Brown became interested in political subjects, and wrote
upon them with vigor and sagacity. He was the editor of two short-lived
literary periodicals which were nevertheless useful in their day: "The
Monthly Magazine and American Review," begun in New York in the spring
of 1798, and ending in the autumn of 1800; and "The Literary Magazine and
American Register," which was established in Philadelphia in 1803--It was
for this periodical that Mr. Brown, who visited Irving in that year,
sought in vain to enlist the service of the latter, who, then a youth of
nineteen, had a little reputation as the author of some humorous essays
in the "Morning Chronicle" newspaper.
Charles Brockden Brown died, the victim of a lingering consumption,
in 1810, at the age of thirty-nine. In pausing for a moment upon his
incomplete and promising career, we should not forget to recall the
strong impression he made upon his contemporaries as a man of genius,
the testimony to the charm of his conversation and the goodness of his
heart, nor the pioneer service he rendered to letters before the
provincial fetters were at all loosened.
The advent of Cooper, Bryant, and Halleck was some twenty years after the
recognition of Irving; but thereafter the stars thicken in our literary
sky, and when in 1832 Irving returned from his long sojourn in Europe,
he found an immense advance in fiction, poetry, and historical
composition. American literature was not only born,--it was able to go
alone. We are not likely to overestimate the stimulus to this movement
given by Irving's example, and by his success abroad. His leadership is
recognized in the respectful attitude towards him of all his
contemporaries in America. And the cordiality with which he gave help
whenever it was asked, and his eagerness to acknowledge merit in others,
secured him the affection of all the literary class, which is popularly
supposed to have a rare appreciation of the defects of fellow craftsmen.
The period from 1830 to 1860 was that of our greatest purely literary
achievement, and, indeed, most of the greater names of to-day were
familiar before 1850. Conspicuous exceptions are Motley and Parkman and
a few belles-lettres writers, whose novels and stories mark a distinct
literary transition since the War of the Rebellion. In the period from
1845 to 1860, there was a singular development of sentimentalism; it had
been, growing before, it did not altogether disappear at the time named,
and it was so conspicuous that this may properly be called the
sentimental era in our literature. The causes of it, and its relation to
our changing national character, are worthy the study of the historian.
In politics, the discussion of constitutional questions, of tariffs and
finance, had given way to moral agitations. Every political movement was
determined by its relation to slavery. Eccentricities of all sorts were
developed. It was the era of "transcendentalism" in New England, of
"come-outers" there and elsewhere, of communistic experiments, of reform
notions about marriage, about woman's dress, about diet; through the open
door of abolitionism women appeared upon its platform, demanding a
various emancipation; the agitation for total abstinence from
intoxicating drinks got under full headway, urged on moral rather than on
the statistical and scientific grounds of to-day; reformed drunkards went
about from town to town depicting to applauding audiences the horrors of
delirium tremens,--one of these peripatetics led about with him a goat,
perhaps as a scapegoat and sin-offering; tobacco was as odious as rum;
and I remember that George Thompson, the eloquent apostle of
emancipation, during his tour in this country, when on one occasion he
was the cynosure of a protracted anti-slavery meeting at Peterboro, the
home of Gerrit Smith, deeply offended some of his co-workers, and lost
the admiration of many of his admirers, the maiden devotees of green tea,
by his use of snuff. To "lift up the voice" and wear long hair were
signs of devotion to a purpose.
In that seething time, the lighter literature took a sentimental tone,
and either spread itself in manufactured fine writing, or lapsed into a
reminiscent and melting mood. In a pretty affectation, we were asked to
meditate upon the old garret, the deserted hearth, the old letters, the
old well-sweep, the dead baby, the little shoes; we were put into a mood
in which we were defenseless against the lukewarm flood of the Tupperean
Philosophy. Even the newspapers caught the bathetic tone. Every "local"
editor breathed his woe over the incidents of the police court, the
falling leaf, the tragedies of the boardinghouse, in the most lachrymose
periods he could command, and let us never lack fine writing, whatever
might be the dearth of news. I need not say how suddenly and completely
this affectation was laughed out of sight by the coming of the "humorous"
writer, whose existence is justified by the excellent service he
performed in clearing the tearful atmosphere. His keen and mocking
method, which is quite distinct from the humor of Goldsmith and Irving,
and differs, in degree at least, from the comic-almanac exaggeration and
coarseness which preceded it, puts its foot on every bud of sentiment,
holds few things sacred, and refuses to regard anything in life
seriously. But it has no mercy for any sham.
I refer to this sentimental era--remembering that its literary
manifestation was only a surface disease, and recognizing fully the value
of the great moral movement in purifying the national life--because many
regard its literary weakness as a legitimate outgrowth of the
Knickerbocker School, and hold Irving in a manner responsible for it.
But I find nothing in the manly sentiment and true tenderness of Irving
to warrant the sentimental gush of his followers, who missed his
corrective humor as completely as they failed to catch his literary art.
Whatever note of localism there was in the Knickerbocker School, however
dilettante and unfruitful it was, it was not the legitimate heir of the
broad and eclectic genius of Irving. The nature of that genius we shall
see in his life.
II
BOYHOOD
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783.
He was the eighth son of William and Sarah Irving, and the youngest of
eleven children, three of whom died in infancy. His parents, though of
good origin, began life in humble circumstances. His father was born on
the island of Shapinska. His family, one of the most respectable in
Scotland, traced its descent from William De Irwyn, the secretary and
armorbearer of Robert Bruce; but at the time of the birth of William
Irving its fortunes had gradually decayed, and the lad sought his
livelihood, according to the habit of the adventurous Orkney Islanders,
on the sea.
It was during the French War, and while he was serving as a petty officer
in an armed packet plying between Falmouth and New York, that he met
Sarah Sanders, a beautiful girl, the only daughter of John and Anna
Sanders, who had the distinction of being the granddaughter of an English
curate. The youthful pair were married in 1761, and two years after
embarked for New York, where they landed July 18, 1763. Upon settling in
New York William Irving quit the sea and took to trade, in which he was
successful until his business was broken up by the Revolutionary War.
In this contest he was a stanch Whig, and suffered for his opinions at
the hands of the British occupants of the city, and both he and his wife
did much to alleviate the misery of the American prisoners. In this
charitable ministry his wife, who possessed a rarely generous and
sympathetic nature, was especially zealous, supplying the prisoners with
food from her own table, visiting those who were ill, and furnishing them
with clothing and other necessaries.
Washington was born in a house on William Street, about half-way between
Fulton and John; the following year the family moved across the way into
one of the quaint structures of the time, its gable end with attic window
towards the street; the fashion of which, and very likely the bricks,
came from Holland. In this homestead the lad grew up, and it was not
pulled down till 1849, ten years before his death. The patriot army
occupied the city. "Washington's work is ended," said the mother, "and
the child shall be named after him." When the first President was again
in New York, the first seat of the new government, a Scotch maid-servant
of the family, catching the popular enthusiasm, one day followed the hero
into a shop and presented the lad to him. "Please, your honor," said
Lizzie, all aglow, "here's a bairn was named after you." And the grave
Virginian placed his hand on the boy's head and gave him his blessing.
The touch could not have been more efficacious, though it might have
lingered longer, if he had known he was propitiating his future
biographer.
New York at the time of our author's birth was a rural city of about
twenty-three thousand inhabitants, clustered about the Battery. It did
not extend northward to the site of the present City Hall Park; and
beyond, then and for several years afterwards, were only country
residences, orchards, and corn-fields. The city was half burned down
during the war, and had emerged from it in a dilapidated condition.
There was still a marked separation between the Dutch and the English
residents, though the Irvings seem to have been on terms of intimacy with
the best of both nationalities. The habits of living were primitive; the
manners were agreeably free; conviviality at the table was the fashion,
and strong expletives had not gone out of use in conversation. Society
was the reverse of intellectual: the aristocracy were the merchants and
traders; what literary culture found expression was formed on English
models, dignified and plentifully garnished with Latin and Greek
allusions; the commercial spirit ruled, and the relaxations and
amusements partook of its hurry and excitement. In their gay,
hospitable, and mercurial character, the inhabitants were true
progenitors of the present metropolis. A newspaper had been established
in 1732, and a theater had existed since 1750. Although the town had a
rural aspect, with its quaint dormer-window houses, its straggling lanes
and roads, and the water-pumps in the middle of the streets, it had the
aspirations of a city, and already much of the metropolitan air.
These were the surroundings in which the boy's literary talent was to
develop. His father was a deacon in the Presbyterian church, a sedate,
God-fearing man, with the strict severity of the Scotch Covenanter,
serious in his intercourse with his family, without sympathy in the
amusements of his children; he was not without tenderness in his nature,
but the exhibition of it was repressed on principle,--a man of high
character and probity, greatly esteemed by his associates. He endeavored
to bring up his children in sound religious principles, and to leave no
room in their lives for triviality. One of the two weekly half-holidays
was required for the catechism, and the only relaxation from the three
church services on Sunday was the reading of "Pilgrim's Progress." This
cold and severe discipline at home would have been intolerable but for
the more lovingly demonstrative and impulsive character of the mother,
whose gentle nature and fine intellect won the tender veneration of her
children. Of the father they stood in awe; his conscientious piety
failed to waken any religious sensibility in them, and they revolted from
a teaching which seemed to regard everything that was pleasant as wicked.
The mother, brought up an Episcopalian, conformed to the religious forms
and worship of her husband, but she was never in sympathy with his rigid
views. The children were repelled from the creed of their father, and
subsequently all of them except one became attached to the Episcopal
Church. Washington, in order to make sure of his escape, and feel safe
while he was still constrained to attend his father's church, went
stealthily to Trinity Church at an early age, and received the rite of
confirmation. The boy was full of vivacity, drollery, and innocent
mischief. His sportiveness and disinclination to religious seriousness
gave his mother some anxiety, and she would look at him, says his
biographer, with a half-mournful admiration, and exclaim, "O Washington!
if you were only good!" He had a love of music, which became later in
life a passion, and great fondness for the theater. The stolen delight
of the theater he first tasted in company with a boy who was somewhat his
senior, but destined to be his literary comrade,--James K. Paulding,
whose sister was the wife of Irving's brother William. Whenever he could
afford this indulgence, he stole away early to the theater in John
Street, remained until it was time to return to the family prayers at
nine, after which he would retire to his room, slip through his window
and down the roof to a back alley, and return to enjoy the after-piece.
Young Irving's school education was desultory, pursued under several more
or less incompetent masters, and was over at the age of sixteen. The
teaching does not seem to have had much discipline or solidity;
he studied Latin a few months, but made no other incursion into the
classics. The handsome, tender-hearted, truthful, susceptible boy was no
doubt a dawdler in routine studies, but he assimilated what suited him.
He found his food in such pieces of English literature as were floating
about, in "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sindbad;" at ten he was inspired by a
translation of "Orlando Furioso;" he devoured books of voyages and
travel; he could turn a neat verse, and his scribbling propensities were
exercised in the composition of childish plays. The fact seems to be
that the boy was a dreamer and saunterer; he himself says that he used to
wander about the pier heads in fine weather, watch the ships departing on
long voyages, and dream of going to the ends of the earth. His brothers
Peter and John had been sent to Columbia College, and it is probable that
Washington would have had the same advantage if he had not shown a
disinclination to methodical study. At the age of sixteen he entered a
law office, but he was a heedless student, and never acquired either a
taste for the profession or much knowledge of law. While he sat in the
law office, he read literature, and made considerable progress in his
self-culture; but he liked rambling and society quite as well as books.
In 1798 we find him passing a summer holiday in Westchester County, and
exploring with his gun the Sleepy Hollow region which he was afterwards
to make an enchanted realm; and in 1800 he made his first voyage up the
Hudson, the beauties of which he was the first to celebrate, on a visit
to a married sister who lived in the Mohawk Valley. In 1802 he became a
law clerk in the office of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and began that enduring
intimacy with the refined and charming Hoffman family which was so deeply
to influence all his life. His health had always been delicate, and his
friends were now alarmed by symptoms of pulmonary weakness. This
physical disability no doubt had much to do with his disinclination to
severe study. For the next two or three years much time was consumed in
excursions up the Hudson and the Mohawk, and in adventurous journeys as
far as the wilds of Ogdensburg and to Montreal, to the great improvement
of his physical condition, and in the enjoyment of the gay society of
Albany, Schenectady, Ballston, and Saratoga Springs. These explorations
and visits gave him material for future use, and exercised his pen in
agreeable correspondence; but his tendency at this time, and for several
years afterwards, was to the idle life of a man of society. Whether the
literary impulse which was born in him would have ever insisted upon any
but an occasional and fitful expression, except for the necessities of
his subsequent condition, is doubtful.
Irving's first literary publication was a series of letters, signed
Jonathan Oldstyle, contributed in 1802 to the "Morning Chronicle,"
a newspaper then recently established by his brother Peter.
The attention that these audacious satires of the theater, the actors,
and their audience attracted is evidence of the literary poverty of the
period. The letters are open imitations of the "Spectator" and the
"Tatler," and, although sharp upon local follies, are of no consequence
at present except as foreshadowing the sensibility and quiet humor of the
future author, and his chivalrous devotion to woman. What is worthy of
note is that a boy of nineteen should turn aside from his caustic satire
to protest against the cruel and unmanly habit of jesting at ancient
maidens. It was enough for him that they are women, and possess the
strongest claim upon our admiration, tenderness, and protection.
III
MANHOOD--FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE
Irving's health, always delicate, continued so much impaired when he came
of age, in 1804., that his brothers determined to send him to Europe.
On the 19th of May he took passage for Bordeaux in a sailing vessel,
which reached the mouth of the Garonne on the 25th of June. His
consumptive appearance when he went on board caused the captain to say to
himself, "There's a chap who will go overboard before we get across;" but
his condition was much improved by the voyage.
He stayed six weeks at Bordeaux to improve himself in the language, and
then set out for the Mediterranean. In the diligence he had some merry
companions, and the party amused itself on the way. It was their habit
to stroll about the towns in which they stopped, and talk with whomever
they met. Among his companions was a young French officer and an
eccentric, garrulous doctor from America. At Tonneins, on the Garonne,
they entered a house where a number of girls were quilting. The girls
gave Irving a needle and set him to work. He could not understand their
patois, and they could not comprehend his bad French, and they got on
very merrily. At last the little doctor told them that the interesting
young man was an English prisoner whom the French officer had in custody.
Their merriment at once gave place to pity. "Ah! le pauvre garcon!" said
one to another; "he is merry, however, in all his trouble." "And what
will they do with him?" asked a young woman. "Oh, nothing of
consequence," replied the doctor; "perhaps shoot him, or cut off his
head." The good souls were much distressed; they brought him wine,
loaded his pockets with fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred
benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way
from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the
recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to the
tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience had always
pricked him for it. "It was a shame," he said, "to leave them with such
painful impressions." The quilting party had dispersed by that time.
"I believe I recognized the house," he says; "and I saw two or three old
women who might once have formed part of the merry group of girls; but I
doubt whether they recognized, in the stout elderly gentleman, thus
rattling in his carriage through their streets, the pale young English
prisoner of forty years since."
Bonaparte was emperor. The whole country was full of suspicion.
The police suspected the traveler, notwithstanding his passport, of being
an Englishman and a spy, and dogged him at every step. He arrived at
Avignon, full of enthusiasm at the thought of seeing the tomb of Laura.
"Judge of my surprise," he writes, "my disappointment, and my
indignation, when I was told that the church, tomb, and all were utterly
demolished in the time of the Revolution. Never did the Revolution, its
authors and its consequences, receive a more hearty and sincere
execration than at that moment. Throughout the whole of my journey I had
found reason to exclaim against it for depriving me of some valuable
curiosity or celebrated monument, but this was the severest
disappointment it had yet occasioned." This view of the Revolution is
very characteristic of Irving, and perhaps the first that would occur to
a man of letters. The journey was altogether disagreeable, even to a
traveler used to the rough jaunts in an American wilderness: the inns
were miserable; dirt, noise, and insolence reigned without control.
But it never was our author's habit to stroke the world the wrong way:
"When I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste
to suit my dinner." And he adds: "There is nothing I dread more than to
be taken for one of the Smellfungi of this world. I therefore endeavor
to be pleased with everything about me, and with the masters, mistresses,
and servants of the inns, particularly when I perceive they have 'all the
dispositions in the world' to serve me; as Sterne says, 'It is enough for
heaven and ought to be enough for me.'"
The traveler was detained at Marseilles, and five weeks at Nice, on one
or another frivolous pretext of the police, and did not reach Genoa till
the 20th of October. At Genoa there was a delightful society, and Irving
seems to have been more attracted by that than by the historical
curiosities. His health was restored, and his spirits recovered
elasticity in the genial hospitality; he was surrounded by friends to
whom he became so much attached that it was with pain he parted from
them. The gayety of city life, the levees of the Doge, and the balls,
were not unattractive to the handsome young man; but what made Genoa seem
like home to him was his intimacy with a few charming families, among
whom he mentions those of Mrs. Bird, Madame Gabriac, and Lady
Shaftesbury. From the latter he experienced the most cordial and
unreserved friendship; she greatly interested herself in his future,
and furnished him with letters from herself and the nobility to persons
of the first distinction in Florence, Rome, and Naples.
Late in December Irving sailed for Sicily in a Genoese packet. Off the
island of Planoca it was overpowered and captured by a little picaroon,
with lateen sails and a couple of guns, and a most villainous crew,
in poverty-stricken garments, rusty cutlasses in their hands and
stilettos and pistols stuck in their waistbands. The pirates thoroughly
ransacked the vessel, opened all the trunks and portmanteaus, but found
little that they wanted except brandy and provisions. In releasing the
vessel, the ragamuffins seem to have had a touch of humor, for they gave
the captain a "receipt" for what they had taken, and an order on the
British consul at Messina to pay for the same. This old-time courtesy
was hardly appreciated at the moment.
Irving passed a couple of months in Sicily, exploring with some
thoroughness the ruins, and making several perilous inland trips, for the
country was infested by banditti. One journey from Syracuse through the
center of the island revealed more wretchedness than Irving supposed
existed in the world. The half-starved peasants lived in wretched cabins
and often in caverns, amid filth and vermin. "God knows my mind never
suffered so much as on this journey," he writes, "when I saw such scenes
of want and misery continually before me, without the power of
effectually relieving them." His stay in the ports was made agreeable by
the officers of American ships cruising in those waters. Every ship was
a home, and every officer a friend. He had a boundless capacity for
good-fellowship. At Messina he chronicles the brilliant spectacle of
Lord Nelson's fleet passing through the straits in search of the French
fleet that had lately got out of Toulon. In less than a year Nelson's
young admirer was one of the thousands that pressed to see the remains of
the great admiral as they lay in state at Greenwich, wrapped in the flag
that had floated at the masthead of the Victory.
From Sicily he passed over to Naples in a fruit boat which dodged the
cruisers, and reached Rome the last of March. Here he remained several
weeks, absorbed by the multitudinous attractions. In Italy the worlds of
music and painting were for the first time opened to him. Here he made
the acquaintance of Washington Allston, and the influence of this
friendship came near changing the whole course of his life. To return
home to the dry study of the law was not a pleasing prospect; the
masterpieces of art, the serenity of the sky, the nameless charm which
hangs about an Italian landscape, and Allston's enthusiasm as an artist,
nearly decided him to remain in Rome and adopt the profession of a
painter. But after indulging in this dream, it occurred to him that it
was not so much a natural aptitude for the art as the lovely scenery and
Allston's companionship that had attracted him to it. He saw something
of Roman society; Torlonia the banker was especially assiduous in his
attentions. It turned out when Irving came to make his adieus that
Torlonia had all along supposed him a relative of General Washington.
This mistake is offset by another that occurred later, after Irving had
attained some celebrity in England. An English lady passing through an
Italian gallery with her daughter stopped before a bust of Washington.
The daughter said, "Mother, who was Washington?" "Why, my dear, don't
you know?" was the astonished reply. "He wrote the 'Sketch-Book.'"
It was at the house of Baron von Humboldt, the Prussian minister, that
Irving first met Madame de Stael, who was then enjoying the celebrity of
"Delphine." He was impressed with her strength of mind, and somewhat
astounded at the amazing flow of her conversation, and the question upon
question with which she plied him.
In May the wanderer was in Paris, and remained there four months,
studying French and frequenting the theaters with exemplary regularity.
Of his life in Paris there are only the meagerest reports, and he records
no observations upon political affairs. The town fascinated him more
than any other in Europe; he notes that the city is rapidly beautifying
under the emperor, that the people seem gay and happy, and 'Vive la
bagatelle!' is again the burden of their song. His excuse for remissness
in correspondence was, "I am a young man and in Paris."
By way of the Netherlands he reached London in October, and remained in
England till January. The attraction in London seems to have been the
theater, where he saw John Kemble, Cooke, and Mrs. Siddons. Kemble's
acting seemed to him too studied and over-labored; he had the
disadvantage of a voice lacking rich bass tones. Whatever he did was
judiciously conceived and perfectly executed; it satisfied the head, but
rarely touched the heart. Only in the part of Zanga was the young critic
completely overpowered by his acting,--Kemble seemed to have forgotten
himself. Cooke, who had less range than Kemble, completely satisfied
Irving as Iago. Of Mrs. Siddons, who was then old, he scarcely dares to
give his impressions lest he should be thought extravagant. "Her looks,"
he says, "her voice; her gestures, delighted me. She penetrated in a
moment to my heart. She froze and melted it by turns; a glance of her
eye, a start, an exclamation, thrilled through my whole frame. The more
I see her, the more I admire her. I hardly breathe while she is on the
stage. She works up my feelings till I am like a mere child." Some
years later, after the publication of the "Sketch-Book," in a London
assembly Irving was presented to the tragedy queen, who had left the
stage, but had not laid aside its stately manner. She looked at him a
moment, and then in a deep-toned voice slowly enunciated, "You've made me
weep." The author was so disconcerted that he said not a word, and
retreated in confusion. After the publication of "Bracebridge Hall" he
met her in company again, and was persuaded to go through the ordeal of
another presentation. The stately woman fixed her eyes on him as before,
and slowly said, "You 've made me weep again." This time the bashful
author acquitted himself with more honor.
This first sojourn abroad was not immediately fruitful in a literary way,
and need not further detain us. It was the irresolute pilgrimage of a
man who had not yet received his vocation. Everywhere he was received in
the best society, and the charm of his manner and his ingenuous nature
made him everywhere a favorite. He carried that indefinable passport
which society recognizes and which needs no 'visee.' He saw the people
who were famous, the women whose recognition is a social reputation; he
made many valuable friends; he frequented the theater, he indulged his
passion for the opera; he learned how to dine, and to appreciate the
delights of a brilliant salon; he was picking up languages; he was
observing nature and men, and especially women. That he profited by his
loitering experience is plain enough afterward, but thus far there is
little to prophesy that Irving would be anything more in life than a
charming 'flaneur.'
IV
SOCIETY AND "SALMAGUNDI"
On Irving's return to America in February, 1806, with reestablished
health, life did not at first take on a more serious purpose. He was
admitted to the bar, but he still halted.--[Irving once illustrated his
legal acquirements at this time by the relation of the following anecdote
to his nephew: Josiah Ogden Hoffman and Martin Wilkins, an effective and
witty advocate, had been appointed to examine students for admission.
One student acquitted himself very lamely, and at the supper which it was
the custom for the candidates to give to the examiners, when they passed
upon their several merits, Hoffman paused in coming to this one, and
turning to Wilkins said, as if in hesitation, "though all the while
intending to admit him, Martin, I think he knows a little law."--"Make it
stronger, Jo," was the reply; "d---d little."]--Society more than ever
attracted him and devoured his time. He willingly accepted the office of
"champion at the tea-parties;" he was one of a knot of young fellows of
literary tastes and convivial habits, who delighted to be known as "The
Nine Worthies," or "Lads of Kilkenny." In his letters of this period I
detect a kind of callowness and affectation which is not discernible in
his foreign letters and journal.
These social worthies had jolly suppers at the humble taverns of the
city, and wilder revelries in an old country house on the Passaic, which
is celebrated in the "Salmagundi" papers as Cockloft Hall. We are
reminded of the change of manners by a letter of Mr. Paulding, one of his
comrades, written twenty years after, who recalls to mind the keeper of a
porter house, "who whilom wore a long coat, in the pockets whereof he
jingled two bushels of sixpenny pieces, and whose daughter played the
piano to the accompaniment of broiled oysters." There was some
affectation of roistering in all this; but it was a time of social
good-fellowship, and easy freedom of manners in both sexes. At the
dinners there was much sentimental and bacchanalian singing; it was
scarcely good manners not to get a little tipsy; and to be laid under
the table by the compulsory bumper was not to the discredit of a guest.
Irving used to like to repeat an anecdote of one of his early friends,
Henry Ogden, who had been at one of these festive meetings. He told
Irving the next day that in going home he had fallen through a grating
which had been carelessly left open, into a vault beneath. The solitude,
he said, was rather dismal at first, but several other of the guests fell
in, in the course of the evening, and they had, on the whole, a pleasant
night of it.
These young gentlemen liked to be thought "sad dogs." That they were
less abandoned than they pretended to be the sequel of their lives shows
among Irving's associates at this time who attained honorable
consideration were John and Gouverneur Kemble, Henry Brevoort, Henry
Ogden, James K. Paulding, and Peter Irving. The saving influence for all
of them was the refined households they frequented and the association of
women who were high-spirited without prudery, and who united purity and
simplicity with wit, vivacity, and charm of manner. There is some
pleasant correspondence between Irving and Miss Mary Fairlie, a belle of
the time, who married the tragedian, Thomas A. Cooper; the "fascinating
Fairlie," as Irving calls her, and the Sophie Sparkle of the
"Salmagundi." Irving's susceptibility to the charms and graces of women
--a susceptibility which continued always fresh--was tempered and
ennobled by the most chivalrous admiration for the sex as a whole.
He placed them on an almost romantic pinnacle, and his actions always
conformed to his romantic ideal, although in his writings he sometimes
adopts the conventional satire which was more common fifty years ago than
now. In a letter to Miss Fairlie, written from Richmond, where he was
attending the trial of Aaron Burr, he expresses his exalted opinion of
the sex. It was said in accounting for the open sympathy of the ladies
with the prisoner that Burr had always been a favorite with them; "but I
am not inclined," he writes, "to account for it in so illiberal a manner;
it results from that merciful, that heavenly disposition, implanted in
the female bosom, which ever inclines in favor of the accused and the
unfortunate. You will smile at the high strain in which I have indulged;
believe me, it is because I feel it; and I love your sex ten times better
than ever."--[An amusing story in connection with this Richmond visit
illustrates the romantic phase of Irving's character. Cooper, who was
playing at the theater, needed small-clothes for one of his parts; Irving
lent him a pair,--knee breeches being still worn,--and the actor carried
them off to Baltimore. From that city he wrote that he had found in the
pocket an emblem of love, a mysterious locket of hair in the shape of a
heart. The history of it is curious: when Irving sojourned at Genoa, he
was much taken with the beauty of a young Italian lady, the wife of a
Frenchman. He had never spoken with her, but one evening before his
departure he picked up from the floor her handkerchief which she had
dropped, and with more gallantry than honesty carried it off to Sicily.
His pocket was picked of the precious relic while he was attending a
religious function in Catania, and he wrote to his friend Storm, the
consul at Genoa, deploring his loss. The consul communicated the sad
misfortune to the lovely Bianca, for that was the lady's name, who
thereupon sent him a lock of her hair, with the request that he would
come to see her on his return. He never saw her again, but the lock of
hair was inclosed in a locket and worn about his neck, in memory of a
radiant vision that had crossed his path and vanished.]
Personally, Irving must have awakened a reciprocal admiration. A drawing
by Vanderlyn, made in Paris in 1805, and a portrait by Jarvis in 1809,
present him to us in the fresh bloom of manly beauty. The face has an
air of distinction and gentle breeding; the refined lines, the poetic
chin, the sensitive mouth, the shapely nose, the large dreamy eyes, the
intellectual forehead, and the clustering brown locks are our ideal of
the author of the "Sketch-Book" and the pilgrim in Spain. His
biographer, Mr. Pierre M. Irving, has given no description of his
appearance; but a relative, who saw much of our author in his latter
years, writes to me: "He had dark gray eyes; a handsome straight nose,
which might perhaps be called large; a broad, high, full forehead, and a
small mouth. I should call him of medium height, about five feet eight
and a half to nine inches, and inclined to be a trifle stout. There was
no peculiarity about his voice; but it was pleasant and had a good
intonation. His smile was exceedingly genial, lighting up his whole face
and rendering it very attractive; while, if he were about to say anything
humorous, it would beam forth from his eyes even before the words were
spoken. As a young man his face was exceedingly handsome, and his head
was well covered with dark hair; but from my earliest recollection of him
he wore neither whiskers nor moustache, but a dark brown wig, which,
although it made him look younger, concealed a beautifully shaped head."
We can understand why he was a favorite in the society of Baltimore,
Washington, Philadelphia, and Albany, as well as of New York, and why he
liked to linger here and there, sipping the social sweets, like a man
born to leisure and seemingly idle observation of life.
It was in the midst of these social successes, and just after his
admission to the bar, that Irving gave the first decided evidence of the
choice of a career. This was his association with his eldest brother,
William, and Paulding in the production of "Salmagundi," a semimonthly
periodical, in small duodecimo sheets, which ran with tolerable
regularity through twenty numbers, and stopped in full tide of success,
with the whimsical indifference to the public which had characterized its
every issue. Its declared purpose was "simply to instruct the young,
reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." In manner and
purpose it was an imitation of the "Spectator" and the "Citizen of the
World," and it must share the fate of all imitations; but its wit was not
borrowed, and its humor was to some extent original; and so perfectly was
it adapted to local conditions that it may be profitably read to-day as a
not untrue reflection of the manners and spirit of the time and city.
Its amusing audacity and complacent superiority, the mystery hanging
about its writers, its affectation of indifference to praise or profit,
its fearless criticism, lively wit, and irresponsible humor, piqued,
puzzled, and delighted the town. From the first it was an immense
success; it had a circulation in other cities, and many imitations of it
sprung up. Notwithstanding many affectations and puerilities it is still
readable to Americans. Of course, if it were offered now to the complex
and sophisticated society of New York, it would fail to attract anything
like the attention it received in the days of simplicity and literary
dearth; but the same wit, insight, and literary art, informed with the
modern spirit and turned upon the follies and "whim-whams" of the
metropolis, would doubtless have a great measure of success. In Irving's
contributions to it may be traced the germs of nearly everything that he
did afterwards; in it he tried the various stops of his genius; he
discovered his own power; his career was determined; thereafter it was
only a question of energy or necessity.
In the summer of 1808 there were printed at Ballston-Spa--then the resort
of fashion and the arena of flirtation--seven numbers of a duodecimo
bagatelle in prose and verse, entitled "The Literary Picture Gallery and
Admonitory Epistles to the Visitors of Ballston-Spa, by Simeon Senex,
Esquire." This piece of summer nonsense is not referred to by any writer
who has concerned himself about Irving's life, but there is reason to
believe that he was a contributor to it, if not the editor.--[For these
stray reminders of the old-time gayety of Ballston-Spa, I am indebted to
J. Carson Brevoort, Esq., whose father was Irving's most intimate friend,
and who told him that Irving had a hand in them.]
In these yellow pages is a melancholy reflection of the gayety and
gallantry of the Sans Souci Hotel seventy years ago. In this "Picture
Gallery," under the thin disguise of initials, are the portraits of
well-known belles of New York whose charms of person and graces of mind
would make the present reader regret his tardy advent into this world,
did not the "Admonitory Epistles," addressed to the same sex, remind him
that the manners of seventy years ago left much to be desired. In
respect of the habit of swearing, "Simeon" advises "Myra" that if ladies
were to confine themselves to a single round oath, it would be quite
sufficient; and he objects, when he is at the public table, to the
conduct of his neighbor who carelessly took up "Simeon's" fork and used
it as a toothpick. All this, no doubt, passed for wit in the beginning of
the century. Punning, broad satire, exaggerated compliment, verse which
has love for its theme and the "sweet bird of Venus" for its object, an
affectation of gallantry and of ennui, with anecdotes of distinguished
visitors, out of which the screaming fun has quite evaporated, make up
the staple of these faded mementos of an ancient watering-place. Yet how
much superior is our comedy of to-day? The beauty and the charms of the
women of two generations ago exist only in tradition; perhaps we should
give to the wit of that time equal admiration if none of it had been
preserved.
Irving, notwithstanding the success of "Salmagundi," did not immediately
devote himself to literature, nor seem to regard his achievements in it
as anything more than aids to social distinction. He was then, as
always, greatly influenced by his surroundings. These were unfavorable
to literary pursuits. Politics was the attractive field for preferment
and distinction; and it is more than probable that, even after the
success of the Knickerbocker history, he would have drifted through life;
half lawyer and half placeman, if the associations and stimulus of an old
civilization, in his second European residence, had not fired his
ambition. Like most young lawyers with little law and less clients,
he began to dabble in local politics. The experiment was not much to his
taste, and the association and work demanded, at that time, of a ward
politician soon disgusted him. "We have toiled through the purgatory of
an election," he writes to the fair Republican, Miss Fairlie, who
rejoiced in the defeat he and the Federals had sustained.
"What makes me the more outrageous is, that I got fairly drawn into the
vortex, and before the third day was expired, I was as deep in mud and
politics as ever a moderate gentleman would wish to be; and I drank beer
with the multitude; and I talked hand-bill fashion with the demagogues;
and I shook hands with the mob, whom my heart abhorreth. 'T is true, for
the first two days I maintained my coolness and indifference. The first
day I merely hunted for whim, character, and absurdity, according to my
usual custom; the second day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the
Seventh Ward, and read a volume of 'Galatea,' which I found on a shelf;
but before I had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good
Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half
shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and
spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering
hand-bill. But the third day--ah! then came the tug of war. My
patriotism then blazed forth, and I determined to save my country!
"Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such filthy nooks
and filthy corners; sweep offices and oyster cellars! I have sworn
brother to a leash of drawers, and can drink with any tinker in his own
language during my life,--faugh! I shall not be able to bear the smell of
small beer and tobacco for a month to come . . . . Truly this saving
one's country is a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such
a dirty virtue,--prythee, no more of it."
He unsuccessfully solicited some civil appointment at Albany, a very
modest solicitation, which was never renewed, and which did not last
long, for he was no sooner there than he was "disgusted by the servility
and duplicity and rascality witnessed among the swarm of scrub
politicians." There was a promising young artist at that time in Albany,
and Irving wishes he were a man of wealth, to give him a helping hand;
a few acts of munificence of this kind by rich nabobs, he breaks out,
"would be more pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and more to the glory and
advantage of their country, than building a dozen shingle church
steeples, or buying a thousand venal votes at an election." This was in
the "good old times!"
Although a Federalist, and, as he described himself, "an admirer of
General Hamilton, and a partisan with him in politics," he accepted a
retainer from Burr's friends in 1807, and attended his trial in Richmond,
but more in the capacity of an observer of the scene than a lawyer.
He did not share the prevalent opinion of Burr's treason, and regarded
him as a man so fallen as to be shorn of the power to injure the country,
one for whom he could feel nothing but compassion. That compassion,
however, he received only from the ladies of the city, and the traits of
female goodness manifested then sunk deep into Irving's heart. Without
pretending, he says, to decide on Burr's innocence or guilt, "his
situation is such as should appeal eloquently to the feelings of every
generous bosom. Sorry am I to say the reverse has been the fact: fallen,
proscribed, prejudged, the cup of bitterness has been administered to him
with an unsparing hand. It has almost been considered as culpable to
evince toward him the least sympathy or support; and many a
hollow-hearted caitiff have I seen, who basked in the sunshine of his
bounty while in power, who now skulked from his side, and even mingled
among the most clamorous of his enemies . . . . I bid him farewell
with a heavy heart, and he expressed with peculiar warmth and feeling his
sense of the interest I had taken in his fate. I never felt in a more
melancholy mood than when I rode from his solitary prison." This is a
good illustration of Irving's tender-heartedness; but considering Burr's
whole character, it is altogether a womanish case of misplaced sympathy
with the cool slayer of Alexander Hamilton.
V
THE KNICKERBOCKER PERIOD
Not long after the discontinuance of "Salmagundi," Irving, in connection
with his brother Peter, projected the work that was to make him famous.
At first nothing more was intended than a satire upon the "Picture of New
York," by Dr. Samuel Mitchell, just then published. It was begun as a
mere burlesque upon pedantry and erudition, and was well advanced, when
Peter was called by his business to Europe, and its completion was
fortunately left to Washington. In his mind the idea expanded into a
different conception. He condensed the mass of affected learning, which
was their joint work, into five introductory chapters,--subsequently he
said it would have been improved if it had been reduced to one, and it
seems to me it would have been better if that one had been thrown away,
--and finished "A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
substantially as we now have it. This was in 1809, when Irving was
twenty-six years old.
But before this humorous creation was completed, the author endured the
terrible bereavement which was to color all his life. He had formed a
deep and tender passion for Matilda Hoffman, the second daughter of
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in whose family he had long been on a footing of
the most perfect intimacy, and his ardent love was fully reciprocated.
He was restlessly casting about for some assured means of livelihood
which would enable him to marry, and perhaps his distrust of a literary
career was connected with this desire, when after a short illness Miss
Hoffman died, in the eighteenth year of her age. Without being a
dazzling beauty, she was lovely in person and mind, with most engaging
manners, a refined sensibility, and a delicate and playful humor.
The loss was a crushing blow to Irving, from the effects of which he
never recovered, although time softened the bitterness of his grief into
a tender and sacred memory. He could never bear to hear her name spoken
even by his most intimate friends, or any allusion to her. Thirty years
after her death, it happened one evening at the house of Mr. Hoffman,
her father, that a granddaughter was playing for Mr. Irving, and in
taking her music from the drawer, a faded piece of embroidery was brought
forth. "Washington," said Mr. Hoffman, picking it up, "this is a piece
of poor Matilda's workmanship." The effect was electric. He had been
talking in the sprightliest mood before, but he sunk at once into utter
silence, and in a few moments got up and left the house.
After his death, in a private repository of which he always kept the key,
was found a lovely miniature, a braid of fair hair, and a slip of paper,
on which was written in his own hand, "Matilda Hoffman;" and with these
treasures were several pages of a memorandum in ink long since faded.
He kept through life her Bible and Prayer Book; they were placed nightly
under his pillow in the first days of anguish that followed her loss, and
ever after they were the inseparable companions of all his wanderings.
In this memorandum--which was written many years afterwards--we read the
simple story of his love:
"We saw each other every day, and I became excessively attached to
her. Her shyness wore off by degrees. The more I saw of her the
more I had reason to admire her. Her mind seemed to unfold leaf by
leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew her so
well as I, for she was generally timid and silent; but I in a manner
studied her excellence. Never did I meet with more intuitive
rectitude of mind, more native delicacy, more exquisite propriety in
word, thought, and action, than in this young creature. I am not
exaggerating; what I say was acknowledged by all who knew her.
Her brilliant little sister used to say that people began by
admiring her, but ended by loving Matilda. For my part, I idolized
her. I felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity,
and as if I was a coarse, unworthy being in comparison."
At this time Irving was much perplexed about his career. He had "a fatal
propensity to belles-lettres;" his repugnance to the law was such that
his mind would not take hold of the study; he anticipated nothing from
legal pursuits or political employment; he was secretly writing the
humorous history, but was altogether in a low-spirited and disheartened
state. I quote again from the memorandum:
"In the mean time I saw Matilda every day, and that helped to
distract me. In the midst of this struggle and anxiety she was
taken ill with a cold. Nothing was thought of it at first; but she
grew rapidly worse, and fell into a consumption. I cannot tell you
what I suffered. The ills that I have undergone in this life have
been dealt out to me drop by drop, and I have tasted all their
bitterness. I saw her fade rapidly away; beautiful, and more
beautiful, and more angelical to the last. I was often by her
bedside; and in her wandering state of mind she would talk to me
with a sweet, natural, and affecting eloquence, that was
overpowering. I saw more of the beauty of her mind in that
delirious state than I had ever known before. Her malady was rapid
in its career, and hurried her off in two months. Her dying
struggles were painful and protracted. For three days and nights I
did not leave the house, and scarcely slept. I was by her when she
died; all the family were assembled round her, some praying, others
weeping, for she was adored by them all. I was the last one she
looked upon. I have told you as briefly as I could what, if I were
to tell with all the incidents and feelings that accompanied it,
would fill volumes. She was but about seventeen years old when she
died.
"I cannot tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long
time. I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me.
I abandoned all thoughts of the law. I went into the country, but
could not bear solitude, yet could not endure society. There was a
dismal horror continually in my mind, that made me fear to be alone.
I had often to get up in the night, and seek the bedroom of my
brother, as if the having a human being by me would relieve me from
the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.
"Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone; but the
despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this
attachment, and the anguish that attended its catastrophe, seemed to
give a turn to my whole character, and throw some clouds into my
disposition, which have ever since hung about it. When I became
more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of occupation,
to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close, as well as I
could, and published it; but the time and circumstances in which it
was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with
satisfaction. Still it took with the public, and gave me celebrity,
as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in
America. I was noticed, caressed, and, for a time, elevated by the
popularity I had gained. I found myself uncomfortable in my
feelings in New York, and traveled about a little. Wherever I went,
I was overwhelmed with attentions; I was full of youth and
animation, far different from the being I now am, and I was quite
flushed with this early taste of public favor. Still, however, the
career of gayety and notoriety soon palled on me. I seemed to drift
about without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart
wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form
other attachments, but my heart would not hold on; it would
continually recur to what it had lost; and whenever there was a
pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into
dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this
hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image
was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly."
This memorandum, it subsequently appeared, was a letter, or a transcript
of it, addressed to a married lady, Mrs. Foster, in which the story of
his early love was related, in reply to her question why he had never
married. It was in the year 1823, the year after the publication of
"Bracebridge Hall," while he sojourned in Dresden, that he became
intimate with an English family residing there, named Foster, and
conceived for the daughter, Miss Emily Foster, a warm friendship and
perhaps a deep attachment. The letter itself, which for the first time
broke the guarded seclusion of Irving's heart, is evidence of the tender
confidence that existed between him and this family. That this intimacy
would have resulted in marriage, or an offer of marriage, if the lady's
affections had not been preoccupied, the Fosters seem to have believed.
In an unauthorized addition to the, "Life and Letters," inserted in the
English edition without the knowledge of the American editor, with some
such headings as, "History of his First Love brought to us, and
returned," and "Irving's Second Attachment," the Fosters tell the
interesting story of Irving's life in Dresden, and give many of his
letters, and an account of his intimacy with the family. From this
account I quote:
"Soon after this, Mr. Irving, who had again for long felt 'the
tenderest interest warm his bosom, and finally enthrall his whole
soul,' made one vigorous and valiant effort to free himself from a
hopeless and consuming attachment. My mother counseled him, I
believe, for the best, and he left Dresden on an expedition of
several weeks into a country he had long wished to see; though, in
the main, it disappointed him; and he started with young Colbourne
(son of general Colbourne) as his companion. Some of his letters on
this journey are before the public; and in the agitation and
eagerness he there described, on receiving and opening letters from
us, and the tenderness in his replies,--the longing to be once more
in the little Pavilion, to which we had moved in the beginning of
the summer,--the letters (though carefully guarded by the delicacy
of her who intrusted them to the editor, and alone retained among
many more calculated to lay bare his true feelings, even fragmentary
as they are), point out the truth.
"Here is the key to the journey to Silesia, the return to Dresden,
and, finally, to the journey from Dresden to Rotterdam in our
company, first planned so as to part at Cassel, where Mr. Irving had
intended to leave us and go down the Rhine, but subsequently could
not find in his heart to part. Hence, after a night of pale and
speechless melancholy, the gay, animated, happy countenance with
which he sprang to our coach-box to take his old seat on it, and
accompany us to Rotterdam. There even could he not part, but joined
us in the steamboat; and, after bearing us company as far as a boat
could follow us, at last tore himself away, to bury himself in
Paris, and try to work . . . .
"It was fortunate, perhaps, that this affection was returned by the
warmest friendship only, since it was destined that the
accomplishment of his wishes was impossible, for many obstacles
which lay in his way; and it is with pleasure I can truly say that
in time he schooled himself to view, also with friendship only, one
who for some time past has been the wife of another."
Upon the delicacy of this revelation the biographer does not comment, but
he says that the idea that Irving thought of marriage at that time is
utterly disproved by the following passage from the very manuscript which
he submitted to Mrs. Foster:
"You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was not
long since. When I had sufficiently recovered from that loss,
I became involved in ruin. It was not for a man broken down in the
world, to drag down any woman to his paltry circumstances. I was
too proud to tolerate the idea of ever mending my circumstances by
matrimony. My time has now gone by; and I have growing claims upon
my thoughts and upon my means, slender and precarious as they are.
I feel as if I already had a family to think and provide for."
Upon the question of attachment and depression, Mr. Pierre Irving says:
"While the editor does not question Mr. Irving's great enjoyment of
his intercourse with the Fosters, or his deep regret at parting from
them, he is too familiar with his occasional fits of depression to
have drawn from their recurrence on his return to Paris any such
inference as that to which the lady alludes. Indeed, his memorandum
book and letters show him to have had, at this time, sources of
anxiety of quite a different nature. The allusion to his having to
put once more to sea evidently refers to his anxiety on returning to
his literary pursuits, after a season of entire idleness."
It is not for us to question the judgment of the biographer, with his
full knowledge of the circumstances and his long intimacy with his uncle;
yet it is evident that Irving was seriously impressed at Dresden, and
that he was very much unsettled until he drove away the impression by
hard work with his pen; and it would be nothing new in human nature and
experience if he had for a time yielded to the attractions of loveliness
and a most congenial companionship, and had returned again to an
exclusive devotion to the image of the early loved and lost.
That Irving intended never to marry is an inference I cannot draw either
from his fondness for the society of women, from his interest in the
matrimonial projects of his friends and the gossip which has feminine
attractions for its food, or from his letters to those who had his
confidence. In a letter written from Birmingham, England, March 15,
1816, to his dear friend Henry Brevoort, who was permitted more than
perhaps any other person to see his secret heart, he alludes, with
gratification, to the report of the engagement of James Paulding, and
then says:
"It is what we must all come to at last. I see you are hankering
after it, and I confess I have done so for a long time past.
We are, however, past that period [Irving was thirty-two] when a man
marries suddenly and inconsiderately. We may be longer making a
choice, and consulting the convenience and concurrence of easy
circumstances, but we shall both come to it sooner or later.
I therefore recommend you to marry without delay. You have
sufficient means, connected with your knowledge and habits of
business, to support a genteel establishment, and I am certain that
as soon as you are married you will experience a change in your
ideas. All those vagabond, roving propensities will cease. They
are the offspring of idleness of mind and a want of something to fix
the feelings. You are like a bark without an anchor, that drifts
about at the mercy of every vagrant breeze or trifling eddy. Get a
wife, and she'll anchor you. But don't marry a fool because she his
a pretty face, and don't seek after a great belle. Get such a girl
as Mary----, or get her if you can; though I am afraid she has
still an unlucky kindness for poor-----, which will stand in the
way of her fortunes. I wish to God they were rich, and married, and
happy!"
The business reverses which befell the Irving brothers, and which drove
Washington to the toil of the pen, and cast upon him heavy family
responsibilities, defeated his plans of domestic happiness in marriage.
It was in this same year, 1816, when the fortunes of the firm were daily
becoming more dismal, that he wrote to Brevoort, upon the report that the
latter was likely to remain a bachelor: "We are all selfish beings.
Fortune by her tardy favors and capricious freaks seems to discourage all
my matrimonial resolves, and if I am doomed to live an old bachelor, I am
anxious to have good company. I cannot bear that all my old companions
should launch away into the married state, and leave me alone to tread
this desolate and sterile shore." And, in view of a possible life of
scant fortune, he exclaims: "Thank Heaven, I was brought up in simple and
inexpensive habits, and I have satisfied myself that, if need be, I can
resume them without repining or inconvenience. Though I am willing,
therefore, that Fortune should shower her blessings upon me, and think I
can enjoy them as well as most men, yet I shall not make myself unhappy
if she chooses to be scanty, and shall take the position allotted me with
a cheerful and contented mind."
When Irving passed the winter of 1823 in the charming society of the
Fosters at Dresden, the success of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge
Hall" had given him assurance of his ability to live comfortably by the
use of his pen.
To resume. The preliminary announcement of the History was a humorous
and skillful piece of advertising. Notices appeared in the newspapers of
the disappearance from his lodging of "a small, elderly gentleman,
dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of
Knickerbocker." Paragraphs from week to week, purporting to be the
result of inquiry, elicited the facts that such an old gentleman had been
seen traveling north in the Albany stage; that his name was Diedrich
Knickerbocker; that he went away owing his landlord; and that he left
behind a very curious kind of a written book, which would be sold to pay
his bills if he did not return. So skillfully was this managed that one
of the city officials was on the point of offering a reward for the
discovery of the missing Diedrich. This little man in knee breeches and
cocked hat was the germ of the whole "Knickerbocker legend," a fantastic
creation, which in a manner took the place of history, and stamped upon
the commercial metropolis of the New World the indelible Knickerbocker
name and character; and even now in the city it is an undefined patent of
nobility to trace descent from "an old Knickerbocker family."
The volume, which was first printed in Philadelphia, was put forth as a
grave history of the manners and government under the Dutch rulers, and
so far was the covert humor carried that it was dedicated to the New York
Historical Society. Its success was far beyond Irving's expectation.
It met with almost universal acclaim. It is true that some of the old
Dutch inhabitants who sat down to its perusal, expecting to read a
veritable account of the exploits of their ancestors, were puzzled by the
indirection of its commendation; and several excellent old ladies of New
York and Albany were in blazing indignation at the ridicule put upon the
old Dutch people, and minded to ostracize the irreverent author from all
social recognition. As late as 1818, in an address before the Historical
Society, Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Irving's friend, showed the deep
irritation the book had caused, by severe strictures on it as a "coarse
caricature." But the author's winning ways soon dissipated the social
cloud, and even the Dutch critics were erelong disarmed by the absence of
all malice in the gigantic humor of the composition. One of the first
foreigners to recognize the power and humor of the book was Walter Scott.
"I have never," he wrote, "read anything so closely resembling the style
of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been
employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two
ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with
laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the
author possesses power of a different kind, and has some touches which
remind me of Sterne."
The book is indeed an original creation, and one of the few masterpieces
of humor. In spontaneity, freshness, breadth of conception, and joyous
vigor, it belongs to the springtime of literature. It has entered into
the popular mind as no other American book ever has, and it may be said
to have created a social realm which, with all its whimsical conceit, has
almost historical solidity. The Knickerbocker pantheon is almost as real
as that of Olympus. The introductory chapters are of that elephantine
facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is
exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book
occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though
it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers. But, notwithstanding
these blemishes, I think the work has more enduring qualities than even
the generation which it first delighted gave it credit for. The world,
however, it must be owned, has scarcely yet the courage of its humor, and
dullness still thinks it necessary to apologize for anything amusing.
There is little doubt that Irving himself supposed that his serious work
was of more consequence to the world.
It seems strange that after this success Irving should have hesitated to
adopt literature as his profession. But for two years, and with leisure,
he did nothing. He had again some hope of political employment in a
small way; and at length he entered into a mercantile partnership with
his brothers, which was to involve little work for him, and a share of
the profits that should assure his support, and leave him free to follow
his fitful literary inclinations. Yet he seems to have been mainly
intent upon society and the amusements of the passing hour, and, without
the spur of necessity to his literary capacity, he yielded to the
temptations of indolence, and settled into the unpromising position of a
"man about town." Occasionally, the business of his firm and that of
other importing merchants being imperiled by some threatened action of
Congress, Irving was sent to Washington to look after their interests.
The leisurely progress he always made to the capital through the
seductive society of Philadelphia and Baltimore did not promise much
business dispatch. At the seat of government he was certain to be
involved in a whirl of gayety. His letters from Washington are more
occupied with the odd characters he met than with the measures of
legislation. These visits greatly extended his acquaintance with the
leading men of the country; his political leanings did not prevent an
intimacy with the President's family, and Mrs. Madison and he were sworn
friends.
It was of the evening of his first arrival in Washington that he writes:
"I emerged from dirt and darkness into the blazing splendor of Mrs.
Madison's drawing-room. Here I was most graciously received; found a
crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly old women and
beautiful young ones, and in ten minutes was hand and glove with half the
people in the assemblage. Mrs. Madison is a fine, portly, buxom dame,
who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, Mrs.
Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like two merry wives of Windsor; but as to
Jemmy Madison,--oh, poor Jemmy!--he is but a withered little apple john."
Odd characters congregated then in Washington as now. One honest fellow,
who, by faithful fagging at the heels of Congress, had obtained a
profitable post under government, shook Irving heartily by the hand, and
professed himself always happy to see anybody that came from New York;
"somehow or another, it was natteral to him," being the place where he
was first born. Another fellow-townsman was "endeavoring to obtain a
deposit in the Mechanics' Bank, in case the United States Bank does not
obtain a charter. He is as deep as usual; shakes his head and winks
through his spectacles at everybody he meets. He swore to me the other
day that he had not told anybody what his opinion was, whether the bank
ought to have a charter or not. Nobody in Washington knew what his
opinion was--not one--nobody; he defied any one to say what it was
--anybody--damn the one! No, sir, nobody knows;' and if he had added nobody
cares, I believe honest would have been exactly in the right. Then
there's his brother George: 'Damn that fellow,--knows eight or nine
languages; yes, sir, nine languages,--Arabic, Spanish, Greek, Ital---And
there's his wife, now,--she and Mrs. Madison are always together. Mrs.
Madison has taken a great fancy to her little daughter. Only think, sir,
that child is only six years old, and talks the Italian like a book,
by---; little devil learnt it from an Italian servant,--damned clever
fellow; lived with my brother George ten years. George says he would not
part with him for all Tripoli,'" etc.
It was always difficult for Irving, in those days, to escape from the
genial blandishments of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Writing to Brevoort
from Philadelphia, March 16, 1811, he says: "The people of Baltimore are
exceedingly social and hospitable to strangers, and I saw that if I once
let myself get into the stream, I should not be able to get out under a
fortnight at least; so, being resolved to push home as expeditiously as
was honorably possible, I resisted the world, the flesh, and the devil at
Baltimore; and after three days' and nights' stout carousal, and a
fourth's sickness, sorrow, and repentance, I hurried off from that
sensual city."
Jarvis, the artist, was at that time the eccentric and elegant lion of
society in Baltimore. "Jack Randolph" had recently sat to him for his
portrait. "By the bye [the letter continues] that little 'hydra and
chimera dire,' Jarvis, is in prodigious circulation at Baltimore. The
gentlemen have all voted him a rare wag and most brilliant wit; and the
ladies pronounce him one of the queerest, ugliest, most agreeable little
creatures in the world. The consequence is there is not a ball,
tea-party, concert, supper, or other private regale but that Jarvis is
the most conspicuous personage; and as to a dinner, they can no more do
without him than they could without Friar John at the roystering revels
of the renowned Pantagruel." Irving gives one of his bon mots which was
industriously repeated at all the dinner tables, a profane sally, which
seemed to tickle the Baltimoreans exceedingly. Being very much
importuned to go to church, he resolutely refused, observing that it was
the same thing whether he went or stayed at home. "If I don't go," said
he, "the minister says I 'll be d---d, and I 'll be d---d if I do go."
This same letter contains a pretty picture, and the expression of
Irving's habitual kindly regard for his fellow-men:
"I was out visiting with Ann yesterday, and met that little
assemblage of smiles and fascinations, Mary Jackson. She was
bounding with youth, health, and innocence, and good humor. She had
a pretty straw hat, tied under her chin with a pink ribbon, and
looked like some little woodland nymph, just turned out by spring
and fine weather. God bless her light heart, and grant it may never
know care or sorrow! It's enough to cure spleen and melancholy only
to look at her.
"Your familiar pictures of home made me extremely desirous again to
be there . . . . I shall once more return to sober life,
satisfied with having secured three months of sunshine in this
valley of shadows and darkness. In this space of time I have seen
considerable of the world, but I am sadly afraid I have not grown
wiser thereby, inasmuch as it has generally been asserted by the
sages of every age that wisdom consists in a knowledge of the
wickedness of mankind, and the wiser a man grows the more
discontented he becomes with those around him. Whereas, woe is me,
I return in infinitely better humor with the world than I ever was
before, and with a most melancholy good opinion and good will for
the great mass of my fellow-creatures!"
Free intercourse with men of all parties, he thought, tends to divest a
man's mind of party bigotry.
"One day [he writes] I am dining with a knot of honest, furious
Federalists, who are damning all their opponents as a set of
consummate scoundrels, panders of Bonaparte, etc. The next day I
dine, perhaps, with some of the very men I have heard thus
anathematized, and find them equally honest, warm, and indignant;
and if I take their word for it, I had been dining the day before
with some of the greatest knaves in the nation, men absolutely paid
and suborned by the British government."
His friends at this time attempted to get him appointed secretary of
legation to the French mission, under Joel Barlow, then minister, but he
made no effort to secure the place. Perhaps he was deterred by the
knowledge that the author of "The Columbiad" suspected him, though
unjustly, of some strictures on his great epic. He had in mind a book of
travel in his own country, in which he should sketch manners and
characters; but nothing came of it. The peril to trade involved in the
War of 1812 gave him some forebodings, and aroused him to exertion.
He accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews,"
afterwards changed to the "Analectic Magazine," for which he wrote
sketches, some of which were afterwards put into the "Sketch-Book," and
several reviews and naval biographies. A brief biography of Thomas
Campbell was also written about this time, as introductory to an edition
of "Gertrude of Wyoming." But the slight editorial care required by the
magazine was irksome to a man who had an unconquerable repugnance to all
periodical labor.
In 1813 Francis Jeffrey made a visit to the United States. Henry
Brevoort, who was then in London, wrote an anxious letter to Irving to
impress him with the necessity of making much of Mr. Jeffrey. "It is
essential," he says,--"that Jeffrey may imbibe a just estimate of the
United States and its inhabitants; he goes out strongly biased in our
favor, and the influence of his good opinion upon his return to this
country will go far to efface the calumnies and the absurdities that have
been laid to our charge by ignorant travelers. Persuade him to visit
Washington, and by all means to see the Falls of Niagara." The impression
seems to have prevailed that if Englishmen could be made to take a just
view of the Falls of Niagara, the misunderstandings between the two
countries would be reduced. Peter Irving, who was then in Edinburgh, was
impressed with the brilliant talent of the editor of the "Review,"
disguised as it was by affectation, but he said he "would not give the
Minstrel for a wilderness of Jeffreys."
The years from 1811 to 1815, when he went abroad for the second time,
were passed by Irving in a sort of humble waiting on Providence.
His letters to Brevoort during this period are full of the ennui of
irresolute youth. He idled away weeks and months in indolent enjoyment
in the country; he indulged his passion for the theater when opportunity
offered; and he began to be weary of a society which offered little
stimulus to his mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America
at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling.
There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the
amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial
inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and there
over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the broad or
pathetic staves and choruses of the convivial table; and there was no
literary atmosphere.
After three months of indolent enjoyment in the winter and spring of
1811, Irving is complaining to Brevoort in June of the enervation of his
social life: "I do want most deplorably to apply my mind to something
that will arouse and animate it; for at present it is very indolent and
relaxed, and I find it very difficult to shake off the lethargy that
enthralls it. This makes me restless and dissatisfied with myself, and
I am convinced I shall not feel comfortable and contented until my mind
is fully employed. Pleasure is but a transient stimulus, and leaves the
mind more enfeebled than before. Give me rugged toils, fierce
disputation, wrangling controversy, harassing research,--give me anything
that calls forth the energies of the mind; but for Heaven's sake shield
me from those calms, those tranquil slumberings, those enervating
triflings, those siren blandishments, that I have for some time indulged
in, which lull the mind into complete inaction, which benumb its powers,
and cost it such painful and humiliating struggles to regain its activity
and independence!"
Irving at this time of life seemed always waiting by the pool for some
angel to come and trouble the waters. To his correspondent, who was in
the wilds of Michilimackinac, he continues to lament his morbid
inability. The business in which his thriving brothers were engaged was
the importation and sale of hardware and cutlery, and that spring his
services were required at the "store." "By all the martyrs of Grub
Street [he exclaims], I 'd sooner live in a garret, and starve into the
bargain, than follow so sordid, dusty, and soul-killing a way of life,
though certain it would make me as rich as old Croesus, or John Jacob
Astor himself!" The sparkle of society was no more agreeable to him than
the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the
----s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination
have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however,
prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of their
charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found the
Lads and Miss Knox with them. S----was in great spirits, and played the
sparkler with such great success as to silence the whole of us excepting
Jim, who was the agreeable rattle of the evening. God defend me from
such vivacity as hers, in future,--such smart speeches without meaning,
such bubble and squeak nonsense! I 'd as lieve stand by a frying-pan for
an hour and listen to the cooking of apple fritters. After two hours'
dead silence and suffering on my part I made out to drag him off, and did
not stop running until I was a mile from the house." Irving gives his
correspondent graphic pictures of the social warfare in which he was
engaged, the "host of rascally little tea-parties" in which he was
entangled; and some of his portraits of the "divinities," the "blossoms,"
and the beauties of that day would make the subjects of them flutter with
surprise in the churchyards where they lie. The writer was sated with
the "tedious commonplace of fashionable society," and languishing to
return to his books and his pen.
In March, 18122, in the shadow of the war and the depression of business,
Irving was getting out a new edition of the "Knickerbocker," which
Inskeep was to publish, agreeing to pay $1200 at six months for an
edition of fifteen hundred. The modern publisher had not then arisen and
acquired a proprietary right in the brains of the country, and the author
made his bargains like an independent being who owned himself.
Irving's letters of this period are full of the gossip of the town and
the matrimonial fate of his acquaintances. The fascinating Mary Fairlie
is at length married to Cooper, the tragedian, with the opposition of her
parents, after a dismal courtship and a cloudy prospect of happiness.
Goodhue is engaged to Miss Clarkson, the sister to the pretty one. The
engagement suddenly took place as they walked from church on Christmas
Day, and report says "the action was shorter than any of our naval
victories, for the lady struck on the first broadside." The war colored
all social life and conversation. "This war [the letter is to Brevoort,
who is in Europe] has completely changed the face of things here. You
would scarcely recognize our old peaceful city. Nothing is talked of but
armies, navies, battles, etc." The same phenomenon was witnessed then
that was observed in the war for the Union: "Men who had loitered about,
the hangers-on and encumbrances of society, have all at once risen to
importance, and been the only useful men of the day." The exploits of
our young navy kept up the spirits of the country. There was great
rejoicing when the captured frigate Macedonian was brought into New York,
and was visited by the curious as she lay wind-bound above Hell Gate.
"A superb dinner was given to the naval heroes, at which all the great
eaters and drinkers of the city were present. It was the noblest
entertainment of the kind I ever witnessed. On New Year's Eve a grand
ball was likewise given, where there was a vast display of great and
little people. The Livingstons were there in all their glory. Little
Rule Britannia made a gallant appearance at the head of a train of
beauties, among whom were the divine H----, who looked very inviting,
and the little Taylor, who looked still more so. Britannia was
gorgeously dressed in a queer kind of hat of stiff purple and silver
stuff, that had marvelously the appearance of copper, and made us suppose
that she had procured the real Mambrino helmet. Her dress was trimmed
with what we simply mistook for scalps, and supposed it was in honor of
the nation; but we blushed at our ignorance on discovering that it was a
gorgeous trimming of marten tips. Would that some eminent furrier had
been there to wonder and admire!"
With a little business and a good deal of loitering, waiting upon the
whim of his pen, Irving passed the weary months of the war. As late as
August, 1814, he is still giving Brevoort, who has returned, and is at
Rockaway Beach, the light gossip of the town. It was reported that
Brevoort and Dennis had kept a journal of their foreign travel, "which is
so exquisitely humorous that Mrs. Cooper, on only looking at the first
word, fell into a fit of laughing that lasted half an hour." Irving is
glad that he cannot find Brevoort's flute, which the latter requested
should be sent to him: "I do not think it would be an innocent amusement
for you, as no one has a right to entertain himself at the expense of
others." In such dallying and badinage the months went on, affairs every
day becoming more serious. Appended to a letter of September 9, 1814,
is a list of twenty well-known mercantile houses that had failed within
the preceding three weeks. Irving himself, shortly after this, enlisted
in the war, and his letters thereafter breathe patriotic indignation at
the insulting proposals of the British and their rumored attack on New
York, and all his similes, even those having love for their subject, are
martial and bellicose. Item: "The gallant Sam has fairly changed front,
and, instead of laying siege to Douglas castle, has charged sword in
hand, and carried little Cooper's' entrenchments."
As a Federalist and an admirer of England, Irving had deplored the war,
but his sympathies were not doubtful after it began, and the burning of
the national Capitol by General Ross aroused him to an active
participation in the struggle. He was descending the Hudson in a
steamboat when the tidings first reached him. It was night, and the
passengers had gone into the cabin, when a man came on board with the
news, and in the darkness related the particulars: the burning of the
President's house and government offices, and the destruction of the
Capitol, with the library and public archives. In the momentary silence
that followed, somebody raised his voice, and in a tone of complacent
derision "wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now." "Sir," cried Mr.
Irving, in a burst of indignation that overcame his habitual shyness,
"do you seize upon such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you,
sir, it is not now a question about Jimmy Madison or Jimmy Armstrong.
The pride and honor of the nation are wounded; the country is insulted
and disgraced by this barbarous success, and every loyal citizen would
feel the ignominy and be earnest to avenge it." There was an outburst of
applause, and the sneerer was silenced. "I could not see the fellow,"
said Mr. Irving, in relating the anecdote, "but I let fly at him in the
dark."
The next day he offered his services to Governor Tompkins, and was made
the governor's aid and military secretary, with the right to be addressed
as Colonel Washington Irving. He served only four months in this
capacity, when Governor Tompkins was called to the session of the
legislature at Albany. Irving intended to go to Washington and apply for
a commission in the regular army, but he was detained at Philadelphia by
the affairs of his magazine, until news came in February, 1815, of the
close of the war. In May of that year he embarked for England to visit
his brother, intending only a short sojourn. He remained abroad
seventeen years.
VI
LIFE IN EUROPE--LITERARY ACTIVITY
When Irving sailed from New York, it was with lively anticipations of
witnessing the stirring events to follow the return of Bonaparte from
Elba. When he reached Liverpool, the curtain had fallen in Bonaparte's
theater. The first spectacle that met the traveler's eye was the mail
coaches, darting through the streets, decked with laurel and bringing
the news of Waterloo. As usual, Irving's sympathies were with the
unfortunate. "I think," he says, writing of the exile of St. Helena,
"the cabinet has acted with littleness toward him. In spite of all his
misdeeds he is a noble fellow [pace Madame de Remusat], and I am
confident will eclipse, in the eyes of posterity, all the crowned
wiseacres that have crushed him by their overwhelming confederacy. If
anything could place the Prince Regent in a more ridiculous light, it is
Bonaparte suing for his magnanimous protection. Every compliment paid
to this bloated sensualist, this inflation of sack and sugar, turns to
the keenest sarcasm."
After staying a week with his brother Peter, who was recovering from
an indisposition, Irving went to Birmingham, the residence of his
brother-in-law, Henry Van Wart, who had married his youngest sister,
Sarah; and from thence to Sydenham, to visit Campbell. The poet was not
at home. To Mrs. Campbell Irving expressed his regret that her husband
did not attempt something on a grand scale.
"'It is unfortunate for Campbell,' said she, 'that he lives in the
same age with Scott and Byron.' I asked why. 'Oh,' said she, 'they
write so much and so rapidly. Mr. Campbell writes slowly, and it
takes him some time to get under way; and just as he has fairly
begun out comes one of their poems, that sets the world agog, and
quite daunts him, so that he throws by his pen in despair.'
I pointed out the essential difference in their kinds of poetry, and
the qualities which insured perpetuity to that of her husband. 'You
can't persuade Campbell of that,' said she. 'He is apt to
undervalue his own works, and to consider his own little lights put
out, whenever they come blazing out with their great torches.'
"I repeated the conversation to Scott some time afterward, and it
drew forth a characteristic comment. 'Pooh!' said he, good
humoredly; 'how can Campbell mistake the matter so much? Poetry
goes by quality, not by bulk. My poems are mere Cairngorms, wrought
up, perhaps, with a cunning hand, and may pass well in the market as
long as Cairngorms are the fashion; but they are mere Scotch
pebbles, after all. Now, Tom Campbell's are real diamonds, and
diamonds of the first water.'"
Returning to Birmingham, Irving made excursions to Kenilworth, Warwick,
and Stratford-on-Avon, and a tour through Wales with James Renwick, a
young American of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had for a
time filled the chair of natural philosophy in Columbia College. He was
a son of Mrs. Jane Renwick, a charming woman and a lifelong friend of
Irving, the daughter of the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey, of Lochmaben, Scotland,
and famous in literature as "The Blue-Eyed Lassie" of Burns. From
another song, "When first I saw my Face," which does not appear in the
poet's collected works, the biographer quotes:
"But, sair, I doubt some happier swain
Has gained my Jeanie's favor;
If sae, may every bliss be hers,
Tho' I can never have her.
"But gang she east, or gang she west,
'Twixt Nith and Tweed all over,
While men have eyes, or ears, or taste,
She'll always find a lover."
During Irving's protracted stay in England he did not by any means lose
his interest in his beloved New York and the little society that was
always dear to him. He relied upon his friend Brevoort to give him the
news of the town, and in return he wrote long letters,--longer and more
elaborate and formal than this generation has leisure to write or to
read; letters in which the writer laid himself out to be entertaining,
and detailed his emotions and state of mind as faithfully as his travels
and outward experiences.
No sooner was our war with England over than our navy began to make a
reputation for itself in the Mediterranean. In his letter of August,
1815, Irving dwells with pride on Decatur's triumph over the Algerine
pirates. He had just received a letter from "that--worthy little tar,
Jack Nicholson," dated on board the Flambeau, off Algiers. In it
Nicholson says that "they fell in with and captured the admiral's ship,
and killed him." Upon which Irving remarks: "As this is all that Jack's
brevity will allow him to say on the subject, I should be at a loss to
know whether they killed the admiral before or after his capture.
The well-known humanity of our tars, however, induces me to the former
conclusion." Nicholson, who has the honor of being alluded to in "The
Croakers," was always a great favorite with Irving. His gallantry on
shore was equal to his bravery at sea, but unfortunately his diffidence
was greater than his gallantry; and while his susceptibility to female
charms made him an easy and a frequent victim, he could never muster the
courage to declare his passion. Upon one occasion, when he was
desperately enamored of a lady whom he wished to marry, he got Irving to
write for him a love-letter, containing an offer of his heart and hand.
The enthralled but bashful sailor carried the letter in his pocket till
it was worn out, without ever being able to summon pluck enough to
deliver it.
While Irving was in Wales the Wiggins family and Madame Bonaparte passed
through Birmingham, on their way to Cheltenham. Madame was still
determined to assert her rights as a Bonaparte. Irving cannot help
expressing sympathy for Wiggins: "The poor man has his hands full, with
such a bevy of beautiful women under his charge, and all doubtless bent
on pleasure and admiration." He hears, however, nothing further of her,
except the newspapers mention her being at Cheltenham. "There are so
many stars and comets thrown out of their orbits, and whirling about the
world at present, that a little star like Madame Bonaparte attracts but
slight attention, even though she draw after her so sparkling a tail as
the Wiggins family." In another letter he exclaims: "The world is surely
topsy-turvy, and its inhabitants shaken out of place: emperors and kings,
statesmen and philosophers, Bonaparte, Alexander, Johnson, and the
Wigginses, all strolling about the face of the earth."
The business of the Irving brothers soon absorbed all Washington's time
and attention. Peter was an invalid, and the whole weight of the
perplexing affairs of the failing firm fell upon the one who detested
business, and counted every hour lost that he gave to it. His letters
for two years are burdened with harassments in uncongenial details and
unsuccessful struggles. Liverpool, where he was compelled to pass most
of his time, had few attractions for him, and his low spirits did not
permit him to avail himself of such social advantages as were offered.
It seems that our enterprising countrymen flocked abroad, on the
conclusion of peace. "This place [writes Irving] swarms with Americans.
You never saw a more motley race of beings. Some seem as if just from
the woods, and yet stalk about the streets and public places with all the
easy nonchalance that they would about their own villages. Nothing can
surpass the dauntless independence of all form, ceremony, fashion, or
reputation of a downright, unsophisticated American. Since the war, too,
particularly, our lads seem to think they are 'the salt of the earth' and
the legitimate lords of creation. It would delight you to see some of
them playing Indian when surrounded by the wonders and improvements of
the Old World. It is impossible to match these fellows by anything this
side the water. Let an Englishman talk of the battle of Waterloo, and
they will immediately bring up New Orleans and Plattsburg.
"A thoroughbred, thoroughly appointed soldier is nothing to a Kentucky
rifleman," etc., etc. In contrast to this sort of American was Charles
King, who was then abroad: "Charles is exactly what an American should be
abroad: frank, manly, and unaffected in his habits and manners, liberal
and independent in his opinions, generous and unprejudiced in his
sentiments towards other nations, but most loyally attached to his own."
There was a provincial narrowness at that date and long after in America,
which deprecated the open-minded patriotism of King and of Irving as it
did the clear-sighted loyalty of Fenimore Cooper.
The most anxious time of Irving's life was the winter of 1815-16.
The business worry increased. He was too jaded with the din of pounds,
shillings, and pence to permit his pen to invent facts or to adorn
realities. Nevertheless, he occasionally escapes from the treadmill.
In December he is in London, and entranced with the acting of Miss
O'Neil. He thinks that Brevoort, if he saw her, would infallibly fall in
love with this "divine perfection of a woman." He writes: "She is, to my
eyes, the most soul-subduing actress I ever saw; I do not mean from her
personal charms, which are great, but from the truth, force, and pathos
of her acting. I have never been so completely melted, moved, and
overcome at a theatre as by her performances . . . . Kean, the
prodigy, is to me insufferable. He is vulgar, full of trick, and a
complete mannerist. This is merely my opinion. He is cried up as a
second Garrick, as a reformer of the stage, etc. It may be so. He may
be right, and all the other actors wrong. This is certain: he is either
very good or very bad. I think decidedly the latter; and I find no
medium opinions concerning him. I am delighted with Young, who acts with
great judgment, discrimination, and feeling. I think him much the best
actor at present on the English stage . . . . In certain characters,
such as may be classed with Macbeth, I do not think that Cooper has his
equal in England. Young is the only actor I have seen who can compare
with him." Later, Irving somewhat modified his opinion of Kean.
He wrote to Brevoort: "Kean is a strange compound of merits and defects.
His excellence consists in sudden and brilliant touches, in vivid
exhibitions of passion and emotion. I do not think him a discriminating
actor, or critical either at understanding or delineating character;
but he produces effects which no other actor does."
In the summer of 1816, on his way from Liverpool to visit his sister's
family at Birmingham, Irving tarried for a few days at a country place
near Shrewsbury on the border of Wales, and while there encountered a
character whose portrait is cleverly painted. It is interesting to
compare this first sketch with the elaboration of it in the essay on "The
Angler" in the "Sketch-Book."
"In one of our morning strolls [he writes, July 15] along the banks
of the Aleen, a beautiful little pastoral stream that rises among
the Welsh mountains and throws itself into the Dee, we encountered a
veteran angler of old Isaac Walton's school. He was an old
Greenwich outdoor pensioner, had lost one leg in the battle of
Camperdown, had been in America in his youth, and indeed had been
quite a rover, but for many years past had settled himself down in
his native village, not far distant, where he lived very
independently on his pension and some other small annual sums,
amounting in all to about L 40. His great hobby, and indeed the
business of his life, was to angle. I found he had read Isaac
Walton very attentively; he seemed to have imbibed all his
simplicity of heart, contentment of mind, and fluency of tongue.
We kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the
beautiful banks of the river, admiring the ease and elegant
dexterity with which the old fellow managed his angle, throwing the
fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among
overhanging bushes, and waving it gracefully in the air, to keep it
from entangling, as he stumped with his staff and wooden leg from
one bend of the river to another. He kept up a continual flow of
cheerful and entertaining talk, and what I particularly liked him
for was, that though we tried every way to entrap him into some
abuse of America and its inhabitants, there was no getting him to
utter an ill-natured word concerning us. His whole conversation and
deportment illustrated old Isaac's maxims as to the benign influence
of angling over the human heart . . . . I ought to mention that
he had two companions--one, a ragged, picturesque varlet, that had
all the air of a veteran poacher, and I warrant would find any
fish-pond in the neighborhood in the darkest night; the other was a
disciple of the old philosopher, studying the art under him, and was
son and heir apparent to the landlady of the village tavern."
A contrast to this pleasing picture is afforded by some character
sketches at the little watering-place of Buxton, which our kindly
observer visited the same year.
"At the hotel where we put up [he writes] we had a most singular and
whimsical assemblage of beings. I don't know whether you were ever
at an English watering-place, but if you have not been, you have
missed the best opportunity of studying English oddities, both moral
and physical. I no longer wonder at the English being such
excellent caricaturists, they have such an inexhaustible number and
variety of subjects to study from. The only care should be not to
follow fact too closely, for I 'll swear I have met with characters
and figures that would be condemned as extravagant, if faithfully
delineated by pen or pencil. At a watering-place like Buxton, where
people really resort for health, you see the great tendency of the
English to run into excrescences and bloat out into grotesque
deformities. As to noses, I say nothing of them, though we had
every variety: some snubbed and turned up, with distended nostrils,
like a dormer window on the roof of a house; others convex and
twisted like a buck-handled knife; and others magnificently
eforescent, like a full-blown cauliflower. But as to the persons
that were attached to these noses, fancy any distortion,
protuberance, and fungous embellishment that can be produced in the
human form by high and gross feeding, by the bloating operations of
malt liquors, and by the rheumy influence of a damp, foggy, vaporous
climate. One old fellow was an exception to this, for instead of
acquiring that expansion and sponginess to which old people are
prone in this country, from the long course of internal and external
soakage they experience, he had grown dry and stiff in the process
of years. The skin of his face had so shrunk away that he could not
close eyes or mouth--the latter, therefore, stood on a perpetual
ghastly grin, and the former on an incessant stare. He had but one
serviceable joint in his body, which was at the bottom of the
backbone, and that creaked and grated whenever he bent. He could
not raise his feet from the ground, but skated along the
drawing-room carpet whenever he wished to ring the bell. The only
sign of moisture in his whole body was a pellucid drop that I
occasionally noticed on the end of along, dry nose. He used
generally to shuffle about in company with a little fellow that was
fat on one side and lean on the other. That is to say, he was
warped on one side as if he had been scorched before the fire; he
had a wry neck, which made his head lean on one shoulder; his hair
was smugly powdered, and he had a round, smirking, smiling, apple
face, with a bloom on it like that of a frostbitten leaf in autumn.
We had an old, fat general by the name of Trotter, who had, I
suspect, been promoted to his high rank to get him out of the way
of more able and active officers, being an instance that a man may
occasionally rise in the world through absolute lack of merit. I
could not help watching the movements of this redoubtable old Hero,
who, I'll warrant, has been the champion and safeguard of half the
garrison towns in England, and fancying to myself how Bonaparte
would have delighted in having such toast-and-butter generals to
deal with. This old cad is doubtless a sample of those generals
that flourished in the old military school, when armies would
manoeuvre and watch each other for months; now and then have a
desperate skirmish, and, after marching and countermarching about
the 'Low Countries' through a glorious campaign, retire on the
first pinch of cold weather into snug winter quarters in some fat
Flemish town, and eat and drink and fiddle through the winter.
Boney must have sadly disconcerted the comfortable system of these
old warriors by the harrowing, restless, cut-and-slash mode of
warfare that he introduced. He has put an end to all the old carte
and tierce system in which the cavaliers of the old school fought
so decorously, as it were with a small sword in one hand and a
chapeau bras in the other. During his career there has been a sad
laying on the shelf of old generals who could not keep up with the
hurry, the fierceness and dashing of the new system; and among the
number I presume has been my worthy house-mate, old Trotter. The
old gentleman, in spite of his warlike title, had a most pacific
appearance. He was large and fat, with a broad, hazy, muffin face,
a sleepy eye, and a full double chin. He had a deep ravine from
each corner of his mouth, not occasioned by any irascible
contraction of the muscles, but apparently the deep-worn channels
of two rivulets of gravy that oozed out from the huge mouthfuls
that he masticated. But I forbear to dwell on the odd beings that
were congregated together in one hotel. I have been thus prolix
about the old general because you desired me in one of your letters
to give you ample details whenever I happened to be in company with
the 'great and glorious,' and old Trotter is more deserving of the
epithet than any of the personages I have lately encountered."
It was at the same resort of fashion and disease that Irving observed a
phenomenon upon which Brevoort had commented as beginning to be
noticeable in America.
"Your account [he writes of the brevity of the old lady's nether
garments] distresses me . . . . I cannot help observing that this
fashion of short skirts must have been invented by the French ladies
as a complete trick upon John Bull's 'woman-folk.' It was
introduced just at the time the English flocked in such crowds to
Paris. The French women, you know, are remarkable for pretty feet
and ankles, and can display them in perfect security. The English
are remarkable for the contrary. Seeing the proneness of the
English women to follow French fashions, they therefore led them
into this disastrous one, and sent them home with their petticoats
up to their knees, exhibiting such a variety of sturdy little legs
as would have afforded Hogarth an ample choice to match one of his
assemblages of queer heads. It is really a great source of
curiosity and amusement on the promenade of a watering-place to
observe the little sturdy English women, trudging about in their
stout leather shoes, and to study the various 'understandings'
betrayed to view by this mischievous fashion."
The years passed rather wearily in England. Peter continued to be an
invalid, and Washington himself, never robust, felt the pressure more and
more of the irksome and unprosperous business affairs. Of his own want
of health, however, he never complains; he maintains a patient spirit in
the ill turns of fortune, and his impatience in the business
complications is that of a man hindered from his proper career. The
times were depressing.
"In America [he writes to Brevoort] you have financial difficulties,
the embarrassments of trade, the distress of merchants, but here you
have what is far worse, the distress of the poor--not merely mental
sufferings, but the absolute miseries of nature: hunger, nakedness,
wretchedness of all kinds that the laboring people in this country
are liable to. In the best of times they do but subsist, but in
adverse times they starve. How the country is to extricate itself
from its present embarrassment, how it is to escape from the poverty
that seems to be overwhelming it, and how the government is to quiet
the multitudes that are already turbulent and clamorous, and are yet
but in the beginning of their real miseries, I cannot conceive."
The embarrassments of the agricultural and laboring classes and of the
government were as serious in 1816 as they have again become in 1881.
During 1817 Irving was mostly in the depths of gloom, a prey to the
monotony of life and torpidity of intellect. Rays of sunlight pierce the
clouds occasionally. The Van Wart household at Birmingham was a frequent
refuge for him, and we have pretty pictures of the domestic life there;
glimpses of Old Parr, whose reputation as a gourmand was only second to
his fame as a Grecian, and of that delightful genius, the Rev. Rann
Kennedy, who might have been famous if he had ever committed to paper the
long poems that he carried about in his head, and the engaging sight of
Irving playing the flute for the little Van Warts to dance. During the
holidays Irving paid another visit to the haunts of Isaac Walton, and his
description of the adventures and mishaps of a pleasure party on the
banks of the Dove suggest that the incorrigible bachelor was still
sensitive to the allurements of life; and liable to wander over the
"dead-line" of matrimonial danger. He confesses that he was all day in
Elysium. "When we had descended from the last precipice," he says, "and
come to where the Dove flowed musically through a verdant meadow--then
--fancy me, oh, thou 'sweetest of poets,' wandering by the course of this
romantic stream--a lovely girl hanging on my arm, pointing out the
beauties of the surrounding scenery, and repeating in the most dulcet
voice tracts of heaven-born poetry. If a strawberry smothered in cream
has any consciousness of its delicious situation, it must feel as I felt
at that moment." Indeed, the letters of this doleful year are enlivened
by so many references to the graces and attractions of lovely women, seen
and remembered, that insensibility cannot be attributed to the author of
the "Sketch-Book."
The death of Irving's mother in the spring of 1817 determined him to
remain another year abroad. Business did not improve. His
brother-in-law Van Wart called a meeting of his creditors, the Irving
brothers floundered on into greater depths of embarrassment, and
Washington, who could not think of returning home to face poverty in New
York, began to revolve a plan that would give him a scanty but sufficient
support. The idea of the "Sketch-Book" was in his mind. He had as yet
made few literary acquaintances in England. It is an illustration of the
warping effect of friendship upon the critical faculty that his opinion
of Moore at this time was totally changed by subsequent intimacy. At a
later date the two authors became warm friends and mutual admirers of
each other's productions. In June, 1817, "Lalla Rookh" was just from the
press, and Irving writes to Brevoort: "Moore's new poem is just out. I
have not sent it to you, for it is dear and worthless. It is written in
the most effeminate taste, and fit only to delight boarding-school girls
and lads of nineteen just in their first loves. Moore should have kept
to songs and epigrammatic conceits. His stream of intellect is too small
to bear expansion--it spreads into mere surface." Too much cream for the
strawberry!
Notwithstanding business harassments in the summer and fall of 1817 he
found time for some wandering about the island; he was occasionally in
London, dining at Murray's, where he made the acquaintance of the elder
D'Israeli and other men of letters (one of his notes of a dinner at
Murray's is this: "Lord Byron told Murray that he was much happier after
breaking with Lady Byron--he hated this still, quiet life"); he was
publishing a new edition of the "Knickerbocker," illustrated by Leslie
and Allston; and we find him at home in the friendly and brilliant
society of Edinburgh; both the magazine publishers, Constable and
Blackwood, were very civil to him, and Mr. Jeffrey (Mrs. Renwick was his
sister) was very attentive; and he passed some days with Walter Scott,
whose home life he so agreeably describes in his sketch of "Abbotsford."
He looked back longingly to the happy hours there (he writes to his
brother): "Scott reading, occasionally, from 'Prince Arthur;' telling
border stories or characteristic ancedotes; Sophy Scott singing with
charming 'naivete' a little border song; the rest of the family disposed
in listening groups, while greyhounds, spaniels, and cats bask in
unbounded indulgence before the fire. Everything about Scott is perfect
character and picture."
In the beginning of 1818 the business affairs of the brothers became so
irretrievably involved that Peter and Washington went through the
humiliating experience of taking the bankrupt act. Washington's
connection with the concern was little more than nominal, and he felt
small anxiety for himself, and was eager to escape from an occupation
which had taken all the elasticity out of his mind. But on account of
his brothers, in this dismal wreck of a family connection, his soul was
steeped in bitterness. Pending the proceedings of the commissioners, he
shut himself up day and night to the study of German, and while waiting
for the examination used to walk up and down the room, conning over the
German verbs.
In August he went up to London and cast himself irrevocably upon the
fortune of his pen. He had accumulated some materials, and upon these he
set to work. Efforts were made at home to procure for him the position
of Secretary of Legation in London, which drew from him the remark, when
they came to his knowledge, that he did not like to have his name
hackneyed about among the office-seekers in Washington. Subsequently his
brother William wrote him that Commodore Decatur was keeping open for him
the office of Chief Clerk in the Navy Department. To the mortification
and chagrin of his brothers, Washington declined the position. He was
resolved to enter upon no duties that would interfere with his literary
pursuits.
This resolution, which exhibited a modest confidence in his own powers,
and the energy with which he threw himself into his career, showed the
fiber of the man. Suddenly, by the reverse of fortune, he who had been
regarded as merely the ornamental genius of the family became its stay
and support. If he had accepted the aid of his brothers, during the
experimental period of his life, in the loving spirit of confidence in
which it was given, he was not less ready to reverse the relations when
the time came; the delicacy with which his assistance was rendered, the
scrupulous care taken to convey the feeling that his brothers were doing
him a continued favor in sharing his good fortune, and their own
unjealous acceptance of what they would as freely have given if
circumstances had been different, form one of the pleasantest instances
of brotherly concord and self-abnegation. I know nothing more admirable
than the lifelong relations of this talented and sincere family.
Before the "Sketch-Book" was launched, and while Irving was casting about
for the means of livelihood, Walter Scott urged him to take the
editorship of an anti-Jacobin periodical in Edinburgh. This he declined
because he had no taste for politics, and because he was averse to
stated, routine literary work. Subsequently Mr. Murray offered him a
salary of a thousand guineas to edit a periodical to be published by
himself. This was declined, as also was another offer to contribute to
the "London Quarterly" with the liberal pay of one hundred guineas an
article. For the "Quarterly" he would not write, because, he says,
"it has always been so hostile to my country, I cannot draw a pen in its
service." This is worthy of note in view of a charge made afterwards,
when he was attacked for his English sympathies, that he was a frequent
contributor to this anti-American review. His sole contributions to it
were a gratuitous review of the book of an American author, and an
explanatory article, written at the desire of his publisher, on the
"Conquest of Granada." It is not necessary to dwell upon the small
scandal about Irving's un-American' feeling. If there was ever a man who
loved his country and was proud of it; whose broad, deep, and strong
patriotism did not need the saliency of ignorant partisanship, it was
Washington Irving. He was, like his namesake, an American, and with the
same pure loyalty and unpartisan candor.
The first number of the "Sketch-Book" was published in America in May,
1819. Irving was then thirty-six years old. The series was not
completed till September, 1820. The first installment was carried mainly
by two papers, "The Wife" and "Rip Van Winkle:" the one full of tender
pathos that touched all hearts, because it was recognized as a genuine
expression of the author's nature; and the other a happy effort of
imaginative humor, one of those strokes of genius that re-create the
world and clothe it with the unfading hues of romance; the theme was an
old-world echo, transformed by genius into a primal story that will
endure as long as the Hudson flows through its mountains to the sea.
A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.
The "Sketch-Book" created a sensation in America, and the echo of it was
not long in reaching England. The general chorus of approval and the
rapid sale surprised Irving, and sent his spirits up, but success had the
effect on him that it always has on a fine nature. He writes to Leslie:
"Now you suppose I am all on the alert, and full of spirit and
excitement. No such thing. I am just as good for nothing as ever I was;
and, indeed, have been flurried and put out of my way by these pufflngs.
I feel something as I suppose you did when your picture met with success,
--anxious to do something better, and at a loss what to do."
It was with much misgiving that Irving made this venture. "I feel great
diffidence," he writes Brevoort, March 3, 1819, "about this reappearance
in literature. I am conscious of my imperfections, and my mind has been
for a long time past so pressed upon and agitated by various cares and
anxieties, that I fear it has lost much of its cheerfulness and some of
its activity. I have attempted no lofty theme, nor sought to look wise
and learned, which appears to be very much the fashion among our American
writers at present. I have preferred addressing myself to the feelings
and fancy of the reader more than to his judgment. My writings may
appear, therefore, light and trifling in our country of philosophers and
politicians. But if they possess merit in the class of literature to
which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only
to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others
to play the fiddle and Frenchhorn." This diffidence was not assumed.
All through his career, a breath of criticism ever so slight acted
temporarily like a boar-frost upon his productive power. He always saw
reasons to take sides with his critic. Speaking of "vanity" in a letter
of March, 1820, when Scott and Lockhart and all the Reviews were in a
full chorus of acclaim, he says: "I wish I did possess more of it, but it
seems my curse at present to have anything but confidence in myself or
pleasure in anything I have written."
In a similar strain he had written, in September, 1819, on the news of
the cordial reception of the "Sketch-Book" in America:
"The manner in which the work has been received, and the eulogiums
that have been passed upon it in the American papers and periodical
works, have completely overwhelmed me. They go far, far beyond my
most sanguine expectations, and indeed are expressed with such
peculiar warmth and kindness as to affect me in the tenderest
manner. The receipt of your letter, and the reading of some of the
criticisms this morning, have rendered me nervous for the whole day.
I feel almost appalled by such success, and fearful that it cannot
be real, or that it is not fully merited, or that I shall not act up
to the expectations that may be formed. We are whimsically
constituted beings. I had got out of conceit of all that I had
written, and considered it very questionable stuff; and now that it
is so extravagantly be praised, I begin to feel afraid that I shall
not do as well again. However, we shall see as we get on. As yet I
am extremely irregular and precarious in my fits of composition.
The least thing puts me out of the vein, and even applause flurries
me and prevents my writing, though of course it will ultimately be a
stimulus . . . .
"I have been somewhat touched by the manner in which my writings
have been noticed in the 'Evening Post.' I had considered Coleman
as cherishing an ill-will toward me, and, to tell the truth, have
not always been the most courteous in my opinions concerning him.
It is a painful thing either to dislike others or to fancy they
dislike us, and I have felt both pleasure and self-reproach at
finding myself so mistaken with respect to Mr. Coleman. I like to
out with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt
Coleman a line on the subject.
"I hope you will not attribute all this sensibility to the kind
reception I have met to an author's vanity. I am sure it proceeds
from very different sources. Vanity could not bring the tears into
my eyes as they have been brought by the kindness of my countrymen.
I have felt cast down, blighted, and broken-spirited, and these
sudden rays of sunshine agitate me more than they revive me. I
hope--I hope I may yet do something more worthy of the appreciation
lavished on me."
Irving had not contemplated publishing in England, but the papers began
to be reprinted, and he was obliged to protect himself. He offered the
sketches to Murray, the princely publisher, who afterwards dealt so
liberally with him, but the venture was declined in a civil note, written
in that charming phraseology with which authors are familiar, but which
they would in vain seek to imitate. Irving afterwards greatly prized
this letter. He undertook the risks of the publication himself, and the
book sold well, although "written by an author the public knew nothing
of, and published by a bookseller who was going to ruin." In a few
months Murray, who was thereafter proud to be Irving's publisher,
undertook the publication of the two volumes of the "Sketch-Book," and
also of the "Knickerbocker" history, which Mr. Lockhart had just been
warmly praising in "Blackwood's." Indeed, he bought the copyright of the
"Sketch-Book" for two hundred pounds. The time for the publisher's
complaisance had arrived sooner even than Scott predicted in one of his
kindly letters to Irving, "when
"'Your name is up and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.'"
Irving passed five years in England. Once recognized by the literary
world, whatever was best in the society of letters and of fashion was
open to him. He was a welcome guest in the best London houses, where he
met the foremost literary personages of the time, and established most
cordial relations with many of them; not to speak of statesmen, soldiers,
and men and women of fashion, there were the elder D'Israeli, Southey,
Campbell, Hallam, Gifford, Milman, Foscolo, Rogers, Scott, and Belzoni
fresh from his Egyptian explorations. In Irving's letters this old
society passes in review: Murray's drawing-rooms; the amusing
blue-stocking coteries of fashion of which Lady Caroline Lamb was a
promoter; the Countess of Besborough's, at whose house the Duke could be
seen; the Wimbledon country seat of Lord and Lady Spence; Belzoni, a
giant of six feet five, the center of a group of eager auditors of the
Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious talker;
Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with something of a
humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth, reclining on a sofa,
propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance that you would expect
from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming man,--he it is who prunes
the contributions and takes the sting out of them (one would like to have
seen them before the sting was taken out); and Scott, the right
honest-hearted, entering into the passing scene with the hearty enjoyment
of a child, to whom literature seems a sport rather than a labor or
ambition, an author void of all the petulance, egotism, and peculiarities
of the craft. We have Moore's authority for saying that the literary
dinner described in the "Tales of a Traveller," whimsical as it seems and
pervaded by the conventional notion of the relations of publishers and
authors, had a personal foundation. Irving's satire of both has always
the old-time Grub Street flavor, or at least the reminiscent tone, which
is, by the way, quite characteristic of nearly everything that he wrote
about England. He was always a little in the past tense. Buckthorne's
advice to his friend is, never to be eloquent to an author except in
praise of his own works, or, what is nearly as acceptable, in
disparagement of the work of his contemporaries. "If ever he speaks
favorably of the productions of a particular friend, dissent boldly from
him; pronounce his friend to be a blockhead; never fear his being vexed.
Much as people speak of the irritability of authors, I never found one to
take offense at such contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are
particularly candid in admitting the faults of their friends." At the
dinner Buckthorne explains the geographical boundaries in the land of
literature: you may judge tolerably well of an author's popularity by the
wine his bookseller gives him. "An author crosses the port line about
the third edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the
sixth or seventh, he may revel in champagne and burgundy." The two ends
of the table were occupied by the two partners, one of whom laughed at
the clever things said by the poet, while the other maintained his
sedateness and kept on carving. "His gravity was explained to us by my
friend Buckthorne. He informed me that the concerns of the house were
admirably distributed among the partners. Thus, for instance, said he,
the grave gentleman is the carving partner, who attends to the joints;
and the other is the laughing partner, who attends to the jokes." If any
of the jokes from the lower end of the table reached the upper end, they
seldom produced much effect. "Even the laughing partner did not think it
necessary to honor them with a smile; which my neighbor Buckthorne
accounted for by informing me that there was a certain degree of
popularity to be obtained before a book seller could afford to laugh at
an author's jokes."
In August, 1820, we find Irving in Paris, where his reputation secured
him a hearty welcome: he was often at the Cannings' and at Lord
Holland's; Talma, then the king of the stage, became his friend, and
there he made the acquaintance of Thomas Moore, which ripened into a
familiar and lasting friendship. The two men were drawn to each other;
Irving greatly admired the "noble hearted, manly, spirited little fellow,
with a mind as generous as his fancy is brilliant." Talma was playing
"Hamlet" to overflowing houses, which hung on his actions with breathless
attention, or broke into ungovernable applause; ladies were carried
fainting from the boxes. The actor is described as short in stature,
rather inclined to fat, with a large face and a thick neck; his eyes are
bluish, and have a peculiar cast in them at times. He said to Irving
that he thought the French character much changed--graver; the day of the
classic drama, mere declamation and fine language, had gone by;
the Revolution had taught them to demand real life, incident, passion,
character. Irving's life in Paris was gay enough, and seriously
interfered with his literary projects. He had the fortunes of his
brother Peter on his mind also, and invested his earnings, then and for
some years after, in enterprises for his benefit that ended in
disappointment.
The "Sketch-Book" was making a great fame for him in England. Jeffrey,
in the "Edinburgh Review," paid it a most flattering tribute, and even
the savage "Quarterly" praised it. A rumor attributed it to Scott, who
was always masquerading; at least, it was said, he might have revised it,
and should have the credit of its exquisite style. This led to a
sprightly correspondence between Lady Littleton, the daughter of Earl
Spencer, one of the most accomplished and lovely women of England, and
Benjamin Rush, Minister to the Court of St. James, in the course of which
Mr. Rush suggested the propriety of giving out under his official seal
that Irving was the author of "Waverley." "Geoffrey Crayon is the most
fashionable fellow of the day," wrote the painter Leslie. Lord Byron, in
a letter to Murray, underscored his admiration of the author, and
subsequently said to an American, "His Crayon,--I know it by heart; at
least, there is not a passage that I cannot refer to immediately."
And afterwards he wrote to Moore, "His writings are my delight." There
seemed to be, as some one wrote, "a kind of conspiracy to hoist him over
the heads of his contemporaries." Perhaps the most satisfactory evidence
of his popularity was his publisher's enthusiasm. The publisher is an
infallible contemporary barometer.
It is worthy of note that an American should have captivated public
attention at the moment when Scott and Byron were the idols of the
English-reading world.
In the following year Irving was again in England, visiting his sister in
Birmingham, and tasting moderately the delights of London. He was,
indeed, something of an invalid. An eruptive malady,--the revenge of
nature, perhaps, for defeat in her earlier attack on his lungs,-appearing
in his ankles, incapacitated him for walking, tormented him at intervals
so that literary composition was impossible, sent him on pilgrimages to
curative springs, and on journeys undertaken for distraction and
amusement, in which all work except that of seeing and absorbing material
had to be postponed. He was subject to this recurring invalidism all his
life, and we must regard a good part of the work he did as a pure triumph
of determination over physical discouragement. This year the fruits of
his interrupted labor appeared in "Bracebridge Hall," a volume that was
well received, but did not add much to his reputation, though it
contained "Dolph Heyliger," one of his most characteristic Dutch stories,
and the "Stout Gentleman," one of his daintiest and most artistic bits of
restrained humor.--['I was once' says his biographer reading aloud in his
presence a very flattering review of his works, which, had been sent him
by the critic in 1848, and smiled as I came to this sentence: 'His most
comical pieces have always a serious end in view.'--'You laugh,' said he,
but it is true. I have kept that to myself hitherto, but that man has
found me out. He has detected the moral of the Stout Gentleman with that
air of whimsical significance so natural to him.']
Irving sought relief from his malady by an extended tour in Germany.
He sojourned some time in Dresden, whither his reputation had preceded
him, and where he was cordially and familiarly received, not only by the
foreign residents, but at the prim and antiquated little court of King
Frederick Augustus and Queen Amalia. Of Irving at this time Mrs. Emily
Fuller (nee Foster), whose relations with him have been referred to,
wrote in 1860:
"He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely in external manners
and look, but to the innermost fibres and core of his heart;
sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and gifted with the
warmest affections; the most delightful and invariably interesting
companion; gay and full of humor, even in spite of occasional fits
of melancholy, which he was, however, seldom subject to when with
those he liked; a gift of conversation that flowed like a full
river in sunshine,--bright, easy, and abundant."
Those were pleasant days at Dresden, filled up with the society of bright
and warm-hearted people, varied by royal boar hunts, stiff ceremonies at
the little court, tableaux, and private theatricals, yet tinged with a
certain melancholy, partly constitutional, that appears in most of his
letters. His mind was too unsettled for much composition. He had little
self-confidence, and was easily put out by a breath of adverse criticism.
At intervals he would come to the Fosters to read a manuscript of his
own.
"On these occasions strict orders were given that no visitor should
be admitted till the last word had been read, and the whole praised
or criticised, as the case may be. Of criticism, however, we were
very spare, as a slight word would put him out of conceit of a whole
work. One of the best things he has published was thrown aside,
unfinished, for years, because the friend to whom he read it,
happening, unfortunately, not to be well, and sleepy, did not seem
to take the interest in it he expected. Too easily discouraged, it
was not till the latter part of his career that he ever appreciated
himself as an author. One condemning whisper sounded louder in his
ear than the plaudits of thousands."
This from Miss Emily Foster, who elsewhere notes his kindliness in
observing life:
"Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a
picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life
as a picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,--not its
defects and shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a
wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of
anything. Never beat a more kindly heart than his; alive to the
sorrows, but not to the faults, of his friends, but doubly alive to
their virtues and goodness. Indeed, people seemed to grow more good
with one so unselfish and so gentle."
In London, some years later:
"He was still the same; time changed him very little. His
conversation was as interesting as ever [he was always an excellent
relater]; his dark gray eyes still full of varying feeling; his smile
'half playful, half melancholy, but ever kind. All that was mean,
or envious, or harsh, he seemed to turn from so completely that,
when with him, it seemed that such things were not. All gentle and
tender affections, Nature in her sweetest or grandest moods,
pervaded his whole imagination, and left no place for low or evil
thoughts; and when in good spirits, his humor, his droll
descriptions, and his fun would make the gravest or the saddest
laugh."
As to Irving's "state of mind" in Dresden, it is pertinent to quote a
passage from what we gather to be a journal kept by Miss Flora Foster:
"He has written. He has confessed to my mother, as to a true and
dear friend, his love for E----, and his conviction of its utter
hopelessness. He feels himself unable to combat it. He thinks he
must try, by absence, to bring more peace to his mind. Yet he
cannot bear to give up our friendship,--an intercourse become so
dear to him, and so necessary to his daily happiness. Poor Irving!"
It is well for our peace of mind that we do not know what is going down
concerning us in "journals." On his way to the Herrnhuthers, Mr. Irving
wrote to Mrs. Foster:
"When I consider how I have trifled with my time, suffered painful
vicissitudes of feeling, which for a time damaged both mind and
body,--when I consider all this, I reproach myself that I did not
listen to the first impulse of my mind, and abandon Dresden long
since. And yet I think of returning! Why should I come back to
Dresden? The very inclination that dooms me thither should furnish
reasons for my staying away."
In this mood, the Herrnhuthers, in their right-angled, whitewashed world,
were little attractive.
"If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would
have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and
everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they
have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and
enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and
two hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one
great chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great
resounding saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds
of the air choose their mates from preference and inclination; but
this detestable system of lot! The sentiment of love may be, and
is, in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and
balder-dashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it
is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all
intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the
morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the
shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in
what is excellent and amiable."
Better suited him Prague, which is certainly a part of the "naughty
world" that Irving preferred:
"Old Prague still keeps up its warrior look, and swaggers about with
its rusty corselet and helm, though both sadly battered. There
seems to me to be an air of style and fashion about the first people
of Prague, and a good deal of beauty in the fashionable circle.
This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a distance, and
my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both actors and
audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look better than
when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to contemplate
society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by the help of
fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it, it is too
apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and ennui of
being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but to be a mere
spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I brought no
letters to Prague. I shall leave it with a favorable idea of its
society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of either; and
with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen is an angel,
as I am apt to think every pretty woman, until I have found her
out."
In July, 1823, Irving returned to Paris, to the society of the Moores and
the fascinations of the gay town, and to fitful literary work. Our
author wrote with great facility and rapidity when the inspiration was on
him, and produced an astonishing amount of manuscript in a short period;
but he often waited and fretted through barren weeks and months for the
movement of his fitful genius. His mind was teeming constantly with new
projects, and nothing could exceed his industry when once he had taken a
work in hand; but he never acquired the exact methodical habits which
enable some literary men to calculate their power and quantity of
production as accurately as that of a cotton mill.
The political changes in France during the period of Irving's long
sojourn in Paris do not seem to have taken much of his attention. In a
letter dated October 5, 1826, he says: "We have had much bustle in Paris
of late, between the death of one king and the succession of another.
I have become a little callous to public sights, but have,
notwithstanding, been to see the funeral of the late king, and the
entrance into Paris of the present one. Charles X. begins his reign in a
very conciliating manner, and is really popular. The Bourbons have
gained great accession of power within a few years."
The succession of Charles X. was also observed by another foreigner,
who was making agreeable personal notes at that time in Paris, but who is
not referred to by Irving, who, for some unexplained reason, failed to
meet the genial Scotsman at breakfast. Perhaps it is to his failure to
do so that he owes the semi-respectful reference to himself in Carlyle's
"Reminiscences." Lacking the stimulus to his vocabulary of personal
acquaintance, Carlyle simply wrote: "Washington Irving was said to be in
Paris, a kind of lion at that time, whose books I somewhat esteemed.
One day the Emerson-Tennant people bragged that they had engaged him to
breakfast with us at a certain cafe next morning. We all attended duly,
Strackey among the rest, but no Washington came. 'Could n't rightly
come,' said Malcolm to me in a judicious aside, as we cheerfully
breakfasted without him. I never saw Washington at all, but still have a
mild esteem of the good man." This ought to be accepted as evidence of
Carlyle's disinclination to say ill-natured things of those he did not
know.
The "Tales of a Traveller" appeared in 1826. In the author's opinion,
with which the best critics agreed, it contained some of his best
writing. He himself said in a letter to Brevoort, "There was more of an
artistic touch about it, though this is not a thing to be appreciated by
the many." It was rapidly written. The movement has a delightful
spontaneity, and it is wanting in none of the charms of his style,
unless, perhaps, the style is over-refined; but it was not a novelty, and
the public began to criticise and demand a new note. This may have been
one reason why he turned to a fresh field and to graver themes. For a
time he busied himself on some American essays of a semi-political
nature, which were never finished, and he seriously contemplated a Life
of Washington; but all these projects were thrown aside for one that
kindled his imagination,--the Life of Columbus; and in February, 1826, he
was domiciled at Madrid, and settled down to a long period of unremitting
and intense labor.
VII
IN SPAIN
Irving's residence in Spain, which was prolonged till September, 1829,
was the most fruitful period in his life, and of considerable consequence
to literature. It is not easy to overestimate the debt of Americans to
the man who first opened to them the fascinating domain of early Spanish
history and romance. We can conceive of it by reflecting upon the blank
that would exist without "The Alhambra," "The Conquest of Granada,"
"The Legends of the Conquest of Spain," and I may add the popular loss if
we had not "The Lives of Columbus and his Companions." Irving had the
creative touch, or at least the magic of the pen, to give a definite,
universal, and romantic interest to whatever he described. We cannot
deny him that. A few lines about the inn of the Red Horse at
Stratford-on-Avon created a new object of pilgrimage right in the
presence of the house and tomb of the poet. And how much of the romantic
interest of all the English-reading world in the Alhambra is due to him;
the name invariably recalls his own, and every visitor there is conscious
of his presence. He has again and again been criticised almost out of
court, and written down to the rank of the mere idle humorist; but as
often as I take up "The Conquest of Granada" or "The Alhambra" I am aware
of something that has eluded the critical analysis, and I conclude that
if one cannot write for the few, it may be worth while to write for the
many.
It was Irving's intention, when he went to Madrid, merely to make a
translation of some historical documents which were then appearing,
edited by M. Navarrete, from the papers of Bishop Las Casas and the
journals of Columbus, entitled "The Voyages of Columbus." But when he
found that this publication, although it contained many documents,
hitherto unknown, that threw much light on the discovery of the New
World, was rather a rich mass of materials for a history than a history
itself, and that he had access in Madrid libraries to great collections
of Spanish colonial history, he changed his plan, and determined to write
a Life of Columbus. His studies for this led him deep into the old
chronicles and legends of Spain, and out of these, with his own travel
and observation, came those books of mingled fables, sentiment, fact, and
humor which are, after all, the most enduring fruits of his residence in
Spain.
Notwithstanding his absorption in literary pursuits, Irving was not
denied the charm of domestic society, which was all his life his chief
delight. The house he most frequented in Madrid was that of Mr.
D'Oubril, the Russian Minister. In his charming household were Madame
D'Oubril and her niece, Mademoiselle Antoinette Bollviller, and Prince
Dolgorouki, a young attache of the legation. His letters to Prince
Dolgorouki and to Mademoiselle Antoinette give a most lively and
entertaining picture of his residence and travels in Spain. In one of
them to the prince, who was temporarily absent from the city, we have
glimpses of the happy hours, the happiest of all hours, passed in this
refined family circle. Here is one that exhibits the still fresh romance
in the heart of forty-four years:
"Last evening, at your house, we had one of the most lovely tableaux
I ever beheld. It was the conception of Murillo, represented by
Madame A----. Mademoiselle Antoinette arranged the tableau with her
usual good taste, and the effect was enchanting. It was more like a
vision of something spiritual and celestial than a representation of
anything merely mortal; or rather it was woman as in my romantic
days I have been apt to imagine her, approaching to the angelic
nature. I have frequently admired Madame A----as a mere beautiful
woman, when I have seen her dressed up in the fantastic attire of
the mode; but here I beheld her elevated into a representative of
the divine purity and grace, exceeding even the beau ideal of the
painter, for she even surpassed in beauty the picture of Murillo.
I felt as if I could have knelt down and worshiped her. Heavens!
what power women would have over us, if they knew how to sustain the
attractions which nature has bestowed upon them, and which we are so
ready to assist by our imaginations! For my part, I am
superstitious in my admiration of them, and like to walk in a
perpetual delusion, decking them out as divinities. I thank no one
to undeceive me, and to prove that they are mere mortals."
And he continues in another strain:
"How full of interest is everything connected with the old times in
Spain! I am more and more delighted with the old literature of the
country, its chronicles, plays, and romances. It has the wild vigor
and luxuriance of the forests of my native country, which, however
savage and entangled, are more captivating to my imagination than
the finest parks and cultivated woodlands.
"As I live in the neighborhood of the library of the Jesuits'
College of St. Isidoro, I pass most of my mornings there.
You cannot think what a delight I feel in passing through its
galleries, filled with old parchment-bound books. It is a perfect
wilderness of curiosity to me. What a deep-felt, quiet luxury there
is in delving into the rich ore of these old, neglected volumes!
How these hours of uninterrupted intellectual enjoyment, so tranquil
and independent, repay one for the ennui and disappointment too
often experienced in the intercourse of society! How they serve to
bring back the feelings into a harmonious tone, after being jarred
and put out of tune by the collisions with the world!"
With the romantic period of Spanish history Irving was in ardent
sympathy. The story of the Saracens entranced his mind; his imagination
disclosed its oriental quality while he pored over the romance and the
ruin of that land of fierce contrasts, of arid wastes beaten by the
burning sun, valleys blooming with intoxicating beauty, cities of
architectural splendor and picturesque squalor. It is matter of regret
that he, who seemed to need the southern sun to ripen his genius, never
made a pilgrimage into the East, and gave to the world pictures of the
lands that he would have touched with the charm of their own color and
the witchery of their own romance.
I will quote again from the letters, for they reveal the man quite as
well as the more formal and better known writings. His first sight of
the Alhambra is given in a letter to Mademoiselle Bollviller:
"Our journey through La Mancha was cold and uninteresting, excepting
when we passed through the scenes of some of the exploits of Don
Quixote. We were repaid, however, by a night amidst the scenery of
the Sierra Morena, seen by the light of the full moon. I do not
know how this scenery would appear in the daytime, but by moonlight
it is wonderfully wild and romantic, especially after passing the
summit of the Sierra. As the day dawned we entered the stern and
savage defiles of the Despena Perros, which equals the wild
landscapes of Salvator Rosa. For some time we continued winding
along the brinks of precipices, overhung with cragged and fantastic
rocks; and after a succession of such rude and sterile scenes we
swept down to Carolina, and found ourselves in another climate.
The orange-trees, the aloes, and myrtle began to make their
appearance; we felt the warm temperature of the sweet South, and
began to breathe the balmy air of Andalusia. At Andujar we were
delighted with the neatness and cleanliness of the houses, the
patios planted with orange and citron trees, and refreshed by
fountains. We passed a charming evening on the banks of the famous
Guadalquivir, enjoying the mild, balmy air of a southern evening,
and rejoicing in the certainty that we were at length in this land
of promise . . . .
"But Granada, bellissima Granada! Think what must have been our
delight when, after passing the famous bridge of Pinos, the scene of
many a bloody encounter between Moor and Christian, and remarkable
for having been the place where Columbus was overtaken by the
messenger of Isabella, when about to abandon Spain in despair, we
turned a promontory of the arid mountains of Elvira, and Granada,
with its towers, its Alhambra, and its snowy mountains, burst upon
our sight! The evening sun shone gloriously upon its red towers as
we approached it, and gave a mellow tone to the rich scenery of the
vega. It was like the magic glow which poetry and romance have shed
over this enchanting place. . .
"The more I contemplate these places, the more my admiration is
awakened for the elegant habits and delicate taste of the Moorish
monarchs. The delicately ornamented walls; the aromatic groves,
mingling with the freshness and the enlivening sounds of fountains
and rivers of water; the retired baths, bespeaking purity and
refinement; the balconies and galleries; open to the fresh mountain
breeze, and overlooking the loveliest scenery of the valley of the
Darro and the magnificent expanse of the vega,--it is impossible to
contemplate this delicious abode and not feel an admiration of the
genius and the poetical spirit of those who first devised this
earthly paradise. There is an intoxication of heart and soul in
looking over such scenery at this genial season. All nature is just
teeming with new life, and putting on the first delicate verdure and
bloom of spring. The almond-trees are in blossom; the fig-trees are
beginning to sprout; everything is in the tender bud, the young
leaf, or the half-open flower. The beauty of the season is but half
developed, so that while there is enough to yield present delight,
there is the flattering promise of still further enjoyment. Good
heavens! after passing two years amidst the sunburnt wastes of
Castile, to be let loose to rove at large over this fragrant and
lovely land!"
It was not easy, however, even in the Alhambra, perfectly to call up the
past:
"The verity of the present checks and chills the imagination in its
picturings of the past. I have been trying to conjure up images of
Boabdil passing in regal splendor through these courts; of his
beautiful queen; of the Abencerrages, the Gomares, and the other
Moorish cavaliers, who once filled these halls with the glitter of
arms and the splendor of Oriental luxury; but I am continually
awakened from my reveries by the jargon of an Andalusian peasant who
is setting out rose-bushes, and the song of a pretty Andalusian girl
who shows the Alhambra, and who is chanting a little romance that
has probably been handed down from generation to generation since
the time of the Moors."
In another letter, written from Seville, he returns to the subject of the
Moors. He is describing an excursion to Alcala de la Guadayra:
"Nothing can be more charming than the windings of the little river
among banks hanging with gardens and orchards of all kinds of
delicate southern fruits, and tufted with flowers and aromatic
plants. The nightingales throng this lovely little valley as
numerously as they do the gardens of Aranjuez. Every bend of the
river presents a new landscape, for it is beset by old Moorish mills
of the most picturesque forms, each mill having an embattled tower,
a memento of the valiant tenure by which those gallant fellows, the
Moors, held this earthly paradise, having to be ready at all times
for war, and as it were to work with one hand and fight with the
other. It is impossible to travel about Andalusia and not imbibe a
kind feeling for those Moors. They deserved this beautiful country.
They won it bravely; they enjoyed it generously and kindly.
No lover ever delighted more to cherish and adorn a mistress, to
heighten and illustrate her charms, and to vindicate and defend her
against all the world than did the Moors to embellish, enrich,
elevate, and defend their beloved Spain. Everywhere I meet traces
of their sagacity, courage, urbanity, high poetical feeling, and
elegant taste. The noblest institutions in this part of Spain, the
best inventions for comfortable and agreeable living, and all those
habitudes and customs which throw a peculiar and Oriental charm over
the Andalusian mode of living may be traced to the Moors. Whenever
I enter these beautiful marble patios, set out with shrubs and
flowers, refreshed by fountains, sheltered with awnings from the
sun; where the air is cool at noonday, the ear delighted in sultry
summer by the sound of falling water; where, in a word, a little
paradise is shut up within the walls of home, I think on the poor
Moors, the inventors of all these delights. I am at times almost
ready to join in sentiment with a worthy friend and countryman of
mine whom I met in Malaga, who swears the Moors are the only people
that ever deserved the country, and prays to Heaven that they may
come over from Africa and conquer it again."
In a following paragraph we get a glimpse of a world, however, that the
author loves still more:
"Tell me everything about the children. I suppose the discreet
princess will soon consider it an indignity to be ranked among the
number. I am told she is growing with might and main, and is
determined not to stop until she is a woman outright. I would give
all the money in my pocket to be with those dear little women at the
round table in the saloon, or on the grass-plot in the garden, to
tell them some marvelous tales."
And again:
"Give my love to all my dear little friends of the round table, from
the discreet princess down to the little blue-eyed boy. Tell la
petite Marie that I still remain true to her, though surrounded by
all the beauties of Seville; and that I swear (but this she must
keep between ourselves) that there is not a little woman to compare
with her in all Andalusia."
The publication of "The Life of Columbus," which had been delayed by
Irving's anxiety to secure historical accuracy in every detail, did not
take place till February, 1828. For the English copyright Mr. Murray
paid him L 3150. He wrote an abridgment of it, which he presented to his
generous publisher, and which was a very profitable book (the first
edition of ten thousand copies sold immediately). This was followed by
the "Companions," and by "The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada," for
which he received two thousand guineas. "The Alhambra" was not
published till just before Irving's return to America, in 1832, and was
brought out by Mr. Bentley, who bought it for one thousand guineas.
"The Conquest of Granada," which I am told Irving in his latter years
regarded as the best of all his works, was declared by Coleridge
"a chef-d'oeuvre of its kind." I think it bears rereading as well as any
of the Spanish books. Of the reception of the "Columbus" the author was
very doubtful. Before it was finished he wrote:
"I have lost confidence in the favorable disposition of my
countrymen, and look forward to cold scrutiny and stern criticism,
and this is a line of writing in which I have not hitherto
ascertained my own powers. Could I afford it, I should like to
write, and to lay my writings aside when finished. There is an
independent delight in study and in the creative exercise of the
pen; we live in a world of dreams, but publication lets in the noisy
rabble of the world, and there is an end of our dreaming."
In a letter to Brevoort, February 23, 1828, he fears that he can never
regain:
"that delightful confidence which I once enjoyed of not the good
opinion, but the good will, of my countrymen. To me it is always
ten times more gratifying to be liked than to be admired; and I
confess to you, though I am a little too proud to confess it to the
world, the idea that the kindness of my countrymen toward me was
withering caused me for a long time the most weary depression of
spirits, and disheartened me from making any literary exertions."
It has been a popular notion that Irving's career was uniformly one of
ease. In this same letter he exclaims: "With all my exertions, I seem
always to keep about up to my chin in troubled water, while the world, I
suppose, thinks I am sailing smoothly, with wind and tide in my favor."
In a subsequent letter to Brevoort, dated at Seville, December 26, 1828,
occurs almost the only piece of impatience and sarcasm that this long
correspondence affords. "Columbus" had succeeded beyond his expectation,
and its popularity was so great that some enterprising American had
projected an abridgment, which it seems would not be protected by the
copyright of the original. Irving writes:
"I have just sent to my brother an abridgment of 'Columbus' to be
published immediately, as I find some paltry fellow is pirating an
abridgment. Thus every line of life has its depredation. 'There be
land rats and water rats, land pirates and water pirates,--I mean
thieves,' as old Shylock says. I feel vexed at this shabby attempt
to purloin this work from me, it having really cost me more toil and
trouble than all my other productions, and being one that I trusted
would keep me current with my countrymen; but we are making rapid
advances in literature in America, and have already attained many of
the literary vices and diseases of the old countries of Europe.
We swarm with reviewers, though we have scarce original works
sufficient for them to alight and prey upon, and we closely imitate
all the worst tricks of the trade and of the craft in England.
Our literature, before long, will be like some of those premature
and aspiring whipsters, who become old men before they are young
ones, and fancy they prove their manhood by their profligacy and
their diseases."
But the work had an immediate, continued, and deserved success. It was
critically contrasted with Robertson's account of Columbus, and it is
open to the charge of too much rhetorical color here and there, and it is
at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not questioned,
and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of
the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully
appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical
narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is
largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of
the noblest in literature. I cannot think it idealized, though it
required a poetic sensibility to enter into sympathy with the magnificent
dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool of an idea.
A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to represent that
mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and, amid frustrated
hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his sacrifices, could
always rebuild its glowing projects and conquer obloquy and death itself
with immortal anticipations.
Towards the close of his residence in Spain, Irving received unexpectedly
the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the Court of St. James, at
which Louis McLane was American Minister; and after some hesitation, and
upon the urgency of his friends, he accepted it. He was in the thick of
literary projects. One of these was the History of the Conquest of
Mexico, which he afterwards surrendered to Mr. Prescott, and another was
the "Life of Washington," which was to wait many years for fulfillment.
His natural diffidence and his reluctance to a routine life made him
shrink from the diplomatic appointment; but once engaged in it, and
launched again in London society, he was reconciled to the situation.
Of honors there was no lack, nor of the adulation of social and literary
circles. In April, 1830, the Royal Society of Literature awarded him one
of the two annual gold medals placed at the disposal of the society by
George IV., to be given to authors of literary works of eminent merit,
the other being voted to the historian Hallam; and this distinction was
followed by the degree of D. C. L. from the University of Oxford,--a
title which the modest author never used.
VIII
RETURN TO AMERICA--SUNNYSIDE--THE MISSION TO MADRID
In 1831 Mr. Irving was thrown, by his diplomatic position, into the thick
of the political and social tumult, when the Reform Bill was pending and
war was expected in Europe. It is interesting to note that for a time he
laid aside his attitude of the dispassionate observer, and caught the
general excitement. He writes in March, expecting that the fate of the
cabinet will be determined in a week, looking daily for decisive news
from Paris, and fearing dismal tidings from Poland. "However," he goes
on to say in a vague way, "the great cause of all the world will go on.
What a stirring moment it is to live in! I never took such intense
interest in newspapers. It seems to me as if life were breaking out anew
with me, or that I were entering upon quite a new and almost unknown
career of existence, and I rejoice to find sensibilities, which were
waning as to many objects of past interest, reviving with all their
freshness and vivacity at the scenes and prospects opening around me."
He expects the breaking of the thraldom of falsehood woven over the human
mind; and, more definitely, hopes that the Reform Bill will prevail.
Yet he is oppressed by the gloom hanging over the booksellers' trade,
which he thinks will continue until reform and cholera have passed away.
During the last months of his residence in England, the author renewed
his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn
showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house,
on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent
some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of
seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great novelist, in
the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on his way to
Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked Irving to dine with him. It was but a
melancholy repast. "Ah," said Scott, as Irving gave him his arm, after
dinner, "the times are changed, my good fellow, since we went over the
Eildon Hills together. It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is
not affected when his body is in this state."
Irving retired from the legation in September, 1831, to return home, the
longing to see his native land having become intense; but his arrival in
New York was delayed till May, 1832.
If he had any doubts of the sentiments of his countrymen toward him, his
reception in New York dissipated them. America greeted her most famous
literary man with a spontaneous outburst of love and admiration. The
public banquet in New York, that was long remembered for its brilliancy,
was followed by the tender of the same tribute in other cities, an honor
which his unconquerable shrinking from this kind of publicity compelled
him to decline.
The "Dutch Herodotus, Diedrich Knickerbocker," to use the phrase of a
toast, having come out of one such encounter with fair credit, did not
care to tempt Providence further. The thought of making a dinner-table
speech threw him into a sort of whimsical panic,--a noble infirmity,
which characterized also Hawthorne and Thackeray.
The enthusiasm manifested for the homesick author was equaled by his own
for the land and the people he supremely loved. Nor was his surprise at
the progress made during seventeen years less than his delight in it.
His native place had become a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants;
the accumulation of wealth and the activity of trade astonished him, and
the literary stir was scarcely less unexpected. The steamboat had come
to be used, so that he seemed to be transported from place to place by
magic; and on a near view the politics of America seemed not less
interesting than those of Europe. The nullification battle was set; the
currency conflict still raged; it was a time of inflation and land
speculation; the West, every day more explored and opened, was the land
of promise for capital and energy. Fortunes were made in a day by buying
lots in "paper towns." Into some of these speculations Irving put his
savings; the investments were as permanent as they were unremunerative.
Irving's first desire, however, on his recovery from the state of
astonishment into which these changes plunged him, was to make himself
thoroughly acquainted with the entire country and its development.
To this end he made an extended tour in the South and West, which passed
beyond the bounds of frontier settlement. The fruit of his excursion
into the Pawnee country, on the waters of the Arkansas, a region
untraversed by white men, except solitary trappers, was "A Tour on the
Prairies," a sort of romance of reality, which remains to-day as good a
description as we have of hunting adventure on the plains. It led also
to the composition of other books on the West, which were more or less
mere pieces of book-making for the market.
Our author was far from idle. Indeed, he could not afford to be.
Although he had received considerable sums from his books, and perhaps
enough for his own simple wants, the responsibility of the support of his
two brothers, Peter and Ebenezer, and several nieces, devolved upon him.
And, besides, he had a longing to make himself a home, where he could
pursue his calling undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and
rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two
undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his
life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of
the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the
loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson.
At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, inexpensive and
simply furnished. But his experience was that of all who buy, and
renovate, and build. The farm had on it a small stone Dutch cottage,
built about a century before, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels.
This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics;
it acquired a tower and a whimsical weather-cock, the delight of the
owner ("it was brought from Holland by Gill Davis, the King of Coney
Island, who says he got it from a windmill which they were demolishing at
the gate of Rotterdam, which windmill has been mentioned in
'Knickerbocker'"), and became one of the most snug and picturesque
residences on the river. When the slip of Melrose ivy, which was brought
over from Scotland by Mrs. Renwick and given to the author, had grown and
well overrun it, the house, in the midst of sheltering groves and
secluded walks, was as pretty a retreat as a poet could desire. But the
little nook proved to have an insatiable capacity for swallowing up
money, as the necessities of the author's establishment increased: there
was always something to be done to the grounds; some alterations in the
house; a greenhouse, a stable, a gardener's cottage, to be built,--and to
the very end the outlay continued. The cottage necessitated economy in
other personal expenses, and incessant employment of his pen.
But Sunnyside, as the place was named, became the dearest spot on earth
to him; it was his residence, from which he tore himself with reluctance,
and to which he returned with eager longing; and here, surround by
relatives whom he loved, he passed nearly all the remainder of his years,
in as happy conditions, I think, as a bachelor ever enjoyed. His
intellectual activity was unremitting, he had no lack of friends, there
was only now and then a discordant note in the general estimation of his
literary work, and he was the object of the most tender care from his
nieces. Already, he writes, in October, 1838, "my little cottage is well
stocked. I have Ebenezer's five girls, and himself also, whenever he can
be spared from town; sister Catherine and her daughter; Mr. Davis
occasionally, with casual visits from all the rest of our family
connection. The cottage, therefore, is never lonely." I like to dwell
in thought upon this happy home, a real haven of rest after many
wanderings; a seclusion broken only now and then by enforced absence,
like that in Madrid as minister, but enlivened by many welcome guests.
Perhaps the most notorious of these was a young Frenchman, a "somewhat
quiet guest," who, after several months' imprisonment on board a French
man-of-war, was set on shore at Norfolk, and spent a couple of months in
New York and its vicinity, in 1837. This visit was vividly recalled by
Irving in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Storrow, who was in Paris in 1853,
and had just been presented at court:
"Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France!
one of whom I have had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the
other, whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada. It
seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has
been the theatre during my lifetime. I have repeatedly thought that
each grand coup de theatre would be the last that would occur in my
time; but each has been succeeded by another equally striking; and
what will be the next, who can conjecture?
"The last time I saw Eugenie Montijo she was one of the reigning
belles of Madrid; and she and her giddy circle had swept away my
charming young friend, the beautiful and accomplished--------,
into their career of fashionable dissipation. Now Eugenie is upon a
throne, and a voluntary recluse in a convent of one of the most
rigorous orders! Poor----! Perhaps, however, her fate may
ultimately be the happiest of the two. 'The storm' with her 'is
o'er, and she's at rest;' but the other is launched upon a
returnless shore, on a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous
shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catastrophe of her career, and
the end of this suddenly conjured-up empire, which seems to 'be of
such stuff as dreams are made of'?"
As we have seen, the large sums Irving earned by his pen were not spent
in selfish indulgence. His habits and tastes were simple, and little
would have sufficed for his individual needs. He cared not much for
money, and seemed to want it only to increase the happiness of those who
were confided to his care. A man less warm-hearted and more selfish, in
his circumstances, would have settled down to a life of more ease and
less responsibility.
To go back to the period of his return to America. He was now past
middle life, having returned to New York in his fiftieth year. But he
was in the full flow of literary productiveness. I have noted the dates
of his achievements, because his development was somewhat tardy compared
that of many of his contemporaries; but he had the "staying" qualities.
The first crop of his mind was of course the most original; time and
experience had toned down his exuberant humor; but the spring of his
fancy was as free, his vigor was not abated, and his art was more
refined. Some of his best work was yet to be done.
And it is worthy of passing mention, in regard to his later productions,
that his admirable sense of literary proportion, which is wanting in many
good writers, characterized his work to the end.
High as his position as a man of letters was at this time, the
consideration in which he was held was much broader than that,--it was
that of one of the first citizens of the Republic. His friends, readers,
and admirers were not merely the literary class and the general public,
but included nearly all the prominent statesmen of the time. Almost any
career in public life would have been open to him if he had lent an ear
to their solicitations. But political life was not to his taste, and it
would have been fatal to his sensitive spirit. It did not require much
self-denial, perhaps, to decline the candidacy for mayor of New York, or
the honor of standing for Congress; but he put aside also the distinction
of a seat in Mr. Van Buren's cabinet as Secretary of the Navy. His main
reason for declining it, aside from a diffidence in his own judgment in
public matters, was his dislike of the turmoil of political life in
Washington, and his sensitiveness to personal attacks which beset the
occupants of high offices. But also he had come to a political
divergence with Mr. Van Buren. He liked the man,--he liked almost
everybody,--and esteemed him as a friend, but he apprehended trouble from
the new direction of the party in power. Irving was almost devoid of
party prejudice, and he never seemed to have strongly marked political
opinions. Perhaps his nearest confession to a creed is contained in a
letter he wrote to a member of the House of Representatives, Gouverneur
Kemble, a little time before the offer of a position in the cabinet, in
which he said that he did not relish some points of Van Buren's policy,
nor believe in the honesty of some of his elbow counselors. I quote a
passage from it:
"As far as I know my own mind, I am thoroughly a republican, and
attached, from complete conviction, to the institutions of my
country; but I am a republican without gall, and have no bitterness
in my creed. I have no relish for Puritans, either in religion or
politics, who are for pushing principles to an extreme, and for
overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous
career . . . . Ours is a government of compromise. We have
several great and distinct interests bound up together, which, if
not separately consulted and severally accommodated, may harass and
impair each other . . . . I always distrust the soundness of
political councils that are accompanied by acrimonious and
disparaging attacks upon any great class of our fellow-citizens.
Such are those urged to the disadvantage of the great trading and
financial classes of our country."
During the ten years preceding his mission to Spain, Irving kept fagging
away at the pen, doing a good deal of miscellaneous and ephemeral work.
Among his other engagements was that of regular contributor to the
"Knickerbocker Magazine," for a salary of two thousand dollars. He wrote
the editor that he had observed that man, as he advances in life, is
subject to a plethora of the mind, occasioned by an accumulation of
wisdom upon the brain, and that he becomes fond of telling long stories
and doling out advice, to the annoyance of his friends. To avoid
becoming the bore of the domestic circle, he proposed to ease off this
surcharge of the intellect by inflicting his tediousness on the public
through the pages of the periodical. The arrangement brought reputation
to the magazine (which was published in the days when the honor of being
in print was supposed by the publisher to be ample compensation to the
scribe), but little profit to Mr. Irving. During this period he
interested himself in an international copyright, as a means of fostering
our young literature. He found that a work of merit, written by an
American who had not established a commanding name in the market, met
very cavalier treatment from our publishers, who frankly said that they
need not trouble themselves about native works, when they could pick up
every day successful books from the British press, for which they had to
pay no copyright. Irving's advocacy of the proposed law was entirely
unselfish, for his own market was secure.
His chief works in these ten years were, "A Tour on the Prairies,"
"Recollections of Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey," "The Legends of the
Conquest of Spain," "Astoria" (the heavy part of the work of it was done
by his nephew Pierre), "Captain Bonneville," and a number of graceful
occasional papers, collected afterwards under the title of "Wolfert's
Roost." Two other books may properly be mentioned here, although they
did not appear until after his return from his absence of four years and
a half at the court of Madrid; these are the "Biography of Goldsmith" and
"Mahomet and his Successors." At the age of sixty-six he laid aside the
"Life of Washington," on which he was engaged, and rapidly threw off
these two books. The "Goldsmith" was enlarged from a sketch he had made
twenty-five years before. It is an exquisite, sympathetic piece of work,
without pretension or any subtle verbal analysis, but on the whole an
excellent interpretation of the character. Author and subject had much
in common: Irving had at least a kindly sympathy for the vagabondish
inclinations of his predecessor, and with his humorous and cheerful
regard of the world; perhaps it is significant of a deeper unity in
character that both, at times, fancied they could please an intolerant
world by attempting to play the flute. The "Mahomet" is a popular
narrative, which throws no new light on the subject; it is pervaded by
the author's charm of style and equity of judgment, but it lacks the
virility of Gibbon's masterly picture of the Arabian prophet and the
Saracenic onset.
We need not dwell longer upon this period. One incident of it, however,
cannot be passed in silence--that was the abandonment of his lifelong
project of writing the History of the Conquest of Mexico to Mr. William
H. Prescott. It had been a scheme of his boyhood; he had made
collections of materials for it during his first residence in Spain;
and he was actually and absorbedly engaged in the composition of the
first chapters, when he was sounded by Mr. Cogswell, of the Astor
Library, in behalf of Mr. Prescott. Some conversation showed that
Mr. Prescott was contemplating the subject upon which Mr. Irving was
engaged, and the latter instantly authorized Mr. Cogswell to say that he
abandoned it. Although our author was somewhat far advanced, and Mr.
Prescott had not yet collected his materials, Irving renounced the
glorious theme in such a manner that Prescott never suspected the pain
and loss it cost him, nor the full extent of his own obligation. Some
years afterwards Irving wrote to his nephew that in giving it up he in a
manner gave up his bread, as he had no other subject to supply its place:
"I was," he wrote, "dismounted from my cheval de bataille, and have never
been completely mounted since." But he added that he was not sorry for
the warm impulse that induced him to abandon the subject, and that Mr.
Prescott's treatment of it had justified his opinion of him.
Notwithstanding Prescott's very brilliant work, we cannot but feel some
regret that Irving did not write a Conquest of Mexico. His method, as he
outlined it, would have been the natural one. Instead of partially
satisfying the reader's curiosity in a preliminary essay, in which the
Aztec civilization was exposed, Irving would have begun with the entry of
the conquerors, and carried his reader step by step onward, letting him
share all the excitement and surprise of discovery which the invaders
experienced, and learn of the wonders of the country in the manner most
likely to impress both the imagination and the memory; and with his
artistic sense of the value of the picturesque he would have brought into
strong relief the dramatis personae of the story.
In 1842 Irving was tendered the honor of the mission to Madrid. It was an
entire surprise to himself and to his friends. He came to look upon this
as the "crowning honor of his life," and yet when the news first reached
him, he paced up and down his room, excited and astonished, revolving in
his mind the separation from home and friends, and was heard murmuring,
half to himself and half to his nephew: "It is hard,--very hard; yet I
must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." His
acceptance of the position was doubtless influenced by the intended honor
to his profession, by the gratifying manner in which it came to him, by
his desire to please his friends, and the belief, which was a delusion,
that diplomatic life in Madrid would offer no serious interruption to his
"Life of Washington," in which he had just become engaged. The
nomination, the suggestion of Daniel Webster, Tyler's Secretary of State,
was cordially approved by the President and cabinet, and confirmed almost
by acclamation in the Senate. "Ah," said Mr. Clay, who was opposing
nearly all the President's appointments, "this is a nomination everybody
will concur in!" "If a person of more merit and higher qualification,"
wrote Mr. Webster in his official notification, "had presented himself,
great as is my personal regard for you, I should have yielded it to
higher considerations."
No other appointment could have been made so complimentary to Spain, and
it remains to this day one of the most honorable to his own country.
In reading Irving's letters written during his third visit abroad, you
are conscious that the glamour of life is gone for him, though not his
kindliness towards the world, and that he is subject to few illusions;
the show and pageantry no longer enchant,--they only weary. The novelty
was gone, and he was no longer curious to see great sights and great
people. He had declined a public dinner in New York, and he put aside
the same hospitality offered by Liverpool and by Glasgow. In London he
attended the Queen's grand fancy ball, which surpassed anything he had
seen in splendor and picturesque effect. "The personage," he writes,
"who appeared least to enjoy the scene seemed to me to be the little
Queen herself. She was flushed and heated, and evidently fatigued and
oppressed with the state she had to keep up and the regal robes in which
she was arrayed, and especially by a crown of gold, which weighed heavy
on her brow, and to which she was continually raising her hand to move it
slightly when it pressed. I hope and trust her real crown sits easier."
The bearing of Prince Albert he found prepossessing, and he adds, "He
speaks English very well;" as if that were a useful accomplishment for an
English Prince Consort. His reception at court and by the ministers and
diplomatic corps was very kind, and he greatly enjoyed meeting his old
friends, Leslie, Rogers, and Moore. At Paris, in an informal
presentation to the royal family, he experienced a very cordial welcome
from the King and Queen and Madame Adelaide, each of whom took occasion
to say something complimentary about his writings; but he escaped as soon
as possible from social engagements. "Amidst all the splendors of London
and Paris, I find my imagination refuses to take fire, and my heart still
yearns after dear little Sunnyside." Of an anxious friend in Paris, who
thought Irving was ruining his prospects by neglecting to leave his card
with this or that duchess who had sought his acquaintance, he writes:
"He attributes all this to very excessive modesty, not dreaming that the
empty intercourse of saloons with people of rank and fashion could be a
bore to one who has run the rounds of society for the greater part of
half a century, and who likes to consult his own humor and pursuits."
When Irving reached Madrid, the affairs of the kingdom had assumed a
powerful dramatic interest, wanting in none of the romantic elements that
characterize the whole history of the peninsula. "The future career [he
writes of this gallant soldier, Espartero, whose merits and services have
placed him at the head of the government, and the future fortunes of
these isolated little princesses, the Queen and her sister], have an
uncertainty hanging about them worthy of the fifth act in a melodrama."
The drama continued, with constant shifting of scene, as long as Irving
remained in Spain, and gave to his diplomatic life intense interest, and
at times perilous excitement. His letters are full of animated pictures
of the changing progress of the play; and although they belong rather to
the gossip of history than to literary biography, they cannot be
altogether omitted. The duties which the minister had to perform were
unusual, delicate, and difficult; but I believe he acquitted himself of
them with the skill of a born diplomatist. When he went to Spain before,
in 1826, Ferdinand VII. was, by aid of French troops, on the throne, the
liberties of the kingdom were crushed, and her most enlightened men were
in exile. While he still resided there, in 1829, Ferdinand married, for
his fourth wife, Maria Christina, sister of the King of Naples, and niece
of the Queen of Louis Philippe. By her he had two daughters, his only
children. In order that his own progeny might succeed him, he set aside
the Salique law (which had been imposed by France) just before his death,
in 1833, and revived the old Spanish law of succession. His eldest
daughter, then three years old, was proclaimed Queen by the name of
Isabella II, and her mother guardian during her minority, which would end
at the age of fourteen. Don Carlos, the king's eldest brother,
immediately set up the standard of rebellion, supported by the absolutist
aristocracy, the monks, and a great part of the clergy. The liberals
rallied to the Queen. The Queen Regent did not, however, act in good
faith with the popular party she resisted all salutary reform, would not
restore the Constitution of 1812 until compelled to by a popular
uprising, and disgraced herself by a scandalous connection with one
Munos, one of the royal bodyguards. She enriched this favorite and
amassed a vast fortune for herself, which she sent out of the country.
In 1839, when Don Carlos was driven out of the country by the patriot
soldier Espartero, she endeavored to gain him over to her side, but
failed. Espartero became Regent, and Maria Christina repaired to Paris,
where she was received with great distinction by Louis Philippe, and
Paris became the focus of all sorts of machinations against the
constitutional government of Spain, and of plots for its overthrow. One
of these had just been defeated at the time of Irving's arrival. It was
a desperate attempt of a band of soldiers of the rebel army to carry off
the little Queen and her sister, which was frustrated only by the gallant
resistance of the halberdiers in the palace. The little princesses had
scarcely recovered from the horror of this night attack when our minister
presented his credentials to the Queen through the Regent, thus breaking
a diplomatic deadlock, in which he was followed by all the other
embassies except the French. I take some passages from the author's
description of his first audience at the royal palace:
"We passed through the spacious court, up the noble staircase, and
through the long suites of apartments of this splendid edifice, most of
them silent and vacant, the casements closed to keep out the heat, so
that a twilight reigned throughout the mighty pile, not a little
emblematical of the dubious fortunes of its inmates. It seemed more like
traversing a convent than a palace. I ought to have mentioned that in
ascending the grand staircase we found the portal at the head of it,
opening into the royal suite of apartments, still bearing the marks of
the midnight attack upon the palace in October last, when an attempt was
made to get possession of the persons of the little Queen and her sister,
to carry them off . . . . The marble casements of the doors had been
shattered in several places, and the double doors themselves pierced all
over with bullet holes, from the musketry that played upon them from the
staircase during that eventful night. What must have been the feelings
of those poor children, on listening, from their apartment, to the horrid
tumult, the outcries of a furious multitude, and the reports of firearms
echoing and reverberating through the vaulted halls and spacious courts
of this immense edifice, and dubious whether their own lives were not the
object of the assault!
"After passing through various chambers of the palace, now silent and
sombre, but which I had traversed in former days, on grand court
occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII, when they were glittering with
all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great saloon, with
high-vaulted ceiling incrusted with florid devices in porcelain, and hung
with silken tapestry, but all in dim twilight, like the rest of the
palace. At one end of the saloon the door opened to an almost
interminable range of other chambers, through which, at a distance, we
had a glimpse of some indistinct figures in black. They glided into the
saloon slowly, and with noiseless steps. It was the little Queen, with
her governess, Madame Mina, widow of the general of that name, and her
guardian, the excellent Arguelles, all in deep mourning for the Duke of
Orleans. The little Queen advanced some steps within the saloon and then
paused. Madame Mina took her station a little distance behind her. The
Count Almodovar then introduced me to the Queen in my official capacity,
and she received me with a grave and quiet welcome, expressed in a very
low voice. She is nearly twelve years of age, and is sufficiently well
grown for her years. She had a somewhat fair complexion, quite pale,
with bluish or light gray eyes; a grave demeanor, but a graceful
deportment. I could not but regard her with deep interest, knowing what
important concerns depended upon the life of this fragile little being,
and to what a stormy and precarious career she might be destined. Her
solitary position, also, separated from all her kindred except her little
sister, a mere effigy of royalty in the hands of statesmen, and
surrounded by the formalities and ceremonials of state, which spread
sterility around the occupant of a throne."
I have quoted this passage, not more on account of its intrinsic
interest, than as a specimen of the author's consummate art of conveying
an impression by what I may call the tone of his style; and this appears
in all his correspondence relating to this picturesque and eventful
period. During the four years of his residence the country was in a
constant state of excitement and often of panic. Armies were marching
over the kingdom. Madrid was in a state of siege, expecting an assault
at one time; confusion reigned amid the changing adherents about the
person of the child-queen. The duties of a minister were perplexing
enough, when the Spanish government was changing its character and its
personnel with the rapidity of shifting scenes in a pantomime. "This
consumption of ministers," wrote Irving to Mr. Webster, "is appalling.
To carry on a negotiation with such transient functionaries is like
bargaining at the window of a railroad-car: before you can get a reply to
a proposition the other party is out of sight."
Apart from politics, Irving's residence was full of half-melancholy
recollections and associations. In a letter to his old comrade, Prince
Polgorouki, then Russian Minister at Naples, he recalls the days of their
delightful intercourse at the D'Oubrils':
"Time dispels charms and illusions. You remember how much I was
struck with a beautiful young woman (I will not mention names) who
appeared in a tableau as Murillo's Virgin of the Assumption? She
was young, recently married, fresh and unhackneyed in society, and
my imagination decked her out with everything that was pure, lovely,
innocent, and angelic in womanhood. She was pointed out to me in
the theatre shortly after my arrival in Madrid. I turned with
eagerness to the original of the picture that had ever remained hung
up in sanctity in my mind. I found her still handsome, though
somewhat matronly in appearance, seated, with her daughters, in the
box of a fashionable nobleman, younger than herself, rich in purse
but poor in intellect, and who was openly and notoriously her
cavalier servante. The charm was broken, the picture fell from the
wall. She may have the customs of a depraved country and licentious
state of society to excuse her; but I can never think of her again
in the halo of feminine purity and loveliness that surrounded the
Virgin of Murillo."
During Irving's ministry he was twice absent, briefly in Paris and
London, and was called to the latter place for consultation in regard to
the Oregon boundary dispute, in the settlement of which he rendered
valuable service. Space is not given me for further quotations from
Irving's brilliant descriptions of court, characters, and society in that
revolutionary time, nor of his half-melancholy pilgrimage to the southern
scenes of his former reveries. But I will take a page from a letter to
his sister, Mrs. Paris, describing his voyage from Barcelona to
Marseilles, which exhibits the lively susceptibility of the author and
diplomat who was then in his sixty-first year:
"While I am writing at a table in the cabin, I am sensible of the
power of a pair of splendid Spanish eyes which are occasionally
flashing upon me, and which almost seem to throw a light upon the
paper. Since I cannot break the spell, I will describe the owner of
them. She is a young married lady, about four or five and twenty,
middle sized, finely modeled, a Grecian outline of face, a
complexion sallow yet healthful, raven black hair, eyes dark, large,
and beaming, softened by long eyelashes, lips full and rosy red, yet
finely chiseled, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. She is dressed in
black, as if in mourning; on one hand is a black glove; the other
hand, ungloved, is small, exquisitely formed, with taper fingers and
blue veins. She has just put it up to adjust her clustering black
locks. I never saw female hand more exquisite. Really, if I were a
young man, I should not be able to draw the portrait of this
beautiful creature so calmly.
"I was interrupted in my letter writing, by an observation of the
lady whom I was describing. She had caught my eye occasionally, as
it glanced from my letter toward her. 'Really, Senor,' said she, at
length, with a smile, I one would think you were a painter taking my
likeness.' I could not resist the impulse. 'Indeed,' said I, 'I am
taking it; I am writing to a friend the other side of the world,
discussing things that are passing before me, and I could not help
noting down one of the best specimens of the country that I had met
with: A little bantering took place between the young lady, her
husband, and myself, which ended in my reading off, as well as I
could into Spanish, the description I had just written down.
It occasioned a world of merriment, and was taken in excellent part.
The lady's cheek, for once, mantled with the rose. She laughed,
shook her head, and said I was a very fanciful portrait painter;
and the husband declared that, if I would stop at St. Filian, all
the ladies in the place would crowd to have their portraits taken,
--my pictures were so flattering. I have just parted with them. The
steamship stopped in the open sea, just in front of the little bay
of St. Filian; boats came off from shore for the party. I helped
the beautiful original of the portrait into the boat, and promised
her and her husband if ever I should come to St. Filian I would pay
them a visit. The last I noticed of her was a Spanish farewell wave
of her beautiful white hand, and the gleam of her dazzling teeth as
she smiled adieu. So there 's a very tolerable touch of romance for
a gentleman of my years."
When Irving announced his recall from the court of Madrid, the young
Queen said to him in reply: "You may take with you into private life the
intimate conviction that your frank and loyal conduct has contributed to
draw closer the amicable relations which exist between North America and
the Spanish nation, and that your distinguished personal merits have
gained in my heart the appreciation which you merit by more than one
title." The author was anxious to return. From the midst of court life
in April, 1845, he had written: "I long to be once more back at dear
little Sunnyside, while I have yet strength and good spirits to enjoy the
simple pleasures of the country, and to rally a happy family group once
more about me. I grudge every year of absence that rolls by. To-morrow
is my birthday. I shall then be sixty-two years old. The evening of
life is fast drawing over me; still I hope to get back among my friends
while there is a little sunshine left."
It was the 19th of September, 1846, says his biographer, "when the
impatient longing of his heart was gratified, and he found himself
restored to his home for the thirteen years of happy life still remaining
to him."
IX
THE CHARACTERISTIC WORKS
The "Knickerbocker's History of New York" and the "Sketch-Book" never
would have won for Irving the gold medal of the Royal Society of
Literature, or the degree of D. C. L. from Oxford.
However much the world would have liked frankly to honor the writer for
that which it most enjoyed and was under most obligations for, it would
have been a violent shock to the constitution of things to have given
such honor to the mere humorist and the writer of short sketches.
The conventional literary proprieties must be observed. Only some
laborious, solid, and improving work of the pen could sanction such
distinction,--a book of research or an historical composition. It need
not necessarily be dull, but it must be grave in tone and serious in
intention, in order to give the author high recognition.
Irving himself shared this opinion. He hoped, in the composition of his
"Columbus" and his "Washington," to produce works which should justify
the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably
satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and should lay for
him the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was
the play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which
might amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but
could not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in
literature. For this, some work of scholarship and industry was needed.
And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one man
then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous
world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and
Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait
of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle;
while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and
writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story of
Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The under-graduates
of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author when he appeared
in the theater to receive his complimentary degree perhaps understood
this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
"Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle."
Irving's "gift" was humor; and allied to this was sentiment. These
qualities modified and restrained each other; and it was by these that he
touched the heart. He acquired other powers which he himself may have
valued more highly, and which brought him more substantial honors; but
the historical compositions, which he and his contemporaries regarded as
a solid basis of fame, could be spared without serious loss, while the
works of humor, the first fruits of his genius, are possessions in
English literature the loss of which would be irreparable. The world may
never openly allow to humor a position "above the salt," but it clings to
its fresh and original productions, generation after generation, finding
room for them in its accumulating literary baggage, while more
"important" tomes of scholarship and industry strew the line of its
march.
I feel that this study of Irving as a man of letters would be incomplete,
especially for the young readers of this generation, if it did not
contain some more extended citations from those works upon which we have
formed our estimate of his quality. We will take first a few passages
from the--"History of New York".
It has been said that Irving lacked imagination. That, while he had
humor and feeling and fancy, he was wanting in the higher quality, which
is the last test of genius. We have come to attach to the word
"imagination" a larger meaning than the mere reproduction in the mind of
certain absent objects of sense that have been perceived; there must be a
suggestion of something beyond these, and an ennobling suggestion, if not
a combination, that amounts to a new creation. Now, it seems to me that
the transmutation of the crude and heretofore unpoetical materials which
he found in the New World into what is as absolute a creation as exists
in literature, was a distinct work of the imagination. Its humorous
quality does not interfere with its largeness of outline, nor with its
essential poetic coloring. For, whimsical and comical as is the
Knickerbocker creation, it is enlarged to the proportion of a realm, and
over that new country of the imagination is always the rosy light of
sentiment.
This largeness of modified conception cannot be made apparent in such
brief extracts as we can make, but they will show its quality and the
author's humor. The Low-Dutch settlers of the Nieuw Nederlandts are
supposed to have sailed from Amsterdam in a ship called the Goede Vrouw,
built by the carpenters of that city, who always model their ships on the
fair forms of their countrywomen. This vessel, whose beauteous model was
declared to be the greatest belle in Amsterdam, had one hundred feet in
the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the
bottom of the stern-post to the taffrail. Those illustrious adventurers
who sailed in her landed on the Jersey flats, preferring a marshy ground,
where they could drive piles and construct dykes. They made a settlement
at the Indian village of Communipaw, the egg from which was hatched the
mighty city of New York. In the author's time this place had lost its
importance:
"Communipaw is at present but a small village, pleasantly situated,
among rural scenery, on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore
which was known in ancient legends by the name of Pavonia,
--[Pavonia, in the ancient maps, is given to a tract of country
extending from about Hoboken to Amboy]--and commands a grand
prospect of the superb bay of New York. It is within but half an
hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and
may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact,
which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still
summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the
obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at
Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their
risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings,
when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher, who
has made great discoveries in the neighborhood of this city, that
they always laugh loudest, which he attributes to the circumstance
of their having their holiday clothes on.
"These negroes, in fact, like the monks of the dark ages, engross
all the knowledge of the place, and being infinitely more
adventurous and more knowing than their masters, carry on all the
foreign trade; making frequent voyages to town in canoes loaded with
oysters, buttermilk, and cabbages. They are great astrologers,
predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as
an almanac; they are moreover exquisite performers on three-stringed
fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of
Orpheus's lyre, for not a horse or an ox in the place, when at the
plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears the
well-known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from
their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers, they
are regarded with as much veneration as were the disciples of
Pythagoras of yore, when initiated into the sacred quaternary of
numbers.
"As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound
philosophers, they never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their
heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that
they live in profound and enviable ignorance of all the troubles,
anxieties, and revolutions of this distracted planet. I am even
told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which
they have heard so much from tradition, is situated somewhere on
Long Island,--that Spiking-devil and the Narrows are the two ends of
the world,--that the country is still under the dominion of their
High Mightinesses,--and that the city of New York still goes by the
name of Nieuw Amsterdam. They meet every Saturday afternoon at the
only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a square-headed
likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe,
by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug
of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, who they imagine is
still sweeping the British channel with a broom at his mast-head.
"Communipaw, in short, is one of the numerous little villages in the
vicinity of this most beautiful of cities, which are so many
strongholds and fastnesses, whither the primitive manners of our
Dutch forefathers have retreated, and where they are cherished with
devout and scrupulous strictness. The dress of the original
settlers is handed down inviolate, from father to son: the identical
broad-brimmed hat, broad-skirted coat, and broad-bottomed breeches,
continue from generation to generation; and several gigantic
knee-buckles of massy silver are still in wear, that made gallant
display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language
likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so
critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect, that
his reading of a Low-Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the
nerves as the filing of a handsaw."
The early prosperity of this settlement is dwelt on with satisfaction by
the author:
"The neighboring Indians in a short time became accustomed to the
uncouth sound of the Dutch language, and an intercourse gradually
took place between them and the new-comers. The Indians were much
given to long talks, and the Dutch to long silence;--in this
particular, therefore, they accommodated each other completely.
The chiefs would make long speeches about the big bull, the Wabash,
and the Great Spirit, to which the others would listen very
attentively, smoke their pipes, and grunt 'yah, mynher', whereat the
poor savages were wondrously delighted. They instructed the new
settlers in the best art of curing and smoking tobacco, while the
latter, in return, made them drunk with true Hollands--and then
taught them the art of making bargains.
"A brisk trade for furs was soon opened; the Dutch traders were
scrupulously honest in their dealings and purchased by weight,
establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois, that the hand
of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds. It is
true, the simple Indians were often puzzled by the great
disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them place a bundle
of furs, never so large, in one scale, and a Dutchman put his hand
or foot in the other, the bundle was sure to kick the beam;--never
was a package of furs known to weigh more than two pounds in the
market of Communipaw!
"This is a singular fact,--but I have it direct from my
great-great-grandfather, who had risen to considerable importance
in the colony, being promoted to the office of weigh-master, on
account of the uncommon heaviness of his foot.
"The Dutch possessions in this part of the globe began now to assume
a very thriving appearance, and were comprehended under the general
title of Nieuw Nederlandts, on account, as the Sage Vander Donck
observes, of their great resemblance to the Dutch Netherlands,
--which indeed was truly remarkable, excepting that the former were
rugged and mountainous, and the latter level and marshy. About this
time the tranquillity of the Dutch colonists was doomed to suffer a
temporary interruption. In 1614, Captain Sir Samuel Argal, sailing
under a commission from Dale, governor of Virginia, visited the
Dutch settlements on Hudson River, and demanded their submission to
the English crown and Virginian dominion. To this arrogant demand,
as they were in no condition to resist it, they submitted for the
time, like discreet and reasonable men.
"It does not appear that the valiant Argal molested the settlement
of Communipaw; on the contrary, I am told that when his vessel first
hove in sight, the worthy burghers were seized with such a panic,
that they fell to smoking their pipes with astonishing vehemence;
insomuch that they quickly raised a cloud, which, combining with the
surrounding woods and marshes, completely enveloped and concealed
their beloved village, and overhung the fair regions of Pavoniaso
that the terrible Captain Argal passed on totally unsuspicious that
a sturdy little Dutch settlement lay snugly couched in the mud,
under cover of all this pestilent vapor. In commemoration of this
fortunate escape, the worthy inhabitants have continue, to smoke,
almost without intermission, unto this very day; which is said to be
the cause of the remarkable fog which often hangs over Communipaw of
a clear afternoon."
The golden age of New York was under the reign of Walter Van Twiller, the
first governor of the province, and the best it ever had. In his sketch
of this excellent magistrate Irving has embodied the abundance and
tranquillity of those halcyon days:
"The renowned Wouter (or Walter Van Twiller) was descended from a
long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed away
their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in
Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular
wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of
--which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object
of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two opposite
ways by which some men make a figure in the world: one, by talking
faster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues and
not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires the
reputation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dunderpate,
like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the
very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I
would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor Van
Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an
oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was
allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his
gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through
the whole course of along and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were
uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it
was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he
would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much
explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pikestaff, he would
continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out
the ashes, would exclaim, 'Well! I see nothing in all that to laugh
about.'
"With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a
subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing
magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a
scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine
both sides of it. Certain it is, that, if any matter were
propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine
at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his
capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length
observe, that 'he had his doubts about the matter;' which gained him
the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon.
What is more, it has gained him a lasting name; for to this habit of
the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller; which is said
to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English,
Doubter.
"The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and
proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some
cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur.
He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five
inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such
stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's
ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of
supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and
settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the
shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at
bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a
man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of
walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the
weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little
the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible
index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of
those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with
what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in
the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament,
and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of
everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and
streaked with dusky red, like a spitzenberg apple.
"His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four
stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and
doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the
four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller,--a true
philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly
settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had
lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know
whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun; and he had
watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his
pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of
those numerous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed
his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding
atmosphere.
"In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat
in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the
Hague, fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and
curiously carved about the arms and feet into exact imitations of
gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long
Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmine and amber, which had been
presented to a stadtholder of Holland at the conclusion of a treaty
with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would
he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right
knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together
upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame
against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even
been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and
intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes
for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by
external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his
mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which his
admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict, made by his
contending doubts and opinions . . . .
"I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and
habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not
only the first but also the best governor that ever presided over
this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and
benevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole of
it a single instance of any offender being brought to punishment,
--a most indubitable sign of a merciful governor, and a case
unparalleled, excepting in the reign of the illustrious King Log,
from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a lineal
descendant.
"The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was
distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering
presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after
he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was
making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with
milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of
Wandle Schoonhoven, a very important old burgher of New Amsterdam,
who complained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker, inasmuch as he
refused to come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a
heavy balance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as
I have already observed, was a man of few words; he was likewise a
mortal enemy to multiplying writings--or being disturbed at his
breakfast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle
Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt, as he shoveled a spoonful
of Indian pudding into his mouth,--either as a sign that he relished
the dish, or comprehended the story,--he called unto him his
constable, and pulling out of his breeches-pocket a huge jackknife,
dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his
tobacco-box as a warrant.
"This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as was
the seal-ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true
believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each
produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character
that would have puzzled any but a High-Dutch commentator, or a
learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them
one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and
attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into
a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a
word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his
eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a
subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth,
puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke, and with marvelous gravity
and solemnity pronounced that, having carefully counted over the
leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just as
thick and as heavy as the other: therefore, it was the final opinion
of the court that the accounts were equally balanced: therefore,
Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should give Wandle
a receipt, and the constable should pay the costs. This decision,
being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New
Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very
wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest
effect was, that not another lawsuit took place throughout the whole
of his administration; and the office of constable fell into such
decay that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the
province for many years. I am the more particular in dwelling on
this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage
and righteous judgments on record, and well worthy the attention of
modern magistrates, but because it was a miraculous event in the
history of the renowned Wouter--being the only time he was ever
known to come to a decision in the whole course of his life."
This peaceful age ended with the accession of William the Testy, and the
advent of the enterprising Yankees. During the reigns of William Kieft
and Peter Stuyvesant, between the Yankees of the Connecticut and the
Swedes of the Delaware, the Dutch community knew no repose, and the
"History" is little more than a series of exhausting sieges and desperate
battles, which would have been as heroic as any in history if they had
been attended with loss of life. The forces that were gathered by Peter
Stuyvesant for the expedition to avenge upon the Swedes the defeat at
Fort Casimir, and their appearance on the march, give some notion of the
military prowess of the Dutch. Their appearance, when they were encamped
on the Bowling Green, recalls the Homeric age:
"In the centre, then, was pitched the tent of the men of battle of
the Manhattoes, who, being the inmates of the metropolis, composed
the lifeguards of the governor. These were commanded by the valiant
Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilom had acquired such immortal fame at
Oyster Bay; they displayed as a standard a beaver rampant on a field
of orange, being the arms of the province, and denoting the
persevering industry and the amphibious origin of the Nederlands.
"On their right hand might be seen the vassals of that renowned
Mynheer, Michael Paw, who lorded it over the fair regions of ancient
Pavonia, and the lands away south even unto the Navesink Mountains,
and was, moreover, patroon of Gibbet Island. His standard was borne
by his trusty squire, Cornelius Van Vorst; consisting of a huge
oyster recumbent upon a sea-green field; being the armorial bearings
of his favorite metropolis, Communipaw. He brought to the camp a
stout force of warriors, heavily armed, being each clad in ten pair
of linsey-woolsey breeches, and overshadowed by broad-brimmed
beavers, with short pipes twisted in their hatbands. These were the
men who vegetated in the mud along the shores of Pavonia, being of
the race of genuine copperheads, and were fabled to have sprung from
oysters.
"At a little distance was encamped the tribe of warriors who came
from the neighborhood of Hell-gate. These were commanded by the Suy
Dams, and the Van Dams,--incontinent hard swearers, as their names
betoken. They were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted
gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and
lightning, and bore as a standard three devil's darning-needles,
volant, in a flame-colored field.
"Hard by was the tent of the men of battle from the marshy borders
of the Waale-Boght and the country thereabouts. These were of a
sour aspect, by reason that they lived on crabs, which abound in
these parts. They were the first institutors of that honorable
order of knighthood called Fly-market shirks, and, if tradition
speak true, did likewise introduce the far-famed step in dancing
called 'double trouble.' They were commanded by the fearless
Jacobus Varra Vanger,--and had, moreover, a jolly band of Breuckelen
ferry-men, who performed a brave concerto on conch shells.
"But I refrain from pursuing this minute description, which goes on
to describe the warriors of Bloemen-dael, and Weehawk, and Hoboken,
and sundry other places, well known in history and song; for now do
the notes of martial music alarm the people of New Amsterdam,
sounding afar from beyond the walls of the city. But this alarm was
in a little while relieved, for lo! from the midst of a vast cloud
of dust, they recognized the brimstone-colored breeches and splendid
silver leg of Peter Stuyvesant, glaring in the sunbeams; and beheld
him approaching at the head of a formidable army, which he had
mustered along the banks of the Hudson. And here the excellent but
anonymous writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into a
brave and glorious description of the forces, as they defiled
through the principal gate of the city, that stood by the head of
Wall Street.
"First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders
of the Bronx: these were short fat men, wearing exceeding large
trunk-breeches, and were renowned for feats of the trencher. They
were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.--Close in
their rear marched the Van Vlotens, of Kaatskill, horrible quaffers
of new cider, and arrant braggarts in their liquor.--After them
came the Van Pelts of Groodt Esopus, dexterous horsemen, mounted
upon goodly switch-tailed steeds of the Esopus breed. These were
mighty hunters of minks and musk-rats, whence came the word Peltry.
--Then the Van Nests of Kinderhoeck, valiant robbers of
birds'-nests, as their name denotes. To these, if report may be
believed, are we indebted for the invention of slap-jacks, or
buckwheat-cakes.--Then the Van Higginbottoms, of Wapping's creek.
These came armed with ferules and birchen rods, being a race of
schoolmasters, who first discovered the marvelous sympathy between
the seat of honor and the seat of intellect,--and that the shortest
way to get knowledge into the head was to hammer it into the
bottom.--Then the Van Grolls, of Antony's Nose, who carried their
liquor in fair, round little pottles, by reason they could not
house it out of their canteens, having such rare long noses. Then
the Gardeniers, of Hudson and thereabouts, distinguished by many
triumphant feats, such as robbing watermelon patches, smoking
rabbits out of their holes, and the like, and by being great lovers
of roasted pigs' tails. These were the ancestors of the renowned
congressman of that name.---Then the Van Hoesens, of Sing-Sing,
great choristers and players upon the jew's-harp. These marched
two and two, singing the great song of St. Nicholas. Then the
Couenhovens, of Sleepy Hollow. These gave birth to a jolly race of
publicans, who first discovered the magic artifice of conjuring a
quart of wine into a pint bottle.--Then the Van Kortlandts, who
lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of
wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with
the long bow.--Then the Van Bunschotens, of Nyack and Kakiat, who
were the first that did ever kick with the left foot. They were
gallant bushwhackers and hunters of raccoons by moonlight.--Then
the Van Winkles, of Haerlem, potent suckers of eggs, and noted for
running of horses, and running up of scores at taverns. They were
the first that ever winked with both eyes at once.--Lastly came the
KNICKERBOCKERS, of the great town of Scaghtikoke, where the folk
lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be
blown away. These derive their name, as some say, from Knicker, to
shake, and Beker, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were
sturdy tosspots of yore; but, in truth, it was derived from
Knicker, to nod, and Boeken, books: plainly meaning that they were
great nodders or dozers over books. From them did descend the
writer of this history."
In the midst of Irving's mock-heroics, he always preserves a substratum
of good sense. An instance of this is the address of the redoubtable
wooden-legged governor, on his departure at the head of his warriors to
chastise the Swedes:
"Certain it is, not an old woman in New Amsterdam but considered
Peter Stuyvesant as a tower of strength, and rested satisfied that
the public welfare was secure so long as he was in the city. It is
not surprising, then, that they looked upon his departure as a sore
affliction. With heavy hearts they draggled at the heels of his
troop, as they marched down to the river-side to embark. The
governor, from the stern of his schooner, gave a short but truly
patriarchal address to his citizens, wherein he recommended them to
comport like loyal and peaceable subjects,--to go to church
regularly on Sundays, and to mind their business all the week
besides. That the women should be dutiful and affectionate to their
husbands,--looking after nobody's concerns but their own,--eschewing
all gossipings and morning gaddings,--and carrying short tongues and
long petticoats. That the men should abstain from intermeddling in
public concerns, intrusting the cares of government to the officers
appointed to support them, staying at home, like good citizens,
making money for themselves, and getting children for the benefit of
their country. That the burgomasters should look well to the public
interest,--not oppressing the poor nor indulging the rich,--not
tasking their ingenuity to devise new laws, but faithfully enforcing
those which were already made, rather bending their attention to
prevent evil than to punish it; ever recollecting that civil
magistrates should consider themselves more as guardians of public
morals than rat-catchers employed to entrap public delinquents.
Finally, he exhorted them, one and all, high and low, rich and poor,
to conduct themselves as well as they could, assuring them that if
they faithfully and conscientiously complied with this golden rule,
there was no danger but that they would all conduct themselves well
enough. This done, he gave them a paternal benediction, the sturdy
Antony sounded a most loving farewell with his trumpet, the jolly
crews put up a shout of triumph, and the invincible armada swept off
proudly down the bay."
The account of an expedition against Fort Christina deserves to be quoted
in full, for it is an example of what war might be, full of excitement,
and exercise, and heroism, without danger to life. We take up the
narrative at the moment when the Dutch host,
"Brimful of wrath and cabbage,"
and excited by the eloquence of the mighty Peter, lighted their pipes,
and charged upon the fort:
"The Swedish garrison, ordered by the cunning Risingh not to fire
until they could distinguish the whites of their assailants' eyes,
stood in horrid silence on the covert-way, until the eager Dutchmen
had ascended the glacis. Then did they pour into them such a
tremendous volley, that the very hills quaked around, and were
terrified even unto an incontinence of water, insomuch that certain
springs burst forth from their sides, which continue to run unto the
present day. Not a Dutchman but would have bitten the dust beneath
that dreadful fire, had not the protecting Minerva kindly taken care
that the Swedes should, one and all, observe their usual custom of
shutting their eyes and turning away their heads at the moment of
discharge.
"The Swedes followed up their fire by leaping the counterscarp, and
falling tooth and nail upon the foe with curious outcries. And now
might be seen prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song.
Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his
quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he
scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune
upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van
Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore,
and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they were
so justly renowned. On a rising knoll were gathered the valiant
men of Sing-Sing, assisting marvelously in the fight by chanting
the great song of St. Nicholas; but as to the Gardeniers of
Hudson, they were absent on a marauding party, laying waste the
neighboring water-melon patches.
"In a different part of the field were the Van Grolls of Antony's
Nose, struggling to get to the thickest of the fight, but horribly
perplexed in a defile between two hills, by reason of the length of
their noses. So also the Van Bunschotens of Nyack and Kakiat, so
renowned for kicking with the left foot, were brought to a stand for
want of wind, in consequence of the hearty dinner they had eaten,
and would have been put to utter rout but for the arrival of a
gallant corps of voltigeurs, composed of the Hoppers, who advanced
nimbly to their assistance on one foot. Nor must I omit to mention
the valiant achievements of Antony Van Corlear, who, for a good
quarter of an hour, waged stubborn fight with a little pursy Swedish
drummer, whose hide he drummed most magnificently, and whom he would
infallibly have annihilated on the spot, but that he had come into
the battle with no other weapon but his trumpet.
"But now the combat thickened. On came the mighty Jacobus Varra
Vanger and the fighting-men of the Wallabout; after them thundered
the Van Pelts of Esopus, together with the Van Rippers and the Van
Brunts, bearing down all before them; then the Suy Dams, and the Van
Dams, pressing forward with many a blustering oath, at the head of
the warriors of Hell-gate, clad in their thunder-and-lightning
gaberdines; and lastly, the standard-bearers and body-guard of Peter
Stuyvesant, bearing the great beaver of the Manhattoes.
"And now commenced the horrid din, the desperate struggle, the
maddening ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion and
self-abandonment of war. Dutchman and Swede commingled, tugged,
panted, and blowed. The heavens were darkened with a tempest of
missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broad-swords; thump
went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks,
cuffs; scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors
of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter,
higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head-over-heels, rough-and-tumble!
Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried
the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the
mine roared stout Risingh. Tanta-rar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet
of Antony Van Corlear;--until all voice and sound became
unintelligible,--grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of
triumph mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if
struck with a paralytic stroke; trees shrunk aghast, and withered
at the sight; rocks burrowed in the ground like rabbits; and even
Christina Creek turned from its course and ran up a hill in
breathless terror.
"Long hung the contest doubtful; for though a heavy shower of rain,
sent by the 'cloud-compelling Jove,' in some measure cooled their
ardor, as doth a bucket of water thrown on a group of fighting
mastiffs, yet did they but pause for a moment, to return with
tenfold fury to the charge. Just at this juncture a vast and dense
column of smoke was seen slowly rolling toward the scene of battle.
The combatants paused for a moment, gazing in mute astonishment,
until the wind, dispelling the murky cloud, revealed the flaunting
banner of Michael Paw, the Patroon of Communipaw. That valiant
chieftain came fearlessly on at the head of a phalanx of oyster-fed
Pavonians and a corps de reserve of the Van Arsdales and Van
Bummels, who had remained behind to digest the enormous dinner they
had eaten. These now trudged manfully forward, smoking their pipes
with outrageous vigor, so as to raise the awful cloud that has been
mentioned, but marching exceedingly slow, being short of leg, and of
great rotundity in the belt.
"And now the deities who watched over the fortunes of the
Nederlanders having unthinkingly left the field, and stepped into a
neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a
direful catastrophe had well-nigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons
of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes,
instructed by the cunning Risingh, leveled a shower of blows full at
their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault, and dismayed at the
havoc of their pipes, these ponderous warriors gave way, and like a
drove of frightened elephants broke through the ranks of their own
army. The little Hoppers were borne down in the surge; the sacred
banner emblazoned with the gigantic oyster of Communipaw was
trampled in the dirt; on blundered and thundered the heavy-sterned
fugitives, the Swedes pressing on their rear and applying their feet
a parte poste of the Van Arsdales and the Van Bummels with a vigor
that prodigiously accelerated their movements; nor did the renowned
Michael Paw himself fail to receive divers grievous and dishonorable
visitations of shoe-leather.
"But what, oh Muse! was the rage of Peter Stuyvesant, when from afar
he saw his army giving way! In the transports of his wrath he sent
forth a roar, enough to shake the very hills. The men of the
Manhattoes plucked up new courage at the sound, or, rather, they
rallied at the voice of their leader, of whom they stood more in awe
than of all the Swedes in Christendom. Without waiting for their
aid, the daring Peter dashed, sword in hand, into the thickest of
the foe. Then might be seen achievements worthy of the days of the
giants. Wherever he went the enemy shrank before him; the Swedes
fled to right and left, or were driven, like dogs, into their own
ditch; but as he pushed forward, singly with headlong courage, the
foe closed behind and hung upon his rear. One aimed a blow full at
his heart; but the protecting power which watches over the great and
good turned aside the hostile blade and directed it to a
side-pocket, where reposed an enormous iron tobacco-box, endowed,
like the shield of Achilles, with supernatural powers, doubtless
from bearing the portrait of the blessed St. Nicholas. Peter
Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him,
as he fled, by an immeasurable queue, 'Ah, whoreson caterpillar,'
roared he, 'here's what shall make worms' meat of thee!' so saying
he whirled his sword and dealt a blow that would have decapitated
the varlet, but that the pitying steel struck short and shaved the
queue forever from his crown. At this moment an arquebusier
leveled his piece from a neighboring mound, with deadly aim; but
the watchful Minerva, who had just stopped to tie up her garter,
seeing the peril of her favorite hero, sent old Boreas with his
bellows, who, as the match descended to the pan, gave a blast that
blew the priming from the touch-hole.
"Thus waged the fight, when the stout Risingh, surveying the field
from the top of a little ravelin, perceived his troops banged,
beaten, and kicked by the invincible Peter. Drawing his falchion,
and uttering a thousand anathemas, he strode down to the scene of
combat with some such thundering strides as Jupiter is said by
Hesiod to have taken when he strode down the spheres to hurl his
thunder-bolts at the Titans.
"When the rival heroes came face to face, each made a prodigious
start in the style of a veteran stage-champion. Then did they
regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious
ram-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw
themselves into one attitude, then into another, striking their
swords on the ground, first on the right side, then on the left: at
last at it they went with incredible ferocity. Words cannot tell
the prodigies of strength and valor displayed in this direful
encounter,--an encounter compared to which the far-famed battles of
Ajax with Hector, of AEneas with Turnus, Orlando with Rodomont, Guy
of Warwick with Colbrand the Dane, or of that renowned Welsh knight,
Sir Owen of the Mountains, with the giant Guylon, were all gentle
sports and holiday recreations. At length the valiant Peter,
watching his opportunity, aimed a blow enough to cleave his
adversary to the very chine; but Risingh, nimbly raising his sword,
warded it off so narrowly, that, glancing on one side, it shaved
away a huge canteen in which he carried his liquor,--thence pursuing
its trenchant course, it severed off a deep coat-pocket, stored with
bread and cheese,--which provant, rolling among the armies,
occasioned a fearful scrambling between the Swedes and Dutchmen, and
made the general battle to wax more furious than ever.
"Enraged to see his military stores laid waste, the stout Risingh,
collecting all his forces, aimed a mighty blow full at the hero's
crest. In vain did his fierce little cocked hat oppose its course.
The biting steel clove through the stubborn ram beaver, and would
have cracked the crown of any one not endowed with supernatural
hardness of head; but the brittle weapon shivered in pieces on the
skull of Hardkoppig Piet, shedding a thousand sparks, like beams of
glory, round his grizzly visage.
"The good Peter reeled with the blow, and turning up his eyes beheld
a thousand suns, besides moons and stars, dancing about the
firmament; at length, missing his footing, by reason of his wooden
leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the
surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame, had he not been
received into a cushion softer than velvet, which Providence, or
Minerva, or St. Nicholas, or some cow, had benevolently prepared for
his reception.
"The furious Risingh, in despite of the maxim, cherished by all true
knights, that 'fair play is a jewel,' hastened to take advantage of
the hero's fall; but, as he stooped to give a fatal blow, Peter
Stuyvesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his wooden leg,
which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in his
cerebellum. The bewildered Swede staggered with the blow, and the
wary Peter seizing a pocket-pistol, which lay hard by, discharged it
full at the head of the reeling Risingh. Let not my reader mistake;
it was not a murderous weapon loaded with powder and ball, but a
little sturdy stone pottle charged to the muzzle with a double dram
of true Dutch courage, which the knowing Antony Van Corlear carried
about him by way of replenishing his valor, and which had dropped
from his wallet during his furious encounter with the drummer. The
hideous weapon sang through the air, and true to its course as was
the fragment of a rock discharged at Hector by bully Ajax,
encountered the head of the gigantic Swede with matchless violence.
"This heaven-directed blow decided the battle. The ponderous
pericranium of General Jan Risingh sank upon his breast; his knees
tottered under him; a deathlike torpor seized upon his frame, and he
tumbled to the earth with such violence that old Pluto started with
affright, lest he should have broken through the roof of his
infernal palace.
"His fall was the signal of defeat and victory: the Swedes gave way,
the Dutch pressed forward; the former took to their heels, the
latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through
the sally-port; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled
over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort
Christina, which, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten
hours, was carried by assault, without the loss of a single man on
either side. Victory, in the likeness of a gigantic ox-fly, sat
perched upon the cocked hat of the gallant Stuyvesant; and it was
declared by all the writers whom he hired to write the history of
his expedition that on this memorable day he gained a sufficient
quantity of glory to immortalize a dozen of the greatest heroes in
Christendom!"
In the "Sketch-Book," Irving set a kind of fashion in narrative essays,
in brief stories of mingled humor and pathos, which was followed for half
a century. He himself worked the same vein in "Bracebridge Hall" and
"Tales of a Traveller." And there is no doubt that some of the most
fascinating of the minor sketches of Charles Dickens, such as the story
of the Bagman's Uncle, are lineal descendants of, if they were not
suggested by, Irving's "Adventure of My Uncle," and the "Bold Dragoon."
The taste for the leisurely description and reminiscent essay of the
"Sketch-Book" does not characterize the readers of this generation, and
we have discovered that the pathos of its elaborated scenes is somewhat
"literary." The sketches of "Little Britain," and "Westminster Abbey,"
and, indeed, that of "Stratford-on-Avon," will for a long time retain
their place in selections of "good reading;" but the "Sketch-Book" is
only floated, as an original work, by two papers, the "Rip Van Winkle"
and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow;" that is to say by the use of the Dutch
material, and the elaboration of the "Knickerbocker Legend," which was
the great achievement of Irving's life. This was broadened and deepened
and illustrated by the several stories of the "Money Diggers," of
"Wolfert Webber" and "Kidd the Pirate," in the "Tales of a Traveller,"
and by "Dolph Heyliger" in "Bracebridge Hall." Irving was never more
successful than in painting the Dutch manners and habits of the early
time, and he returned again and again to the task until he not only made
the shores of the Hudson and the islands of New York harbor and the East
River classic ground, but until his conception of Dutch life in the New
World had assumed historical solidity and become a tradition of the
highest poetic value. If in the multiplicity of books and the change of
taste the bulk of Irving's works shall go out of print, a volume made up
of his Knickerbocker history and the legends relating to the region of
New York and the Hudson would survive as long as anything that has been
produced in this country.
The philosophical student of the origin of New World society may find
food for reflection in the "materiality" of the basis of the civilization
of New York. The picture of abundance and of enjoyment of animal life is
perhaps not overdrawn in Irving's sketch of the home of the Van Tassels,
in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It is all the extract we can make room
for from that careful study.
"Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each
week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van
Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer.
She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge;
ripe and melting and rosy-checked as one of her father's peaches,
and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast
expectations. She was, withal, a little of a coquette, as might be
perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and
modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the
ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had
brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time;
and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest
foot and ankle in the country round.
"Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it
is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor
in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her
paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a
thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true,
sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his
own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy, and
well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud
of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance rather than the
style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks
of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in
which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm-tree
spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up
a spring, of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well,
formed of a barrel, and then stole sparkling away through the grass
to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along among alders and dwarf
willows. Hard by the farm-house was a vast barn, that might have
served for a church, every window and crevice of which seemed
bursting forth with the treasures of the farm. The flail was
busily resounding within it from morning till night; swallows and
martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons,
some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with
their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and
others swelling and cooing and bowing about their dames, were
enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were
grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, whence sallied
forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the
air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining
pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were
gobbling through the farm-yard, and guinea fowls fretting about it,
like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry.
Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a
husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished
wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart
--sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously
calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the
rich morsel which he had discovered.
"The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous
promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye he
pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding
in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put
to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust;
the geese were swimming in their own gravy, and the ducks pairing
cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent
competency of onion-sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the
future sleek side of bacon, and juicy, relishing ham; not a turkey
but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing,
and, peradventure, a necklace-of savory sausages; and even bright
chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side-dish, with
uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous
spirit disdained to ask while living.
"As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his
great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of
wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchard
burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van
Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these
domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might
be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense
tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his
busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the
blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the
top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles
dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare,
with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or
the Lord knows where.
"When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was complete.
It was one of those spacious farm-houses, with high-ridged, but
lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first
Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the
front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were
hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for
fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the
sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a
churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important
porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod
entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion and the
place of usual residence. Here, rows of resplendent pewter, ranged
on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag
of wool ready to be spun; in another a quantity of linsey-woolsey
just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples
and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the
gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the
best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables
shone like mirrors; and irons, with their accompanying shovel and
tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges
and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various
colored birds' eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was
hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly
left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended
china."
It is an abrupt transition from these homely scenes, which humor commends
to our liking, to the chivalrous pageant unrolled for us in the "Conquest
of Granada." The former are more characteristic and the more enduring of
Irving's writings, but as a literary artist his genius lent itself just
as readily to oriental and medieval romance as to the Knickerbocker
legend; and there is no doubt that the delicate perception he had of
chivalric achievements gave a refined tone to his mock heroics, which
greatly heightened their effect. It may almost be claimed that Irving
did for Granada and the Alhambra what he did, in a totally different way,
for New York and its vicinity.
The first passage I take from the "Conquest" is the description of the
advent at Cordova of the Lord Scales, Earl of Rivers, who was brother of
the queen of Henry VII, a soldier who had fought at Bosworth field, and
now volunteered to aid Ferdinand and Isabella in the extermination of the
Saracens. The description is put into the mouth of Fray Antonio
Agapidda, a fictitious chronicler invented by Irving, an unfortunate
intervention which gives to the whole book an air of unveracity:
"'This cavalier [he observes] was from the far island of England,
and brought with him a train of his vassals; men who had been
hardened in certain civil wars which raged in their country. They
were a comely race of men, but too fair and fresh for warriors, not
having the sunburnt, warlike hue of our old Castilian soldiery.
They were huge feeders also, and deep carousers, and could not
accommodate themselves to the sober diet of our troops, but must
fain eat and drink after the manner of their own country. They were
often noisy and unruly, also, in their wassail; and their quarter of
the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl.
They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our
inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the 'pundonor,'
the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes;
but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote
and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most
perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord
Scales, beyond the greatest of their grandees. With all this, it
must be said of them that they were marvelous good men in the field,
dexterous archers, and powerful with the battleaxe. In their great
pride and self-will, they always sought to press in the advance and
take the post of danger, trying to outvie our Spanish chivalry.
They did not rush on fiercely to the fight, nor make a brilliant
onset like the Moorish and Spanish troops, but they went into the
fight deliberately, and persisted obstinately, and were slow to find
out when they were beaten. Withal they were much esteemed yet
little liked by our soldiery, who considered them staunch companions
in the field, yet coveted but little fellowship with them in the
camp.
"'Their commander, the Lord Scales, was an accomplished cavalier, of
gracious and noble presence and fair speech; it was a marvel to see
so much courtesy in a knight brought up so far from our Castilian
court. He was much honored by the king and queen, and found great
favor with the fair dames about the court, who indeed are rather
prone to be pleased with foreign cavaliers. He went always in
costly state, attended by pages and esquires, and accompanied by
noble young cavaliers of his country, who had enrolled themselves
under his banner, to learn the gentle exercise of arms. In all
pageants and festivals, the eyes of the populace were attracted by
the singular bearing and rich array of the English earl and his
train, who prided themselves in always appearing in the garb and
manner of their country-and were indeed something very magnificent,
delectable, and strange to behold.'
"The worthy chronicler is no less elaborate in his description of
the masters of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara, and their valiant
knights, armed at all points, and decorated with the badges of their
orders. These, he affirms, were the flower of Christian chivalry;
being constantly in service they became more steadfast and
accomplished in discipline than the irregular and temporary levies
of feudal nobles. Calm, solemn, and stately, they sat like towers
upon their powerful chargers. On parades they manifested none of
the show and ostentation of the other troops: neither, in battle,
did they endeavor to signalize themselves by any fiery vivacity, or
desperate and vainglorious exploit,--everything, with them, was
measured and sedate; yet it was observed that none were more warlike
in their appearance in the camp, or more terrible for their
achievements in the field.
"The gorgeous magnificence of the Spanish nobles found but little
favor in the eyes of the sovereigns. They saw that it caused a
competition in expense ruinous to cavaliers of moderate fortune; and
they feared that a softness and effeminacy might thus be introduced,
incompatible with the stern nature of the war. They signified their
disapprobation to several of the principal noblemen, and recommended
a more sober and soldier-like display while in actual service.
"'These are rare troops for a tourney, my lord [said Ferdinand to
the Duke of Infantado, as he beheld his retainers glittering in gold
and embroidery]; but gold, though gorgeous, is soft and yielding:
iron is the metal for the field.'
"'Sire replied the duke, if my men parade in gold, your majesty will
find they fight with steel.' The king smiled, but shook his head,
and the duke treasured up his speech in his heart."
Our author excels in such descriptions as that of the progress of
Isabella to the camp of Ferdinand after the capture of Loxa, and of the
picturesque pageantry which imparted something of gayety to the brutal
pastime of war:
"It was in the early part of June that the queen departed from
Cordova, with the Princess Isabella and numerous ladies of her
court. She had a glorious attendance of cavaliers and pages, with
many guards and domestics. There were forty mules for the use of
the queen, the princess, and their train.
"As this courtly cavalcade approached the Rock of the Lovers, on the
banks of the river Yeguas, they beheld a splendid train of knights
advancing to meet them. It was headed by that accomplished cavalier
the Marques Duke de Cadiz, accompanied by the adelantado of
Andalusia. He had left the camp the day after the capture of
Illora, and advanced thus far to receive the queen and escort her
over the borders. The queen received the marques with distinguished
honor, for he was esteemed the mirror of chivalry. His actions in
this war had become the theme of every tongue, and many hesitated
not to compare him in prowess with the immortal Cid.
"Thus gallantly attended, the queen entered the vanquished frontier
of Granada, journeying securely along the pleasant banks of the
Xenel, so lately subject to the scourings of the Moors. She stopped
at Loxa, where she administered aid and consolation to the wounded,
distributing money among them for their support, according to their
rank.
"The king, after the capture of Illora, had removed his camp before
the fortress of Moclin, with an intention of besieging it. Thither
the queen proceeded, still escorted through the mountain roads by
the Marques of Cadiz. As Isabella drew near to the camp, the Duke
del Infantado issued forth a league and a half to receive her,
magnificently arrayed, and followed by all his chivalry in glorious
attire. With him came the standard of Seville, borne by the
men-at-arms of that renowned city, and the Prior of St. Juan, with
his followers. They ranged themselves in order of battle, on the
left of the road by which the queen was to pass.
"The worthy Agapida is loyally minute in his description of the
state and grandeur of the Catholic sovereigns. The queen rode a
chestnut mule, seated in a magnificent saddle-chair, decorated with
silver gilt. The housings of the mule were of fine crimson cloth;
the borders embroidered with gold; the reins and head-piece were of
satin, curiously embossed with needlework of silk, and wrought with
golden letters. The queen wore a brial or regal skirt of velvet,
under which were others of brocade; a scarlet mantle, ornamented in
the Moresco fashion; and a black hat, embroidered round the crown
and brim.
"The infanta was likewise mounted on a chestnut mule, richly
caparisoned. She wore a brial or skirt of black brocade, and a
black mantle ornamented like that of the queen.
"When the royal cavalcade passed by the chivalry of the Duke del
Infantado, which was drawn out in battle array, the queen made a
reverence to the standard of Seville, and ordered it to pass to the
right hand. When she approached the camp, the multitude ran forth
to meet her, with great demonstrations of joy; for she was
universally beloved by her subjects. All the battalions sallied
forth in military array, bearing the various standards and banners
of the camp, which were lowered in salutation as she passed.
"The king now came forth in royal state, mounted on a superb
chestnut horse, and attended by many grandees of Castile. He wore a
jubon or close vest of crimson cloth, with cuisses or short skirts
of yellow satin, a loose cassock of brocade, a rich Moorish
scimiter, and a hat with plumes. The grandees who attended him were
arrayed with wonderful magnificence, each according to his taste and
invention.
"These high and mighty princes [says Antonio Agapida] regarded each
other with great deference, as allied sovereigns rather than with
connubial familiarity, as mere husband and wife. When they
approached each other, therefore, before embracing, they made three
profound reverences, the queen taking off her hat, and remaining in
a silk net or cawl, with her face uncovered. The king then
approached and embraced her, and kissed her respectfully on the
cheek. He also embraced his daughter the princess; and, making the
sign of the cross, he blessed her, and kissed her on the lips.
"The good Agapida seems scarcely to have been more struck with the
appearance of the sovereigns than with that of the English earl. He
followed [says he] immediately after the king, with great pomp, and,
in an extraordinary manner, taking precedence of all the rest. He
was mounted 'a la guisa,' or with long stirrups, on a superb
chestnut horse, with trappings of azure silk which reached to the
ground. The housings were of mulberry, powdered with stars of gold.
He was armed in proof, and wore over his armor a short French mantle
of black brocade; he had a white French hat with plumes, and carried
on his left arm a small round buckler, banded with gold. Five pages
attended him, appareled in silk and brocade, and mounted on horses
sumptuously caparisoned; he had also a train of followers, bravely
attired after the fashion of his country.
"He advanced in a chivalrous and courteous manner, making his
reverences first to the queen and infanta, and afterwards to the
king. Queen Isabella received him graciously, complimenting him on
his courageous conduct at Loxa, and condoling with him on the loss
of his teeth. The earl, however, made light of his disfiguring
wound, saying that your blessed Lord, who had built all that house,
had opened a window there, that he might see more readily what
passed within; whereupon the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida is more
than ever astonished at the pregnant wit of this island cavalier.
The earl continued some little distance by the side of the royal
family, complimenting them all with courteous speeches, his horse
curveting and caracoling, but being managed with great grace and
dexterity, leaving the grandees and the people at large not more
filled with admiration at the strangeness and magnificence of his
state than at the excellence of his horsemanship.
"To testify her sense of the gallantry and services of this noble
English knight, who had come from so far to assist in their wars,
the queen sent him the next day presents of twelve horses, with
stately tents, fine linen, two beds with coverings of gold brocade,
and many other articles of great value."
The protracted siege of the city of Granada was the occasion of feats of
arms and hostile courtesies which rival in brilliancy any in the romances
of chivalry. Irving's pen is never more congenially employed than in
describing these desperate but romantic encounters. One of the most
picturesque of these was known as "the queen's skirmish." The royal
encampment was situated so far from Granada that only the general aspect
of the city could be seen as it rose from the vega, covering the sides of
the hills with its palaces and towers. Queen Isabella expressed a desire
for a nearer view of the city, whose beauty was renowned throughout the
world, and the courteous Marques of Cadiz proposed to give her this
perilous gratification.
"On the morning of June the 18th, a magnificent and powerful train
issued from the Christian camp. The advanced guard was composed of
legions of cavalry, heavily armed, looking like moving masses of
polished steel. Then came the king and queen, with the prince and
princesses, and the ladies of the court, surrounded by the royal
bodyguard, sumptuously arrayed, composed of the sons of the most
illustrious houses of Spain; after these was the rearguard, a
powerful force of horse and foot; for the flower of the army sallied
forth that day. The Moors gazed with fearful admiration at this
glorious pageant, wherein the pomp of the court was mingled with the
terrors of the camp. It moved along in radiant line, across the
vega, to the melodious thunders of martial music, while banner and
plume, and silken scarf, and rich brocade, gave a gay and gorgeous
relief to the grim visage of iron war that lurked beneath.
"The army moved towards the hamlet of Zubia, built on the skirts of
the mountain to the left of Granada, and commanding a view of the
Alhambra, and the most beautiful quarter of the city. As they
approached the hamlet, the Marques of Villena, the Count Urena, and
Don Alonzo de Aguilar filed off with their battalions, and were soon
seen glittering along, the side of the mountain above the village.
In the mean time the Marques of Cadiz, the Count de Tendilla, the
Count de Cabra, and Don Alonzo Fernandez, senior of Alcaudrete and
Montemayor, drew up their forges in battle array on the plain below
the hamlet, presenting a living barrier of loyal chivalry between
the sovereigns and the city.
"Thus securely guarded, the royal party alighted, and, entering one
of the houses of the hamlet, which had been prepared for their
reception, enjoyed a full view which the city from its terraced
roof. The ladies of the court gazed with delight at the red towers
of the Alhambra, rising from amid shady groves, anticipating the
time when the Catholic sovereigns should be enthroned within its
walls, and its courts shine with the splendor of Spanish chivalry.
'The reverend prelates and holy friars, who always surrounded the
queen, looked with serene satisfaction,' says Fray Antonio Agapida,
at this modern Babylon, enjoying the triumph that awaited them, when
those mosques and minarets should be converted into churches, and
goodly priests and bishops should succeed to the infidel alfaquis.'
"When the Moors beheld the Christians thus drawn forth in full array
in the plain, they supposed it was to offer battle, and hesitated
not to accept it. In a little while the queen beheld a body of
Moorish cavalry pouring into the vega, the riders managing their
fleet and fiery steeds with admirable address. They were richly
armed, and clothed in the most brilliant colors, and the caparisons
of their steeds flamed with gold and embroidery. This was the
favorite squadron of Muza, composed of the flower of the youthful
cavaliers of Granada. Others succeeded, some heavily armed, others
a la gineta, with lance and buckler; and lastly came the legions of
foot-soldiers, with arquebus and crossbow, and spear and scimiter.
"When the queen saw this army issuing from the city, she sent to the
Marques of Cadiz, and forbade any attack upon the enemy, or the
acceptance of any challenge to a skirmish; for she was loth that her
curiosity should cost the life of a single human being.
"The marques promised to obey, though sorely against his will; and
it grieved the spirit of the Spanish cavaliers to be obliged to
remain with sheathed swords while bearded by the foe. The Moors
could not comprehend the meaning of this inaction of the Christians,
after having apparently invited a battle. They sallied several
times from their ranks, and approached near enough to discharge
their arrows; but the Christians were immovable. Many of the
Moorish horsemen galloped close to the Christian ranks, brandishing
their lances and scimiters, and defying various cavaliers to single
combat; but Ferdinand had rigorously prohibited all duels of this
kind, and they dared not transgress his orders under his very eye.
"Here, however, the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida, in his enthusiasm
for the triumphs of the faith, records the following incident, which
we fear is not sustained by any grave chronicler of the times, but
rests merely on tradition, or the authority of certain poets and
dramatic writers, who have perpetuated the tradition in their works.
While this grim and reluctant tranquillity prevailed along the
Christian line, says Agapida, there rose a mingled shout and sound
of laughter near the gate of the city. A Moorish horseman, armed at
all points, issued forth, followed by a rabble, who drew back as he
approached the scene of danger. The Moor was more robust and brawny
than was common with his countrymen. His visor was closed; he bore
a huge buckler and a ponderous lance; his scimiter was of a Damascus
blade, and his richly ornamented dagger was wrought by an artificer
of Fez. He was known by his device to be Tarfe, the most insolent,
yet valiant, of the Moslem warriors--the same who had hurled into
the royal camp his lance, inscribed to the queen. As he rode slowly
along in front of the army, his very steed, prancing with fiery eye
and distended nostril, seemed to breathe defiance to the Christians.
"But what were the feelings of the Spanish cavaliers when they
beheld, tied to the tail of his steed, and dragged in the dust, the
very inscription, 'AVE MARIA,' which Hernan Perez del Pulgar had
affixed to the door of the mosque! A burst of horror and
indignation broke forth from the army. Hernan was not at hand, to
maintain his previous achievement; but one of his young companions
in arms, Garcilasso de la Vega by name, putting spurs to his horse,
galloped to the hamlet of Zubia, threw himself on his knees before
the king, and besought permission to accept the defiance of this
insolent infidel, and to revenge the insult offered to our Blessed
Lady. The request was too pious to be refused. Garcilasso
remounted his steed, closed his helmet, graced by four sable plumes,
grasped his buckler of Flemish workmanship, and his lance of
matchless temper, and defied the haughty Moor in the midst of his
career. A combat took place in view of the two armies and of the
Castilian court. The Moor was powerful in wielding his weapons, and
dexterous in managing his steed. He was of larger frame than
Garcilasso, and more completely aimed, and the Christians trembled
for their champion. The shock of their encounter was dreadful;
their lances were shivered, and sent up splinters in the air.
Garcilasso was thrown back in his saddle--his horse made a wide
career before he could recover, gather up the reins, and return to
the conflict. They now encountered each other with swords. The
Moor circled round his opponent, as a hawk circles when about to
make a swoop; his steed obeyed his rider with matchless quickness;
at every attack of the infidel, it seemed as if the Christian knight
must sink beneath his flashing scimiter. But if Garcilasso was
inferior to him in power, he was superior in agility; many of his
blows he parried; others he received upon his Flemish shield, which
was proof against the Damascus blade. The blood streamed from
numerous wounds received by either warrior. The Moor, seeing his
antagonist exhausted, availed himself of his superior force, and,
grappling, endeavored to wrest him from his saddle. They both fell
to earth; the Moor placed his knee upon the breast of his victim,
and, brandishing his dagger, aimed a blow at his throat. A cry of
despair was uttered by the Christian warriors, when suddenly they
beheld the Moor rolling lifeless in the dust. Garcilasso had
shortened his sword, and, as his adversary raised his arm to strike,
had pierced him to the heart. It was a singular and miraculous
victory,' says Fray Antonio Agapida; 'but the Christian knight was
armed by the sacred nature of his cause, and the Holy Virgin gave
him strength, like another David, to slay this gigantic champion of
the Gentiles.'
"The laws of chivalry were observed throughout the combat--no one
interfered on either side. Garcilasso now despoiled his adversary;
then, rescuing the holy inscription of 'AVE MARIA' from its
degrading situation, he elevated it on the point of his sword, and
bore it off as a signal of triumph, amidst the rapturous shouts of
the Christian army.
"The sun had now reached the meridian, and the hot blood of the
Moors was inflamed by its rays, and by the sight of the defeat of
their champion. Muza ordered two pieces of ordnance to open a fire
upon the Christians. A confusion was produced in one part of their
ranks: Muza called to the chiefs of the army, 'Let us waste no more
time in empty challenges--let us charge upon the enemy: he who
assaults has always an advantage in the combat.' So saying, he
rushed forward, followed by a large body of horse and foot, and
charged so furiously upon the advance guard of the Christians, that
he drove it in upon the battalion of the Marques of Cadiz.
"The gallant marques now considered himself absolved from all
further obedience to the queen's commands. He gave the signal to
attack. 'Santiago!' was shouted along the line; and he pressed
forward to the encounter, with his battalion of twelve hundred
lances. The other cavaliers followed his example, and the battle
instantly became general.
"When the king and queen beheld the armies thus rushing to the
combat, they threw themselves on their knees, and implored the Holy
Virgin to protect her faithful warriors. The prince and princess,
the ladies of the court, and the prelates and friars who were
present, did the same; and the effect of the prayers of these
illustrious and saintly persons was immediately apparent. The
fierceness with which the Moors had rushed to the attack was
suddenly cooled; they were bold and adroit for a skirmish, but
unequal to the veteran Spaniards in the open field. A panic seized
upon the foot-soldiers--they turned and took to flight. Muza and
his cavaliers in vain endeavored to rally them. Some took refuge in
the mountains; but the greater part fled to the city, in such
confusion that they overturned and trampled upon each other. The
Christians pursued them to the very gates. Upwards of two thousand
were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoners; and the two pieces
of ordnance were brought off as trophies of the victory. Not a
Christian lance but was bathed that day in the blood of an infidel.
"Such was the brief but bloody action which was known among the
Christian warriors by the name of 'The Queen's Skirmish;' for when
the Marques of Cadiz waited upon her majesty to apologize for
breaking her commands, he attributed the victory entirely to her
presence. The queen, however, insisted that it was all owing to her
troops being led on by so valiant a commander. Her majesty had not
yet recovered from her agitation at beholding so terrible a scene of
bloodshed, though certain veterans present pronounced it as gay and
gentle a skirmish as they had ever witnessed."
The charm of the "Alhambra" is largely in the leisurely, loitering,
dreamy spirit in which the temporary American resident of the ancient
palace-fortress entered into its moldering beauties and romantic
associations, and in the artistic skill with which he wove the
commonplace daily life of his attendant: there into the more brilliant
woof of its past. The book abounds in delightful legends, and yet then
are all so touched with the author's airy humor that our credulity is
never overtaxed; we imbibe all the romantic interest of the place without
for a moment losing our hold upon reality. The enchantment of this
Moorish paradise become part of our mental possessions, without the least
shock to our common sense. After a few days of residence in the part of
the Alhambra occupied by Dame Tia Antonia and her family, of which the
handmaid Dolores was the most fascinating member, Irving succeeded in
establishing himself in a remote and vacant part of the vast pile, in a
suite of delicate and elegant chambers with secluded gardens and
fountains, that had once been occupied by the beautiful Elizabeth of
Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma, and more than four centuries ago
by a Moorish beauty named Lindaraxa, who flourished in the court of
Muhamed the Left-Handed. These solitary and ruined chambers had their
own terrors and enchantments, and for the first nights gave the author
little but sinister suggestions and grotesque food for his imagination.
But familiarity dispersed the gloom and the superstitious fancies.
"In the course of a few evenings a thorough change took place in the
scene and its associations. The moon, which, when I took possession
of my new apartments, was invisible, gradually gained each evening
upon the darkness of the night, and at length rolled in full
splendor above the towers, pouring a flood of tempered light into
every court and hall. The garden beneath my window, before wrapped
in gloom, was gently lighted up; the orange and citron trees were
tipped with silver; the fountain sparkled in the moonbeams, and even
the blush of the rose was faintly visible.
"I now felt the poetic merit of the Arabic inscription on the walls:
'How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth vie
with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon
alabaster fountain filled with crystal water? nothing but the moon
in her fullness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!'
"On such heavenly nights I would sit for hours at my window inhaling
the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered fortunes of
those whose history was dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials
around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the clock from the
distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight hour, I have
sallied out on another tour and wandered over the whole building;
but how different from my first tour! No longer dark and
mysterious; no longer peopled with shadowy foes; no longer recalling
scenes of violence and murder; all was open, spacious, beautiful;
everything called up pleasing and romantic fancies; Lindaraxa once
more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of Moslem Granada once
more glittered about the Court of Lions! Who can do justice to a
moonlight night in such a climate and such a place? The temperature
of a summer midnight in Andalusia is perfectly ethereal. We seem
lifted up into a purer atmosphere; we feel a serenity of soul, a
buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which render mere
existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all this, the
effect is like enchantment. Under its plastic sway the Alhambra
seems to regain its pristine glories. Every rent and chasm of time,
every mouldering tint and weather-stain, is gone; the marble resumes
its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the
moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance,
we tread the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale.
"What a delight, at such a time, to ascend to the little airy
pavilion of the queen's toilet (el tocador de la reyna), which, like
a bird-cage, overhangs the valley of the Darro, and gaze from its
light arcades upon the moonlight prospect! To the right, the
swelling mountains of the Sierra Nevada, robbed of their ruggedness
and softened into a fairy land, with their snowy summits gleaming
like silver clouds against the deep blue sky. And then to lean over
the parapet of the Tocador and gaze down upon Granada and the
Albaycin spread out like a map below; all buried in deep repose; the
white palaces and convents sleeping in the moonshine, and beyond all
these the vapory vega fading away like a dreamland in the distance.
"Sometimes the faint click of castanets rises from the Alameda,
where some gay Andalusians are dancing away the summer night.
Sometimes the dubious tones of a guitar and the notes of an amorous
voice, tell perchance the whereabout of some moonstruck lover
serenading his lady's window.
"Such is a faint picture of the moonlight nights I have passed
loitering about the courts and halls and balconies of this most
suggestive pile; 'feeding my fancy with sugared suppositions,' and
enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steals away
existence in a southern climate; so that it has been almost morning
before I have retired to bed, and been lulled to sleep by the
falling waters of the fountain of Lindaraxa."
One of the writer's vantage points of observation was a balcony of the
central window of the Hall of Ambassadors, from which he had a
magnificent prospect of mountain, valley, and vega, and could look down
upon a busy scene of human life in an alameda, or public walk, at the
foot of the hill, and the suburb of the city, filling the narrow gorge
below. Here the author used to sit for hours, weaving histories out of
the casual incidents passing under his eye, and the occupations of the
busy mortals below. The following passage exhibits his power in
transmuting the commonplace life of the present into material perfectly
in keeping with the romantic associations of the place:
"There was scarce a pretty face or a striking figure that I daily
saw, about which I had not thus gradually framed a dramatic story,
though some of my characters would occasionally act in direct
opposition to the part assigned them, and disconcert the whole
drama. Reconnoitring one day with my glass the streets of the
Albaycin, I beheld the procession of a novice about to take the
veil; and remarked several circumstances which excited the strongest
sympathy in the fate of the youthful being thus about to be
consigned to a living tomb. I ascertained to my satisfaction that
she was beautiful, and, from the paleness of her cheek, that she was
a victim rather than a votary. She was arrayed in bridal garments,
and decked with a chaplet of white flowers, but her heart evidently
revolted at this mockery of a spiritual union, and yearned after its
earthly loves. A tall, stern-looking man walked near her in the
procession: it was, of course, the tyrannical father, who, from some
bigoted or sordid motive, had compelled this sacrifice. Amid the
crowd was a dark, handsome youth, in Andalusian garb, who seemed to
fix on her an eye of agony. It was doubtless the secret lover from
whom she was forever to be separated. My indignation rose as I
noted the malignant expression painted on the countenances of the
attendant monks and friars. The procession arrived at the chapel of
the convent; the sun gleamed for the last time upon the chaplet of
the poor novice, as she crossed the fatal threshold and disappeared
within the building. The throng poured in with cowl, and cross, and
minstrelsy; the lover paused for a moment at the door. I could
divine the tumult of his feelings; but he mastered them, and
entered. There was a long interval. I pictured to myself the scene
passing within: the poor novice despoiled of her transient finery,
and clothed in the conventual garb; the bridal chaplet taken from
her brow, and her beautiful head shorn of its long silken tresses.
I heard her murmur the irrevocable vow. I saw her extended on a
bier; the death-pall spread over her; the funeral service performed
that proclaimed her dead to the world; her sighs were drowned in the
deep tones of the organ, and the plaintive requiem of the nuns; the
father looked on, unmoved, without a tear; the lover--no my
imagination refused to portray the anguish of the lover--there the
picture remained a blank.
"After a time the throng again poured forth and dispersed various
ways, to enjoy the light of the sun and mingle with the stirring
scenes of life; but the victim, with her bridal chaplet, was no
longer there. The door of the convent closed that severed her from
the world forever. I saw the father and the lover issue forth; they
were in earnest conversation. The latter was vehement in his
gesticulations; I expected some violent termination to my drama; but
an angle of a building interfered and closed the scene. My eye
afterwards was frequently turned to that convent with painful
interest. I remarked late at night a solitary light twinkling from
a remote lattice of one of its towers. 'There,' said I, the unhappy
nun sits weeping in her cell, while perhaps her lover paces the
street below in unavailing anguish.' . . .
"The officious Mateo interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an
instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy. With his usual zeal he had
gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to
flight. The heroine of my romance was neither young nor handsome;
she had no lover; she had entered the convent of her own free will,
as a respectable asylum, and was one of the most cheerful residents
within its walls.
"It was some little while before I could forgive the wrong done me
by the nun in being thus happy in her cell, in contradiction to all
the rules of romance; I diverted my spleen, however, by watching,
for a day or two, the pretty coquetries of a dark-eyed brunette,
who, from the covert of a balcony shrouded with flowering shrubs and
a silken awning, was carrying on a mysterious correspondence with a
handsome, dark, well-whiskered cavalier, who lurked frequently in
the street beneath her window. Sometimes I saw him at an early
hour, stealing forth wrapped to the eyes in a mantle. Sometimes he
loitered at a corner, in various disguises, apparently waiting for a
private signal to slip into the house. Then there was the tinkling
of a guitar at night, and a lantern shifted from place to place in
the balcony. I imagined another intrigue like that of Almaviva, but
was again disconcerted in all my suppositions. The supposed lover
turned out to be the husband of the lady, and a noted
contrabandista; and all his mysterious signs and movements had
doubtless some smuggling scheme in view . . . .
"I occasionally amused myself with noting from this balcony the
gradual changes of the scenes below, according to the different
stages of the day.
"Scarce has the gray dawn streaked the sky, and the earliest cock
crowed from the cottages of the hill-side, when the suburbs give
sign of reviving animation; for the fresh hours of dawning are
precious in the summer season in a sultry climate. All are anxious
to get the start of the sun, in the business of the day. The
muleteer drives forth his loaded train for the journey; the traveler
slings his carbine behind his saddle, and mounts his steed at the
gate of the hostel; the brown peasant from the country urges forward
his loitering beasts, laden with panniers of sunny fruit and fresh
dewy vegetables, for already the thrifty housewives are hastening to
the market.
"The sun is up and sparkles along the valley, tipping the
transparent foliage of the groves. The matin bells resound
melodiously through the pure bright air, announcing the hour of
devotion. The muleteer halts his burdened animals before the
chapel, thrusts his staff through his belt behind, and enters with
hat in hand, smoothing his coal-black hair, to hear a mass, and to
put up a prayer for a prosperous wayfaring across the sierra. And
now steals forth on fairy foot the gentle Senora, in trim basquina,
with restless fan in hand, and dark eye flashing from beneath the
gracefully folded mantilla; she seeks some well-frequented church to
offer up her morning orisons; but the nicely adjusted dress, the
dainty shoe and cobweb stocking, the raven tresses exquisitely
braided, the fresh-plucked rose, gleaming among them like a gem,
show that earth divides with Heaven the empire of her thoughts.
Keep an eye upon her, careful mother, or virgin aunt, or vigilant
duenna, whichever you may be, that walk behind!
"As the morning advances, the din of labor augments on every side;
the streets are thronged with man, and steed, and beast of burden,
and there is a hum and murmur, like the surges of the ocean. As the
sun ascends to his meridian, the hum and bustle gradually decline;
at the height of noon there is a pause. The panting city sinks into
lassitude, and for several hours there is a general repose. The
windows are closed, the curtains drawn, the inhabitants retired into
the coolest recesses of their mansions; the full-fed monk snores in
his dormitory; the brawny porter lies stretched on the pavement
beside his burden; the peasant and the laborer sleep beneath the
trees of the Alameda, lulled by the sultry chirping of the locust.
The streets are deserted, except by the water-carrier, who refreshes
the ear by proclaiming the merits of his sparkling beverage, 'colder
than the mountain snow (mas fria que la nieve).'
"As the sun declines, there is again a gradual reviving, and when
the vesper bell rings out his sinking knell, all nature seems to
rejoice that the tyrant of the day has fallen. Now begins the
bustle of enjoyment, when the citizens pour forth to breathe the
evening air, and revel away the brief twilight in the walks and
gardens of the Darro and Xenil.
"As night closes, the capricious scene assumes new features. Light
after light gradually twinkles forth; here a taper from a balconied
window; there a votive lamp before the image of a saint. Thus, by
degrees, the city emerges the banners of the haughty chiefs of
Spain, and flaunted in triumph through these Moslem halls. I
picture to myself Columbus, the future discoverer of a world, taking
his modest stand in a remote corner, the humble and neglected
spectator of the pageant. I see in imagination the Catholic
sovereigns prostrating themselves before the altar, and pouring
forth thanks for their victory; while the vaults resound with sacred
minstrelsy and the deep-toned Te Deum.
"The transient illusion is over,--the pageant melts from the fancy,
--monarch, priest, and warrior return into oblivion with the poor
Moslems over whom they exulted. The hall of their triumph is waste
and desolate. The bat flits about its twilight vault, and the owl
hoots from the neighboring tower of Comares."
It is a Moslem tradition that the court and army of Boabdil the
Unfortunate, the last Moorish king of Granada, are shut up in the
mountain by a powerful enchantment, and that it is written in the book of
fate that when the enchantment is broken, Boabdil will descend from the
mountain at the head of his army, resume his throne in the Alhambra, and,
gathering together the enchanted warriors from all parts of Spain,
reconquer the peninsula. Nothing in this volume is more amusing and at
the same time more poetic and romantic than the story of "Governor Manco
and the Soldier," in which this legend is used to cover the exploit of a
dare-devil contrabandista. But it is too long to quote. I take,
therefore, another story, which has something of the same elements, that
of a merry mendicant student of Salamanca, Don Vicente by name, who
wandered from village to village, and picked up a living by playing the
guitar for the peasants, among whom he was sure of a hearty welcome.
In the course of his wandering he had found a seal-ring, having for its
device the cabalistic sign invented by King Solomon the Wise, and of
mighty power in all cases of enchantment.
"At length he arrived at the great object of his musical
vagabondizing, the far-famed city of Granada, and hailed with wonder
and delight its Moorish towers, its lovely vega, and its snowy
mountains glistening through a summer atmosphere. It is needless to
say with what eager curiosity he entered its gates and wandered
through its streets, and gazed upon its Oriental monuments. Every
female face peering through a window or beaming from a balcony was
to him a Zorayda or a Zelinda, nor could he meet a stately dame on
the Alameda but he was ready to fancy her a Moorish princess, and to
spread his student's robe beneath her feet.
"His musical talent, his happy humor, his youth and his good looks,
won him a universal welcome in spite of his ragged robes, and for
several days he led a gay life in the old Moorish capital and its
environs. One of his occasional haunts was the fountain of
Avellanos, in the valley of Darro. It is one of the popular resorts
of Granada, and has been so since the days of the Moors; and here
the student had an opportunity of pursuing his studies of female
beauty; a branch of study to which he was a little prone.
"Here he would take his seat with his guitar, improvise love-ditties
to admiring groups of majos and majas, or prompt with his music the
ever-ready dance. He was thus engaged one evening when he beheld a
padre of the church advancing, at whose approach every one touched
the hat. He was evidently a man of consequence; he certainly was a
mirror of good if not of holy living; robust and rosy-faced, and
breathing at every pore with the warmth of the weather and the
exercise of the walk. As he passed along he would every now and
then draw a maravedi out of his pocket and bestow it on a beggar,
with an air of signal beneficence. 'Ah, the blessed father!' would
be the cry; long life to him, and may he soon be a bishop!'
"To aid his steps in ascending the hill he leaned gently now and
then on the arm of a handmaid, evidently the pet-lamb of this
kindest of pastors. Ah, such a damsel! Andalus from head to foot;
from the rose in her hair, to the fairy shoe and lacework stocking;
Andalus in every movement; in every undulation of the body:--ripe,
melting Andalus! But then so modest!--so shy!--ever, with downcast
eyes, listening to the words of the padre; or, if by chance she let
flash a side glance, it was suddenly checked and her eyes once more
cast to the ground.
"The good padre looked benignantly on the company about the
fountain, and took his seat with some emphasis on a stone bench,
while the handmaid hastened to bring him a glass of sparkling water.
He sipped it deliberately and with a relish, tempering it with one
of those spongy pieces of frosted eggs and sugar so dear to Spanish
epicures, and on returning the glass to the hand of the damsel
pinched her cheek with infinite loving-kindness.
"'Ah, the good pastor!' whispered the student to himself; 'what a
happiness would it be to be gathered into his fold with such a
pet-lamb for a companion!'
"But no such good fare was likely to befall him. In vain he essayed
those powers of pleasing which he had found so irresistible with
country curates and country lasses. Never had he touched his guitar
with such skill; never had he poured forth more soul-moving ditties,
but he had no longer a country curate or country lass to deal with.
The worthy priest evidently did not relish music, and the modest
damsel never raised her eyes from the ground. They remained but a
short time at the fountain; the good padre hastened their return to
Granada. The damsel gave the student one shy glance in retiring;
but it plucked the heart out of his bosom!
"He inquired about them after they had gone. Padre Tomas was one of
the saints of Granada, a model of regularity; punctual in his hour
of rising; his hour of taking a paseo for an appetite; his hours of
eating; his hour of taking his siesta; his hour of playing his game
of tresillo, of an evening, with some of the dames of the cathedral
circle; his hour of supping, and his hour of retiring to rest, to
gather fresh strength for another day's round of similar duties.
He had an easy sleek mule for his riding; a matronly housekeeper
skilled in preparing tidbits for his table; and the pet-lamb, to
smooth his pillow at night and bring him his chocolate in the
morning.
"Adieu now to the gay, thoughtless life of the student; the
side-glance of a bright eye had been the undoing of him. Day and
night he could not get the image of this most modest damsel out of
his mind. He sought the mansion of the padre. Alas! it was above
the class of houses accessible to a strolling student like himself.
The worthy padre had no sympathy with him; he had never been
Estudiante sopista, obliged to sing for his supper. He blockaded
the house by day, catching a glance of the damsel now and then as
she appeared at a casement; but these glances only fed his flame
without encouraging his hope. He serenaded her balcony at night,
and at one time was flattered by the appearance of something white
at a window. Alas, it was only the nightcap of the padre.
"Never was lover more devoted; never damsel more shy: the poor
student was reduced to despair. At length arrived the eve of St.
John, when the lower classes of Granada swarm into the country,
dance away the afternoon, and pass midsummer's night on the banks of
the Darro and the Xenil. Happy are they who on this eventful night
can wash their faces in those waters just as the cathedral bell
tells midnight; for at that precise moment they have a beautifying
power. The student, having nothing to do, suffered himself to be
carried away by the holiday-seeking throng until he found himself in
the narrow valley of the Darro, below the lofty hill and ruddy
towers of the Alhambra. The dry bed of the river; the rocks which
border it; the terraced gardens which overhang it, were alive with
variegated groups, dancing under the vines and fig-trees to the
sound of the guitar and castanets.
"The student remained for some time in doleful dumps, leaning
against one of the huge misshapen stone pomegranates which adorn the
ends of the little bridge over the Darro. He cast a wistful glance
upon the merry scene, where every cavalier had his dame; or, to
speak more appropriately, every Jack his Jill; sighed at his own
solitary state, a victim to the black eye of the most unapproachable
of damsels, and repined at his ragged garb, which seemed to shut the
gate of hope against him.
"By degrees his attention was attracted to a neighbor equally
solitary with himself. This was a tall soldier, of a stern aspect
and grizzled beard, who seemed posted as a sentry at the opposite
pomegranate. His face was bronzed by time; he was arrayed in
ancient Spanish armor, with buckler and lance, and stood immovable
as a statue. What surprised the student was, that though thus
strangely equipped, he was totally unnoticed by the passing throng,
albeit that many almost brushed against him.
"'This is a city of old time peculiarities,' thought the student, I
and doubtless this is one of them with which the inhabitants are too
familiar to be surprised.' His own curiosity, however, was
awakened, and being of a social disposition, he accosted the
soldier.
"'A rare old suit of armor that which you wear, comrade. May I ask
what corps you belong to?'
"The soldier gasped out a reply from a pair of jaws which seemed to
have rusted on their hinges.
"'The royal guard of Ferdinand and Isabella.'
"'Santa Maria! Why, it is three centuries since that corps was in
service.'
"'And for three centuries have I been mounting guard. Now I trust
my tour of duty draws to a close. Dost thou desire fortune?'
"The student held up his tattered cloak in reply.
"'I understand thee. If thou hast faith and courage, follow me, and
thy fortune is made.'
"'Softly, comrade; to follow thee would require small courage in one
who has nothing to lose but life and an old guitar, neither of much
value; but my faith is of a different matter, and not to be put in
temptation. If it be any criminal act by which I am to mend my
fortune, think not my ragged coat will make me undertake it.'
"The soldier turned on him a look of high displeasure. 'My sword,'
said he, 'has never been drawn but in the cause of the faith and the
throne. I am a 'Cristiano viejo;' trust in me and fear no evil.'
"The student followed him wondering. He observed that no one heeded
their conversation, and that the soldier made his way through the
various groups of idlers unnoticed, as if invisible.
"Crossing the bridge, the soldier led the way by a narrow and steep
path past a Moorish mill and aqueduct, and up the ravine which
separates the domains of the Generalife from those of the Alhambra.
The last ray of the sun shone upon the red battlements of the
latter, which beetled far above; and the convent-bells were
proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was
overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers
and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the
twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier
halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a
Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his
spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones yawned
apart, leaving an opening as wide as a door.
"'Enter in the name of the Holy Trinity,' said the soldier, 'and
fear nothing.' The student's heart quaked, but he made the sign of
the cross, muttered his Ave Maria, and followed his mysterious guide
into a deep vault cut out of the solid rock under the tower, and
covered with Arabic inscriptions. The soldier pointed to a stone
seat hewn along one side of the vault. 'Behold,' said he, 'my couch
for three hundred years.' The bewildered student tried to force a
joke. 'By the blessed St. Anthony,' said he, 'but you must have
slept soundly, considering the hardness of your couch.'
"'On the contrary, sleep has been a stranger to these eyes;
incessant watchfulness has been my doom. Listen to my lot. I was
one of the royal guards of Ferdinand and Isabella; but was taken
prisoner by the Moors in one of their sorties, and confined a
captive in this tower. When preparations were made to surrender the
fortress to the Christian sovereigns, I was prevailed upon by an
alfaqui, a Moorish priest, to aid him in secreting some of the
treasures of Boabdil in this vault. I was justly punished for my
fault. The alfaqui was an African necromancer, and by his infernal
arts cast a spell upon me--to guard his treasures. Something must
have happened to him, for he never returned, and here have I
remained ever since, buried alive. Years and years have rolled
away; earthquakes have shaken this hill; I have heard stone by stone
of the tower above tumbling to the ground, in the natural operation
of time; but the spell-bound walls of this vault set both time and
earthquakes at defiance.
"'Once every hundred years, on the festival of St. John, the
enchantment ceases to have thorough sway; I am permitted to go forth
and post myself upon the bridge of the Darro, where you met me,
waiting until some one shall arrive who may have power to break this
magic spell. I have hitherto mounted guard there in vain. I walk
as in a cloud, concealed from mortal sight. You are the first to
accost me for now three hundred years. I behold the reason. I see
on your finger the seal-ring of Solomon the Wise, which is proof
against all enchantment. With you it remains to deliver me from
this awful dungeon, or to leave me to keep guard here for another
hundred years.'
"The student listened to this tale in mute wonderment. He had heard
many tales of treasures shut up under strong enchantment in the
vaults of the Alhambra, but had treated them as fables. He now felt
the value of the seal-ring, which had, in a manner, been given to
him by St. Cyprian. Still, though armed by so potent a talisman, it
was an awful thing to find himself tete-a-tete in such a place with
an enchanted soldier, who, according to the laws of nature, ought to
have been quietly in his grave for nearly three centuries.
"A personage of this kind, however, was quite out of the ordinary
run, and not to be trifled with, and he assured him he might rely
upon his friendship and good will to do everything in his power for
his deliverance.
"'I trust to a motive more powerful than friendship,' said the
soldier.
"He pointed to a ponderous iron coffer, secured by locks inscribed
with Arabic characters. 'That coffer,' said he, 'contains countless
treasure in gold and jewels and precious stones. Break the magic
spell by which I am enthralled, and one half of this treasure shall
be thine.'
"'But how am I to do it?'
"'The aid of a Christian priest and a Christian maid is necessary.
The priest to exorcise the powers of darkness; the damsel to touch
this chest with the seal of Solomon. This must be done at night.
But have a care. This is solemn work, and not to be effected by the
carnal-minded. The priest must be a Cristiano viejo, a model of
sanctity; and must mortify the flesh before he comes here, by a
rigorous fast of four-and-twenty hours: and as to the maiden, she
must be above reproach, and proof against temptation. Linger not in
finding such aid. In three days my furlough is at an end; if not
delivered before midnight of the third, I shall have to mount guard
for another century.'
"'Fear not,' said the student, 'I have in my eye the very priest and
damsel you describe; but how am I to regain admission to this tower?
"'The seal of Solomon will open the way for thee.'
"The student issued forth from the tower much more gayly than he had
entered. The wall closed behind him, and remained solid as before.
"The next morning he repaired boldly to the mansion of the priest,
no longer a poor strolling student, thrumming his way with a guitar;
but an ambassador from the shadowy world, with enchanted treasures
to bestow. No particulars are told of his negotiation, excepting
that the zeal of the worthy priest was easily kindled at the idea of
rescuing an old soldier of the faith and a strong-box of King Chico
from the very clutches of Satan; and then what alms might be
dispensed, what churches built, and how many poor relatives enriched
with the Moorish treasure!
"As to the immaculate handmaid, she was ready to lend her hand,
which was all that was required, to the pious work; and if a shy
glance now and then might be believed, the ambassador began to find
favor in her modest eyes.
"The greatest difficulty, however, was the fast to which the good
padre had to subject himself. Twice he attempted it, and twice the
flesh was too strong for the spirit. It was only on the third day
that he was enabled to withstand the temptations of the cupboard;
but it was still a question whether he would hold out until the
spell was broken.
"At a late hour of the night the party groped their way up the
ravine by the light of a lantern, and bearing a basket with
provisions for exorcising the demon of hunger so soon as the other
demons should be laid in the Red Sea.
"The seal of Solomon opened their way into the tower. They found
the soldier seated on the enchanted strong-box, awaiting their
arrival. The exorcism was performed in due style. The damsel
advanced and touched the locks of the coffer with the seal of
Solomon. The lid flew open; and such treasures of gold and jewels
and precious stones as flashed upon the eye!
"'Here's cut and come again!' cried the student, exultingly, as he
proceeded to cram his pockets.
"'Fairly and softly,' exclaimed the soldier. 'Let us get the coffer
out entire, and then divide:
"They accordingly went to work with might and main; but it was a
difficult task; the chest was enormously heavy, and had been
imbedded there for centuries. While they were thus employed the
good dominie drew on one side and made a vigorous onslaught on the
basket, by way of exorcising the demon of hunger which was raging in
his entrails. In a little while a fat capon was devoured, and
washed down by a deep potation of Val de penas; and, by way of grace
after meat, he gave a kind-hearted kiss to the pet-lamb who waited
on him. It was quietly done in a corner, but the tell-tale walls
babbled it forth as if in triumph. Never was chaste salute more
awful in its effects. At the sound the soldier gave a great cry of
despair; the coffer, which was half raised, fell back in its place
and was locked once more. Priest, student, and damsel found
themselves outside of the tower, the wall of which closed with a
thundering jar. Alas! the good padre had broken his fast too soon!
"When recovered from his surprise, the student would have reentered
the tower, but learnt to his dismay that the damsel, in her fright,
had let fall the seal of Solomon; it remained within the vault.
"In a word, the cathedral bell tolled midnight; the spell was
renewed; the soldier was doomed to mount guard for another hundred
years, and there he and the treasure remain to this day--and all
because the kind-hearted padre kissed his handmaid. 'Ah, father!
father!' said the student, shaking his head ruefully, as they
returned down the ravine, 'I fear there was less of the saint than
the sinner in that kiss!'
"Thus ends the legend as far as it has been authenticated. There is
a tradition, however, that the student had brought off treasure
enough in his pocket to set him up in the world; that he prospered
in his affairs, that the worthy padre gave him the pet-lamb in
marriage, by way of amends for the blunder in the vault; that the
immaculate damsel proved a pattern for wives as she had been for
handmaids, and bore her husband a numerous progeny; that the first
was a wonder; it was born seven months after her marriage, and
though a seven months' boy, was the sturdiest of the flock. The
rest were all born in the ordinary course of time.
"The story of the enchanted soldier remains one of the popular
traditions of Granada, though told in a variety of ways; the common
people affirm that he still mounts guard on midsummer eve beside the
gigantic stone pomegranate on the bridge of the Darro; but remains
invisible excepting to such lucky mortal as may possess the seal of
Solomon."
These passages from the most characteristic of Irving's books do not by
any means exhaust his variety, but they afford a fair measure of his
purely literary skill, upon which his reputation must rest. To my
apprehension this "charm" in literature is as necessary to the
amelioration and enjoyment of human life as the more solid achievements
of scholarship. That Irving should find it in the prosaic and
materialistic conditions of the New World as well as in the
tradition-laden atmosphere of the Old, is evidence that he possessed
genius of a refined and subtle quality, if not of the most robust order.
X
LAST YEARS--THE CHARACTER OF HIS LITERATURE
The last years of Irving's life, although full of activity and
enjoyment,--abated only by the malady which had so long tormented him,
--offer little new in the development of his character, and need not much
longer detain us. The calls of friendship and of honor were many, his
correspondence was large, he made many excursions to scenes that were
filled with pleasant memories, going even as far south as Virginia, and
he labored assiduously at the "Life of Washington,"--attracted, however,
now and then, by some other tempting theme. But his delight was in the
domestic circle at Sunnyside. It was not possible that his occasional
melancholy vein should not be deepened by change and death and the
lengthening shade of old age. Yet I do not know the closing days of any
other author of note that were more cheerful, serene, and happy than his.
Of our author, in these latter days, Mr. George William Curtis put
recently into his "Easy Chair" papers an artistically touched little
portrait. "Irving was as quaint a figure," he says, "as the Diedrich
Knickerbocker in the preliminary advertisement of the 'History of New
York.' Thirty years ago he might have been seen on an autumnal afternoon
tripping with an elastic step along Broadway, with 'low-quartered' shoes
neatly tied, and a Talma cloak--a short garment that lung from the
shoulders like the cape of a coat. There was a chirping, cheery,
old-school air in his appearance which was undeniably Dutch, and most
harmonious with the associations of his writing. He seemed, indeed, to
have stepped out of his own books; and the cordial grace and humor of his
address, if he stopped for a passing chat, were delightfully
characteristic. He was then our most famous man of letters, but he was
simply free from all self-consciousness and assumption and dogmatism."
Congenial occupation was one secret of Irving's cheerfulness and
contentment, no doubt. And he was called away as soon as his task was
done, very soon after the last volume of the "Washington" issued from the
press. Yet he lived long enough to receive the hearty approval of it
from the literary men whose familiarity with the Revolutionary period
made them the best judges of its merits.
He had time also to revise his works. It is perhaps worthy of note that
for several years, while he was at the height of his popularity, his
books had very little sale. From 1842 to 1848 they were out of print;
with the exception of some stray copies of a cheap Philadelphia edition,
and a Paris collection (a volume of this, at my hand, is one of a series
entitled a "Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors"), they were
not to be found. The Philadelphia publishers did not think there was
sufficient demand to warrant a new edition. Mr. Irving and his friends
judged the market more wisely, and a young New York publisher offered to
assume the responsibility. This was Mr. George P. Putnam. The event
justified his sagacity and his liberal enterprise. From July, 1848, to
November, 1859, the author received on his copyright over eighty-eight
thousand dollars. And it should be added that the relations between
author and publisher, both in prosperity and in times of business
disaster, reflect the highest credit upon both. If the like relations
always obtained, we should not have to say, "May the Lord pity the
authors in this world, and the publishers in the next."
I have outlined the life of Washington Irving in vain, if we have not
already come to a tolerably clear conception of the character of the man
and of his books. If I were to follow his literary method exactly, I
should do nothing more. The idiosyncrasies of the man are the strength
and weakness of his works. I do not know any other author whose writings
so perfectly reproduce his character, or whose character may be more
certainly measured by his writings. His character is perfectly
transparent: his predominant traits were humor and sentiment; his
temperament was gay with a dash of melancholy; his inner life and his
mental operations were the reverse of complex, and his literary method is
simple. He felt his subject, and he expressed his conception not so much
by direct statement or description as by almost imperceptible touches and
shadings here and there, by a diffused tone and color, with very little
show of analysis. Perhaps it is a sufficient definition to say that his
method was the sympathetic. In the end the reader is put in possession
of the luminous and complete idea upon which the author has been
brooding, though he may not be able to say exactly how the impression has
been conveyed to him; and I doubt if the author could have explained his
sympathetic process. He certainly would have lacked precision in any
philosophical or metaphysical theme, and when, in his letters, he touches
upon politics, there is a little vagueness of definition that indicates
want of mental grip in that direction. But in the region of feeling his
genius is sufficient to his purpose; either when that purpose is a highly
creative one, as in the character and achievements of his Dutch heroes,
or merely that of portraiture, as in the "Columbus" and the "Washington."
The analysis of a nature so simple and a character so transparent as
Irving's, who lived in the sunlight and had no envelope of mystery, has
not the fascination that attaches to Hawthorne.
Although the direction of his work as a man of letters was largely
determined by his early surroundings,--that is, by his birth in a land
void of traditions, and into a society without much literary life, so
that his intellectual food was of necessity a foreign literature that was
at the moment becoming a little antiquated in the land of its birth, and
his warm imagination was forced to revert to the past for that
nourishment which his crude environment did not offer,--yet he was by
nature a retrospective man. His face was set towards the past, not
towards the future. He never caught the restlessness of this century,
nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit, he still, by
mental affiliation, belonged rather to the age of Addison than to that of
Macaulay. And his placid, retrospective, optimistic strain pleased a
public that were excited and harrowed by the mocking and lamenting of
Lord Byron, and, singularly enough, pleased even the great pessimist
himself.
His writings induce to reflection; to quiet musing, to tenderness for
tradition; they amuse, they entertain, they call a check to the
feverishness of modern life; but they are rarely stimulating or
suggestive. They are better adapted, it must be owned, to please the
many than the critical few, who demand more incisive treatment and a
deeper consideration of the problems of life. And it is very fortunate
that a writer who can reach the great public and entertain it can also
elevate and refine its tastes, set before it high ideas, instruct it
agreeably, and all this in a style that belongs to the best literature.
It is a safe model for young readers; and for young readers there is very
little in the overwhelming flood of to-day that is comparable to Irving's
books, and especially, it seems to me, because they were not written for
children.
Irving's position in American literature, or in that of the English
tongue, will be determined only by the slow settling of opinion, which no
critic can foretell, and the operation of which no criticism seems able
to explain. I venture to believe, however, that the verdict will not be
in accord with much of the present prevalent criticism. The service that
he rendered to American letters no critic disputes; nor is there any
question of our national indebtedness to him for investing a crude and
new land with the enduring charms of romance and tradition. In this
respect, our obligation to him is that of Scotland to Scott and Burns;
and it is an obligation due only, in all history, to here and there a
fortunate creator to whose genius opportunity is kind. The Knickerbocker
Legend and the romance with which Irving has invested the Hudson are a
priceless legacy; and this would remain an imperishable possession in
popular tradition if the literature creating it were destroyed. This
sort of creation is unique in modern times. New York is the
Knickerbocker city; its whole social life remains colored by his fiction;
and the romantic background it owes to him in some measure supplies to it
what great age has given to European cities. This creation is sufficient
to secure for him an immortality, a length of earthly remembrance that
all the rest of his writings together might not give.
Irving was always the literary man; he had the habits, the
idiosyncrasies, of his small genus. I mean that he regarded life not
from the philanthropic, the economic, the political, the philosophic, the
metaphysic, the scientific, or the theologic, but purely from the
literary point of view. He belongs to that small class of which Johnson
and Goldsmith are perhaps as good types as any, and to which America has
added very few. The literary point of view is taken by few in any
generation; it may seem to the world of very little consequence in the
pressure of all the complex interests of life, and it may even seem
trivial amid the tremendous energies applied to immediate affairs; but it
is the point of view that endures; if its creations do not mold human
life, like the Roman law, they remain to charm and civilize, like the
poems of Horace. You must not ask more of them than that. This attitude
toward life is defensible on the highest grounds. A man with Irving's
gifts has the right to take the position of an observer and describer,
and not to be called on for a more active participation in affairs than
he chooses to take. He is doing the world the highest service of which
he is capable, and the most enduring it can receive from any man. It is
not a question whether the work of the literary man is higher than that
of the reformer or the statesman; it is a distinct work, and is justified
by the result, even when the work is that of the humorist only.
We recognize this in the case of the poet. Although Goethe has been
reproached for his lack of sympathy with the liberalizing movement of his
day (as if his novels were quieting social influences), it is felt by
this generation that the author of "Faust" needs no apology that he did
not spend his energies in the effervescing politics of the German states.
I mean, that while we may like or dislike the man for his sympathy or
want of sympathy, we concede to the author the right of his attitude;
if Goethe had not assumed freedom from moral responsibility, I suppose
that criticism of his aloofness would long ago have ceased. Irving did
not lack sympathy with humanity in the concrete; it colored whatever he
wrote. But he regarded the politics of his own country, the revolutions
in France, the long struggle in Spain, without heat; and he held aloof
from projects of agitation and reform, and maintained the attitude of an
observer, regarding the life about him from the point of view of the
literary artist, as he was justified in doing.
Irving had the defects of his peculiar genius, and these have no doubt
helped to fix upon him the complimentary disparagement of "genial."
He was not aggressive; in his nature he was wholly unpartisan, and full
of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world,
although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect
for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as
fools in the main. Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to
the realists, whom our generation affects. Both writers stimulate the
longing for something better. Their creed was short: "Love God and honor
the King." It is a very good one for a literary man, and might do for a
Christian. The supernatural was still a reality in the age in which they
wrote. Irving's faith in God and his love of humanity were very simple;
I do not suppose he was much disturbed by the deep problems that have set
us all adrift. In every age, whatever is astir, literature, theology,
all intellectual activity, takes one and the same drift, and approximates
in color. The bent of Irving's spirit was fixed in his youth, and he
escaped the desperate realism of this generation, which has no outcome,
and is likely to produce little that is noble.
I do not know how to account, on principles of culture which we
recognize, for our author's style. His education was exceedingly
defective, nor was his want of discipline supplied by subsequent
desultory application. He seems to have been born with a rare sense of
literary proportion and form; into this, as into a mold, were run his
apparently lazy and really acute observations of life. That he
thoroughly mastered such literature as he fancied there is abundant
evidence; that his style was influenced by the purest English models is
also apparent. But there remains a large margin for wonder how, with his
want of training, he could have elaborated a style which is distinctively
his own, and is as copious, felicitous in the choice of words, flowing,
spontaneous, flexible, engaging, clear, and as little wearisome when read
continuously in quantity as any in the English tongue. This is saying a
great deal, though it is not claiming for him the compactness, nor the
robust vigor, nor the depth of thought, of many other masters in it.
It is sometimes praised for its simplicity. It is certainly lucid, but
its simplicity is not that of Benjamin Franklin's style; it is often
ornate, not seldom somewhat diffuse, and always exceedingly melodious.
It is noticeable for its metaphorical felicity. But it was not in the
sympathetic nature of the author, to which I just referred, to come
sharply to the point. It is much to have merited the eulogy of Campbell
that he had "added clarity to the English tongue." This elegance and
finish of style (which seems to have been as natural to the man as his
amiable manner) is sometimes made his reproach, as if it were his sole
merit, and as if he had concealed under this charming form a want of
substance. In literature form is vital. But his case does not rest upon
that. As an illustration his "Life of Washington" may be put in
evidence. Probably this work lost something in incisiveness and
brilliancy by being postponed till the writer's old age. But whatever
this loss, it is impossible for any biography to be less pretentious in
style, or less ambitious in proclamation. The only pretension of matter
is in the early chapters, in which a more than doubtful genealogy is
elaborated, and in which it is thought necessary to Washington's dignity
to give a fictitious importance to his family and his childhood, and to
accept the southern estimate of the hut in which he was born as a
"mansion." In much of this false estimate Irving was doubtless misled by
the fables of Weems. But while he has given us a dignified portrait of
Washington, it is as far as possible removed from that of the smileless
prig which has begun to weary even the popular fancy. The man he paints
is flesh and blood, presented, I believe, with substantial faithfulness
to his character; with a recognition of the defects of his education and
the deliberation of his mental operations; with at least a hint of that
want of breadth of culture and knowledge of the past, the possession of
which characterized many of his great associates; and with no concealment
that he had a dower of passions and a temper which only vigorous
self-watchfulness kept under. But he portrays, with an admiration not
too highly colored, the magnificent patience, the courage to bear
misconstruction, the unfailing patriotism, the practical sagacity, the
level balance of judgment combined with the wisest toleration, the
dignity of mind, and the lofty moral nature which made him the great man
of his epoch. Irving's grasp of this character; his lucid marshaling of
the scattered, often wearisome and uninteresting details of our dragging,
unpicturesque Revolutionary War; his just judgment of men; his even,
almost judicial, moderation of tone; and his admirable proportion of
space to events, render the discussion of style in reference to this work
superfluous. Another writer might have made a more brilliant
performance: descriptions sparkling with antitheses, characters projected
into startling attitudes by the use of epithets; a work more exciting and
more piquant, that would have started a thousand controversies, and
engaged the attention by daring conjectures and attempts to make a
dramatic spectacle; a book interesting and notable, but false in
philosophy, and untrue in fact.
When the "Sketch-Book" appeared, an English critic said it should have
been first published in England, for Irving was an English writer.
The idea has been more than once echoed here. The truth is, that while
Irving was intensely American in feeling, he was, first of all, a man of
letters, and in that capacity he was cosmopolitan; he certainly was not
insular. He had a rare accommodation of tone to his theme. Of England,
whose traditions kindled his susceptible fancy, he wrote as Englishmen
would like to write about it. In Spain he was saturated with the
romantic story of the people and the fascination of the clime; and he was
so true an interpreter of both as to earn from the Spaniards the title of
"the poet Irving." I chanced once, in an inn at Frascati, to take up
"The Tales of a Traveller," which I had not seen for many years.
I expected to revive the somewhat faded humor and fancy of the past
generation. But I found not only a sprightly humor and vivacity which
are modern, but a truth to Italian local color that is very rare in any
writer foreign to the soil. As to America, I do not know what can be
more characteristically American than the Knickerbocker, the Hudson River
tales, the sketches of life and adventure in the far West. But
underneath all this diversity there is one constant quality,--the flavor
of the author. Open by chance and read almost anywhere in his score of
books,--it may be the "Tour on the Prairies," the familiar dream of the
Alhambra, or the narratives of the brilliant exploits of New World
explorers; surrender yourself to the flowing current of his transparent
style, and you are conscious of a beguilement which is the crowning
excellence of all lighter literature, for which we have no word but
"charm."
The consensus of opinion about Irving in England and America for thirty
years was very remarkable. He had a universal popularity rarely enjoyed
by any writer. England returned him to America medaled by the king,
honored by the university which is chary of its favors, followed by the
applause of the whole English people. In English households, in
drawing-rooms of the metropolis, in political circles no less than among
the literary coteries, in the best reviews, and in the popular newspapers
the opinion of him was pretty much the same. And even in the lapse of
time and the change of literary fashion authors so unlike as Byron and
Dickens were equally warm in admiration of him. To the English
indorsement America added her own enthusiasm, which was as universal.
His readers were the million, and all his readers were admirers. Even
American statesmen, who feed their minds on food we know not of, read
Irving. It is true that the uncritical opinion of New York was never
exactly reechoed in the cool recesses of Boston culture; but the magnates
of the "North American Review" gave him their meed of cordial praise. The
country at large put him on a pinnacle. If you attempt to account for
the position he occupied by his character, which won the love of all men,
it must be remembered that the quality which won this, whatever its
value, pervades his books also.
And yet it must be said that the total impression left upon the mind by
the man and his works is not that of the greatest intellectual force.
I have no doubt that this was the impression he made upon his ablest
contemporaries. And this fact, when I consider the effect the man
produced, makes the study of him all the more interesting. As an
intellectual personality he makes no such impression, for instance, as
Carlyle, or a dozen other writers now living who could be named. The
incisive critical faculty was almost entirely wanting in him. He had
neither the power nor the disposition to cut his way transversely across
popular opinion and prejudice that Ruskin has, nor to draw around him
disciples equally well pleased to see him fiercely demolish to-day what
they had delighted to see him set up yesterday as eternal. He evoked
neither violent partisanship nor violent opposition. He was an extremely
sensitive man, and if he had been capable of creating a conflict, he
would only have been miserable in it. The play of his mind depended upon
the sunshine of approval. And all this shows a certain want of
intellectual virility.
A recent anonymous writer has said that most of the writing of our day is
characterized by an intellectual strain. I have no doubt that this will
appear to be the case to the next generation. It is a strain to say
something new even at the risk of paradox, or to say something in a new
way at the risk of obscurity. From this Irving was entirely free. There
is no visible straining to attract attention. His mood is calm and
unexaggerated. Even in some of his pathos, which is open to the
suspicion of being "literary," there is no literary exaggeration. He
seems always writing from an internal calm, which is the necessary
condition of his production. If he wins at all by his style, by his
humor, by his portraiture of scenes or of character, it is by a gentle
force, like that of the sun in spring. There are many men now living,
or recently dead, intellectual prodigies, who have stimulated thought,
or upset opinions, created mental eras, to whom Irving stands hardly in
as fair a relation as Goldsmith to Johnson. What verdict the next
generation will put upon their achievements I do not know; but it is safe
to say that their position and that of Irving as well will depend largely
upon the affirmation or the reversal of their views of life and their
judgments of character. I think the calm work of Irving will stand when
much of the more startling and perhaps more brilliant intellectual
achievement of this age has passed away.
And this leads me to speak of Irving's moral quality, which I cannot
bring myself to exclude from a literary estimate, even in the face of the
current gospel of art for art's sake. There is something that made Scott
and Irving personally loved by the millions of their readers, who had
only the dimmest ideas of their personality. This was some quality
perceived in what they wrote. Each one can define it for himself; there
it is, and I do not see why it is not as integral a part of the authors
--an element in the estimate of their future position--as what we term
their intellect, their knowledge, their skill, or their art. However you
rate it, you cannot account for Irving's influence in the world without
it. In his tender tribute to Irving, the great-hearted Thackeray, who
saw as clearly as anybody the place of mere literary art in the sum total
of life, quoted the dying words of Scott to Lockhart,--"Be a good man, my
dear." We know well enough that the great author of "The Newcomes" and
the great author of "The Heart of Midlothian" recognized the abiding
value in literature of integrity, sincerity, purity, charity, faith.
These are beneficences; and Irving's literature, walk round it and
measure it by whatever critical instruments you will, is a beneficent
literature. The author loved good women and little children and a pure
life; he had faith in his fellow-men, a kindly sympathy with the lowest,
without any subservience to the highest; he retained a belief in the
possibility of chivalrous actions, and did not care to envelop them in a
cynical suspicion; he was an author still capable of an enthusiasm. His
books are wholesome, full of sweetness and charm, of humor without any
sting, of amusement without any stain; and their more solid qualities are
marred by neither pedantry nor pretension.
Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at the close of a
lovely day of that Indian summer which is nowhere more full of a
melancholy charm than on the banks of the lower Hudson, and which was in
perfect accord with the ripe and peaceful close of his life. He was
buried on a little elevation overlooking Sleepy Hollow and the river he
loved, amidst the scenes which his magic pen has made classic and his
sepulcher hallows.
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